May Abuses Constitution to Cling to Power – Just Like Hitler

No, this isn’t another example of Godwin’s Law. This is a very real instance where the Tories and the Nazis pursue similar legalistic tactics to seize power without a democratic mandate.

Remember back last summer, when one of the comments incorrectly cited by the Israel lobby to support their accusations of anti-Semitism against one of Corbyn’s supporters was a quote from Martin Luther King? The great civil rights leader had said ‘Everything Hitler did was legal’. Historically, MLK was absolutely right. Hitler and Mussolini came to power through the skillful manipulation of their countries’ democratic institutions and their constitution. They were even careful to make sure that the Holocaust – the horrific mass murder of six million Jews – had a legal basis in the German constitution. A few years ago the Beeb staged a drama documentary of the Wannsee Conference, the infamous secret meeting of the Nazi leaders to plan the genocide of the Jewish people in occupied Europe. At one point the drama showed the Nazi party lawyer briefly raising a point against the enactment of the Holocaust. He wasn’t against it for any moral reason. His only objection to it was his concern that it wouldn’t be legal.

Far from being popular revolutions, as they claimed, the Nazis and the Italian Fascists before them were able to seize power through democratic campaigning, and exploiting the political weakness of their right-wing rivals as the various coalitions that had governed Italy and Germany broke down. The governing right-wing parties needed a coalition partner to form a government. And Mussolini in Italy and then Hitler over a decade later were asked to join them in government. The Fascists and Nazis then exploited the political impasse to become the dominant party in these new, rightist coalitions, and then used a series of political crises to ensure that they became the only party following their victory in an election. In the case of Mussolini, the Fascists with the aid of the right wing of the Liberal party altered the Italian constitution so that the whole of Italy became a single electoral district, thus giving them the majority they needed to seize power as the only permitted political party. If the constitution had not been altered, and the separate, individual electoral districts had retained, Mussolini probably wouldn’t have one the election at all. In fact, he was personally embarrassed by the results. In Mussolini’s home town of Pridappa, nobody voted for him or his thugs.

It’s very clear how this situation also applied to Black Americans before the ending of segregation. America is a democratic state, which prides itself on its constitution and democratic institutions. Yet it was also state where Blacks, and other ethnic minorities, such as its indigenous peoples, were marginalised and oppressed through a set of regulations designed to maintain White political and social dominance, a set of regulations that were clearly anti-democratic in that they violated the fundamental democratic principle of equality for everyone under the law, but which nevertheless also claimed a basis in democracy through the support of the majority.

Now it seems Theresa May is also trying to manipulate the British constitution so she can cling to power without a clear electoral mandate. The elections have resulted in a hung parliament. The Conservatives have the largest number of seats in parliament, but lack an overall majority. So May has been desperately trying to form a coalition with the extremely right-wing DUP, a party with connections to Loyalist terror gangs in Ulster, such as the UDA and UVF. And Mike has also reported how she has cancelled next year’s Queen’s Speech, citing the need to maintain a solid government for Brexit, in order to hang on to another two years of power.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/06/18/desperate-theresa-may-is-playing-fast-and-loose-with-our-constitution-to-keep-herself-in-power/

I don’t think Brexit is particularly important to May. It certainly isn’t to the great mass of the British people. In a poll, only 15 per cent said it was a priority. However, it is a priority for business, and just about the only issue May has left to campaign on, now that a majority of the British public have shown that they don’t like the promises outlined in the Tory manifesto. The Tories are busily revising this to exclude the most unpopular, such as the Dementia Tax.

Meanwhile, the Tory whips are trying to drum up support for May as this country’s defence against ‘Marxist’ Jeremy Corbyn.

This really is the tactics of the Nazis. The Nazis and the Italian Fascists were crisis regimes. That is, they claimed their mandate to rule through a desperate crisis – the threat of Communism – which was facing their countries. In both cases, the threat of a Communist revolution or insurrection was gone when they seized power. Nevertheless, they were adept at exploiting the fear of a Communist uprising amongst the upper and middle classes.

And they exploited their nations’ constitutional provision for government by presidential decree for the duration of the crisis. This had been invoked by Hindenburg, the right-wing German president, in the late 1920s and first years of the ’30s when the coalition between the SDP, Catholic Centre Party and the Liberal parties broke down. It was then adopted by Adolf Hitler, who used it to keep the regime in power.

The German constitution dictated that the state of emergency could only last four years unless it was renewed. And so every four years, Hitler had to call the Reichstag, which was composed solely of members of the Nazi party, to renew the state of national emergency that kept the Nazis in power.

