Jewish Labour Member Martin Odoni Smeared and Accused of Anti-Semitism

This sordid little episode seems to bear out the observation of the Jewish victims of the fake anti-Semitism witch hunt: that the Israel lobby reserves particular spite and venom for its Jewish critics.

I’m saddened and disgusted, but not surprised, to report that Martin Odoni of the Critique Archives website, has been one of those accused of anti-Semitism by the self-appointed witchfinders in the Labour party. Martin’s another long term Jewish critic of Israel, and his crime was to support Mike over at Vox Political, when he was libelled, vilified and suspended. This has been ahead of the elections to Labour’s NEC, and Mike has commented that this seems very suspicious. It sounds like the Blairites and the Israel lobby are trying to stop left-wingers voting in these elections, just like they tried to stop left-wingers voting for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership elections by trying to find any old excuse to suspend and purge them from the Labour ranks. Mike’s not the only one to make this observation. There’s an article by Tony Greenstein that makes it very clear that the Thatcherite entryists in Labour are still searching for the flimsiest of pretexts to carry on this purge, though the article was written a little while ago and so does not mention the NEC elections.

Martin’s accused of anti-Semitism because he’s supposed to have violated the clause in the I.H.R.A.’s flawed and mendacious definition of anti-Semitism, that it is anti-Semitic to compare Jews to Nazis. Martin states that this is a very dangerous rule, as it makes criticism of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians difficult. He states that even if there is no resemblance between Israel and Nazi Germany now, which he also considers a very dubious proposition, this is not to say there wouldn’t be in the future. He goes on to say that he is not suggesting that this would happen, but if Israel did go all the way, and set up death camps and gas chambers for the Palestinians, the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism would prevent that fact from being reported, as it would automatically be considered anti-Semitic.

Martin’s also being accused of anti-Semitism because of a graphic in which he shows the Israeli flag above that of the Nazis, with the caption ‘If criticising this makes me a racist and an anti-Semite,’ next to the Israeli flag, ‘then criticising this makes you racist and anti-Aryan’.

Martin has said on his own post about this latest travesty that he hopes it helps to discredit the witch hunt, because he himself is Jewish. Mike states in his article on it that he hopes it also helps to open up debate about Israel’s actions, and the assumption that it cannot perform such acts. Again, Tony Greenstein in his articles on Israel and its racism, has repeatedly pointed out that Fascist groups like Lehava, whose leader declared that mosques and churches in Israel should be burned down, are not touched by the Israeli authorities despite their violent, racist rhetoric and physical assaults on Palestinians.

As for Martin’s ethnicity helping to discredit this whole, shameful farrago, I’m afraid I’m much more pessimistic. Very many of those falsely accused of anti-Semitism are Jews, and very obviously nothing of the sort. The Israel lobby declares them to be ‘self-hating’. Martin states in his article that, rather than being very common, as this wretched witch hunt and its persecution of non- and anti-Zionist Jews would make you think, it’s actually extremely rare.

I’ve no doubt whatsoever he’s right. Not only are Jews his community, and so he speaks from knowledge and experience, but I must say I’ve only come across real, self-hating Jews in books, friend-of-friend stories, and on internet sites put up by a very few wretched individuals. And I’ve only heard one friend-of-a-friend story about meeting a self-hating Jew.

And the self-hating Jews I’ve read about are very extreme anti-Semites. There’s the case of one, very conflicted soul, who ended up as the leader of an American group of neo-Nazis. He committed suicide after someone leaked his ethnic/religious background to his fellow storm troopers. None of the Jewish people, who have been falsely accused of anti-Semitism remotely resembles this wretched fellow. They’ve all been decent, self-respecting people, whether secular or Torah-observant.

These farcical accusations against Jews should have been discredited the moment they smeared Jackie Walker. She’s a Jewish woman of colour, whose parents were members of the American Civil Rights movement, and her father was a Russian Jew. Her partner is Jewish, and her daughter attends a Jewish school. I’d say that makes her absolutely one of the least racist people, and the completely opposite of Nazism or Jewish self-hatred. But they smeared her nonetheless because she discussed Jewish involvement in the slave trade with three other people on Facebook. Note: she talked about Jewish involvement, which is a legitimate historical topic discussed by respected and respectable historians. She made it clear that those ultimately responsible for the enslavement of Africans were Christian Europeans. But because she left one word out the title, the Israel lobby libelled her and had her thrown out.

And the invective and abuse the Israel lobby metes out to Jews is particularly appalling. Walker suffered it when she was accused, including bigots stating that she wasn’t really Jewish because she was Black. Tony Greenstein was physically assaulted by an Israeli, and has had other Zionists tell him that they wished that his family had died in the Holocaust. Martin was accused by the fanatics in the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism of faking his Jewish ancestry. Er, no. Martin states that his ancestors with Lithuanian Jews, who came over in the first years of the last century to escape the Tsarist pogroms. Like very many other Jewish immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The Israel lobby also like to vilify their Jewish opponents as ‘Kapos’. These were the members of the Jewish authority governing the Warsaw ghetto. They had the terrible responsibility of selecting which of their people to send to the gas chambers, otherwise the SS would move in and murder everyone. It’s a vile insult, which shows how low the Israel lobby is. And it also shows how hypocritical they are, because it compares Jews, if not to Nazis, then to Nazi collaborators.

Mike concludes his article with the following comments:

Like so many of the assumptions in the IHRA working definition, that is wide open to abuse. And Labour is in danger of supporting that abuse, at the hands of pro-Israel activists and a mass media that is complicit in publishing fake news about the party, instead of the facts.

Finally, there is the fact that Martin is, himself, ethnically Jewish. The Labour Party must, therefore, fall foul of the claim by their apparent masters in the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council – that it is for Jews to decide what is anti-Semitic, not Gentiles.

Or are we seeing double-standards? One rule for one group and a different rule for another? Is Martin ‘the wrong kind of Jew’ that the Board of Deputies and the JLC keep banging on about?

I know I’m only a Gentile, but…

That looks like racism and anti-Semitism to me.

Quite.

Mike’s article is at:
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/07/29/jewish-labour-member-accused-of-anti-semitism-during-nec-elections-connection/

Martin’s article can be read at
https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2018/07/28/hurrah-ive-been-suspended-by-the-labour-party-i-was-wondering-if-theyd-ever-get-around-to-it/

Sky Poll: 78 Per Cent Think Government Doing Bad Job on Brexit

This is a very short video from RT, citing a poll by Sky showing that only 10 per cent think May is doing a good job about Brexit. A massive 78 per cent believe she’s doing a bad job.

This gives some background to the latest campaign by the Israel lobby, the Blairites and the media to play up the fake anti-Semitism scare about Corbyn and the Labour party yet again: the Tories are doing extremely badly. The cabinet is split over Brexit, most people think they’re doing a bad job, and worst of all, there may be serious food shortages if there’s a ‘no deal’ Brexit. According to reports, the army stands prepared to deliver food rations.

Theresa May and the Tories are literally driving this country to starvation. Even more so, if you count the quarter of a million or so unfortunates already using food banks thanks to benefit sanctions and their appalling ‘welfare to work’ policy.

With their party in disarray and becoming increasingly unpopular, they and their supporters are turning to vilifying Labour as the only way to cling on to power.

