Tony Greenstein on Zionist Anti-Semitism

Last Wednesday Tony Greenstein, a veteran Jewish opponent of racism, Fascism and Zionism, put up on his blog a piece about how Zionists resort to anti-Semitic rhetoric when attacking their Jewish opponents. He made it very clear that this was because, in his view, anti-Semitism was at the very heart of Zionism.

The Hate Mail Directed at Jenny Manson, Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein

Greenstein began his piece with some very nasty examples of Zionist anti-Semitic hate messages sent to himself, Jenny Manson, the chair of Jewish Voice for Labour and Jackie Walker. Manson was left a vile message on her voice mail calling her a ‘f***ing Nazi bitch’, ‘Nazi cow’ and ranting that she should be burned in a gas oven, and should burn in hell, in acid. He points out that this disgusting rant mixed the Zionist accusation that non-Zionists are Nazis, with the real Nazi abuse that a Jewish person should be gassed like the innocent millions in the Holocaust. He compares this with another unpleasant message sent to Jackie Walker, which questioned whether she was really Jewish and that she should be put into a burning bin. He also put up the full text of a hate message he received, which called him a ‘traitorous b***ard’, ‘a left-liberal Jew’, ‘a cowardly traitor’, who should go back to the shtetls and ghettos under non-Jewish domination, and said that it was a pity that Hitler or the Angel of Death missed his house, that of his family, and Naturei Karta’s, the Jewish anti-Zionist organisation. Greenstein compared this with another message he’d received which denied the existence of the Holocaust. Greenstein states he passed on both of these messages to the Community Security Trust, which compiles lists of anti-Semitic incidents. They duly logged the second message, but refused to list the first, as they don’t include anti-Semitic incidents perpetrated by Jews. Discussing the reason for this omission, he quotes the Jewish American anti-Zionist, Aurora Levins Morales, who states in her book, On Anti-Semitism, that she gets anti-Semitic abuse from Zionists, because they really believe that the only way Jews can be safe is to have their own homeland where only they are the privileged people.

The Nazi Nicknames Adopted by Israeli Soldiers

Greenstein goes on to make the point that under the right circumstances, every people can become racists. It was, he states, inevitable that Jewish Israelis should develop the same mindset and attitudes as their Nazi oppressors. He cites articles in Haaretz and al Hamishmar from 1989 about Israeli army units that called themselves after Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor, who experimented on Jews and other human victims in the concentration camps; ‘Our Nazis’, for those squaddies in the IDF who liked to beat Arabs, and ‘the Auschwitz 10’ and ‘Demjanjuks’, after a sadistic concentration camp guard, who was just being tried. He also quoted a supporter of Lehava, the Israeli group that campaigns against racial mixing, who said that it was ‘unfortunate’ that Hitler attacked the wrong nation, as Jews were the chosen race. He also describes an incident from 2012 involving Israeli schoolchildren, who had been taken to see the play Ghetto, about Jewish life in Vilna during the Nazi occupation. Instead of sympathising with the suffering of their parents’ and grandparents’, the kids instead applauded the Nazis, even cheering on a scene in which a kapo struck a Jew.

Herzl and Anti-Semitism

Greenstein then goes on to show how there always was a confluence of interests between Zionism and anti-Semitism. He quotes Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, who believed that gentile anti-Semitism contained the Divine will to good by forcing Jews to close ranks. He also quotes a piece from the Jewish paper, Davar, from the 1950s in which the writer stated he would like to select a group of ‘efficient young men’ who would be sent to countries in which the Jewish population are engaged in ‘sinful self-satisfaction’. These men would then paint anti-Semitic hate messages on walls disguised as non-Jews and demanding that they go to Palestine. He states that Zionism was never really concerned with fighting anti-Semitism. It was concerned with gathering the Jewish people together to establish a Jewish state. And so Zionists came to see their real enemies as the Jewish opponents of Zionism, who should themselves be the victims of anti-Semitism.

He states that, contra France’s President Macron, who declared that anti-Zionism was a new version of anti-Semitism, Jewish history shows that it is Zionism that actually has the closest similarity to gentile anti-Semitism. He illustrates this with a passage from Herzl’s The Jewish State, which lays the blame for anti-Semitism on the Jews themselves. For Herzl, Jews, who married gentiles were lost to the ‘Jewish tribe’ and he declared he had no quarrel with the ‘honest anti-Semites’ who would spur on Jewish emigration. He also recognised that people would accuse him of ‘giving a handle to anti-Semitism’ when he said that the Jews were one people. One of the very many Jews, who did consider Zionism anti-Semitic was Lucien Wolf, the head of Britain’s Conjoint Committee and British Jewry’s ‘unofficial foreign minister’, who is quoted as saying

‘I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’

Herzl also admired Edouard Droumont, a notorious anti-Semite and anti-Dreyfusard, who Herzl declared was ‘an artist’ and was delighted when Droumont gave The Jewish State a glowing review.

The Zionists also agreed with the anti-Semites that the Jews were an ‘asocial’ body that did not belong among gentiles. The Marxist Zionist left, which followed the doctrines of Ber Borochov, Hashomer Hatzair and later Mapam, believed that there were too many rich Jews at the top of diaspora Jewish society and not enough workers. The reality, however, was that the vast majority of Jews in the Russian Empire lived in grinding poverty. The Zionists also agreed with the anti-Semites that Jews were either rootless cosmopolitans behind Communist agitation or the excesses of capitalism. He once again quotes Herzl, who wrote

When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; and at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.

This is exactly the sentiments of that terrible Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has inspired so much Nazism, Fascism and real Jew-hatred in the 20th century.

Other Zionist Anti-Semitism

Greenstein goes on to quote the Israeli novelist, A.B. Yehoshua, who said that Jews treated other people’s countries as hotels. And when Zionists described diaspora Jews, they sounded exactly like gentile anti-Semites. The first Israeli Minister of Justice, Pinhas Rosenbluth, described Palestine as an ‘institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’. Jacob Klatzkin, the co-editor of the Jewish newspaper, Die Welt, and co-founder of the Encylopaedia Judaica, wrote that Jews were

‘a people disfigured in both body and soul – in a word, of a horror… some sort of outlandish creature… in any case, not a pure national type… some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.’

Hashomer Hatzair’s Weltanschauung, first published in 1917, and then republished in 1936, also described Jews in hostile terms:

“a caricature of a normal, natural human being, both physically and spiritually. As an individual in society he revolts and throws off the harness of social obligations, knows no order nor discipline.”

Greenstein concludes

Why is this relevant? Because even today Zionism considers the Jewish diaspora as essentially worthless. Whenever a choice has to be made between the Jews and the Jewish state then the interests of the latter always take priority.

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/04/why-when-zionists-abuse-their-jewish.html

The Identification of the Oppressed with their Oppressors

This is deeply shocking stuff, and it shows that Zionists have absolutely no business whatsoever accusing decent people, particularly self-respecting Torah-observant and secular Jews, of anti-Semitism. Greenstein has elsewhere argued that Zionism is a capitulation to anti-Semitism. It also reminds me of a comment the great journalist of the gogglebox, Clive James wrote way back in the 1970s. He observed in a piece about Roman Catholic children identifying with the British army in Northern Ireland, that oppressed peoples often supported and took on the views of their oppressors. I think James may have been wrong in the case of Ulster Catholics, as many of them initially supported the deployment of British troops, because they expected them to be far more impartial than the police. But it does seem to apply to many Zionists’ view of the degraded nature of diaspora Jewry following Herzl.