Similar to the way May is using the crisis of negotiations with the EU to extend her term in parliament beyond her actual democratic mandate to govern.

The Tories are now showing that they’re an active threat to democracy in this country. Blair’s New Labour and the Tories and their Lib Dem enablers led by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, passed a series of legislation providing for secret courts. If it is deemed necessary for reasons of national emergency, a person may be tried in secret, with the evidence against him kept from both him-or herself and his/her lawyer. The accused may also not be told the identity of their accuser.

It is exactly the type of legal system that was set up in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia.

And now May is also seeking to manipulate the British constitution, so she can secure a few more years of rule without the support of the British electorate.

This is another step towards authoritarianism and dictatorship, in which parliament only becomes a rubber stamp, or indeed a democratic façade, for an antidemocratic administration.

This has to be stopped. Now.
May either forms a workable coalition government. If she cannot do so within the next few weeks, then there should be absolutely no question of calling another election.

And this time voting her and her vile party out.

Yoav Shamir on the Xenophobic Indoctrination of the Israelis

This is a short segment, fifteen minutes or so, from the full length film, Defamation, by the Israeli film-maker Yoav Shamir. Shamir’s argument in the film is that Israeli society and Jewish organisations abroad, like the Anti-Defamation League, deliberately obsess about anti-Semitism as a way of indoctrinating their people with xenophobic fears about everyone else. This is done in order to whip up support for the brutalisation and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.

Shamir starts off by saying that he’s an Israeli, and has never encountered anti-Semitism. So he wants to investigate it. He talks to his grandmother about it, a woman who fled Russia. Her comments about anti-Semitism shock her grandson, as her remarks about those Jews, who remain in the native countries are exactly the same as the slurs anti-Semites make about the Jewish people in general. She states that she is the genuine Jew, the hardworking, decent Jew, while those who remain outside Israel are all crooks, exploiting the non-Jewish inhabitants through alcohol, gambling and so on.

He then goes to one of Israel’s leading newspapers, which has published many stories about anti-Semitism. He meets one of its leading journalists, an elderly man in his 80s and a veteran of Auschwitz, who still has the tattoos the Nazis placed on the arms of their Jewish victims. This man blandly tells him that anti-Semitism is rising in the world, and that Germany, France, Britain and America are all anti-Semitic. Britain, he declares, is anti-Semitic, as London has an anti-Semitic mayor. He also states that the newspaper is keen to play up anti-Semitic incidents, and downplay any decline in them. When Shamir asks why that is, he gets the bland answer that if there’s a rise in anti-Semitism, they sell more papers.

He then travels to America, where he meets Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defamation League at their headquarters. Foxman and his colleagues inform him that there has been a rise in anti-Semitism, and they’re pursuing several incidents at the moment. Later on, Shamir asks Foxman if there are any cases his team can follow as they’re investigated by Foxman and his people. Foxman agrees. When Shamir asks his staff what cases they’re pursuing at the moment, he’s told that they’re quite serious cases. However, most of them seem to be about people not being given time off work for the Jewish holidays, and an incident where someone overheard a cop making derogatory comments about the Jews on his walkie-talkie.

He then talks to Jewish high school students at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel. The students are shown looking at a model of the gas ovens at Auschwitz, and being taught about the horrific system under which the corpses of the victims had their gold teeth extracted, before being cremated. He then films a school teacher giving her class a prep talk for their forthcoming visit to Auschwitz. She touches on how this will prepare some of them for their military service. She also states quite explicitly that everyone hates the Jews. The Polish people, she says, hate the Jews. But they are not to worry, as they won’t meet them, and there will be two secret service agents with them.

When asked about their reactions to this xenophobic teaching, the kids state that it makes them feel special, to know that everyone in the world hates them.

This is a disturbing movie, and the repeated assertions that all non-Jews are anti-Semitic, blandly made as if they were a simple statement of fact, are nothing short of outrageous. If the shoe was on the other foot, and a non-Jewish politician stated that all Jews, or all Israelis, despised the gentiles, it would almost certainly be met with anger and condemnation from spokespeople for the Jewish community. And rightly so, as such claims are at the heart of the stupid and vicious conspiracy theories that claim that Jews exploit gentiles, or are engaged on a centuries-long project of global conquest, as outlined in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But these statements are not challenged, despite the fact that they are for a very large part, manifestly untrue.

I’m not bothered about the comments from Shamir’s grandmother. She’s of a different generation, one that arose long before our modern sensibilities about race. She’s like the embarrassing older relatives many of us have, who go on about Blacks or Asians. Their attitudes are unpleasant, and dangerous in so far as the people who hold them tend to be the people voting for Nigel Farage and UKIP here in Britain. But it’s not at the same level as the official xenophobia and racism being spewed out by the newspapers and the Israeli school system.