Don’t be deceived. Corbyn and the others smeared as anti-Semites are no such thing. Vote Labour in, and get May out!

Tony Greenstein on Israel’s and Mossad’s Involvement in the Anti-Semitism Smears

Tony Greenstein, that redoubtable foe of every kind of racism, anti-Semitism and Fascism, has published yet another invaluable piece attacking the Israel lobby, and specifically the Community Security Trust on his blog. The Community Security Trust are a charity dedicated to protecting Jews from anti-Semitism. However, they also have decided to take part in the Labour party’s witch hunt against genuine opponents of anti-Semitism to protect Israel.

Last year, the Israel lobby and the Blairites attempted to get Moshe Machover expelled from the Labour party for anti-Semitism. Prof. Machover is a respected Israeli academic and an authority on mathematical logic. He is also one of the founders of an Israeli socialist party, Matzpen, and a veteran critic of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians. The witchfinders in the Labour party turned on him after he published a piece in the newspaper of Labour Party Marxists against Israel. This showed how the Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis, and how it exploits the Holocaust.

Prof. Machover was duly expelled, but had to be reinstated after there was a massive outcry against this foul treatment of a respected international figure. This has clearly rankled the Israel lobby, and now the Community Security Trust has demanded that he be expelled again for his comments about Israel’s exploitation of the Holocaust. They consider this a ‘vile slur’.

As with so much the Israel lobby objects to, this vile slur is absolutely spot-on accurate. Greenstein shows with example after example, how the Zionists did collaborate with the Nazis and how they continually exploit the Holocaust, particularly to demonise their international opponents, like Iran, and the Palestinians. He also quotes other Jewish and Israeli critics, who have also described this.

He goes on to discuss the Israeli’s hypocrisy over the Holocaust, as they exploit while welcoming real anti-Semites, like Hungary’s president Orban, to their country on diplomatic visits.

And he also describes how the Zionists have a deliberate strategy of trying to make Jews feel uncomfortable and frightened in order to encourage them to emigrate to Israel.

Among the many important facts his article contains is his discussion of the way Israel is attempting to monopolise all research and campaigning against anti-Semitism. Jewish editors in the Diaspora are under Israeli pressure either to merge their magazines on this important subject with Israeli publications, or to cease publication altogether. He writes

The background to the CST’s operations is what Tony Lerman, former Director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs and the Institute of Jewish Policy Research, described as ‘Israeli hegemony over the monitoring and combating of anti-Semitism.’ Lerman describes how, as the principal Editor of the Anti-Semitism World Report, he was put under pressure by London’s Mossad (MI6) representative either to cease publication or merge it with the Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Tel Aviv University under Professor Dina Porat, which was partly financed by Mossad. Porat is now the head of Yad Vashem and a dedicated Zionist Holocaust historian.

Lerman describes how, with the Mossad pressurising individual Jewish communities world-wide his World Report ceased publication in 1999. This was a time when Israel was fashioning the ‘new anti-Semitism’ into a potent weapon that Israel could use. It fed into the prevailing idea that Islam was the main source of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism was increasingly defined in terms of Muslims not fascists or genuine anti-Semites. [See Tony Lerman, Anti-Semitism Redefined in ‘On Anti-Semitism’, Jewish Voice for Peace, Haymarket Books, 2017].

In addition, Machover had also angered the Israel lobby in his article by naming an Israeli official as the person responsible for the campaign against Labour’s new guidelines on anti-Semitism .

Furthermore Moshe claimed that Gilad Erdan, Israeli Interior Minister and his Ministry of Strategic Affairs was behind the campaign against Labour’s new guidelines on anti-Semitism. How shameful, you might think, to draw attention to the elephant in the room.

Greenstein also describes how embarrassing recent statistics are for the CST and the Israel lobby. Real anti-Semitic incidents have actually declined over the past year. And diaspora Jews are determinedly staying put in their countries of origin, and not emigrating to Israel. Even worse, some of those who did, then returned to Europe.

This is the role of the CST which produces every 6 months an Anti-Semitic Incidents Report. The latest Report was not accompanied by the usual publicity and scare stories in the news papers. Why? Because the number of ‘anti-Semitic incidents’ in the first half of 2018 fell from 767 in the equivalent period in 2017 to 727 , that is a fall of 8% . Even worse from the Zionist perspective, the number of violent incidents fell by a massive 26% from 80 to 59 in the same period. For the third year none of these violent incidents were classed as ‘extreme’ which means they didn’t involve serious or indeed any injury.

I have commented before on how the small relationship of violent incidents to overall hate /incidents against Jews suggests that there is something dodgy in the latter figures. Usually there is a much larger proportion of assaults as part of overall hate incidents. In the case of religious attacks around 30% going up to 45% in the case of disability. Yet this year the proportion of violent attacks on Jews compared to overall hate incidents is just 8.1%, down from 10% last year. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the number of hate incidents in inflated by things like social media trivia and comments about Israel which are interpreted under the IHRA definition as anti-Semitism.

As for Jews emigrating to Israel

The CST is in the business of distorting and manipulating popular perceptions of anti-Semitism in the service of the Israeli state. The whole basis of Zionism is aliyah, the emigration of Jews to Israel. The only problem is that most diaspora Jews don’t want to live in Israel. Even when, as with France a few years ago, there was an upsurge of anti-Semitism and the murder of 4 Jews in the kosher supermarket, French Jews refused to come. Many of those who did come left again because their situation in France is so much better.

He then discusses as another example of the Israel lobby’s attempts to stifle criticism of Israel its campaign against a Muslim religious leader, Raed Saleh, by smearing him as a terrorist.

The CST’s attempts to get Prof. Machover expelled has, like the Blairites’ and Israel lobby’s smears and witch hunts against other Labour party members, nothing whatsoever to do with combating real anti-Semitism. It is all about suppressing criticism of Israel and it seven-decades old policy of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Leader of Jewish Voice for Labour Richard Kuper: Criticism of Israel Is Not Anti-Semitism

This is yet another great video from RT, which shows why we need it and other alternative news channels so very badly.

This short clip, of one minute 20 seconds, is an extract from host Afshin Rattansi’s interview with Richard Kuper, the head of Jewish Voice for Labour. The JVL has resolutely backed Jeremy Corbyn, and so Rattansi asks Kuper the obvious question: How can he back ‘a f***ing racist and anti-Semite’. Rattansi qualifies this by saying that Hodge has now denied using the expletive. Kuper replies by stating that Jeremy Corbyn is not and has never been an anti-Semite, and it is disgraceful that Margaret Hodge has attacked him in this way. It doesn’t matter whether Hodge used the expletive or not, that is not how things are done in the Labour party.

Rattansi then mentions that Hodge has plenty of support from the Blairite factions in the Labour party. Kuper rebuts this by saying that it doesn’t matter. As far as his organisation is concerned, anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews as Jews. Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, unless it includes hatred of Jews as Jews. Otherwise it is political argument, and needs to be confronted and dealt with as such.