Israel’s Abandonment of Diaspora Jewry for Its Own Interests

And Zionists have shown themselves to be perfectly willing to sacrifice diaspora Jews to real anti-Semitism if it will benefit Israel. Greenstein has blogged about how one of the Zionist pioneers – I have a feeling it may have been David Ben Gurion – said that he would rather half of Europe’s Jews were wiped out by the Nazis, if half of them went to Israel, than all of them being saved by going to Britain. George Soros, the billionaire financier, who is cordially hated by Zionists and gentile anti-Semites, despises Zionism because of the deal Kasztner, the leader of Hungarian Zionism during the Nazi occupation, struck with the Nazis. This allowed for tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews to be sent to the death camps in return for a certain number escaping to Israel. And they’re still doing it today. David Rosenberg has written time and again on his blog, Rebel Notes, about the threat posed to eastern Europe’s remaining Jews by the extreme nationalist, anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim regimes in Hungary, Poland, the Ukraine and the Baltic states. But these have received little criticism from Israel, because they support the Israeli states and buy its armaments. Stephen Pollard, the gentile editor of the Jewish Chronicle, notoriously declared that a far-right Polish MEP wasn’t an anti-Semite, but a true friend of Israel. This was a politician, who among other things, supported legislation banning any discussion of Polish collaboration with the Nazis in the Holocaust, contrary to historical fact and ordinary, common morality.

Anti-Semitism and the Idea of a Chosen People

As for that comment by the Lehava supporter stating that Hitler shouldn’t have attacked the Jews, because they were the Chosen People, this is deeply offensive and dangerous for a variety of reasons. One common anti-Semitic accusation is that the Jews believe themselves to be superior to everyone else because they believe themselves to be God’s elect. There have been many attempts by Jews to tackle this misconception. In the 1920s, I believe, some German synagogues removed a prayer from their services referring to them as the Chosen People, because they were afraid it would give their non-Jewish compatriots the wrong idea. Other Jewish authorities have pointed out, citing the Bible, that their status of the Jewish people does not confer on them any kind of superiority. Rather, God chose the Jews because they were the smallest, weakest people, who are called upon to be a servant people.

Many Jews are uncomfortable with the idea of being a Chosen People, and some reject it outright. My guess is that some of this discomfort may also be due to the apparent similarity of the doctrine to secular ideas of racial superiority. I knew a lad at college, who bitterly hated Christianity, though he definitely wasn’t an anti-Semite nor any kind of Nazi. Quite the opposite. He believed that the roots of Nazi racism lay in the Old Testament and the idea of a Chosen People. He was wrong. Nazism grew out of western biological racism, which was founded in the 19th century by the French count, Gobineau. This also inspired Nazism, although the Nazis also took over and exploited Christian anti-Semitism. The Lehava supporter’s statement about Hitler and the Jews as the Chosen People would support the prejudiced views of the opponents of Judaism and Christianity as the origins of racism.

Zionist Silence over their Anti-Semitism

The existence of the virulent anti-Semitism in Zionism, which Tony Greenstein describes, also raises another issue. Why won’t Zionist organisations like the Community Security Trust log anti-Semitic incidents and hate speech committed by Jews? It seems to be a prohibition that really only goes one way. As we’ve seen, very many of the decent people vilified and smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour party and elsewhere for their opposition to israel’s oppression of the Palestinians have been Jewish. Their Zionist opponents have shown themselves to have no qualms about accusing them of Jew-hatred. But it seems they do not want to record instances where decent Jewish critics of Israel have been so reviled.

Not only is this a disgusting double standard, it also makes you wonder what they’re hiding. Is there so much of this vilification, that if it was recorded, Zionists would find themselves exposed as some of the worst anti-Semites?

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Just How Many Members of the JLM Are Really Jewish?

As Jeremy Corbyn becomes more popular, so the vile right-wing establishment and media, and particularly the Sunset Times, are determined to smear him and the Labour party as anti-Semites. One of the leaders of this campaign within the Labour Party has been the JLM, or the Jewish Labour Movement. Who I believe should be more accurately called the Zionist Bowel Movement. They claim to represent the Labour Party’s Jewish members and have been active denouncing anyone they can on the Labour left as a Jew-hater.

In reality, what they consider to be anti-Semitism is very narrow: it’s opposition to Israel and Zionism, rather than anti-Semitism in the proper meaning of the word: hatred of Jews as Jews. It honestly isn’t surprising, as the Jewish Labour Movement is the successor to Paole Zion, or ‘Workers of Zion’, a Jewish Zionist organisation that became affiliated to the Labour Party in the 1920s, and which campaigned for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. But Paole Zion was more or less moribund when it was taken over in 2014 or so by embezzler Jeremy Newmark, of the Jewish Leadership Council, who told his friends in a Golders Green coffee shop that he wanted to work for Zionism from inside the Labour party, using the tactics Zionists had already used in the Universities and Colleges Union. The Zionist Bowel Movement has repeatedly claimed that anti-Semitism is rife in the Labour Party, and last week loudly held a meeting to discuss disaffiliation, because the party was allegedly no longer a place where Jews were comfortable.

In fact, this is news to many of the Party’s Jewish members, who acknowledge that there probably is anti-Semitism in Labour, but haven’t met it personally themselves in all their years of membership. Labour also have a number of other Jewish organisations, like the superb Jewish Voice for Labour, which has attacked the anti-Semitism witch-hunt and defended its innocent victims, like Jackie Walker. I’ve also no doubt that the Party has very many other Jewish members, who are not members of specifically Jewish organisations. Many people don’t want to be put in boxes or defined by religion or ethnicity. One of these was Dr. Jonathan Miller, the satirist, broadcaster and opera director. When he was introduced on one programme back in the 1960s as a Jew, he replied by stating that he was ‘Jewish’. ‘I’m a Jewish. I have no interest in being a minority’. Which I dare say is probably the attitude of many assimilated Jews comfortable with their British and Jewish identities.

From their public pronouncements, you could be forgiven for believing that the Zionist Bowel Movement had a mass membership. After all, they claim to speak for the Jewish members of a party, which now has a quarter of a million members. They claimed to have 2000 members, which is trivial compared to that of the Party in general. And it’s probably less than that. From the voting numbers recorded at their general meeting on the issue of disaffiliation, it appears that they may only have 150 members. And not all of those of are Jewish. The Jewish Labour Movement is open to gentiles, and you don’t have to be a member of the Labour Party. Tony Greenstein on his blog stated that as many of 2/3 of the Bowel Movement’s members were actually non-Jews. That’s a hundred out of 150. So you have the spectacle of a Jewish organisation, of which only a third are actually Jewish, trying to tell a party of a quarter of a million that anti-Semitism is rampant in their ranks, in the face of the majority of its members and proper Jewish organisations with an equivalent or higher membership, who assert that it isn’t. And some of these other Jewish organisations have members who are really Jewish.