I’m not complacent about anti-Semitism in the West. Racism is on the rise throughout Europe, partly as a reaction to the poverty inflicted on the mass of ordinary people across the continent through neoliberal economic policies, and a political class that seems intent only on its corporate enrichment. It’s also fed too from fears of Muslim terrorism and violence following 9/11, and the refugee crisis, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people flee north Africa and the Middle East for what they hope will be better lives in Europe. Racism was a powerful factor in getting Trump to the White House, where he’s appointed Steven Bannon, an anti-Semite, as his ‘head of strategy’. It’s a powerful force in elevating Marine Le Pen’s Front National to a position as a major political force in France, and the Alternative fuer Deutschland in Germany. And there is a very nasty tradition of anti-Semitism in eastern Europe, which is getting stronger, with attacks on Gypsies and now Muslim immigrants.

But to claim that all non-Jews are anti-Semites is, quite simply, a ridiculous, outrageous lie. Let’s take some of the countries the various Israeli speakers in the movie claimed were anti-Semitic, beginning with Germany.

Yes, Germany was murderously anti-Semitic during the Third Reich. But apparently today the situation is the exact reverse. There are still Nazi thugs and hooligans, like the National Democrats and Schonhuber’s German Republican Party. But, probably in reaction to their anti-Semitic past, according to the BBC modern Germany is very pro-Jewish. So much so that Radio 4 a few months ago broadcast a documentary on how the country attracts many young Israelis to spend time there after they’ve done their national service. And a few weeks ago, the papers on this side of the North Sea reported that a sizable chunk of the British Jewish community had taken out German citizenship in opposition to Brexit. I’m not sure if the people, who did this will actually be moving to the Fatherland their grandparents and parents left. I think it’s like the various Brits, who took out Irish citizenship on the grounds that they had an Irish grandparent. They want the benefits of a connection to the EU through their ancestral homelands without actually moving there. But nevertheless, if Germany was the terrible, anti-Semitic monster that the Israeli bigots claim, somehow I don’t think the Jewish Brits now taking out German citizenship would want to do so.

Ditto with the Jews in France. Despite Marine Le Pen and her storm troopers, a poll of French people conducted after 9/11 found that 95 per cent of the population consider Jews French. Of course, this means that 5 per cent don’t, which is a problem. But the message there is that the overwhelming majority of French people aren’t anti-Semitic, at least in as much as they regard Jewish French people as their compatriots.

My guess is that the same is probably true of this country. I’m very much aware of the Nazi antics of the various NF/BNP splinter groups, such as the explicitly anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi National Action, whose leaders do believe in the obscene lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They’re a pain and a menace. But they’re also miniscule, a mere handful of violent thugs. As for the mayor of London being anti-Semitic, excuse me, but ‘eh?’ If the film was made when Boris was mayor, this statement is wrong. Boris is, in my opinion, a vile individual, with racism one of his many unpleasant traits. But I’ve never heard him utter an anti-Semitic comment. All the racist remarks he’s made, or alleged to have made, seem to be about Blacks and Asians. If the remark is about Saddiq Khan, then again, I’ve never seen anything to indicate that he’s anti-Semitic. Unless, of course, this comes from the smear that somehow he supports Islamic terrorism. Which he doesn’t. He has associated himself, so I gather, with very conservative Muslim preachers, some of whom may hold anti-Semitic views. But this is speculation, and I’ve never heard or seen evidence that Khan himself is an anti-Semite.

As for America, the country is a staunch supporter of Israel, and very many of its favourite entertainers and celebrities are Jewish. Again, the Nazis, the Klan and the Alt-Right are out there, but the impression I’ve got is that, as a country, America has been very pro-Jewish. In fact amongst the American Conservatives, I’ve noticed that there is the perception that they believe that Europeans are all anti-Semites, and so view the rest of us on the other side of the Atlantic with suspicion.

The anti-Semitic incidents Shamir shows in this clip being discussed by the ADL are clearly in the movie because they are trivial. I don’t doubt that they’re annoying and distressing, to those to whom they occurred. I’m sympathetic to the frustrations and annoyance of the people, who couldn’t get time off to celebrate their religious holidays. With the rise of aggressive secularisation in Britain, it’s also happening to Christians over here. And I don’t like to hear people talking disparagingly about minorities. But these aren’t the same as assaults, and threats of physical violence. I am aware, though, that since Trump’s election Jewish businesses have been vandalised with Nazi slogans, including references to Kristallnacht, the infamous vandalism of Jewish shops and businesses by the Nazis.

