Sheikh Raed Salah: a defence
Has the Islamic Movement leader become the UK's first Palestinian political prisoner?
By Hanan Chehata Published 02 July 2011 11:36
Source: AFP
Sheikh Raed Salah has been the target of a vicious and concerted smear campaign by the pro-Israel lobby in the UK and unfortunately our government has now weighed in to give legitimacy to the systematic persecution of Palestinians on British soil as well.
Sheikh Raed is the Palestinian leader of the largest civil society body in Israel and works with the largest umbrella body of Palestinian organisations, the High Follow Up Committee. As soon as the Middle East Monitor (MEMO) began to publicise the fact that we were inviting Sheikh Raed to the United Kingdom to take part in a series of public and parliamentary speaking engagements, a vicious campaign of demonization began against him in parts of the British media. Pro-Israel bloggers and journalists began to call him an anti-Semite, a hate preacher, and other libellous and defamatory statements were made against him. This is despite the fact that he has never been convicted of anti-Semitism in Israel, has spoken openly in Tel Aviv University, and has repeatedly denied and rejected all of the allegations made against him. Sheikh Raed's solicitors immediately began legal proceedings against several journalists and Sheikh Raed has made it very clear that he was willing to challenge all allegations against him in the British courts.
However, it seems that the pro-Israel apparatus went into overdrive to ensure that he would not get the opportunity to freely and publicly refute these allegations and he was arrested, without warning, late at night on the third day of his stay in the UK. It was later claimed that Home Secretary Theresa May had issued an exclusion order against him banning his entry to the UK. If this was indeed the case however, neither he, nor his lawyers, nor MEMO as his hosts, were ever informed. In fact MEMO and his solicitors called the Home Office before his arrest to clarify his status in the UK and they refused to confirm or deny anything in relation to his particular case.
He did not, as some papers have alluded, sneak into the UK. He flew from Ben Gurion airport straight to Heathrow. He was not stopped or questioned at either end. He came in openly and publicly using his Israeli passport as he has when visiting the UK on several occasions in the past.
The double standards operating here are chilling. While the government is doing its utmost to change the British laws on Universal Jurisdiction to make it easier for suspected Israeli war criminals to visit the UK without the fear of arrest warrants being issued against them, at the same time they are happy to arrest Palestinian leaders who have committed no crime but are here to expose Israeli war crimes and discuss peaceful methods of resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Although the unjustifiable arrest of Sheikh Raed will be challenged on the individual merits of his case this has become about more than just the case of a single man. He represents a much larger issue. The attempted character assassination of Sheikh Raed is typical of the targeting of all prominent Palestinians. He is a spokesperson for the Palestinian people; for the people of East Jerusalem whose homes are routinely demolished; for the Muslims and Christians who are being denied access to their holiest sites of worship; for the native Palestinian residents who are being made homeless in favour of pro-Israel immigrants who come from abroad to usurp their land. He is being treated as a criminal despite having committed no crime.
The shocking treatment of Sheikh Raed will backfire as it is simply exposing the fact that, once again, the British authorities seem willing to do the Israelis' dirty work for them no matter how much it flies in the face of British standards of justice, democracy and free speech. The UK, it seems, now has its first Palestinian political prisoner.
Dr Hanan Chehata is the press officer for the Middle East Monitor
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42 comments
fucking hell here we go again another Jewish conspiracy. How the fuck can 3.9 million Jews living in the tiny state of Israel control the world.
since when did the British authority have any right to detain an innocent person because another government said to?
Salah is allowed in this country just as every person, but the Isreali government thought him as a threat and decided that they didn't like him so hey, get back here! seriously...
Here, in an article which appears on the same site the author of this post is associated with,
http://www.middleeastmonitor.org.uk/resources/commentary-and-analysis/24...
we read of 'Israeli paymasters', 'Israel's lackeys' and 'Israel's British hirelings'. It is asserted that the accusations against him are without foundation - but in that case why not go through each accusation and demonstrate why it is incorrect, or how it has been taken out of context, or whatever? Just claiming that one isn't antisemitic isn't enough, any more than it's enough for the EDL claim they have nothing against Muslims per se, just extremist ones.
"The double standards operating here are chilling".