The JLM is such a pompous organisation, and its claims to represent Labour’s Jews so grotesque, that I was tempted to send them a letter offering to become a member. I’m not Jewish, but have read books on Biblical Hebrew and have the piano music for Hava Nagila, which puts me on the same level as many of their other members. And no, I’m not sneering at Jews or promoting Jewish stereotypes with this comment. I am attacking and satirising a mendacious organisation that has done nothing but spread smears and destroy innocent people’s lives. And they have done this not for any good reason, but simply to defend Israel and its terrorist actions against the Palestinians from criticism. Far from representing the party’s Jewish members, they should be seen as a marginal organisation which grotesquely tries to reduce the rich variety of Jewish opinions on the question of Jewish identity to simply equating it with Zionism and support for Israel.

And in doing so they have smeared decent people, including genuine, Torah-observant and secular Jews. The JLM really only represents Zionism under the pretence of standing for the party’s Jews. And if they departed from the Party tomorrow, absolutely nothing would be lost. Indeed, as Mike and many of the other bloggers have shown from comments posted on Twitter, many people, Jewish and non-Jewish, would be delighted.

Miriam Margolyes Defends Labour and Jeremy Corbyn against Anti-Semitism Smears in Radio Times

Next week’s Radio Times for 20th-26th April 2019 has a long interview with veteran thesp Miriam Margolyes.  It’s partly publicity for her forthcoming documentary, Miriam’s Dead Good Adventure, in which she explores death and how people cope with it. This includes venturing into the kind of territory Louis Theroux explored in his Weird Weekends all those years ago, when he explored the weirder margins of American society. In her case, Margolyes meets a group, who believe they can use orgasmic energy to stave off death forever, making them immortal. Needless to say, she doesn’t believe a word of it.

Most interestingly, Margolyes discusses the anti-Semitism allegations against the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn, making it very clear that she doesn’t believe in them either. She condemns the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and describes how her view have led to her being vilified by pro-Israel groups and individuals, like Maureen Lipman. And like Jackie Walker, another Jewish anti-Zionist lady of mature years, she was radicalised through her opposition to apartheid in South Africa. This section of the interview runs

A Labour Party member, she has firm opinions about anti-Semitism accusations directed at the party. “Jeremy Corbyn, who is an excellent constituency representative, a serious person, is not an anti-Semite. I don’t think there is the extent of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party that people seem to imply,” she says. “I think it’s to do with trying to stop Corbyn from being prime minister”. She is also critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. “It’s just a fact that the Israelis have behaved appallingly, they continue to do so, and people are dying. I am ashamed, as a Jew, of what’s been done in my my name. I can’t bear it. And for that I’m vilified and people won’t come to see the plays I’m in. I’ve become, as it were a kind of minuscule Vanessa Redgrave when she was vilified for her political position. But I am right. I have no doubt about that whatever”.

I wonder how it feels to be separated from your own community. “It hurts me,” she says. “I’m so Jewish, and so happy to be Jewish. And the schism between me and Maureen Lipman, which is the manifestation of this chasm, causes me pain.”

Lipman is a very public supporter of Israel. IN 2015 she demonstrated with pro-Israeli groups outside a production of a pro-Palestinian play in London. “She feels that I am a wicked traitor to my people,” says Margolyes. “And I feel that she’s a fool.” The two appeared together in a 1989 British Telecom commercial spoofing Jewish domestic life, now Margolyes admits it would be difficult if they met in the street. “I hope I would be civil. I’m sad because I admire Maureen, and I have known her for a long time. She’s been a friend, and now it’s not possible any more. I expect she might be said, too. But she said don’t communicate with me again and I haven’t.”

She says she feels compelled to stand against injustice in the world. “For me, it’s the same sort of cause as apartheid. I was marching on South Africa House when I was young and, unfortunately, it’s now my own people I’ve got to march against. That’s painful, but I won’t pretend. If you can’t tell the truth when you’re 77, when are you going to tell it?”

Jewish Opposition to Zionism as Anti-Semitism

Over a decade ago she was one of a number of public figures, who condemned the Israeli bombardment of Gaza, and she made her Jewishness very plain then too. She stated that she was a ‘proud Jew, and an ashamed Jew’. She says in the interview that she doesn’t believe in God, but she loves Jewish life, the cooking, culture and community. She shares her happiness with her Jewish identity with many of the other Jewish critics of Israel, both Torah-observant and secular/ atheist, who have also been vilified for their stance against the Israeli oppression and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arabs. People like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni and many others. And many Jewish critics of Israel find it utterly ridiculous, even anti-Semitic, that they should be considered traitors by their community, because they’d don’t support a foreign country that they weren’t born in. Greenstein, David Rosenberg, and the Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, have made the point that until recently the majority of the Jewish people rejected Zionism, partly because they were afraid that it would lead to accusations that Jews’ loyalties were divided between their homeland and that of the Jewish state. Indeed, at the beginning of the Zionist project, Zionism was strongly associated with anti-Semitism because of the number of real Jew-haters, who wanted to expel their Jewish populations to some other country, and the establishment of a Jewish state would be perfect for this purpose. The majority of Jews wished to stay in their native homelands and be accepted as equal citizens with their gentile fellow countrymen and women. The establishment of the state of Israel has indeed led to diaspora Jews being accused of being more loyal to Israel than their home countries, not least because Benjamin Netanyahu actually declared that the Jewish people and Israel are synonymous and identical. All Jews, everywhere, are citizens of Israel. The Palestinians, however, are not. Which is why activists like Tony Greenstein make it very clear that Israel isn’t a democracy, as it is not a state of its citizens but of a single, privileged ethnic group.

Maureen Lipman’s Attack on Ed Miliband

As for Maureen Lipman, she’s a great actor, but she has boiled her brain on this issue. She’s claimed to have left the Labour party because of Corbyn. She didn’t. She left it a few years ago when Ed Miliband, who’s Jewish, became leader. Miliband made some mild policy departures from a rigidly pro-Israel line, so Lipman threw a strop and left, ranting about how the party was now anti-Semitic. She wasn’t the only one. As Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have pointed out, the anti-Semitism smears date from this time, long before Corbyn became leader. Which makes utter nonsense of the claim that Corbyn, one of the most anti-racist and determined opponents of anti-Semitism, is a Jew-hater.

Other Victims of Witchhunt Silenced by Media

It’s refreshing that the Radio Times should give space to Margolyes’ views, and I’m sorry that she, too, is suffering vilification and smears for her opposition to Israel that other critics and activists, both Jewish and non-Jewish, are also receiving. But unfortunately the media, including the Beeb, is still determined to repeat these smears and libels. Those abused, like Mike, may be able to correct these attacks through IPSO, but it’s very difficult for the victims to take their attackers to court for libel. This is largely because of the huge costs involved, but also because there are time limits on libel actions and the newspapers do everything they can to stall and stonewall them until they run out of time. And I have yet to see any part of the lamestream media invite those, who have been smeared as anti-Semites, onto their programmes to defend themselves. The noble exception to this have been the new, alternative broadcasters like RT and Novara Media. George Galloway has had Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein on his show, Sputnik, on RT to make their case and describe their experience of victimisation in the anti-Semitic witchhunt. But the Beeb, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and others have yet to do so. Meanwhile Laura Kuenssberg and the other liars of the BBBC newsroom have been free to continue their promotion of the lies and smears against Corbyn and his supporters without any criticism or dissent whatsoever, urged on by the rest of the mendacious right-wing media and Jewish establishment.