Kuper’s exactly right. Jeremy Corbyn has always been a very committed opponent and activist of all kinds of racism, including anti-Semitism. But what frightens the Blairites in the Labour party and the Israel lobby is that he supports the Palestinians in their battle for dignity and equality. The Blairites, the Tories and the lamestream media also fear and despise him because he’s a genuine socialist, who wants to undo all the damage Thatcherism has done to this country under the Tories and Blair. And so they are determined to destroy his leadership. The anti-Semitism smears and libels are merely another means to this end.

As for the definition of anti-Semitism used by Kuper, this is the one adopted by the Jewish philosopher Brian Klug. It is also the definition of anti-Semitism used by the very man, who coined the term, Wilhelm Marr, the founder and leader of Germany’s vile League of Anti-Semites in the late 19th century. The I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, which includes criticism of Israel among its examples, is being used by the Israel lobby to silence criticism of Israel. This is particularly vile now, after Netanyahu has passed his law making racial discrimination against Palestinians and others perfectly legal.

The anti-Semitism smears and libels are a politically motivated charade, a campaign to vilify decent, anti-racist men and women, including self-respecting Jews, simply so that the Blairites can cling on to power in the Labour party, and Israel’s multiple crimes against the Palestinians can remain hidden. It’s time this was stopped, and the people behind it were exposed and discredited instead.

New Film Based on Otzi the Iceman

This is another film I’d like to see, but won’t get a chance because of my illness. The treatments for cancer severely lower, and in some cases destroy, your immunity to disease. Hence, while I was in hospitable, all my visitors had to wear facemasks and wash their hands in the vestibule outside before visiting me. I’m home now, and can receive visitors, but I’ve been told to avoid crowds. So going to the cinema is out for me, at least for the next few months.

Last Friday’s edition of the I, for the 27th July 2018, carried the news of a new, Swiss film, based on the presumed life of Otzi the Iceman. This was the frozen body of a Neolithic hunter preserved in the Otztal glacier in the Alps on the border of Switzerland and Italy over two decades ago now. The discovery of ‘Otzi’, as he was dubbed, massively increased our understanding of the Neolithic and its people. The man was found equipped with a bow and arrow, wearing neatly tailored leather clothes and knapsack, and carrying an impressive toolkit mend and repair his equipment. Because his clothing was leather, some of the articles in the press compared him with modern rock fans, even to the point of saying that he should have been called ‘the Icerocker’. Oh yes, and one German DJ, responsible for releasing a ’90’s version of the hit ‘Hey, Baby!’ even decided to name himself Otzi after him.

The documentaries also speculated about his life, and what had brought Otzi up into the Alps. The man had died after being shot with an arrow. In one dramatic reconstruction in one of the documentaries, it was suggested that Otzi had travelled to the Alps seeking revenge after his village in Switzerland had been attacked. And this seems to be the narrative adopted by the new film.

The review of it in the I runs

“Iceman (15)
Felix Randau, 94 mins, starring Jurgen Vogel, Andre Hennicke, Susanne Wuest, Sabin Tambrea, Martin Augustin Schneider, Voilet6ta Schurawlow
Iceman is the only film you will see this year in an early version of the Rhaetic language. “Translation is not required to comprehend the story,” the opening credits inform us. This is an everyday tale of murder, pillage and rape among Neolithic village folk in the Otztal Alps thousands of years ago.

The movie was inspired by the discovery of a body in the region after a glacier melted in the early 1990s. At first everyone assumed the corpse was that of a hiker who had got lost in the snow. Then, the scientists discovered he had been dead for 5,300 years. Felix Randau’s movie imagines what might have been the story of his life and death.

Iceman plays like an X-rated version of the recent Aardman cartoon Early Man. the early scenes show that life is tough but the Neolithic inhabitants appear to be living at one with nature. Then comes catastrophe. The community’s leader, Kelab (Jurgen Vogel), is off hunting when another tribe attacks the village in shockingly brutal fashion.

As Kelab sets off in pursuit of the killers, the film turns into a typical revenge western. Kaleb is utterly ruthless. He wants to inflict suffering on the killers.

The film’s strength lies in its sense of mystery and in the primal nature of the story. The majestic landscapes add an epic quality to bloodthirsty, original movie.”

The Swiss have produced a couple of interesting movies in the past few years. One was Dark Star, a documentary about the Surrealist artist H.R. Giger. Giger was the creator of ‘biomechanics’ art, which mixed organic and technological forms to produce strange, disturbing creatures and landscapes. He was the concept artist behind Alien’s Xenomorph, and Sil, the sexually predatory alien in the film Species. Unfortunately, I’ve never seen it, despite combing through the foreign language section of H.M.V. and other music/DVD stores many times.

They also produced an interesting German-language horror film, Blood Glacier, or Blutgletscher in German. This is about a group of scientists and a visiting female politico, cut off in the Alps facing a horde of mutated creatures produced by some strange, organic substance spreading into the ecosystem from a melting glacier. This substance is blood red, of course, as hinted in the film’s title. It’s not a great film, but it also isn’t a bad one, and is interesting as an example of the kind of SF the Europeans are producing away from Hollywood.

Iceman also reminds me of that other film set in prehistory, The Quest For Fire. This was a Franco-Canadian co-production based on a short story set in the Palaeolithic by one of the great, early French SF writers. It stars Ron Perlman, now probably best known for his role as the title character in Hellboy, as a Neanderthal on a quest to obtain fire. On his travels, the Neanderthal encounters a number of other early human varieties, some more primitive, until he finally discovers a tribe of Cro Magnons. He finally steals fire from them, and winning the love of an Early Modern human woman, who follows him back into the wilderness.

Others will no doubt think of The Clan of the Cave Bear, based on the novels of Jean M. Auel, and starring Daryl Hannah as a Homo Sapiens woman growing up in a tribe of Neanderthals. The book, or its sequel, on which the movie was based was given a very bad review in the literary pages of Private Eye, and the critics weren’t terribly impressed with the film, either. But Auel’s fiction is respected and defended by some leading professional archaeologists, who were impressed by her knowledge of the Old Stone Age and her ability to bring it alive to her readers.

You could also compared it with 10,000 BC, which had ancient tribes battling a tyrannical civilisation, which looked a lot like Ancient Egypt, and One Million Years BC. 10,000 BC was wildly anachronistic, but not quite as bad as One Million Years BC. This starred Raquel Welch in a fur bikini as the matriarch of an early human tribe fighting off dinosaurs. I enjoyed watching it when I was school age, but it’s nowhere near a realistic depiction of prehistory.

But what makes Iceman similar to The Quest For Fire is that both films were deliberately made in archaic languages. In Iceman, as the review says, this is an early form of Romantsch, the Latin language spoken in Switzerland, and recognised as their fourth official language. This is slightly anachronistic, as like the other Romance languages like French, Italian and Spanish, Romantsch is based on the Latin introduced in these countries after they were conquered by the Romans. Before then, the language spoken in Iron Age Switzerland was the Celtic of the La Tene culture.

The dialogue in The Quest For Fire is all in proto-Indo-European, as reconstructed by Anthony Burgess. Burgess, who wrote A Clockwork Orange, amongst other things, was the first to produce a dictionary, which reconstructed the ancestral Indo-European language, which gave rise to those of much of Europe, Iran and India. Languages like English, French, German, Russian, Lithuanian and Irish in Europe, Farsi in Iran, and Sanskrit, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi in India and Pakistan. The film’s producer’s called Burgess in as an advisor to translate the dialogue. The film’s also anachronistic, in that, for example, it shows Palaeolithic humans with pottery. This only came in with the Neolithic. Nevertheless, despite the anachronisms, it shows that the film’s producers and director were determined to make the film scientifically plausible to some degree.