But what is really chilling and outrageous is the way the Israeli education seems deliberately designed to reinforce these fears. It’s entire understandable and right that Israeli young people should visit Auschwitz, as an example of the massive campaign of extermination the Nazis initiated during the Holocaust. However, it is a chilling and vile smear that all of the Polish people are anti-Semites, and that these kids are to be kept away from them for their own protection. I’m very much aware that there is widespread anti-Semitism Poland, as there is in many other parts of eastern Europe. But I also know that the part of the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust also contains a list of the many righteous Polish gentiles, who risked life and limb to rescue and shelter their Jewish countrymen during the Nazi occupation of their country.

Part of the joy of travelling is that you meet the native peoples of the countries you visit. Not only does meeting and talking to them broaden your mind by exposing you to their culture and their frequently very different perspectives on events and issues, but they’ve also been an integral part in creating good international relations after the carnage of the Second World War. When I was studying German for my ‘A’ levels, one of the foreign excursions we were offered as an adjunct to the course, was to the Sonnenberg Conference in Hannover. This is an annual meeting of school students in Germany from across Europe. And I think it was set up, at least in part, to heal the divisions between Germany and the other peoples of Europe after the War. I didn’t go, but those who did really enjoyed it.

My old college, where I took my first degree, also offered an exchange with a Polish college. The students, who went on this also visited Auschwitz, naturally. But they also met and enjoyed the hospitality of their Polish friends and exchange partners. Those I talked to about this were really impressed at how hard Polish students worked, and the way they were able to achieve good grades and a thorough understanding of their subjects, despite serious shortages in the kind of equipment we take for granted over here, like stationary and pens.

I’ve no doubt whatsoever that meeting other people from all over the world broadens your outlook, and creates genuine international understanding. But these Israeli kids were denied that. They were to be kept separate, guarded, told to fear the Polish people around them. As for the two secret service agents with them, you wonder why they were there, and who they were protecting. It seemed to me that they were there not to safeguard the children from gentile attack or vilification, but to make sure they didn’t become too close to the Poles. The real danger there, according to the Israeli military and educational authorities, seemed to be that Israelis could become too friendly with the people they were intent to demonise as the terrible ‘Other’.

And this has created the fear that makes some Israelis see themselves as special. And this feeling that the world is against them has led to the Israeli authorities angrily denouncing any criticism of the barbarous treatment they mete out to the Palestinians as ‘anti-Semitic’. Because they’re taught by their school teachers and army instructors that everyone else is anti-Semitic, and so any criticism they make of Israel must come from this deep anti-Jewish racism, not because of a decent outrage against the persecution of one people by another.

Shamir’s film is also important for the perspective it gives on the anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour party. I’m sorry for bringing this up once again, now that so many of the people accused of anti-Semitism have been cleared, but Luke Akehurst and the Jewish Labour Movement are still around, and still likely to cause trouble. The people slandered as anti-Semites, in the vast majority of cases, were decent, non-racist and even actively anti-racist people, with proud personal histories of fighting against anti-Semitism. They were accused of anti-Semitism because they made the unforgiveable crime of speaking out against the persecution of the Palestinians, or trying to put the Holocaust into perspective of one of the very many genocides that have sullied human history.

The Israelis, and Zionists like Akehurst, need to demonise and vilify such people, in order to ward off the entirely justified criticisms of Israel and its own maltreatment of its indigenous people. They need to demonise the peoples of other countries, Jews as well as gentiles, as ‘anti-Semitic’, or, if they’re Jewish, ‘self-hating’, in order to create that sense of election that allows the butchers in the Israeli armed forces to kill and massacre without compunction.

This is a monstrous disgrace. There are very many Jews and Jewish organisations abroad and in Israel itself, which are committed to defending the Palestinians and trying to create a better, more just Israel and a free Palestine. They include not just secular Jews, but also deeply religious people versed in the Bible and the Torah. Those in Israel may be subject to horrendous persecution, simply for speaking out. I’ve mentioned before how Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian, who writes extensively on the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, was forced out of his teaching post and then his homeland by the authorities.

This xenophobia needs to be challenged. It needs to be taken into account whenever the odious Mark Regev, the Israeli ambassador, starts ranting about anti-Semitism and lying about his political masters’ abuse of the indigenous Arab population. It needs to be brought up whenever the Israel lobby in the Labour party start lying and smearing decent people as anti-Semites. Racism everywhere needs to be fought. This includes not just the disgusting xenophobia of the Nazis, the Holocaust deniers, and racial populists like Trump and Farage. It also means the Israeli system, that fills its young people with unreasoning terror of other nations, in order to deform their personalities to get them to perpetuate the same horrors Jews have suffered on the Palestinians.