I’m pleased Margolyes has been able to present the other side of the argument in the RT, and would like other anti-Israel activists also to have the opportunity to explain their position and rebut the anti-Semitism smears. But the majority are ordinary people, like Mike, Greenstein, Walker, Odoni, Wadsworth and Chilson, who aren’t already media figures and so are denied a proper, sympathetic platform. And so the lies and smears continue.

‘I’ Celebrates Lad Who Egged Racist Senator Fraser Anning

Here’s an inspiring story. Fraser Anning, an utterly repugnant far-right Australian senator, who literally blamed the victims of the Christchurch massacre for their own murder, got his just comeuppance. As he was speaking, a White kid hit him over the head with an egg. And the lad is now an internet hero.

The story’s covered by the I, whose article in today’s edition for 18th March 2019, on page 9, runs

Online accolades for boy who egged far-right senator

Will Connolly, the 17 year old boy who egged the far-right Australian senator Fraser Anning, has become an online hero.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison suggested yesterday that the anti-Muslim senator should be charged after he slapped a teenager who cracked a raw egg over his head.

Mr Anning has been condemned for blaming Muslim immigration for the racist attacks on two New Zealand mosques. Mr Morrison said: “The full force of the law should be applied to Senator Anning.”

Posting on after the mass shootings on Friday, Mr Anning tweeted: “Does anyone still dispute the link between Muslim immigration and violence?”

“The real cause of the bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration programe which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place, ” he said later. A GoFundMe page set up to raise A$2,000 (£1,0000) to pay for Connolly’s ‘legal fees’ and ‘more eggs’ had exceeded A$25,000 yesterday.

The site says most of the money will go to Christchurch victims.

The I’s columnist Eleanor Margolis wrote a further piece about, When words fail, some people need egging, adding a bit of historical context to Eggboy’s act. She mentions the egging of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jeremy Corbyn at Finsbury Park mosque last week, and John Prescott, how it was used against people in the stocks in the Middle Ages, and by less than impressed audiences in Elizabethan theatres. She said of Eggboy’s strike against Anning that

For anyone slating Eggboy for food wastage, maybe supermarkets should start keeping the eggs that pass their sell by date specifically to see to people with grievances against our leaders. Becuase the thing about egging is, it’s sort of effective. When Eggboy matter-of-factly broke that egg on Fraser Anning’s racist head, millions of people soon saw a display of solidarity -from a White non-Muslim kid – with those impacted by the Christchurch shooting and the victims of today’s rampant islamophobia in general. When words fail, some people just need an egg to the face. It’s probably the most physical, yet mostly non-violent, way of showing the world you disagree with someone and their entire schtick. (p. 18)

Let’s add a bit more detail to this. Anning didn’t just blame Muslim immigration for the violence, he specifically suggested that the victims of this atrocity were themselves violent and to blame for it. He issued a statement essentially saying that Islam is a violent religion, all Muslims were violent, and the massacre victims were ‘not armed yet’. Very many religions and ideologies, including Christianity, have their violent  as well as peaceful aspects, and Islam is no different. At times it has expanded through military conquest and at others through peaceful preaching and simply commercial interaction. It’s believed that Islam spread into sub-Saharan African, for example, through merchants, and that many of the African peoples, who adopted it did so because the majlis, or assembly of religious scholars, offered a constitutional check to the power of the kings.  It’s also obviously untrue that Muslims are violent, as clearly shown by the peaceful behaviour of the vast majority. And Anning’s statement about the victims of the massacre is both wrong and obscene. They weren’t armed at all, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that they were going to be.

Kevin Logan dealt with this lie in his livestream he did with feminist professor Kristi Winters. It’s on YouTube, entitled ‘We Love You Kiwis’. I haven’t reblogged it, because it’s over an hour long and Logan, as an internet atheist, makes a series of gratuitous attacks on Christianity. But on a more positive note, he did post this video celebrating Anning’s nemesis. Enjoy! 

Warning: Contains language.

 

Margolis’ article is also interesting for how she describes the attack on Corbyn. She repeats the falsehood that he was hit with an egg – he wasn’t. He was punched in the head. But she admits he was attacked by a racist. Which is interesting, as this is a tacit admission that Corbyn isn’t. And if he isn’t a racist, he can’t be an anti-Semite, by definition. But I doubt you’ll find the I going that far to buck the anti-Semitism witch-hunt against Labour.

Abusive Message Sent to Jenny Manson, Head of Jewish Voice for Labour

Mike today has put up a piece about the vile, abusive message sent to Jenny Manson, the chair of Jewish Voice for Labour. Unlike the Zionist hate group, the Jewish Labour Movement, this is a group that represents all Jews and members have to be members of the Labour party. Unlike the JLM, where they don’t have to be either. The JVL supports Jeremy Corbyn, and like Jewdas and other Jewish groups, it points out what the lamestream media and the establishment really don’t want people hearing: that Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite and has always been supportive of Jews. Indeed, 21 rabbis wrote and signed a letter about this last year.

Manson was on Newsnight last week defending Jeremy Corbyn, and I gather that she has also been on two other programmes as well doing the same. This was too much for one member of the public, who stalked her and left an abusive message on her phone. The anonymous caller calls her  ‘Nazi scum’ and says that he wishes she burns ‘in the gas oven’ and ‘burns in hell in acid’. She has also said that she is regularly stopped in the street by aggressive individuals, angered at her support for Labour.

Mike in his article states that it seems to him that this is exactly what the witchhunters want. He mentions that this week Jeremy Corbyn was punched in the head by someone angry about his stance on Brexit, and wonders how long it will be before someone is physically attacked or worse by the supporters of the anti-Semitism witchhunt.

He speculates about what they would say if caught, and who they would claim had incited them to it. Mike states that it’s time the people stirring up this hatred were held to account. He concludes

Next time they make unfounded accusations, perhaps we should lodge complaints against them under the Public Order Act – fear or provocation of violence.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/03/15/listen-to-the-vile-hypocrisy-of-the-anti-semitism-witch-hunters/

If you want to hear the message, go to the Skwawkbox at: https://skwawkbox.org/2019/03/15/listen-horrific-antisemitic-voice-message-sent-to-left-wing-jewish-labour-activist/

The Skwawkbox also has another story about an Orthodox Jewish man, Shraga Stern, who was abused because he appeared with Jeremy Corbyn in a photograph taken at Finsbury Park Mosque commemorating the terrorist attack there last year. The message wasn’t as vitriolic as that directed at Manson. It just said ‘You appeared with Corbyn. Shame on you. Be careful’.

https://skwawkbox.org/2019/03/15/orthodox-jewish-man-threatened-over-appearance-with-corbyn/

I don’t know if the people leaving these obscene messages are Jewish. Quite honestly, given some of the weird characters in organisations like Sussex Friends of Israel and North West Friends of Israel, they could well be gentiles. One Jewish anti-Zionist described some of the bizarre, twisted members of one of these group. One of them was a bloke, who claims to be an Orthodox Jew, despite the fact that he is very obviously not. But unfortunately, this kind of abuse is no aberration, whether it is hurled by Jews or gentiles. Tony Greenstein has described on his blog how he has received messages from Zionist Jews telling him that they wished he and his family had died in the Shoah, the Holocaust. He was also physically assaulted in Brighton by a Jewish American. To add insult to injury, Greenstein was himself arrested following this attack, though released without charge. And one of the videos for Jackie Walker’s one-woman performance about her unjust suspension from the Labour party on a fake charge of anti-Semitism included her reading out some of the vile hate messages she got. And they were absolutely horrific. She was called a ‘court Jew’ – the Jewish equivalent of the Black slur ‘house n***er’. She was also told, amongst other threats, that she should be lynched. As the video of her performance shows, this is especially horrific because her mother was an American civil rights activist, at a time when Blacks were really being lynched.