Yes, calling Greet Wilders, the EDL, BNP... extremists while describing Salah as someone who came to Britain in order to "discuss peaceful methods of resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict" is indeed chiling.
For christ's sake (or Mohamad).The guy is a typical Jihadist. He is the Israeli version of Islam4UK.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V28HnPTYz-I
Thank you for this article - I had wanted to read a more balanced article for a while (or a balancing/corrective article to the demonisation you talk about).
Luddite - it's not a question of Jewish conspiracies and the article doesn't claim such. Stop screaming anti-Semitism at everything.
This is ridiculous. This militant Islamist radical has free rights in Israel and openly speaks against the state without trial. He has even conspired with Hamas and terrorist groups.
BRITAIN is a SOVEREIGN STATE and can DEFINE its own borders. Only IDIOTS buy into this pro-Israel lobby fanaticism. Where was the outrage when all the hard-core right-wingers like Geert were being expelled? Michael Savage was denied entry into the UK! Michael Savage!
But no protest from the Left. Only when the token Palestinian, who happens to be an irrational religious fanatic, do they cry.
British leftism is becoming a sick joke. Really. What happened to the true liberals that fought for liberty and justice? Now you guys are gushing at the floor with these Islamists who would have your heads in their home country.
Shame on you newstateman.
The tribalists have their peculiar understanding of "never again."
The treatment of peaceful flotilla and the systematic humiliation of people of different faith reflect on the Israeli state-sponsored racist tendencies. And who are those chosen people - the former Soviets? The political opportunists leaching on the US taxpayers' money?
Whoever in the UK made this ridiculous decision about the prominent Palestinian does not promote the cause of Jewish people (and the Western civilization for this matter). This is rather an insult to the memory of the best and brightest Jews who were invariably the humanists
This article is yet another example of how the NS has been taken over by radical Islamists and used as a mouthpiece to further their cause. The Australin Labour Prime Minister had it right when she stated recently that anyone who seeks to introduce Islamic Sharis Law into her country is not welcome in Australia. More British politicians should show the same courage.
Londoner, bullocks its all about the dirty Jew, stop pretending otherwise .
Dr Chehata - who are you kidding?
Noone believes that Salah is anything other than a vile anti-semite, leading as he does the very divisive, reactionary and jihadist "islamic movement"!
Also, many Palestinians are actually Christians, and many more are strongly secular - they know that Salah and his wretched movement is islamising still further an already horrible conflict, and they also know that all he offers is more suffering, hatred and violence - which is why Christian and secular Palestinians reject this Islamist strategy.
Stop trying to justify the unjustifiable - the Government, for once, is sending a clear, moral message to this Sheikh Yasin-wannabe!
historybuff, no one needs to "introduce" Sharia courts to the State of Israel, which has always: anyone who happens to be born into certain ethnic minorities is and has always been automatically subject to them, purely by accident of birth. No wonder that Saleh is so happy to travel on an Israeli passport. And no wonder that his own government has no apparent problem with him.
If you can watch this clip: www.thememriblog.org/blog_personal/en/38897.htm
and still want to defend Salah, that's your choice. But be honest about the values which make this possible and cut the crap about smear campaigns. Nothing that has been said about Salah is as bad as the truth.
@david Lindsay, Salah is loathed by everyone in Israel (Jews, Christians, Muslims, left/right) other then fellow Jihadists. The last time a hand was chopped, woman stoned to death... in Israel was..., errr, never! As a libral state, Israel allows certian lunatics to speach freely and resolve internal diffrences within the community. The state also recongised seqular/civil/same sex relations. Salah is trying to introduce a Saudi/Hamas/Taliban sort of law.
Let's face it. If he wasn't a Muslim he would be regarded as the worst kind of Nazi reactionary. Stop whitewash any scum because he is "anti zionist" (he is also anti British/west/women/gay/democracy/secularism...).
massive disappointment, I am very pleased that he is not allowed in this country, all though I wish that I could say the same about many, many others.
But my main point stands: be born into certain ethnic minorities in Israel (the 1948 borders), and you are automatically subject to Sharia law. Far more people should know that than do.