I’d like to see Iceman, because I’ve felt for some time that it’s possible to make a good, scientifically accurate drama set in prehistory, in which the dialogue is in a genuinely ancient language. It could easily be done in Britain or Ireland, set in the Celtic Iron Age, and with dialogue in Old or Middle Irish or Welsh. Both of Irish and Welsh have literatures going right back to the Early Middle Ages, what used to be called the Dark Ages, and so would be suitable as the language spoken by Iron Age people in a British or Irish film.

Unfortunately, films are an expensive business, and I’m not sure how many film studios now would want to take the gamble on producing a film in a minority tongue for artistic and reasons of authenticity.

In the meantime, unable to see Otzi at the cinema, I shall have to wait until it comes out on DVD. Let’s hope it appears on the shelves, and doesn’t vanish like the Giger documentary apparently did.

Tony Greenstein’s Open Letter to Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard

Tony Greenstein is a Jewish Socialist and veteran foe of all forms of racism, anti-Semitism and Fascism. He is also a fierce critic of Israel for its persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, which is itself another form of racism. It was because of this that he was one of the many fine people purged from the Labour party by the Blairites and the Israel lobby on spurious charges of anti-Semitism.

He was so angered last week by the Jewish press’ concerted attack on Jeremy Corbyn, because the Labour leader had not adopted the clauses in the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, which seek to outlaw criticism of Israel, that he wrote an open letter expressing his disgust to Stephen Pollard. Pollard is the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, one of the papers that published these smears. He’s not Jewish, and the term ‘goysplainer’ seems particularly suited to him. As Professor Michael Rosen explained last week in his TalkRadio conversation with George Galloway, a ‘goysplainer’ is a gentile, who patronises Jews by telling them what they should believe as Jews. Some of the Jewish commenters on Mike’s blog have made it very clear they naturally resent him for his presumption in this case, along with other gentile cheerleaders for the Israel lobby.

In his open letter Greenstein also describes Pollard’s own disgraceful double standards in penning an article in the Groaniad declaring that the very anti-Semitic prime minister of Poland, Michal Kaminski, isn’t an anti-Semite as he’s ‘a good friend of Israel’. As Greenstein goes on to describe, Kaminski was one of those passing a law rewriting the Holocaust to forbid including Poles as Nazi collaborators. He has also declared that Poles were not responsible for a horrific massacre at Jedwabne, and that Jews should apologise to the Poles for accusing them of participating in this!

Here’s Greenstein’s letter:

Dear Stephen,

You described the joint front pages of 3 Zionist papers this week as ‘unprecedented’. I agree. It is difficult to recollect when even the Jewish Chronicle saw deceiving its readers as its prime purpose. An article that suggests ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘Zionist bitch’ will now be ‘fair game’ in the Labour Party does not deserve to be taken seriously.

For the past three years, during the whole contrived ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis you failed to point to any actual anti-Semitism. That was why Jews such as Jackie Walker, Cyril Chilsom and myself were the most prominent targets. The only people who made anti-Semitic comments, calling Jews ‘self-haters’, ‘traitors’ or ‘kapos’ were Zionists.

It is noticeable that not once have you or your co-conspirators raised the Conservative Party’s membership of the ECR Group in the European Parliament, despite it containing two anti-Semitic parties – Poland’s Law & Justice and the Latvian LNNK.

I was also surprised that your article was so fulsome in its praise of Margaret Hodge. Is this the same Hodge of whom you once said that her ‘foul hypocrisy just beggars belief’. That was just the headline! You also wrote: ‘It’s difficult to imagine a more blatant, shameful and utterly contemptible piece of two-faced hypocrisy than the behaviour of Margaret Hodge.’’ I couldn’t have put it better myself. You also wrote:

‘Her behaviour drags the entire political system into disrepute, and she would now be well advised to withdraw from public life….

Last April, she apologised for what she called her “shameful naivety” when, as leader of Islington Council, she dismissively brushed aside the victims of paedophiles who preyed on children in council care. One victim, Demetrious Panton, who was abused by the former head of an Islington children’s home in the late 1970s, was dismissed by Mrs Hodge in a letter to the BBC as “extremely disturbed”.

It was almost beyond parody when she was then appointed Children’s Minister by Tony Blair. … the sheer grubbiness of her brand of hypocrisy leaves a stench that makes others look almost admirable.’

Matthew Norman wrote: ‘With a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility.’ It would appear that a dose of Zionism is the best political disinfectant for getting rid of the ‘stench that makes others look almost admirable.’

The blessed Margaret was not the only one who was giving off a stench. Your concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ was not in evidence when Polish MEP Michal Kaminski was invited to speak to Conservative Friends of Israel. Kaminski was MP for Jedwabne, a village in which, in 1941, up to 1600 Jews had been herded by fellow Poles into a barn which was then set alight. When the truth of what occurred was revealed by two Polish Jewish historians Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski agreed to make an apology, for which he was criticised by Kaminski.

Your response was to write an article Poland’s Kaminski is not an antisemite: he’s a friend to Jews in which you described him as ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ After all ‘ Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.’ Not only did Kaminski oppose an apology but he argued that those few who survived the Holocaust, should apologise to the Poles! It seems that there are some anti-Semites that you have no objections to.

Jeremy Corbyn’s crime is not that he hates Jews but he doesn’t support the Israeli state. You wrote ‘instead of adopting the (IHRA) definition … Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

It is clear that your agenda is not anti-Semitism but Israel. If the Labour Party was anti-Semitic you would have no objection as long as it was pro-Zionist. Genuine anti-Semites in the Trump Administration, such as Steve Bannon, who objected to his children going to school with ‘whiny Jewish brats’ have never merited an ‘unprecedented’ joint front page article despite an election campaign which Dana Millbank described thus: Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody. This did not prevent your fellow ‘anti-Semitism’ campaigner Jonathan Arkush from giving Trump a warm welcome.

Trump of course is pro-Israel whereas Corbyn is not, which is why Trump’s praise for the ‘fine people’ i.e. neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, who chanted ‘the Jews will not replace us’ seems to have made him the most popular President ever in Israel.

When you talked about the threat to Jewish life in this country what really concerned you was support for the world’s only Apartheid state. A state where hundreds of Jews can demonstrate in Afula against the sale of a house to an Arab.

If Jews in this country experienced what Palestinians in Israel undergo then your complaints of anti-Semitism would have some merit. Your gripes about non-existent anti-Semitism should be treated with contempt.

The time has come when Corbyn needs to get a backbone and tell you and your fellow creative writers where to go. The truth is, Stephen Pollard, you would not recognise anti-Semitism if it bit you on your ample backside.

Best wishes,

Tony Greenstein

Greenstein in his accompanying article also describes how comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany, which the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism also seeks to outlaw, are actually all-too fitting.

