JLC Attempts to Shut Down Boston Conference on Zionism

Jewish Labor Committee Attempts to Shut Down
Boston Conference on Zionism

Zionists walked into a well-known center for left
activists in Boston this week and managed, with a single
complaint, to take away an already
agreed-upon meeting space for an April conference on
Palestine organized by the New England Committee to
Defend Palestine. Around March 9, the local
branch of a national group called the Jewish Labor
Committee told the director of Encuentro 5 and the landlord
of the building that houses Encuentro that the New
England Committee to Defend Palestine is a "hate
group" and demanded that it not be allowed to hold
the conference in Encuentro's meeting space.

On March 14, the director of Encuentro informed
the conference organizers that he would have to
accede to pressure from the
Jewish Labor Committee and UNITE-HERE (
the Union of Needle trades, Industrial and Textile
Employees and Hotel Employees and Restaurant
Employees Union). UNITE-HERE is connected to
a trust that owns the multi-story brick industrial building in
Boston's Chinatown. Encuentro's
space is on the 5th floor of this building
and is held without a lease,
making it vulnerable to landlord threats.

Beneath the facts of the case lie a number of ironies:

* Attacks like this are exactly the subject
of the disputed conference. The
purpose of the conference, whose title is
"Zionism and the Repression of Anti-Colonial Movements,"
is to expose attacks on activists as they have
been carried out historically by zionist forces.
Activists scheduled to speak have been involved
in the Native American struggle against European
genocide on the North American continent,
the Black liberation struggle in the US from slavery onward,
the struggle against US imperialism in Central
America, the movement against apartheid in South Africa,
the struggle against US imperialism and genocide in Iraq,
and the struggle against US-Israeli genocide in Palestine.

* Encuentro bills itself as
"a space for progressive movement building" in
Boston (http://www.encuentro5.org

Massachusetts Global Action -- the organization that runs
Encuentro--argued the need for a "tactical retreat" and
offered us $400 and help finding another venue if we would
consent to leave. We told them that this would undermine the
meaning of our conference, their own work, and the
movement as a whole. Our suggestion to Encuentro was to
take this matter to the activist community --
to the people who use the space -- to tell them
what was taking place and invite them to help organize
a struggle to defend the integrity of our collective work.

Zionist organizations like the JLC have more material
and political power than perhaps at any time in the past.
But this power is increasingly hollow,
since it must increasingly assert itself by shutting down
a discussion about that power--a discussion that is growing
and moving into the mainstream. The
JLC did not succeed by persuading Encuentro 5,
but by threatening them through the building's owners.
These are clearly threats that they have the
power to carry out--a fact that proves what
critics of zionism are saying.

But this also demonstrates that while they
have more material power than ever before, they have
less ideological support than ever before. The
legitimacy of the zionist project--the passive consent
given to US support for "Israel"--is collapsing. That
collapse must come before the serious
fight over material power--a fight that is coming.

We are disappointed that Encuentro 5 and Mass
Global Action decided that it was not strategic for them
to challenge this abuse of power now. We know
that the repercussions might well have been severe, and
recognize that this would affect a great deal of effort and
work that has gone into building their organization. We offer
the following as a challenge--not so much to
them, but to the movement as a whole, since finally
the question is not about any of our specific,
struggling organizations:

Can we build a movement against imperialism,
or against social injustice in the United States, if the limits of
our discussion can be set by organizations like the JLC--
organizations that are committed to ensuring
that billions of dollars in US military and economic support are given
yearly to one of the most militarized colonial states in the world?

There is widespread discontent with zionist power.
This discontent will not turn itself into a meaningful response
until it becomes organized around specific battles.
This can only take place if at some point people are
willing say "it stops here."

* "Progressives" are not progressive. The "progressives"
are the Jewish Labor Committee, which calls itself "
the Jewish voice in the labor movement."
The JLC did not come in from the outside but actually has an
office in Encuentro's own space.
The Jewish Labor Committee's web site
(http://www.jewishlabor.org

shows its president, Stuart Applebaum,
standing proudly with war criminal
Shimon Peres in February in Jerusalem.
The JLC has put out a statement
condemning the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment,
and sanctions against "Israel." The JLC statement asserts
that Israelis, who have brutally occupied Palestine for 60 years,
carrying out a program of genocide ever
since, should not be seen as "victimizers."

The progressives are UNITE-HERE, the brave union
for oppressed garment and hotel workers, which acted in
this fiasco as a landlord bully threatening
to kick out tenants for political speech.

The progressives are leftists who support resistance
in Palestine, but not resistance that uses measures of a
kind used by its enemy -- namely, armed
struggle. The leadership of the resistance in Palestine,
Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan today is Islamic.
Progressives in the US support secular political movements,
so they don't support the people who are actually
carrying out the resistance in these countries which
the US and "Israel" are busy devastating. Support for
resistance by oppressed people should be given
without qualification.

* The criminal has accused his victim of the crime. The real hate groups are
those who support genocide in Palestine. The Boston Jewish Labor
Committee's accusation that the conference organizers are a "hate group"
comes right out of the manual of the Anti-Defamation League which has gone
to great pains to define political speech and action as good or bad in terms
favorable to the zionist project. The ADL is a "progressive" organization --
it seems to be for the right thing, except when it comes to criticism of
"Israel." Criticism of "Israel" is anti-Semitism -- that's hate speech,
that's against the law. The ADL was part of a recent attack on a mosque
being built in Boston. It was exposed for lobbying Congress against a bill
that condemns the Armenian genocide. During the late '70's and early '80's,
it spied on organizations in the U.S. that supported the struggle against
white supremacist apartheid in South Africa. This do-good "no place for
hate" organization is actually a front group for a racist foreign power.

The limits of political speech on the left are now
being defined by the very organizations who say they're
working for the good. There is no open
debate. The idea is to simply prevent political speech.
Why is support for a nasty racist state in occupied
Palestine driving so much of US and international politics?
And the question goes beyond Palestine, since these
same organizations have the power to set limits on the
discussion of "social justice" and racism here inside the
US. This includes a history of demonizing black nationalists
like Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the
Black Panthers as "anti-Semites." In many cases people's
careers have been ruined and their reputations smeared by
forces who never came out in the open. Joseph Massad, Tony Martin,
Ward Churchill, and most recently Catherine Wilkerson, are examples.
Ward Churchill will be among the speakers at the conference.

The New England Committee to Defend Palestine assures
all those who have been invited to and registered for the
April 12 and 13 conference that we have secured another
venue and will be announcing it soon. We couldn't have
provided a better example of zionist interference in
anti-imperialist activism than the one that just happened here.
We have great speakers coming from many different movements.
We hope that supporters of the struggle in
Palestine, and all those who recognize the need to build
a truly independent
opposition to oppression inside the US, will join us for this event.

New England Committee to Defend Palestine
http://www.onepalestine.org