Trump and the Rise in Real Anti-Semitism in America

After all the false accusations of anti-Semitism brought by the Israel lobby against the country’s critics and opponents comes the real thing. In this video from The Young Turks, the presenters R.J. Eskow and John Iadarola discuss a new report from the Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organisation set up to combat anti-Semitism, on the surge of genuinely anti-Semitic comments posted online. In the year from July 2015 to July this year, 2016, a total of 2.5 million Tweets were posted. These Tweets were viewed 10 billion times. Eskow and Iadarola put this into perspective by pointing out that it’s the same amount of coverage which would be produced by a £20 million advertising campaign at the Superbowl. These included 20,000 hate messages sent to 50,000 journalists. 70 per cent of these messages come from a mere 1600 accounts, however.

Most of these Tweets and messages came from people who identified themselves as Conservatives, White Nationalists and supporters of Donald Trump. The messages’ contents are horrific and disgusting. They included photoshopped pictures showing the journalists in the gas chambers or among the piles of corpses at Auschwitz, and the journos have suffered explicit threats to put them in the ovens. One journalist, Hadas Gold, who was born in Israel, received a message which showed her with a bullet wound in her head and a yellow Star of David on her shirt, as worn by the Jewish victims of the Nazis. Accompanying the picture was the message, ‘Don’t mess with our boy Trump, or you’ll be the first in the camps.’

Eskow and Iadarola make the point that this comes after hate speech against Muslims, Hispanics and Blacks rose thanks to Trump’s campaign. They make the point that, while the Israel lobby accused Israel’s critics of anti-Semitism, especially of its colonisation of the West Bank, the real anti-Semitism was always on the Right. Eskow also describes how he received massive amounts of hate mail from Hillary supporters when he was supporting Bernie Sanders’ campaign. This is interesting, as Shrillary has made a very explicit appeal for support to AIPAC, one of the main political lobbying groups for Israel in the US, and has stated that she wants even greater American support for the country. The Israel lobby also succeeded in getting Sanders’ Jewish Outreach Officer sacked for alleged anti-Semitism, despite the fact that she was Jewish and a very active member of her community. This was because she dared to criticise Israel’s maltreatment of the Palestinians.

The two discuss how this racism comes from intellectual laziness. Instead of trying to grapple with the real, complex issues, the racist Right prefers simple solutions, such as blaming the country’s plight on racial minorities. This becomes a problem when it becomes the driving force behind politics. They also state that it’s very much a product of the Alt-Right. At the moment, this loose collection of extreme Right-wingers is torn by intense controversy about their racism. On the one hand there are those, who would like to hide or tone-down their anti-Semitism, while on the other is a more extreme faction, which sees the main issue as always having been about the Jews, and accuse their opponents of trying to weaken the movement.

The two criticise Trump for not trying to restrain his supporters’ expressions of hate. Eskow states that when he wrote a piece attacking the bankers, he received many messages stating that they should all be ‘strung up.’ Eskow responded by telling the people sending them to tone down their language. The bankers shouldn’t be killed. What was needed was not their deaths, but proper legislation. Trump, on the others hand, has never told his followers to ‘dial it down’, and indeed has stoked up their anger and aggression by encouraging them to attack his enemies and protesters at his rallies, even to the point of telling them that he’ll pay their legal bills.

The two debate whether this upsurge in anti-Semitism is a product of the internet and recent events, or has been there all along. John Iadarola speculates that it may well have been there all the time, given the long history of lynching in America. It’s just while in the past a racist may have said the ‘N’ word to his neighbour, and it didn’t get much farther than that, now with the emergence of the internet such messages can spread far and wide and reach a much larger number of people.

This clearly is a very worrying trend, especially as the content goes far beyond mere derogatory names and racial slurs to death threats and menaces invoking the Holocaust. I concur with the two hosts in that it does appear that the rise in anti-Semitism has been inspired by the Trump campaign’s legitimation of hatred against other religious and racial groups. There is some comfort, however, in that 70% of this vile stuff comes from only 1,600 people. It shows that anti-Semitism at this point is mainly the province of a small group of hardline fanatics. If you consider how large the American population is – well over 300 million – then it’s very clear that those 1,600 bigots are a trivial minority. Which I realise doesn’t make receiving those messages any more pleasant, or the individuals sending them less of a danger. Most of the terrorist offences committed in America are by Nazi and White Supremacist groups, not by Muslims. And while Muslims and Blacks now seem to be the main targets, they certainly have no compunctions whatsoever about killing Jews.