I. Calling Israel ‘a racist endeavour’. Only last week Israel passed the Jewish Nation State Law, which even liberal Zionists acknowledge is an Apartheid Law. It removed Arabic as an official language, supports Jewish –only settlements and deliberately omitted any reference to equality. Is calling this racist anti-Semitic?

II. Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is also anti-Semitic. Why? When mobs demonstrate with banners proclaiming ‘kill them all’ whilst chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ is that not reminiscent of a certain European state in the 1930’s? Recently hundreds of Jews demonstrated in Afula protesting against the sale of a house to an Arab. Is that not similar to signs in German towns saying ‘Jews not welcome’?

III. Another of their concerns is ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’. But the idea that Jews form a separate nation with the right to self-determination is an anti-Semitic idea. It rests on the belief that Jews don’t belong in the states where they live. It follows therefore that Jews owe their loyalty to Israel, the self-proclaimed ‘Jewish state’ than to the country they live in. But the IHRA says this is also anti-Semitic!
The article makes it clear that the people promoting the idea that the Labour party is anti-Semitic aren’t interested in anti-Semitism itself, but are just using at as a weapon against Corbyn because they fear a genuine Socialist and a supporter of Palestinian rights entering No. 10.

For more information, got to Greenstein’s article at
http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-lie-of-labour-anti-semitism-whilst.html

David Rosenberg on the Jewish Establishment and Tory Racism

This is another piece commenting on an article put up by David Rosenberg. Rosenberg, like Tony Greenstein and many others, is a veteran Jewish Socialist, anti-racist, anti-Fascist activist and fierce critic of the Jewish establishment. His posts are fascinating for describing the shameful attitudes and actions of the establishment Jewish organisations in Britain and abroad.

In one piece, he discusses the statue of Nelson Mandela unveiled in Parliament Square in 2007, and the struggle against apartheid. He states clearly that only the Labour and Liberal parties emerged with any credit. Margaret Thatcher bitterly opposed any sanctions against the South African regime. Self-interest was part of it. Denis Thatcher, her husband, had investments there. And he describes how young Tories were producing T-shirts and other merchandising with the slogan ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’.

He also discusses the way Britain was home to many exiled South African anti-apartheid activists, such as Ben Turok, who was also Jewish, the son of Yiddish-speaking parents who supported the anti-Zionist Bund. He goes on to describe how Jewish campaigners against the racist state were monitored and informed upon by the South African Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Politically, the Jewish community was closely policed by the South African Board of Deputies. In a literal sense. While the main government-supporting Afrikaans press were producing classic antisemitic cartoons about Jewish financiers, Turok told me that the Board of Deputies were busy informing on Jewish anti-apartheid activists to the SA authorities, handing over personal details.

Turok had a private meeting with Gus Seron, leader of the SA Board of Deputies, encouraging the Board to at least give some indication of support for democratic and anti-racist positions: “We wanted the Jewish Board to give some recognition to the fact that the Black people of South Africa had legitimate aspirations. We were not asking them to get guns and fight. We were asking them to make some gesture of recognition. They refused to do that.”

The anti-Semitic nature of the South African government was briefly described by the comic novelist, Tom Sharpe, in one of his novels set in SA, either Riotous Assembly or Indecent Exposure. He states that Jewish South Africans were regarded as Communists come straight from Moscow.

Roseberg is also critical of the British Board of Deputies of British Jews, for their failure to confront Mosley’s BUF and their hostility to left-wing groups and organisations, whom they smear as anti-Semitic.

Our own Board of Deputies are little better. Their appalling record in the 1930s, when they seemed to spend more time criticising Jewish anti-fascists than combating Oswald Mosley’s hooligans, and famously advised Jews to stay indoors and pull down the shutters rather than confront the fascists at the Battle of Cable street, is well known. Thankfully the Jewish public ignored them then. Grassroots activists explained the reason why: they regarded the Board as the old establishment and thoroughly unrepresentative.

Always a socially conservative force in the Jewish community, they continue today to be led and dominated by supporters of the Tory Party that defended apartheid South Africa. They still pursue a relentless anti-left agenda, and frequently identify internationalist left movements as antisemites.

He then goes on to discuss the real, racists in the Tory ranks. People like the three DUP politicos, who turned up at the Board of Deputies’ and Jewish Leadership Council’s rally, Zac Goldsmith, who ran an islamophobic campaign against Sadiq Khan for mayor of London, and Norman Tebbit. But the president of the Board, Jonathan Arkush, ignored these racists in order to revile Corbyn.

In the name of anti-racism, and especially the fight against antisemitism, Arkush was ranting against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose record on anti-racism and on support for human rights, among the current crop of parliamentarians, is second to none.

He goes further, and describes Arkush’s own support for the racist regime in Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians.

Arkush, however, has never criticised the terrible human rights record of the Israeli Government towards the Palestinians. He is a firm supporter of the most right-wing, racist and pro-settler government Israel has ever had. The Board of Deputies, and their co-sponsors of Monday’s demonstration, the self-proclaimed Jewish Leadership Council, had not a word of criticism for Zac Goldsmith’s dog-whistle mayoral campaign.

He notes how anti-Semitic incidents rise in connection with other forms of racism, and that there has been a staggering increase in them during May’s tenure of 10 Downing Street. Where the ideology of the people committing these attacks has been identified, it is always that of the extreme right. But Arkush has ignored this to attack Corbyn and Labour.

And yet, bizarrely, Jewish leaders are trying to damn Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party, the very party responsible for practically every piece of anti-discrimination law in Britain, laws which were first put in place while many Tories were investing in apartheid South Africa and condemning anti-apartheid activists as communists and extremists.

He then goes on to discuss the various real racist groups in the Tory party, like the Traditional Britain Group and its leaders Lord Sudeley and Gregory Lauder Frost. This group has shared platforms with the Holocaust deniers David Irving and Ernst Zundel, reviled in crude racist terms Baroness Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, and Vanessa Feltz, and has welcomed other members of the international Far Right. These have include Richard Spencer of the American Alt Right, the Far Right Identarian Alex Kurtagic, Dr. Thomas Hubner of the Austrian Freedom Party, and the French National Front MEP Bruno Gollnisch.

As for the TBG’s recommended reading, this includes Oswald Mosley’s biography, My Life; Julius Evola’s Revolt Against the Modern World. Evola and his wretched works are regarded as seminal works of philosophy by many Fascists, and inspired the perpetrators of the Bologna railway station bombing in Italy in the 1970s, which left over a hundred killed or injured. Also included is Roger Pearson’s Race and Heredity. Pearson’s a retired anthropologists, who believes Aryans really are the ‘master race’, and has links to a number of neo-Nazi groups and individuals. The group also recommends The Great Betrayal, by Ian Smith, the former leader of Rhodesia when it had the colour bar.

You won’t be surprised to find out that Lauder Frost also condemns the Nuremberg war crimes trials as ‘a farce’ and says Britain should not have gone to war with Nazi Germany. Rosenberg also describes how the Young Master, Jacob Rees-Mogg, went to one of their formal dinners at the organisation’s invitation. When he was caught out doing so by the Observer or Guardian, I can’t remember which, he claimed he didn’t know anything about them, and just went because they invited him. Which doesn’t sound very plausible to me. Rosenberg ends his article with

The Traditional Britain Group, led by Tory members, have called for the removal of one monument from Parliament Square – the statue of the great anti-racist fighter and leader Nelson Mandela. Why am I not surprised?

https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2018/03/28/enough-is-enough-what-would-mandela-have-said/

Never mind the Jewish press screaming that a Corbyn government represents an existential threat to Jews, the TBG and other Far Right organisations with connections to the Tory party represent a far greater, and more explicit threat.