Saleh, waving his Star of David passport and with the name of that state in that of his organisation, obviously knows it very well indeed.
brilliant article!!!thank u for printing the truth...it's very rare that we get to read the truth regarding affairs like this; we don't need any more brainwashing from the media
@ massive disappointmnet: uh i dont know know where u got your facts from but sheikh salah is loved and respected by muslims AND christians in PALESTINE and he stands up for their rights!!!
and anyway this arrest is a total scam because the british government were aware that he was coming, he came legally and only after a few days they decide to arrest him?? pure example of israeli/british racism against palestinians... i mean why allow him in the country in the first place if he was so-called "banned"...
By all means exclude "foreign-born preachers of hate" from this country. Including Raed Saleh.
Among other Islamists. Such as the black-shirted pimp and heroin-trafficker Hashim Thaçi, who is somehow also both a Wahhabi and a Maoist - he really is what the more hysterical Tea Party attendees imagine Obama to be. Such as the terrorist Akhmed Zakayev, whom this country currently harbours. Such as the recently apprehended terrorist Abdulmalik Rigi. And such as the even more recently arrested war criminal Ejup Ganic.
However, also including the signatories to the Project for the New American Century, and the Patrons of the Henry Jackson Society.
Also including those American and other ecclesiastics who have expressed racist views about Africans and others who do not share their liberal sexual morality.
Also including Hans Küng, whose disparagement of Blessed John Paul the Great's Polishness made and make them the authentic voice of the age-old Teutonic racism against the Slavs; Küng only gets away with it because he is Swiss.
Also including Avigdor Lieberman, the members of his party, and those who sit in coalition with them, some of whom believe that Gentiles were created as beasts of burden; would any other country with people like that in government be treated as anything other than a pariah by the West?
Also including the EDL-supporting leaders of the Tea Party. And also including a whole host of others. For example, Geert Wilders. Their presence most certainly would not be, and periodically is not, conducive to the public good.
I could go on.
@amy, Salah is a Jihadist and he is NOT respected outside his inner circle. BTW, he was the elected mayor of Um he Fachem which is a recognised (and radical)city in northen Israel. In other words, my taxes pays his salery, pention, healthcare and his right to call for Jihad on everything that is seqular, libral and modren.
@David Lindasy, in Israel you are subjected to religious courts ONLY if you choose to (Muslims and Orthodox Jews/ This is liberalism). Most Israelis are seqular Jews and marry in a secular or traditionl way. We also have one of the highest divorce percent in the world. I don't really understand your point. Salah can be a gay satanist and no one will care. Israeli Muslims have religious courts the same way British Muslim have. They are not above the state laws. You can not stone a women or chop a hand.
He is travelling with an Israeli passport because he doesn't have another passport (maybe Palestinian). Israelis do not need a visa for EU countries, so it makes sense.
As I said previously, if he wasn't a Muslim cleric he would be regarded a reactionary Nazi.
BTW, I'm a non Jew living in Israel.
massive disappointment, Israel's Sharia courts are not "above" the state ones, simply because they are the state ones. Their rulings in relation to those born under their jurisdiction are the law of the land, and their judges are appointed and paid by the state. (By contrast, although the State of Israel treats family law rulings by entirely private Christian religious courts as a fait accompli, that is as far as any relationship goes.)
As for "Salah can be a gay satanist and no one will care", even if that were true, such Jews as are still being born in Israel are mostly ultra-Orthodox, and in any case the single most common name for newborn boys (within the 1948 borders, not the 1967 ones) is now Muhammad. "This is liberalism"? If it ever was, then it won't be for very much longer at all.
No wonder that Saleh is such a proud and happy Israeli.
imagine a foreigner trying to enter the UK who has:
1. called for all Moslems to be expelled from 'his' homeland;
2. accused Moslems of killing non-Moslem children and using their blood for religious festivals;
3. supported and raised money for a terrorist organization which in it's charter calls for Moslems to be killed.
Where such a person to enter the UK, the Islamist NS, the Guardian, the Moslem Council of Britain, George Galloway, Ken Livingstone would all be bating for his blood and condemning the authorities for Islamaphobia for allowing the man in..
When the man seeking to enter is a Moslem and has uttered all the above against Jews - it somehow becomes a human rights/free speech issue. When will the likes of Chehata realize that most people in the UK do not distinguish between her racist Islamist friends and neo-nazis.
only the sick lord haw haw left wing idiots can come to the defence of this racist,homophobic dangerous bigoted extremist,,i need say mo more..