From the descriptions of their behaviour on a number of Jewish blogs, not just Greenstein’s, it’s very clear that the Zionist groups who turn up to protest events criticising Israel are very aggressive. They scream, shout, sneer and giggle at description of the IDF killing Palestinian children. They will also try to block the entrances into the venue where the event is being held. If flyers and leaflets are being handed out, they will try to snatch them from the grasp of the ordinary members of the public who ask for them. They also hobnob with members of the islamophobic mainstream Fascist right, like Britain First. The Israel lobby will also demonstrate with members of the Jewish Defence League and idiots wearing T-shirts supporting Kach, a far-right Israeli terror group. Given this, it seems to me that it may only be a matter of time before someone from these Fascist organisations takes out their rage physically on an innocent person, whose only crime is to be a Jewish supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.

As for the anti-Semitic abuse hurled by Zionists at non-Zionist or Israel-critical Jews, this goes back a long way. A week or so ago I posted up a piece about how the language Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, used about diaspora Jews in his Das Judenstaat mirrored and prefigured Nazi and Fascist rhetoric. Herzl described contemporary diaspora Jews as ‘Yids’, who were small, dark, cringing and ugly, in contrast to the strong, proud, beautiful Hebrews who would arise with the new Jewish state. Alfred Kepel, in his book on the rise of Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism, The Revenge of God, also talks about the bitter feelings Zionists have towards non-Zionist Jews. Many Zionist partly blamed the non-Zionist Jewish organisations in eastern Europe for the Holocaust, arguing that more Jews could have been saved if they’d encouraged them to emigrate to Israel. It’s a highly questionable assertion. Rudolf Kasztner, the leader of the Hungarian Zionists during the Second World War, struck a deal with the Nazis, in which tens of thousands of ordinary Jews were sent to the death camps in return for a minority being sent to Israel. It’s also been argued that what stopped Israel suffering the same fate as European Jewry was Montgomery’s victory at El Alamein. If the Nazi forces had broken through, then they would have occupied Palestine and murdered its Jewish inhabitants. Amongst the rhetoric Zionists use against their non-Zionist fellows, according to Kepel, is casting them as ‘Yids’, capering for the entertainment of their gentile, aristocratic lords. I think this is a literary trope, but it is obviously part of the accusation that non- or anti-Zionist Jews like Jackie Walker are ‘court Jews’.

It seems to me very strongly that the ugly abuse Jenny Manson and Shraga Stern have suffered is part of the racist, anti-Semitic rhetoric of Zionist fanatics.

And Mike is absolutely correct. It may well only be a matter of time before one of these fanatics takes it further, and physically attacks or kills a decent, self-respecting Jew, because as a Corbyn supporter they have to be ‘Nazi scum’ or a ‘court Jew’. Quite apart from the non-Jewish opponents of anti-Semitism and racism, who have suffered the same abuse.

It’s time to halt the racism by calling it what it is: hate speech, incitement to racial hatred and incitement to violence.

Trailer for Jackie Walker’s One-Woman Show ‘The Lynching’

Jackie Walker is, as readers of the blog well know, the former vice-chair of Momentum, who frightened the Blairites and the Israel lobby in the Labour party so much that they smeared her as anti-Semite. It’s a ridiculous charge, as her mother is a Black American civil rights activist and her father a Russian Jew, who met on a civil rights demo. Walker herself is also a Jew by faith, her partner is Jewish, and her daughter attends a Jewish school. She is anti-racist activist herself. She was targeted for smearing because she’s a critique of Israel and its horrific maltreatment of the Palestinians. And so they accused her of anti-Semitism after uncovering a poorly worded sentence in a discussion she was having about Jewish involvement in – but not responsibility for – the slave trade.

She has been suspended from the Labour party, but is fighting back. Jon Pullman, the director of this trailer, has produced a film, Witchhunt, about her smearing by the Labour Party and the Israel Lobby. This is so potentially damaging to that section of the Labour party that Luciana Berger, now a member of the Independent Grouping of Anti-Democrats, threw a strop and demanded the cancellation of its screening at the Labour party. And shortly afterwards, the MP who booked the room, Chris Williamson, was suspended for the stance he had taken against the anti-Semitism smears in a speech.

Two years ago in 2017 Walker also toured Britain with her show, The Lynching, about her persecution.  This is the trailer posted on YouTube on August 9th, 2017, for her show.

It begins with her walking down a beach, before showing her reading out some of the vile messages that she has been sent on her computer. Like ‘racist, fascist Jew-hater’, ‘Put her in a bin, throw petrol over her’, ‘Set her on fire’, ‘Lynch the bitch’. Other messages on the computer claim that she isn’t really Jewish, and that her Jewish identity is just an artfully constructed guise. She then appears on stage, set with teaching equipment, and with a black doll hanging from a noose in a corner. At the front of the stage is a banner with the slogan ‘Anti-Semitism is a crime. Anti-Zionism is a duty’. She explains that those were just some of the Tweets.

She then appears back walking down a hillside towards a beach. She explains that she got a blank from the mainstream media. All they wanted was a particular story, which wasn’t one that included details or context. Back on the stage she explains to her audience that she’s going to tell them a story tonight about a witch hunt, about fake news, interspersed of screen shots of some of the reports, including the astonishingly wrong claim that she denied Hitler was responsible for the Holocaust. She states this was an attempt to smash the most extensive, radical movement in her lifetime.

She states that she’s saying that if the mass media don’t want to give a balanced report, then ‘we have to do it ourselves’. She is then shown introducing herself to her audience, saying that up to two years ago she was barely known as a teacher, writer, as an anti-racist activist and a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. And then in May her life was totally transformed. Israel and the agents of Israel and the supporters of Israel are targeting people like her all across the world. She was having dinner when the phone rang and she was told she’d been suspended for anti-Semitism. She says she was thinking of ways of getting her story out to people, especially people, who wouldn’t normally come to a political meeting.

She states that the story starts with her mother, who she explains was a Black civil rights activists. She imitates her mother’s voice, and quotes her explaining that in some places lynching is so popular they have it twice a week. She also explains that her father was a Jewish Russian Communist involved in the civil rights movement, where her parents met. She imitates him saying that as a Communist, he believes that Black people had been at the bottom of the pile, not just for a few years, but hundreds, who weren’t even thought of as human beings. Walker then explains that she wanted to make politics personal. She then returns to quoting her father, who said it wasn’t just him who wanted to support ‘coloured’ people’s rights. All his Jewish comrades were there. She then returns to explaining that she always knew that her father was Jewish, her mother had always discussed it, and she knew that her mother also had Jewish ancestry. As she became politically aware of what that meant, of that whole struggle, she became increasingly an anti-Zionist Jew, identifying with that position.

