Mike over at Vox Political has posted a piece attacking Jewish News for the falsehoods it has repeated about some of the leading Labour politicians and members, who have been unfairly accused of anti-Semitism. The newspaper has apparently told its readers that Ken Livingstone was suspended for saying that Hitler was a Zionist and Naz Shah for saying that Jewish Israelis should be relocated to the US. Neither of them made the comments that were attributed to them. Now it seems that a Black activist in Momentum, Marlene Ellis, has been suspended for saying that Hitler was involved with the Zionists.
Mike states that there is much in Ellis’ open letter which is highly questionable and open to criticism. That doesn’t no justify the disinformation coming out of Jewish News and other parts of the media. See his article:
Livingstone said that Hitler co-operated with Zionists, which was true. He did consider sending Jews to Israel instead of exterminating them for a short period of time. Just as the Stern Gang also considered collaborating with the Nazis to end what they saw as the British occupation of Israel during the Mandate. As for the remarks attributed to Naz Shah, she did not make them. Instead she retweeted a joke map, showing Israel being relocated to the US. It was posted by Norman Finkelstein, a fierce critic of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, who comes from a secular Jewish background. Finkelstein himself can in no way be described as an anti-Semite: he states very clearly that both his parents survived the Holocaust. It’s one of the reasons why he is so very bitter in his condemnation of the often cheap and gratuitous ways the Holocaust is invoked by the Zionist lobby. He is outraged at what he feels denigrates the real suffering of those who went through the horror, merely for a political or commercial advantage. The joke map he produced was a comment on an American joke about the two countries’ extremely close relationship: ‘Why doesn’t Israel become America’s 51st state?’ ‘Because then they’d only have two senators.’
Ellis in her open letter attacking Livingstone’s suspension, states that Corbyn has played into the hands of ‘Zionist criminals’. It’s strong words, but not unreasonable ones. Kyle Kulinski in the video I posted earlier attacking NY governor Andrew Cuomo’s criminalisation of state involvement with organisations connected to the BDS campaign, states that if any other country behaved like Israel does to the Palestinians, such as, say Iran, you’d never hear the end of the condemnations. He compares Israel’s treatment of them to South Africa’s treatment of Blacks during apartheid. South Africa was similarly criticised and subject to sanctions, and the apartheid regime collapsed.
This is what Cuomo and the other opponents of BDS fear. Kulinski in his video makes the case that the attacks on the campaign are bitter, because they’re having an effect: about 20 to 30 per cent of the companies dealing with the West Bank have closed and left, because of the sanctions campaign. And my guess – and it is only a guess, I don’t know – is that something similar is happening here. Several of the leading figures in the current right-wing Israeli government have their homes in the West Bank. We live in a world where newspapers are part of vast industrial conglomerates spanning the world. In the 1980s Tiny Rowland, the owner of the Absurder, was furious after the newspaper published a report on Mugabe’s massacre of the Ndebele people in Zimbabwe. Rowland’s company, Lonrho, had mining and other commercial interests in Zimbabwe, which he understandably did not wish to jeopardise by annoying its ruling thugs, and so wanted the report Mugabe’s butchery suppressed. It may well be that the proprietors of Jewish News have similar commercial interests in the Occupied Territories in Israel.
Ellis herself, and her organisation, Momentum Black ConneXions, a ‘Black power’ organisation, actually comes across as having views similar to Ken Livingstone and the GLC in the 1980s. She attacks the current Labour leadership as ‘White supremacists’. I don’t believe they are, but it’s the same point ‘Red’ Ken made in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. There’s an entire chapter devoted to Ken’s anti-racism views, entitled ‘Labour Should Have Listened to Black People’, in which he faults his party for its failure to support autonomous Black Labour organisations.
Mike himself also had someone turning up on Facebook, accusing him of anti-Semitism, and trying to lure him into making an anti-Semitic comment. Mike wasn’t fooled, and refused to be drawn in. It was a ridiculous allegation. I mentioned it to a friend of mine, who knows Mike in the pub the other week. He fell about laughing. Mike studied film and drama when he was at College, and performed in a piece about the Holocaust, in which he read out the names of some of those murdered by the Nazis. His Jewish friends were profoundly moved by the performance. So let’s have no more nonsense that criticising Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians, or attacking the falsehoods of those, who seek to cover them up, or smear their critics, are anti-Semites.
Tags: 'Livingstone's Labour', 'Momentum', Adolf Hitler, Andrew Cuomo, anti-racism, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Allegations, Apartheid, BDS Campaign, Blacks, Holocaust, Israelis, Jewish News, Jews, Ken Livingstone, Labour Party, Lonrho, Momentum Black Connexions, New York State, Norman Finkelstein, Occupied Territories, Palestine, Palestinians, Robert Mugabe, Stern Gang, The Observer, Tiny Rowland, Vox Political, West Bank, White Supremacism, Zionism
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