When exactly was the Jewish Labour Movement founded? The group claims that it’s merely Paole Zion, ‘Workers’ of Zion’, a Jewish socialist organisation that has been part of the Labour party for over a century, simply revamped and with a different monicker. It’s why they’re hoping that the stories about them debating whether or not to disaffiliate from Labour will be so harmful to the party. Imagine the headlines: ‘Labour now so anti-Semitic that historic Jewish group has now been forced out’. Except that, according to an article posted three days ago on the 7th March 2019 by the Electronic Intifada, the group may have been founded much more recently. Like 2004. Or later still, 2015.
The JLM used to have a page on their website, now deleted, in which they told the world that it had been set up in 2004 by its then chair, Louise Ellman, as Paole Zion’s successor.
And there’s also a very embarrassing transcript of a section of the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, which was never used, in which embezzler and Labour councillor Jeremy Newmark states that it was founded in 2015 to fight Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders. No-Morals told a meeting of the organisation’s youth wing in 2016 that actually it’s origins were the year before, when ‘a bunch of us’ sat in a coffee shop in Golders Green, and decided to refound the JLM. This was supposed to be about tackling anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but it’s really all about Israel. No-Morals is a pro-Israel activist and has close connections to the Israeli government and its London embassy. He claimed that Corbyn had been forced to back down from a boycott of Israel because of pressure from the group, and said that they need to replicate that on broader issues. He stated that the key to his movement was behind the scenes lobbying, legal leg-work and Engage, a left-wing campaign against anti-Semitism. The article quotes him as saying
“We built a robust political discourse, rooted in the politics of the left and deployed it in their own backyard,” he wrote.
If people walked away from the party, Newmark argued, “Israel’s case will be lost by default.”
This little snippet adds more information to a growing pile confirming that the anti-Semitism row in the Labour party isn’t remotely about real anti-Semitism. It’s about the Israel lobby and the Blairites smearing opponents of Israel in the party. In the case of the Blairites, this is partly a simply strategy to hold to power in a political landscape that has changed, and where Blairite neo-liberalism is hated and reviled. And both the Blairites, as fervent Zionists, and the Israel lobby are desperately trying to smear Israel’s critics as increasing numbers of decent people are becoming aware of the country’s racism, it’s vicious persecution of the Palestinians and its constant meddling in the internal affairs of other countries through lobbying groups. It’s especially venomous in its treatment of Jewish critics of Israel, who are reviled in anti-Semitic terms that recall the vilification of Jews under Julius Streicher and his wretched propaganda, Der Sturmer, for the Nazis. They are also accused of being anti-Semitic, self-hated, and disloyal to a country in which they were not born or have any desire to visit, let alone move to. To the Israel lobby, they are ‘the wrong kind of Jews’, another anti-Semitic trope.
As the JLM clandestinely seems to admit, it’s less than 20 years, if that, its departure from the Labour Party will be no great loss. Indeed, some of us are looking forward to it.
Tags: 'Der Sturmer', al-Jazeera, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Electronic Intifada, Embezzlement, Golders Green, Israel Lobby, Israeli Embassy, Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Newmark, Jewish Labour Movement, Julius Streicher, Louise Ellman, Neoliberalism, Palestinians, Paole Zion, tony blair
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