She explains that for hundreds of years Black people, who were fighting enslavement got nowhere. They were lynched and worse for attempting to liberate themselves. Here she appears on stage showing a photo of such lynching, with the bodies of two Black men grotesquely dangling from a tree. She also reads from one of the Noddy books, in which Noddy reproaches a golliwog for stealing his things, and says they shouldn’t be allowed in Toytown, but made to live in Gollitown with the other Gollies, while clutching a golliwog.

The video then shows her saying that Blacks were fighting against overwhelming political and economic forces and there are strong similarities between that and what is happening in Israel and Palestine now. She says that being open about her family and her background is absolutely critical to understanding her political work. And of course it what the mainstream media and the Israel lobby, who’ve been in many ways mounting the campaign against her, cannot bear.

Back on stage she says, ‘They wanted a lynching. A political lynching. So she thought she would get her own court of public opinion. And you’re -‘ she gestures at the audience – ‘are going to be that for me tonight’.

As well as at home, on the stage and on the beach, the video also shows her handing round a flyer for her show outside a cathedral during one of the festivals, and talking to the camera in a park.

It looks like The Lynching was a fascinating, inspiring show, and Walker is clearly a woman of great resilience to have endured such vile smears. As are the other people, who’ve also been vilified and abused, like Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Marc Wadsworth, and Mike over at Vox Political.

The lynching campaign of the Blairites and the Israel lobby is still going on. It claimed Chris Williamson this week. But perhaps if more shows like that are put on, and more people protest and defy their persecutors, and bring their cases instead to the court of public opinion, it may be halted.

The Number of German Jews Who Fought and Died for their Country in WW I

I found the figures for the number of German Jews, who did their patriotic duty and served and died fighting for their homeland during the carnage of the First World War in a German edition of Hinkemann by the playwright Ernst Toller (Stuttgart: Philip Reclam 1985). The book’s afterword notes that Toller’s own history is closely linked with that of the Jews during this period. Toller’s mother was German, and like very many assimilated Jews he wanted to be considered ‘German, nothing but German’. And like many others, he showed his patriotism by joining up when war broke out. The book states that 100,000 German Jews like him joined the army in a wave of patriotism, and that 12,000 of them fell during the War. The book states that ‘no section of the population paid a higher blood sacrifice.’ (p. 73). After the War, Toller became an Anarchist, who also paid for his political ideals with his death. He was one of the founders and leaders of the Bavarian soviet republic during the revolution of 1919, along with the philosopher Gustav Landauer and the theatre critic Kurt Eisner. And like them, he was killed when the Freikorps retook the land’s capital, Munich.

I’m putting this up because it’s often been stated that Jewish Germans formed the single largest group that joined the army, but I hadn’t seen the precise figures. Despite the fact that these statistics demolish the anti-Semitic claims that promoted the formation of the Nazi party, that Germany was defeated because of a ‘stab in the back’ by the Jews, anti-Semitism in Europe is rising. The Alternative Fuer Deutschland have managed to goose-step their way into the Bundestag, and their leaders are people, who can only be described as Nazis. One made a speech demanding that Germany’s Holocaust memorial should be demolished as a ‘badge of shame’. Another chillingly said that when they get into power, they’ll open an underground railway to Auschwitz.

Over in Hungary, the president, Victor Orban, is using the same old anti-Semitic tropes against the American financier George Soros. Soros is of Jewish Hungarian heritage, and Orban’s denunciations of him are precisely the same claims that the Nazis made about the Jews: that they are using their control of the banks and financial sector to destroy the country in an evil conspiracy. Orban’s Fidesz party is far right, bitterly racist and anti-immigrant, and particular anti-Muslim. According to today’s I, demonstrators have started calling Orban ‘Victator’, a portmanteau of his name Victor and ‘dictator’ to mock his authoritarian government. I don’t know how many Jews joined the Austro-Hungarian army during the First World War. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was similar proportion. I read in a history of the Jewish people years ago that the majority of Hungarian Jews were likewise assimilated, and considered themselves to be Magyars ‘of the Israelitish religion’, rather than a separate ethnic group. When Hungary gained its independence, many of them changed their surnames to Hungarian monickers. One of the families that did this were that of the Hungarian avantgarde composer, Gyorgi Ligeti.

And there are similar right-wing, anti-Semitic parties on the rise elsewhere in eastern Europe, like the Baltic states and the Ukraine, where SS auxiliaries are marching about in patriotic parades, and real Nazis form part of the ruling coalition in the latter country.

I felt therefore that I had to put up the figures for the numbers of Jewish servicemen who joined the army and their sacrifice to refute yet again any idea that the Jews aren’t patriotic citizens of their European homelands or that they’re somehow part of some weird global conspiracy to enslave non-Jews or destroy the White race.

These are just malicious lies and myths that have resulted in the horrific murder of 6 million innocents in the Nazi Holocaust. And, unless fought, will again result in more persecution and mass murder.

Zarjaz! Rebellion to Open Studio for 2000AD Films

Here’s a piece of good news for the Squaxx dek Thargo, the Friends of Tharg, editor of the Galaxy’s Greatest Comic. According to today’s I, 26th November 2018, Rebellion, the comic’s current owners, have bought a film studio and plan to make movies based on 2000AD characters. The article, on page 2, says

A disused printing factory in Oxfordshire is to be converted into a major film studio. The site in Didcot has been purchased by Judge Dredd publisher Rebellion to film adaptations from its 2000 AD comic strips. The media company based in Oxford hopes to create 500 jobs and attract outside contractors.

Judge Dredd, the toughest lawman of the dystopian nightmare of Megacity 1, has been filmed twice, once as Judge Dredd in the 1990s, starring Sylvester Stallone as Dredd, and then six years ago in 2012, as Dredd, with Karl Urban in the starring role. The Stallone version was a flop and widely criticized. The Dredd film was acclaimed by fans and critics, but still didn’t do very well. Two possible reasons are that Dredd is very much a British take on the weird absurdities of American culture, and so doesn’t appeal very much to an American audience. The other problem is that Dredd is very much an ambiguous hero. He’s very much a comment on Fascism, and was initially suggested by co-creator Pat Mills as a satire of American Fascistic policing. The strip has a very strong satirical element, but nevertheless it means that the reader is expected to identify at least partly with a Fascist, though recognizing just how dreadful Megacity 1 and its justice system is. It nevertheless requires some intellectual tight rope walking, though it’s one that Dredd fans have shown themselves more than capable of doing. Except some of the really hardcore fans, who see Dredd as a role model. In interviews Mills has wondered where these people live. Did they have their own weird chapterhouse somewhere?

Other 2000AD strips that looked like they were going to make the transition from the printed page to the screen, albeit the small one of television, were Strontium Dog and Dan Dare. Dare, of course, was the Pilot of Future, created by Marcus Morris for the Eagle, and superbly drawn by Franks Hampson and Bellamy. He was revived for 2000 AD when it was launched in the 1970s, where he was intended to be the lead strip before losing this to Dredd. The strip was then revived again for the Eagle, when this was relaunched in the 1980s. As I remember, Edward Norton was to star as Dare.