I also wouldn’t be surprised the if the British Board of Deputies hadn’t also informed on Jewish anti-apartheid activists over here, just like its South African counterpart. Lobster has several times discussed the way far right, and right-wing organisations over here compiled dossiers on anti-apartheid activists in Britain, which were passed on to the South African authorities. I also think that the British state may also have been involved. Given the Board’s hostility to Jewish left-wing activism, it seem to me a distinct possibility that the Board may also have been informing on British Jews involved in the campaign.

The Real Reason the Jewish Establishment Are Attacking Labour: They’re Tories

Mike yesterday put up a piece reporting the hysterical reaction of the Jewish press to the Labour party’s refusal to adopt all of the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism. The Jewish Chronical, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph produced a joint editorial yesterday, screaming that a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn would pose ‘an existential threat to Jewish life in the UK’. This is frankly nothing more than scaremongering nonsense.

Tony Greenstein on his blog has pointed out time and again that real anti-Semitism in the UK is actually very low. The vast majority of severely normal Brits either have positive views of their Jewish fellows, or else consider them to be no better or worse than anyone else. Only 8 per cent of Brits are anti-Semites, or hold negative views of Jews. He considers real anti-Semitism in Britain to be almost negligible, and dying out. I wouldn’t go that far. The real anti-Semites are still present, and they are a genuine threat to Jews, as well as to other ethnic groups, feminists, Socialists, trade unionists and everyone else on the left. This week we’ve seen Jack Renshall, of the banned Nazi youth group National Action, convicted of terrorism. Renshall and his ‘national comrades’, to use a Nazi term for members of a Nazi group, are genuine anti-Semites, who really do believe all the vicious lies and myths about the Jews controlling everything and plotting to destroy the White race. Renshall was convicted of plotting to assassinate Rosie Copper, his local MP, as the local representative of ‘the Jewish state’. And there are chillingly videos on YouTube of Renshall and his storm troopers holding rallies in their cod-Nazi uniforms, screaming their bile against the Jews, and raising their hands in the Nazi salute.

Apart from these vile remnants, anti-Semitism is much less acceptable now than it was when I was growing up in the ’70s and ’80s along with other forms of racism. And sections of the British Far Right were very aware of it. Matthew Collins, the former BNP and Combat 18 bruiser turned informer and anti-racist activist describes in his memoir, Hate, how one of his former friends in the Far Right stated that he couldn’t understand the hatred against the Jews. I did hear that one British Fascist group tried to capitalise on British society’s general rejection of anti-Semitism by launching their own anti-racist movement, Fascists Against Racism. If true, then their anti-racism didn’t stretch very far. They still hated Black and Asian immigration.

Aside from this, Britain already possesses very robust anti-racist legislation. The earliest dates from the 1930s when Fascism was on the rise in Britain under Mosley’s BUF and other groups, and was passed to combat their anti-Semitism and attacks on Jews. Further legislation was passed from the 1970s onwards in order to combat prejudice, discrimination and physical attacks on Blacks and Asians. And these groups, including Muslims, are the main targets of racist abuse and assault in Britain. Tony Greenstein again in one of his blogs pointed out that, at least at the time he was writing, there had been no attacks on synagogues. But there had been many attacks on mosques. Despite the higher level of racist incidents directed against Muslims and other non-Whites, most of the funding to protect vulnerable groups – about 70 per cent – goes to the Jewish Community Security Trust. Jews are far more trusted and protected than other ethnicities.

And the Jewish establishment are well aware of this. That’s why they’re smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Mike raises the real issue why the Jewish newspapers are smearing Corbyn and the Labour part as anti-Semitic in the very title of his article on them: Jewish Newspapers Attack Corbyn – Or Are They Tory Newspapers? He makes the point that the groups smearing Corbyn aren’t interested in defending Jews. They’ve adopted the parts of the I.H.R.A.’s definition that does that. What they’ve rejected are the parts, which wish to outlaw any criticism of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. For example, the clause, which condemns promoting the vile anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was used against Mike himself when he described Shai Masot’s conspiracy with various establishment Jewish organisations at the Israeli embassy to select who would be in the Tory cabinet. This is a real conspiracy, but according to the Israel lobby, you’re an anti-Semite spreading hate if you report or comment on it. See his article at:
https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/07/26/jewish-newspapers-attack-corbyn-or-are-they-tory-newspapers/

David Rosenberg has also described the fraudulent nature of the Jewish establishment’s smears and posturing in several of his blog posts. And he’s made it very clear that organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism aren’t interested in defending Jews from real persecution. For example, at the time the CAA, and then the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council were holding their squalid demos attacking Labour, the Jewish residents of Dollis Hill had awoken one morning to find anti-Semitic graffiti and SS symbols scrawled on the pavement outside their homes and on a bus shelter. One family had a brick thrown through their window. These people needed the help and support of a genuine group combating anti-Semitism. But the CAA wasn’t interested. They’re too busy attacking Labour.

And Rosenberg makes it very clear that this is because they’re Tories. He writes

If the larger protests in Parliament Square led by the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council on 26th March, alleging “endemic” antisemitism in the Labour Party, could draw a thin veil over a patently pro-Tory agenda, by offering speaker slots to anti-Corbyn Labour representatives, there were no pretences yesterday. One invited speaker, a former Labour Party donor who quit the party last month, who spoke of the need to rebuild relations between the Jewish community and the Labour Party, was shouted down with cries of “Off! Off! Off!” and “Vote Tory!”

His article goes further, and describes how anti-Semitic incidents rise and fall along with hate crimes against other ethnic groups, like Blacks and Asians. How the Tories are unable to combat this racism because they themselves are racist, with Boris Johnson’s sneers at Blacks as ‘picaninnies’.
He goes on to describe how the anti-Semitism in the Labour party has been grossly exaggerated by the Tories to disguise the rise in racism against other ethnic groups, which has occurred with the Conservative’s complicity.

But that palpable sense of panic in Tory ranks has been pushed out of the news by an opportunist campaign that has latched on to a tiny number of real incidents involving Labour members and anti-Semitism that need to be addressed. That campaign has wildly and deliberately exaggerated their overall significance, thrown in ambiguous historical incidents as if they are of burning significance today; and completely obscured the bigger picture of rising racism against a range of communities that has occurred on the Tories’ watch and with Tory complicity.

Rosenberg then recommends that the Labour party should carry on and not be distracted by these allegations. It should not be lectured by the Tories, who at the moment are collaborating with real anti-Semitic and Far Right parties in Europe. And in Britain the Traditional Britain Group, led by the two Tory activists, maintains fluid boundaries with anti-Semites, eugenicists, and Holocaust deniers. Labour should keep its eyes on the prize, and concentrate on willing elections, not get sidetracked with this issue.

