On Saturday 19 March 2022, the ‘Stand Up To Racism’ (SUTR) campaign, whose leadership is dominated by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), allowed Glasgow Friends of Israel (GFI) and the Confederation of Friends of Israel Scotland (COFIS) to join their annual march in Glasgow for a fourth year (2017, 2018, 2019, 2022). SUTR marches in both 2020 and 2021 were cancelled due to the pandemic, but Friends of Israel did attend a preparatory SUTR conference in 2020. Find reports and footage from previous years here, here and here. SUTR’s annual march in Glasgow is supported by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) and numerous other opportunists drawn from the Labour and SNP supporting ‘left’.
This year, the GFI and COFIS contingent held placards stating, ‘Anti-Semitism is a crime’, ‘Anti-Semitism is Racism’ and waved Israel flags. This is a development from 2019, when SUTR and the Zionists mutually agreed to leave Palestine and Israel flags at home, while the Zionists displayed placards reading ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is a crime’.
Supporters from the Zionism is Racism coalition (ZIR), Glasgow Palestine Human Rights Campaign and Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! mobilised to oppose the Zionist presence, refusing to join the march while chanting against the Zionists inclusion and challenging SUTR / SWP stewards for allowing them onto the march. One SUTR steward told FRFI supporters that SUTR ‘can’t ban Jewish people from the march’. When challenged on this, by the fact that Zionist Israel does not represent all Jewish people, he repeatedly stuck his finger up and told us to ‘fuck off’.
Anti-racist activists from across Scotland have organised to oppose Friends of Israel participation on SUTR marches since 2017. In 2018, visiting Palestinian firefighters and the Muslim Council of Scotland withdrew their support for the march owing to Friends of Israel participation. More organisations, including the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, boycotted the march. Those who went on to form the ZIR coalition, including FRFI, recognised that Friends of Israel’s inclusion on SUTR marches represented a step back and a threat to the anti-racist movement and so it had to be actively opposed on the streets. In 2018 we managed to stop the Zionists from joining SUTR’s march and in 2019 mobilised a large counter protest.
SUTR’s march is held every year on the Saturday closest to the 21 March which marks the UN’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. This remembers the Sharpeville Massacre of 21 March 1960 when Apartheid South African police and soldiers shot dead 69 peaceful protestors and wounded over 180. By refusing to close the door to organised Friends of Israel groups, who promote a racist, settler colonial agenda under the banner of ‘opposing anti-Semitism’, SUTR / SWP continue to insult not only the memory of those who fought and died to end Apartheid in South Africa, but they also turn their back on and spit in the faces of Palestinians today, struggling against racial discrimination and occupation.
Just nine days before SUTR took to the streets the Israeli parliament passed the so called ‘citizenship law’ which denies Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza who are married to Israeli citizens the means of claiming citizenship, thus separating spouses and families from each other. The Israeli ‘nation – state’ law passed in 2018 has been widely condemned as racist, reducing Palestinians to second class citizenship within Israel. Even the imperialist backed human rights organisation Amnesty International have recognised the racist nature of Israel releasing a report on 1 February entitled ‘Israel’s Apartheid against Palestinians: Cruel System of Domination and Crime against Humanity’. The Palestinian national movement itself has called for an international boycott of Israel. All of this is clearly a step too far for SUTR / SWP who attempt to separate their ‘anti racism’ in imperialist Britain from in their own words ‘the politics of the Middle East’, as if the country in which they live was a neutral actor!
SUTR / SWP’s refusal to recognise Zionism is racism and to exclude Zionists from their march is not as they suggest a defence of Jewish people but rather a defence of their ties with British imperialist parties (Labour, SNP) who support the Zionist state. This is opportunism, unprincipled and cowardly, representing a privileged upper layer of the working class and middle class whose comfort depends on the maintenance of a parasitic and decaying imperialist system.
On 9 March 2022 the anti-imperialist Palestine solidarity campaign in France, Collectif Palestine Vaincra, which is part of the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, was banned by the imperialist French government who claimed that the movement was based on ‘hatred, violence and discrimination’. Already our own imperialist governments (British and Scottish) and all the largest political parties (Tories, SNP, Labour) have moved in this same direction by adopting the IHRA definition which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. If we do not prevent the infiltration of the anti-racist movement by racists, aided by ‘anti-racists’ who refuse to break from imperialist parties, we will soon lose our right to stand in solidarity with the oppressed of the world against the oppressors.
Contact us if you would like to get involved with organising to protest against Zionist inclusion on SUTR’s march next year ([email protected] / 07826203476).
Follow us on Facebook / Instagram @ ‘Glasgow FRFI’ and the ZIR coalition Facebook page ‘Zionism is Racism – Scotland Stand Up!’
Share ZIR’s facebook event for next years counter protest here
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