Strontium Dog came from 2000 AD’s companion SF comic, StarLord, and was the tale of Johnny Alpha, a mutant bounty hunter, his norm partner, the Viking Wulf, and the Gronk, a cowardly alien that suffered from a lisp and a serious heart condition, but who could eat metal. It was set in a future, where the Earth had been devastated by a nuclear war. Mutants were a barely tolerated minority, forced to live in ghettos after rising in rebellion against an extermination campaign against them by Alpha’s bigoted father, Nelson Bunker Kreelman. Alpha and his fellow muties worked as bounty hunters, the only job they could legally do, hunting down the galaxy’s crims and villains.

Back in the 1990s the comic’s then publishers tried to negotiate a series of deals with Hollywood for the translation on their heroes on to the big screen. These were largely unsuccessful, and intensely controversial. In one deal, the rights for one character was sold for only a pound, over the heads of the creators. They weren’t consulted, and naturally felt very angry and bitter about the deal.

This time, it all looks a lot more optimistic. I’d like to see more 2000 AD characters come to life, on either the big screen or TV. Apart from Dredd, it’d good to see Strontium Dog and Dare be realized for screen at last. Other strips I think should be adapted are Slaine, the ABC Warriors and The Ballad of Halo Jones. Slaine, a Celtic warrior strip set in the period before rising sea levels separated Britain, Ireland and Europe, and based on Celtic myths, legends and folklore, is very much set in Britain and Ireland. It could therefore be filmed using some of the megalithic remains, hillforts and ancient barrows as locations, in both the UK and Eire. The ABC Warriors, robotic soldiers fighting injustice, as well as the Volgan Republic, on Earth and Mars, would possibly be a little more difficult to make. It would require both CGI and robotics engineers to create the Warriors. But nevertheless, it could be done. There was a very good recreation of an ABC Warrior in the 1990s Judge Dredd movie, although this didn’t do much more than run amok killing the judges. It was a genuine machine, however, rather than either a man in a costume or animation, either with a model or by computer graphics. And the 1980s SF movie Hardware, which ripped off the ‘Shock!’ tale from 2000AD, showed that it was possible to create a very convincing robot character on a low budget.

The Ballad of Halo Jones might be more problematic, but for different reasons. The strip told the story of a young woman, who managed to escape the floating slum of an ocean colony to go to New York. She then signed on as a waitress aboard a space liner, before joining the army to fight in a galactic war. It was one of the comic’s favourite strips in the 1980s, and for some of its male readers it was their first exposure to something with a feminist message. According to Neil Gaiman, the strip’s creator, Alan Moore, had Jones’ whole life plotted out, but the story ended with Jones’ killing of the Terran leader, General Cannibal, on the high-gravity planet Moab. There was a dispute over the ownership of the strip and pay between Moore and IPC. Moore felt he was treated badly by the comics company, and left for DC, never to return to 2000 AD’s pages. Halo Jones was turned into a stage play by one of the northern theatres, and I don’t doubt that even after a space of thirty years after she first appeared, Jones would still be very popular. But for it to be properly adapted for film or television, it would have to be done involving the character’s creators, Moore and Ian Gibson. Just as the cinematic treatment of the other characters should involve their creators. And this might be difficult, given that Moore understandably feels cheated of the ownership of his characters after the film treatments of Watchmen and V For Vendetta.

I hope that there will be no problems getting the other 2000 AD creators on board, and that we can soon look forward to some of the comics many great strips finally getting on to the big screen.

Splundig vur thrig, as the Mighty One would say.

Outrage at Sun and Israel Lobby After Jackie Walker Film Cancelled due to Bomb Hoax

Earlier this week, on Tuesday, 25th September 2018, a film about the vicious smearing and attacks on the former vice-chair of Momentum, Jackie Walker, was due to have its premier at Blackburne House, Liverpool. It was to be shown as a fringe event of the Labour conference then being held in that fair city. Directed by Jon Pullman, it took its title, The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker, from a blog post written by the redoubtable critic of Zionism, Tony Greenstein, The Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker. There has also been a play about her mistreatment, The Lynching.

The film was shot in Britain and Europe, and followed Walker’s activities for over a year, as she worked, performed and interviewed her across her kitchen table, including comments from her friends and enemies, in order to get the real issue behind the headlines, and show the woman behind the activist.

Walker, you will remember, was smeared as an anti-Semite because members of the Jewish Labour Movement hacked into a private conversation she was having on Facebook about Jewish involvement in the slave trade. They took her words out of context and passed them on to that libelous rag, the Jewish Chronicle. They claimed that she had said that Jews were responsible for the slave trade. Walker has made it very clear that this is absolutely untrue.

She said

Yes, I wrote “many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade”. These words, taken out of context in the way the media did, of course do not reflect my position. I was writing to someone who knew the context of my comments. Had he felt the need to pick me up on what I had written I would have rephrased – perhaps to “Jews (my ancestors too) were among those who financed the sugar and slave trade and at the particular time/in the particular area I’m talking about they played an important part.”

For the record, my claim, as opposed to those made for me by the Jewish Chronicle, has never been that Jews played a disproportionate role in the Atlantic Slave Trade, merely that, as historians such as Arnold Wiznitzer noted, at a certain economic point, in specific regions where my ancestors lived, Jews played a dominant role “as financiers of the sugar industry, as brokers and exporters of sugar, and as suppliers of Negro slaves on credit, accepting payment of capital and interest in sugar.”

The producers had hoped that it would be shown as part of Momentum’s The World Transformed event, but Momentum refused, banning not just the film but also Free Speech on Israel and Labour Against the Witch-Hunt. The film was cancelled in its new venue after the organisers received an anonymous call claiming that there was a bomb in the building.

Mike, Tony Greenstein and Martin Odoni have all written pieces about this. Mike believes that the hoaxer may have been inspired by a piece in the Scum by one Hugo Gye. The Scum had been outraged by Momentum’s refusal to allow their journalists into their event, and bitterly complained. Then Gye wrote his piece in the rag describing the film and play. He called Walker herself a ‘far-left activist who was kicked out of Labour for making anti-Semitic slurs’, and quoted the Labour MP and member of the Israel lobby, Louise Ellman, as saying that it was ‘disgraceful’ for other party members to tolerate banned activists. This nasty piece of character assassination masquerading as journalism also included an image of a flier for the event, giving its date and venue.

See Mike’s article at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/25/did-walker-movie-bomb-threat-arise-from-bitchiness-by-the-sun-over-momentum-ban/

Martin has cautiously suggested that the hoaxer may well have been a Zionist, noting that there have been a number of attempts by Zionists to disrupt meetings of left-wing Jews over the past couple of years, including one of Jewish Voice for Labour this same week. Martin goes to ask

Perhaps Labour right-wingers like Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger, with their ridiculous histrionics-for-the-cameras with needless bodyguards, and comparisons to the Holocaust, would like to consider that a real threat is being aimed at the very people by whom they claim to be threatened? There is every chance that this threat was made by one of Hodge’s/Berger’s allies. If that is the case, what will they have to say about that?

See: https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2018/09/25/breaking-news-bomb-threat-against-jackie-walker/

Greenstein, however, believes very strongly that the hoaxer was probably inspired by Marie van der Zyle (pictured below) and the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Yes, the joke’s getting old now, but it’s still funny.