There’s a warning here for Britain. This country has also seen a rise in hate speech and crimes against ethnic minorities following the success of the Brexit campaigns, which some racists and bigots feel legitimates their own expressions of hatred. There hasn’t been a rise in anti-Semitism, but this may yet arise following its resurgence in America.

The piece is also important because it shows very clearly how, contra to what the Israel lobby and the Blairites in the Labour party are trying to tell everyone, the real anti-Semites aren’t on the Left with the critics of Israel, but on the Right, amongst the genuine racists the Israel lobby chooses to ignore in favour of screaming down and smearing genuinely decent people, anti-racists, both gentile and Jewish, who object to Israel, not because it is Jewish, but because it is a racist Western settler state.

History Today on the UN, the Holocaust, and Post-1945 Genocides

I found the definition of Genocide according to the UN’s Genocide Convention, and a list of genocides that have occurred since 1945 in an article by Ronnie Landau, ‘Never Again?’ in the March 1994 issue of History Today, pp. 6-8. Landau was the head of Humanities at the City Literary Institute, and the author of The Nazi Holocaust, published by I.B. Tauris in 1992. Her article traces the origins of the word and the concept of genocide, coined by the international jurist Raphael Lemkin in 1943, examining and criticising the repeated failure of the international community to stop genocides recurring and to bring the perpetrators to justice. The article is worth discussing here, as it deals with many of the issues involved in the latest anti-Semitism smears against Jackie Walker.

Landau notes in the article that Lemkin was concerned not just with the punishment of existing crimes against humanity, but also with prevent further atrocities. The UN responded three year later, in 1946, by setting up a committee to consider drafting a convention on such crimes. The committee’s provisional definition of genocide declared it to be ‘deliberate acts committed with the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or political group on grounds of the national or racial origin, religious belief or political opinion of its members.’ This led to the final Convention, which left out the references to economic and political groups. (p. 6).

The UN Convention on genocides states that

Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical racial or religious group, as such:

A) Killing members of the group;
B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
C) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Landau goes on to describe how various nations attempted to eviscerate this convention. The Soviets did so by stating that genocide, like the Holocaust, was the result of decaying imperialism and implied that the convention would be inapplicable in the future. In the Soviet bloc, the Holocaust was considered part of the wider crimes by the Nazis against the peoples of eastern Europe. Furthermore, the UN caused massive popular outrage around the world by failing to invoke the Convention against Pol Pot and the vile Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. This has resulted in many believing that the UN has lost its right to be regarded as a serious preventative force against such mass murders.

The article goes on to list the post-1945 atrocities, which may be defined as genocide according to the UN Convention as follows:

The Bengalis, 1971;
the Hutu of Burundi, 1972;
Ache Indians of Paraguay, 1968-72;
Kampucheans, 1975-79;
East Timor Islanders, 1975-present;
The French against the Algerians, 1945-62;
Governing Sudanese against Black Christians in South Sudan, 1955-present;
Post-Sukarno regime against Indonesian Communists, 1965-70;
General Pinochet in Chile against political opposition 1965-67;
Nigerian army against Ibo people in Biafra, 1966-70;
Guatemalan army against Mayan Indians, 1980-present;
Ethiopian regime against Tigre and Eritreans, 1980-present;
Iraqi government against Kurds, 1988 and 1991;
Pakistan, later Bangladesh, against Chittagong Hill Tract tribes, late 1940s-present;
Brazilian and Paraguayan governments against Ache and other Amerindians, 1960s-present.
Communist China against Tibet, 1959-present;
Indonesia against West Papua, 1969-present.
Stalin’s regime against the Communist party and selected elements of the population, up to 1953;
Macias government of Equatorial Guinea, 1968-79;
Idi Amin against the Ugandans, and particularly the Ugandan Asians, 1972-85;
the Argentinian junta against the ‘Left’, 1978-79. (p. 7).

The article then discusses the issue of whether aging Nazis should be tried for their complicity in the Holocaust, especially as those responsible for other horrors, such as Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein et al have never been hunted down or punished. It also notes that the Nuremberg Trials were remarkable in that they were ever held at all. When Landau was writing, there had been no further international trials either of Nazis or other genocides. She also states that there is a clear difference between the treatment of homicide and genocide. Those responsible for individual murders know that this is a crime, and that the police and other authorities will attempt to arrest and punish them. This is in contrast to genocides, who, as people in authority, rarely feel remorse, or are found guilty and punished.