See: https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/time-for-labours-leaders-to-call-their-opponents-bluff/

He also gives a fuller description of the parties the Tories are cosying up to in Poland, Denmark, Latvia and Bulgaria, who celebrate SS auxiliaries that murdered Jews during the Second World War, and which have a bitter hatred of Muslims and Roma, as well as Jews in an earlier article. This also quotes a social media post by one Tory activist that makes it very clear that the smears against Labour are nothing but a fraud:

One Tory activist, David Thomas, a former Conservative parish councillor was honest enough to tweet “It’s an actual stroke of genius we’ve been able to pull this off, perfect timing heading into the elections too” (My emphasis). He has since deleted the tweet.

See: https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2018/03/30/so-who-are-those-tories-cosying-up-to/

David Rosenberg on How the Board of Deputies of British Jews Tried to Stop Jews from Joining ‘Rock Against Racism’

David Rosenberg is another Jewish Socialist, and a veteran activist against racism and Fascism. He’s also anti-Zionist, which means that he is, according to the standards of the Jewish establishment such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the ‘wrong sort of Jew’. Like Jewdas, and the other left-wing Jewish groups, who support Jeremy Corbyn.

Rosenberg has published a fascinating piece attacking Margaret Hodge for the way she effectively capitulated to the BNP by entirely ignoring the genuine fears and anxieties of working class communities. They were so delighted by her complete lack of resistance, that when they got into power in Tower Hamlets they sent her a bouquet of flowers. If you believe the lamestream media now, after her attack on Corbyn, she’s a committed antifascist, who bravely fought against them. In fact she’s nothing of the kind.

Rosenberg has spoken with left-wing Jewish groups, like Jewish Voice for Labour, at a demo on behalf of the Windrush Generation. As this blog and others have extensively described, they are the victims of Tory racism, which decided that they were no longer welcome in this country, despite devoting years of their life to working here and helping to rebuild it after the War. Rosenberg drew parallels between their persecution, and the official discrimination his grandparents faced when they arrived in Britain from the Russian Empire in the first years of the last century. This was after the British Brothers’ League had succeeded in getting the Aliens’ Act passed in 1905, designed to sort the Jewish emigrants fleeing Tsarist persecution into who were ‘desirable’ and ‘undesirable’.

In another article he describes how, as a youngster of 20, he went as one of the protesters and rock/pop enthusiasts to a Rock Against Racism gig, put on the Anti-Nazi League and featuring some of the great Punk bands of the day – The Clash and X-Ray Specs, and Tom Robinson, the composer of the gay anthem, ‘Glad to Be Gay’. He describes the mixed nature of the crowd, Blacks and Whites united against racism and Fascism, and how they marched en masse through the BNP’s heartland in east London.

But one of the most interesting pieces in the post is his description of how the Board of Deputies of British Jews had done their level best to stop Jews joining the protest. Officially this was because the ANL were an anti-Zionist organisation, and didn’t want Jews exposed to this part of their ideology. But other Jews believed it was simply because the Board didn’t want Jews joining the Left. Rosenberg writes

I was there with other Jews… but not without a fight. Our ‘leaders’, the Board of Deputies, had pulled out all the stops to try to prevent Jews from supporting the biggest anti-fascist mobilisation in Britain since the 1930s. Why? They claimed that the ANL’s leading figures were anti-Zionists and therefore the Jewish community should have nothing to do with them. Effectively they were saying that it was more important to keep out of range of comments someone might say about a conflict 2,000 miles away in the Middle-East than to unite here and now with communities that were bearing the brunt of racist attacks, having their homes firebombed, being beaten up on the streets, by the same forces that were daubing swastikas on Jewish gravestones. It seemed a callous and narrow attitude, then, as well as a self-defeating one.

For several weeks the letters pages of the Jewish Chronicle were filled with argument and counter-argument about this issue. When the ANL held a public meeting in the Jewish heartland of Golders Green, and with Jewish speakers on the platform, it was forced to hold it in a Unitarian church because the Board had told synagogues not to let their premises to the ANL. I remember Aubrey Lewis, who cut his political teeth in street battles against fascism and campaigns against poverty in Manchester in the 1930s, and was one of the founders of the Jewish Socialists’ Group, telling us that the Board were not really worried about young Jews becoming enticed by anti-Zionism, they wanted, above all, to keep young Jews away from the Left.

For more information, see his article at:
https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/the-carnival-is-not-over/

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is one of the official Jewish organisations now accusing Labour of anti-Semitism, and particularly smearing Jeremy Corbyn, because the party has not adopted all of I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism. This contains clauses, which would outlaw any criticism of Israel and its racist persecution of the Palestinians. More than that, the Board is intensely Conservative, and so is part of the general campaign by the right, including the Blairites in the Labour party and the lamestream media, to prevent a truly left-wing government under Corbyn getting into power. The Right are rightly afraid that a Corbyn government would undo nearly forty years of Thatcherism, and actually empower ordinary people, raise them out of poverty, give them better, or at least more secure jobs and renationalise the NHS. And this would threaten the profits and power of the rich and the big corporations.

The Board is part of those forces of the Right. And they’re now trying to present themselves as genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This is a grotesque fraud. And if the Board has tried in its past to stop Jews supporting demonstrations against the persecution of other ethnic groups, then they have absolutely no right to try to present themselves as an anti-racism organisation. Rosenberg makes it clear that if you’re an anti-racist, you’re against racism in its entirety, no matter who it’s directed against. The Board’s shabby behaviour 40 years ago trying to prevent genuine anti-racist Jews from joining the ANL shows that the Board doesn’t share this attitude.

They are a sham, whose attacks on Corbyn should be immediately dismissed as the smears of yet another Tory organisation spreading more lies and libels against Labour.

George Galloway and Prof. Michael Rosen Attack Margaret Hodge’s Anti-Semitism Smear against Corbyn

A few days ago, Dame Margaret Hodge stood up in Parliament to denounce Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, who didn’t ‘want people like me in the party’ because the Labour leader had failed to bow to the pressure of the Israel lobby and adopt the full definition of anti-Semitism now being foisted on everyone by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. This attempts to outlaw as anti-Semitic criticism of Israel.

The media have just lapped up Hodge’s denunciation, and reacted with horror at the possibility that she might be disciplined for attacking her party leader in Parliament. A highly biased report in the I did its best to leave its readers with no doubt whatsoever that Corbyn was anti-Semitic, like the rest of the British press. In support of this the papers mentioned that Hodge was not only Jewish, but like very many Jews had lost family in the Holocaust. Further on in the I their columnist, Simon Kelner, wrote a piece arguing that Labour should adopt the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism, because it was formulated by Jews, who were the people best placed to realise what anti-Semitism is. This is all despite the fact that very many Jews reject the I.H.R.A’s definition of anti-Semitism. According to what I’ve heard, 36 Jewish organisations from around the world concerned with protesting and combating Israel’s brutalisation and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians gave messages of congratulation to Corbyn because he hadn’t caved into pressure and adopted the definition in toto. But you won’t hear that from the biased British press. Nor will you see it on TV. On the Andrew Marr Show, the eponymous presenter seemed to get very irritated and insistent with a spokeswoman from the Labour Party, Rebecca Long-Bailey, because Labour hadn’t adopted that definition of Anti-Semitism like everyone else. And then in parliament yesterday we had the revolting spectacle of right-wing Labour MPs standing up one after the other to denounce Corbyn as an anti-Semite.