In arresting Mr Salah for remarks he denies he made, a British home secretary is showing that terrorists are not welcome in the UK.
Mr. Salah uses ‘taqiyya’, in which the Koran permits and mandates deceiving one’s enemy, so he feels morally bound to deny his violent activities.
"Has the Islamic Movement leader become the UK's first Palestinian political prisoner?"
Maybe the author should get is facts right, beginning with the title. There has been Palestinian political prisoners in UK prisons before.
So it's OK to sequel like stuffed pigs when denying Geert Wilders entry, but all religious fuck-wits may enter, apart from American ones that is!! Have some on the political-left become so poisoned by their appalling defence of religious fascism, they can no longer see the wood for the trees.
Zionism is the most violent racism in the world, but the international money power behind it is so powerful that it controls the governments of the US and Europe - google "neocons Iraq war" as just one example of the criminal, catastrophic results flowing from this. Media control (Murdoch is a Zionist) is another aspect of this. We live under the control of Satan..
By the way, with regard to Zionism and its methods, it’s now official – there’s been no actual shortage of Holocaust Survivors :
Quote from The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein of the City University of New York, published by Verso in the year 2000:
'The Israeli Prime Minister's office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million.' (page 83)
According to Wikipedia, Salah's history comprises:
# 2 years in jail following his arrest in 2003 "on suspicion of" money laundering aid for Hamas.
# Arrest on a charge of incitement in connection with Temple Mount riots in 2009, from which he was released "hours later".
# Detained for the first week in June 2010 after being taken from the Mavi Marmara.
# 5 months in jail in 2010 for allegedly attacking a policeman during a protest against excavations near Temple Mount.
# His current arrest in London.
Whilst it's clear that the Israeli authorities don't like him, there's no mention here of the "blood libel" or "virulent anti-semitism" horror stories in the Daily Mail.
What's more, searches of Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post provide little more, certainly not on virulent anti-semitism. The quoted blood libel did appear in a 2007 speech which needs to be read in context and as being in a speech that was reported in Haaretz on 29th Jan 2008 as having attracted a charge of "incirement to violence and racism". However, there appears to be no further news of the outcome of this charge.
One learns also that the 5 month Temple Mount sentence was what had been served, up to the time of his aquittal, of a 9 month sentence.
It seems that the Israeli judiciary, at least, have a more robust capacity for separating fact from fiction than that displayed by UK or US authorities in the face of unrelenting native Jewish propaganda and the authorities' own conditioned reflexes on such matters.
Whilst followers of articles like this one in the New Statesman have to cope, in addition, with the ranting of a breed of illiterate, islamophobic, BNP sound-alikes ever eager to promote themselves as truly understanding friends of the Jews.
A democracy has the right to defend itself. The UK Government has every right to keep out a racist Islamist bigot to ensure he doesn't spread his anti-Jewish, anti-Christian and anti-gay prejudices. It's not as if there is a shortage of such Islamist scum here anyway.
Herbert,
It is not clear what kind of democracy you are trying to protect. The Western civilization's achievements can be summoned as this:
“Je déteste ce que vous écrivez, mais je donnerai ma vie pour que vous puissiez continuer à écrire" ("I disagree strongly with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.")
Israel suffers from too many Cheneys
Same is true about "Friends of Israel" in the UK
I basically agree with this article's claim that Sheikh Ra'ed is a political prisoner and that his detention and possible expulsion is a disgrace. Ra'ed Salah is not a jihadist, and while I am saddened to learn that he may have made some unfortunate statements about Jews (such statements exist in Jewish sources in reference to non-Jews...), they are not representative of his discourse, and therefore do not disqualify him as a dialog partner or as a representative of the Islamic community in Israel.
why do people cite Voltaire as a justification to let in a racist Moslem islamofascist bigot - but not extend this hospitality to Geert Wilders or the Florida Pastor who wanted to burn a copy of the racist Koran?
“Pretend Jews”? Well, Israel is now so desperate that she is flying in Russians who refuse to eat kosher food and who insist on taking their Israeli Defence Force oaths on the New Testament alone, Russian Nazis, East Africans who have invented a religion based on the Old Testament brought by Christian missionaries, Peruvian Indians, absolutely anyone at all.