She also discusses the difficulties in treating each genocide as equally serious, and not privileging the extermination of one group over others. She states

How can the international community show even-handedness i9n their investigation of such monstrous crimes, and thus avoid the construction of a hierarchy of suffering which condemns some genocides and atrocities to virtual oblivion, while others remain at the forefront of our consciousness? While preserving the distinctiveness and unique character of each genocide, are we prepared to make ‘connections’ between different genocides- identify common features – which may enable us to establish early warning systems to prevent the continuing abuse, persecution and destruction of groups, and the possible obliteration of cultures? (p. 8).

She goes on to discuss some of the features common to genocides, which may allow for its effective prosecution and prevention.

She also raises the question of whether it is possible to formulate a new code, based on previous conventions and what has been learned from the Nazi Holocaust, to set up systems for the international monitoring of potential genocides, with, if necessary, the deployment of UN forces. She then goes on to criticise current international inactivity over the war crimes in Bosnia, and compares it to the dilatory stance the international community took to the Holocaust, which led to the deaths of 6 million Jews and 5 1/2 million other innocents before the Nazi regime was wiped from the Earth.

The Holocaust, Jackie Walker and the Anti-Semitism Allegations

This article is acutely relevant to the latest smear against Jackie Walker, the former vice-chair of Momentum. Walker was accused and dismissed from her post because she had behaved ‘insensitively’ at a Labour party training day on Holocaust Memorial Day, because she had raised the issue of why it should not include other Holocausts. The organisers have claimed that it does, but this is refuted by the fact that it does not cover genocides committed before 1945. The definition of anti-Semitism they used also considers as anti-Semitic criticism of Israel, because of which it is not generally accepted. Furthermore, her Jewish supporters in Momentum have pointed out that the Israeli authorities and academics consider the Holocaust to be an experience unique to Jews. This list shows that this is clearly not the case, and that Walker was quite right to question the unique focus on the Jewish Holocaust.

This sole focus of the Israelis on the Jewish Holocaust also raises the issue of whether Israel can be considered an enabler of genocide. Israel is certainly guilty of the mass murder of Palestinians, and has followed a policy of ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arab population since its foundation. In that sense, it would be guilty of genocide. But as Landau notes, the formulation of the whole concept of genocide by Lemkin was intended to prevent it from recurring. In this, the Jewish experience of the Holocaust was seen not just as unique in itself, but also an example of the horrors perpetrated against multitudes of others. By stressing the uniqueness of the Shoah, the Israeli authorities are undercutting part of the historical framework for the prosecution of other, similar crimes.

Finally, the initial smear against Jackie Walker as an anti-Semite came from a very selectively argued complaint about a conversation she was having on Facebook several months previously with two others. There she discussed Jewish complicity – but crucially, not complete responsibility – in the slave trade. But her point was to do exactly what Landau also raised in her article – make the point that there should be no ‘hierarchy of suffering’ which privileges some groups over others.

Tony Greenstein, one of the others, who was suspended from the Labour party by the Blairites for unspecified thoughtcrimes, has written an excellent article in the Weekly Worker demanding that Walker should be reinstalled as Momentum’s vice-chair and criticising Lansman, Momentum’s leader, for caving in to the Zionists. Mike over at Vox Political has reblogged Mr Greenstein’s article, with his own comments. He notes that Mrs Walker has a case for prosecuting those involved in the smears for libel and invasion of privacy under the data protection act. And as I’ve mentioned in a previous piece, far from being anti-Semitic, Mrs Walker’s discussion of the involvement of some Jews in the slave trade is certain not unique. Other historians have also, including several mentioned by Mrs Walker herself in her statement clarifying her comments.

The Israel lobby, as I have said before, are smearing decent people as anti-Semites, simply because they dare to criticise Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. In doing so, and insisting on the Holocaust as an experience unique to Jews, they are obstructing its application as a template of what constitutes genocides to other cases, and are therefore weakening the ability of the international community to protect other groups. This is to be resisted, as is the smearing of individuals.

New Book Repeating the Anti-Semitism Smears against the Labour Party

Unfortunately, despite the fact that Shami Chakrabarti cleared the Labour party of institutional racism, and that most of the people smeared as anti-Semites have similarly been cleared and reinstated, the allegations keep being repeated. Browsing through the Cheltenham branch of Waterstone’s on Friday, I came across a book repeating the allegations. Written by David Rich and published by Biteback, the book’s title told you precisely how it was biased: The Left’s Jewish Problem, with the word ‘Jewish’ on the cover surrounded by a stylised Star of David. The blurb for it on its back cover stated that the Labour party having to conduct three investigations into anti-Semitism after the election of Jeremy Corbyn was no accident. It then went on to allege that the ‘left’ and in particular the Labour party was deeply contaminated with anti-Semitism. This was, it declared, due to the anti-apartheid campaigns launched against Israel, which saw members of the Left ally themselves with radical Islam.