The piece below, which was posted by Galloway’s radio talk show, The Mother Of All Talk Shows on YouTube on July 21 2018, is a conversation between George Galloway himself and Professor Michael Rosen. Rosen is a children’s poet, and a frequent guest on radio programmes as well as writing the occasional piece for the press. I think he has been voted Children’s Poet Laureate, if I’m not mistaken, and is now professor of children’s literature. Galloway gives him a warm introduction, saying that he would have a place in a British senate, and is every father’s, mother’s and grandfather’s favourite author, and that he has stacks of his books in his own house. Rosen and Galloway have also known Jeremy Corbyn for a very long time, and Rosen himself is a Labour supporter, though not a member of the party. He’s also Jewish, and has a very different perspective on the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn, which you certainly won’t read in the press. He and Galloway both state very clearly that knowing Corbyn for as long as they have, they know that he is certainly not anti-Semitic.

They go on to discuss Hodge’s splenetic attack in parliament. Rosen says that it sounds very much like it was staged to cause maximum exposure. He states that if Hodge really felt that Corbyn was an anti-Semite, she would instead have raised the issue through the organs within the Labour party itself set up to deal with such grievances. She hasn’t. Nor has she made this complaint before.

The two also go on to discuss Hodge’s own checkered reputation with the press. She’s a Blairite, and when she first was elected she was ‘an Islington luvvie’. There was also a time when she went through a bad patch, for reasons they were reluctant to discuss. Then after doing reasonably well, she was attacked again by the Jewish Chronicle, who declared that she was disgraceful and that for everyone’s good she should resign. This was only a little while ago. Now, in Rosen’s words, she now appears like a Jewish Joan of Arc!

They also talk about the way she brought into the accusation the murder of members of her family in the Holocaust. Rosen states that many Jews have lost family during the Nazis’ murderous reign from 1933 and 1945. And yes, many Jews, including himself, do like to remind people of it. But Hodge has used this personal tragedy as a ploy to draw Corbyn into it metaphorically, to make him appear one of those culpable through the accusation of anti-Semitism. But Rosen says there are other Jews, who have also lost family in the Shoah, but no-one mentions them. The statement ‘I have lost family in the Holocaust and I support Corbyn’ never appears, and seems odd.

Rosen also makes the point that this part of the civil war initiated by the Blairites in the Labour party to split the party, as they would rather destroy it then have Jeremy Corbyn in No.10. He describes how a while ago Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, was phoning round TV celebs asking if they wanted to be members of their new party, and how the right-wing Labour MPs were preparing to split. He also has a go at John Woodcock, another Blairite, who took it upon himself to resign suddenly without giving any warning. Rosen states that it shows Woodcock’s contempt for his own constituents and local party that he gave no word he was going to do so. He also characterises him as a ‘goysplainer’, a term much used in the Jewish community. It’s modelled on ‘mansplainer’, a feminist term to describe a man, who patronisingly explains things, particularly women’s issues, to women. A ‘goysplainer’ is a gentile – goy – who patronises Jews by telling them what they should do and believe as Jews. He also mentions that Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, is also trying to split the Labour party by calling on all the party’s Jewish MPs, who may number about 10, to leave it.

Rosen and Galloway also talk about how the vitriol directed at Corbyn changes according to whether he’s behind or ahead of the Tory party in the polls. If he’s behind, then he’s a loser. If he’s ahead, then he’s an anti-Semite.The attacks against him have previously been that he looks like an old geography teacher, because he’s got a slightly worn jacket. But now they’ve changed as he’s pulled ahead.

This latest attack is because the Tory party is split and eating itself over Brexit. And Rosen states that both of them hope this will go on, and allow Jeremy Corbyn to take office in No. 10 as part of a genuine, reforming government. He also describes how anti-Semitic and vile the Tories’ supporters in the DUP are. They go further than just Creationism. There are two or three, he says, who are genuine anti-Semites. They believe in a version of Christian Zionism in which all the Jews are to move to Israel or be put to the sword so that Christ can return. And then these same DUP members of the devolved Northern Irish government have then had the audacity to turn up at the ‘Enough’s Enough’ demonstration against anti-Semitism in Labour.
They then talk about the nub of the issue, which is the definition of anti-Semitism itself. Rosen makes the point that it is, quite simply, hatred of the Jews as Jews. He talks about prejudice, giving an example of the kind of prejudice he means a conjectural insult he could make about Galloway because he’s Scottish. But the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism goes way beyond this by include criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Rosen states that this definition would not stand up anywhere, as it’s possible to insult Iceland, America and other countries without being accused of racism, so long as you don’t advocate committing a hate crime. Rosen then moves to talking about Ruritania as a way of illustrating prejudicial speech as applied to countries in order to avoid offending people.

He goes on to explain how the adoption of the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism would mean that he would be thrown out of the Labour party, if he were a member. And it came just after Netanyahu passed a law which firmly discriminates against the Palestinians, who comprise 1.8 million of his country’s own people. And many liberal Zionists, including Israelis, are outraged by it. Galloway mentions here the Israeli paper, Ha’Aretz, which has decried this legislation. And one liberal Zionist writer in the Washington Post has barely been able to restrain his disgust at the law. He wrote an article against it, and those who passed it, but obviously did not use the anti-Semitic tropes.

Rosen also mentions that other Jews have supported Jeremy Corbyn’s rejection of the clauses within the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism, which considers criticism of Israel anti-Semitic. He states that the philosopher, Brian Klug, who is also Jewish, wrote a piece in the Guardian explaining that Corbyn was right, and it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel.

Galloway and Rosen then demolish another accusation used by the Israel lobby to promote their legal suppression of criticism of Israel: that Israel is somehow singled out for criticism. But as Galloway and Rosen agree, they don’t single out Israel for criticism. They criticise a range of brutal and despotic nations, including Saudi Arabia. This is a very repressive regime, which has produced much of the Islamist terrorism now spreading over the Middle East. And to whom Britain certainly should not be selling arms.

This is a very good refutation of the extremely biased reporting about Hodge and her smear of Corbyn as an anti-Semite in the British lamestream media. They also make it clear that even Blair did not accuse Corbyn of being a Jew hater. This might be because he’s outside parliament, and so did not have immunity from the libel laws. Rosen also says that he believes that Hodge’s attack is a moment from which there can be no way back.

As for Hodge herself, the dubious episode that Galloway and Rosen were reluctant to delve into is probably when she tried to suppress reports and allegations of child abuse in Islington, which got to the point where she verbally attacked one of the victims herself. Tony Greenstein has a description of this vile episode in his own criticism of Hodge’s denunciation on his website. Nor is that the only controversial thing Hodge has done. She also appeared in the pages of the Guardian declaring that Whites may sometimes be right to complain about discrimination when members of ethnic minorities are given council or social housing ahead of them. This had her critics declaring that she was using the rhetoric of the BNP.

In short, Hodge is a vile individual, who is libelling Corbyn as anti-Semite simply to prevent a genuine Socialist getting into No. 10. And she is supported by the Blairites in the Labour party, the Tories and the mainstream media. And it’s about time this stopped, and was exposed for what it is. Now.