Zyle and the Board have done their level best over these past few years to stop Walker speaking. When Walker and Greenstein spoke in Brighton and Nottingham, the Board phoned the venues beforehand and tried to get them to cancel them. They did the same in 2016, when Walker was due to speak at a church in Bradford, slandering her as ‘an unapologetic Jew-baiter’. They also tried the same stunt to stop her appearing at the Edinburgh Festival.

Greenstein writes

Even if the hoax bomb caller was unknown there can be no doubt that he was doing the work that Marie van der Zyl, Jonathan Arkush and the Board of Deputies have been doing these past two years.

Even if their methods were slightly different the objective was the same. To prevent Jackie Walker exercising her right of free speech. Defence of the pernicious and racist Israeli state was the aim of both Marie Van Der Zyle and the hoax bomb caller. Whereas Ms Zyle merely threatened, cajoled and lied to the owners of venues which she contacted, the anonymous person who phoned on Tuesday simply promised to blow people up Israeli style.

Both Martin and Greenstein also describe the immense hypocrisy of the Board and the Groaniad, who have tried to make political capital out of the incident by describing it as ‘anti-Semitic’. The Groan’s headline about the incident was so misleading that one Peter C. Burns, tweeting about it, apparently believed that it was the Zionists, who had been threatened.

Greenstein points out in his article that the hoaxer did call it a ‘Jewish event’ in his phone call, even though it wasn’t. And it’s rich that the Board has used it to tweet a message about how we must all stand together against anti-Semitism, when they themselves have been whipping up hatred against Walker, libeling her as an anti-Semite. This has resulted in Walker being sent vicious abuse, expressed in foul and anti-Semitic language from other Jews. Because, as Greenstein himself has experienced, Zionist Jews hated Jewish critics of Israel more than gentile anti-Semites.

Greenstein also notes the monumental lack of interest in this by the media, with the exception of the Guardian. He observes that if this had happened at a Zionist event, then Luciana Berger, Ellman and Margaret Hodge would all be shouting about how they were being victimized and needed protection.

Both Mike and Greenstein write in their articles that far from shutting down interest in the film, this will only make more people interested in it. And Mike asks if her accusers’ case is so fragile, their only answer to Walker and her film is to try to stop it being thrown through bomb threats.

Greenstein’s article is at: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/09/bomb-hoax-in-liverpool-we-shall-not-be.html

It also includes some prize examples of the abuse Walker has received. It’s nasty, racist and viciously misogynist stuff. ‘Lying sack of excrement’ is one of the least foul terms her abusers use. So decent, sensitive souls be warned.

On a more positive note, he also includes a brief trailer for the film, which is very much worth watching.

Mike Launches Crowdfunding Appeal to Help Fight Libel Battle

On Wednesday, 13th June 2018, Mike annnounced that he had set up a crowdfunding page to raise money for him to take to court the organisations and publications that have libelled him as an anti-Semite. He has had to do this, because he simply doesn’t make enough from the Vox Political page to pay the legal fees himself, and so he has turned to the generosity of his readers.

He posted up the description of his case, and why he needs the money, which he has put on his JustGiving page. This runs

“My name is Mike Sivier. You may know me as the writer of the Vox Political website.

I am probably best-known as the man who forced the Conservative government to reveal the number of sick and disabled benefit claimants who had lost their lives after being denied benefit, after a two-year campaign.

In 2017, immediately before local government elections in which I was standing as a Labour candidate, an organisation calling itself the Campaign Against Antisemitism published an article falsely alleging anti-Semitism by me. I believe the intention was to corruptly spoil my chance of being elected.

The piece ‘quotemined’ investigative articles I had written about claims of anti-Semitism against Labour Party politicians, using only those words that could present the most prejudicial impression about me, in order to falsely suggest hatred of the Jewish people. A weblink to the article was then sent to the Labour Party, in an attempt to have my membership suspended. This led to newspaper articles including one in which my local Conservative MP libelled me.

Labour obligingly suspended my membership, and subsequently launched a one-sided investigation in which I was found guilty despite being absent from the proceedings, at which none of the evidence I had presented to the party was mentioned by the investigator.

A copy of the report to the Labour Party committee that heard my case was then handed to a member of the national press. This led to further newspaper articles claiming I was not only an anti-Semite but also a Holocaust denier (an innovation by the Labour Party investigator).

I have been trying to persuade all those involved to retract their unfounded claims and apologise. These lies have harmed my main business – the Vox Political website – by encouraging readers to believe I should be avoided because of the unacceptable views they have attributed to me.

My attempts seem unlikely to produce positive results so it seems I must resort to court action.

I need your support to fund the court campaign to clear my name.

Please support this case and share. As a Labour Party member, I believe in equal opportunities for all people, no matter the colour of their skin, their religion or ethnic background, or any other accident of birth. My campaign to force the Tory government to release its sickness and disability death figures was an example of my commitment to end discrimination, prejudice and hate based on such characteristics.”

He ends his article with an appeal to readers to support him, either by donating or sharing the link, or both, which is

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/mike-sivier

The article is at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/06/13/help-vox-political-writer-fight-anti-semitism-libels-in-court/

All this is absolutely true. And I’ve written time and again that Mike is no racist, Anti-Semite or any kind of Nazi. He and I had an uncle, who was of Jewish descent, with whom our family used to go on holidays when we were children. Our father had done his national service in Germany, not far from Belsen concentration camp, and showed us the photos he’d taken of the remains of that terrible place, and the memorial the British army put up to the Jews murdered there.

He has always enjoyed the friendship of people of different cultures, religions and nationalities. One of his mates at college was a Muslim Nigerian. And while he was there, he was one of the speakers reading out the names of some of the victims of the Holocaust in a performance commemorating them and the others butchered in the Shoah. He had done this at the invitation of a female Jewish friend, who was deeply moved by his performance.

One of the books I’ve got on my shelf on the Third Reich was given to me by Mike after he went on a College trip to Berlin. It’s on the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst – the infamous ‘Security Service’, which formed a part of the apparatus of state terror in the Third Reich. It was published by the-then West German government to acccompany an exhibition on the SD and the horrors they perpetrated following the redevelopment and archaeological investigation of the organisation’s headquarters in what was then West Berlin. As well as information on the SD and the other parts of the Nazi secret police, like the Gestapo and the Krimipolizei, the ordinary criminal police, who were also responsible for persecuting political and ethnic enemies of the Nazi order, the book also gave due coverage of the Nazis’ victims. It described the network of camps, and gave the figures for the number of Jews and other victims murdered in the occupied countries. It also had a photographs and potted biographies of some of the most notable victims. It is most definitely not the kind of book Nazis, ant-Semites and Holocaust deniers want people reading, let alone give to their relatives.

Mike and I grew up in the ’80s, when the NF and BNP were very much in the news and trying to make their presence felt through terrorising and attacking people of colour and lefties. It was also the decade when Blacks and Asians also fought back against racism with the support of White sympathisers. There was a real fear at the time that the BNP or something like them could gain power, especially under Thatcher’s noxious government, with its links to South American Fasciss like Pinochet and the horrific Rios Montt. This fear was expressed in some of the comic literature that both he and I read, which dealt with issues like racism and persecution.

It shows the absolute contempt for truth or any kind of journalistic integrity that he, and so many others like him, have been smeared and libelled by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the scumbags of the right-wing press. I full support Mike in his court battle, and hope others will too.