Such Jewish births as there still are, are largely and increasingly to ultra-Orthodox who so disdain the Zionist State that they will use physical force against its teenage conscripts of both sexes.
Meanwhile, the Berlin synagogue has 12,000 members, and there are now perhaps 55,000 Jews in Poland, many of whom are immigrants from Israel. About 14,000 Jews left Israel annually between 1990 and 2005. Half of Israelis aged between 14 and 18 express the desire to live elsewhere. A huge percentage of Israelis holds, or plans to inquire about obtaining, foreign nationality.
Curzon was right when he bemoaned the Balfour Declaration on the grounds that the “advanced and intellectual” Jews would have no desire to live in the Middle East. They cannot wait to go home.
If Israel does not want to become a haven for Russian Nazis, then she needs to repeal the Law of Return, declaring that she is now a settled culture and society in her own right, and precluding any wildly impracticable demand for a corresponding right on the part of Palestinian refugees or their descendants.
The people who will do anything for Israel except live there, and who throw their weight around in demanding policies that suit their prejudices expressed from comfortable berths thousands of miles away, can thus be told where to go, or not to bother trying to go.
Maria. Who are the friends of Israel?
The comments that I read above simply point out the opinion that Palestinians do not have a right to have their own country. while seeing every pro-Palestinian movement as an anti-antisemitic one, why do we forget that Palestine was also a society of human beings, who loved their home, streets, markets and their nation. how can we ever emphatise with them as we have always been colonisers. we do not know the plights of the crushed dreams, humiliation and patronizing treatment by a foreign force. this is an aggressive and colonial british psyche that we have, which prevents us from even considering a genuine call for the reinstatement of palestine. and every genuine voice which calls for Palestine's right to be a nation again is an antisemite, neo-nazi and islamofascist
The brilliant Justice Nicholas Stadlen has reviewed the evidence quite thoroughly yesterday and has freed the Sheikh.
The Sheikh was not charged with any crimes in the UK and interestingly enough the Israelis have charged him on 23 June with regard to an incident in 2007. 23 June was the same day Theresa May signed his exclusion order.
By pure co-incidence the CST have managed to obtain a copy of the Israeli indictments against the Sheikh. Thank you CST
It is clear that the Home Secretary has disgraced herself and Justice Stadlen has retrieved the good name of British Justice.
It would seem most likely that the allegations against the Sheikh have originated in Israel ( He is not charged with any crime committed in the UK). These allegations must have been forwarded through the British Embassy in Israel and must have been approved by the Ambassador there, Mathew Gould. The same Mathew Gould who recently spoke at a BICOM conference inb London.
More apologia for a racist from the New Statesmen. What do you expect from a publication that employs a man who describes non Muslims as animals and cattle who are kaffir with no intelligence.
He was previously Mayor of Umm al-Fahm, a 100% Arab and 99.7%Muslim city which has been ruin by the Islamic Movement for many years and where 83% of the population recently voted against transfer to Palestinian jurisdiction. If you want to be the Islamic Movement's fiefdom, then Israel will let you be it, and will even pay your bills. Rather like David Cameron's "Quality of Life Commission" (don't laugh, it's real), which proposed giving the power to decide public holidays in ethnic minorities to "local community leaders".
What else would those figures be given the power to decide in return for filling in every postal voting form in their households in the Bullingdon Boys' interest, and making sure that all their mates did likewise? To the statelets thus created – little Caliphates, little Hindutvas, little Khalistans, and so on – people minded to live in such places would flock from the ends of the earth, entrenching the situation for ever. Like Umm al-Fahm. In Israel.
Erm actually he CANNOT be an anti semite primarily since he IS a Semite. unlike the euro Khazar pretend Jews infesting Palestine you thumbsucking moron.
There really are some dumb bastards on these posts.
Love and peace love and peace
@Steve
'Pretend Jews infesting Palestine'. How about pretend Brits (ie Muslims ) infesting Tower Hamlets, Luton, Bradford and Birmingham? Oh dear that would be racist and islamophopic! It's amazing the sort of gutter anti-Semitic racists that are attracted by Mehdi Hasan at the Islamist NS.
Sieg Heil Steve.