I was half tempted to buy it, simply to rip it to shreds, but I decided against it on the grounds that it would annoy me too much. Plus, I didn’t want to give Rich my money for his twaddle. But I shall try and give a brief refutation of his allegations here.

Firstly, the smears have been made not because the Labour party does have an anti-Semitism problem, but because of the desperation of the Blairites in the party and the Israel lobby to hang on to power by any means they can. Which basically means smearing decent people, Jews as well as gentiles, as anti-Semites when they are nothing of the kind. Norman Finkelstein, one of the leading Jewish American critics of Israel, and the author of several books, has made the point that the Israel lobby has always responded to criticism by smearing the critics as anti-Semites, even when they’re not. And those labelled as anti-Semites in the recent allegations within the Labour party are either critics of Israel, or those unfortunate to be labelled as such simply because they’re members of Momentum. Like Rhea Wolfson, whose bid to join the NEC was blocked by Jim Murphy, a leading member of Labour Friends of Israel and the head of the Labour party in Scotland. He recommended that Wolfson’s party should not support her bid, because, as a member of Momentum, she was linked to an anti-Semitic organisation. This was despite the fact that Wolfson herself is Jewish. Mike pointed out the monumental absurdity of the claim when he stated that anti-Semites don’t usually support a Jewish candidate for political office getting into power. They don’t. In fact, they’re bitterly opposed to it. That’s part of why they’re anti-Semites. And it’s one of the reasons the allegations against Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn are stupid and malign.

Rich is right about some of the opposition to Israel having emerged from the anti-apartheid movement. In the 1960s and 1970s Israel did indeed form a close alliance with White South Africa, as they were both pariah states, where Western settlers ruled as a privilege minority over non-Western indigenous population. The alliance also shocked many Israelis, who did not want to see their country allied to and compared with a nakedly racist state. Israel too has also developed its own form of apartheid in its treatment of the Palestinians, who are subject to repeated restrictions on the personal and collective freedoms in the name of security, and where the constant goal of the state itself has been their cleansing from Israel and the Occupied Territories.

The claims of an alliance with radical Islam is rather more complex. Some idiots have indeed supported ISIS as supposedly anti-imperial forces, rather than the sadistic, intolerant murderers they really are. But the numbers who have seem far smaller than the impression given by the Right. There’s a piece over on Guy Debord’s Cat, where he takes apart the claim that there was an attempt at one left-wing meeting to pass a motion of support for ISIS. In fact, out of all the hundreds of people attending the meeting, there was only three who proposed and supported such a motion. They were roundly defeated by everyone else. Nevertheless, the Cat described how this was seized on by the Conservative press and magnified so that instead of only three, it seemed that the majority of people attending the meeting supported the proposed endorsement of ISIS.

One of those blogging about supposed anti-Semitism on the Left and in the Labour movement is Adam Lebor. The extreme Right-wing Canadian blog, Five Feet of Fury, linked to his a few years ago when it posted up a piece about how anti-Semitism is supposedly rife on the Left. His blog on its masthead explicitly stated that it was dedicated to exposing this anti-Semitism. If I remember correctly, about twenty or so years ago Lebor was a supporter of the Palestinians and anti-Israel, anti-imperialist activist. He authored a book that was reviewed in the ‘books’ pages of the Financial Times’ ‘Weekend’ supplement. This described his meetings with a series of radical Islamic preachers and leaders, whom he did support as the enemies of imperialism. One of these was a vile individual he met in London, who told Holocaust jokes throughout his interview with Lebor. I think Lebor himself is Jewish. His interviewee’s behaviour was disgusting, and reading I wondered why Lebor persisted in talking to him and supporting him, rather than simply walking out there and then. Assuming this is the same person, it seems to me that in the intervening period he has had too much of the real Muslim anti-Semites, and this has tainted his entire attitude towards the Left and those who shared his former opinions.

However, that does not mean that everyone who supports the Palestinians is an anti-Semite, or, if they’re Jewish, a self-hating ‘un-Jew’. Nor does it mean that they are allied with radical Muslims. And there is much more to this latter claim than first appears.

I think both Lobster and Guy Debord’s Cat have posted pieces about the deliberate tactics Israel adopted to marginalise, isolate and destroy the credibility and influence of the secular wing of the PLO. This was done with the intention of leaving the more extreme, Islamic faction in overall control of the Palestinian territories, so that the Israelis could present themselves on the world stage as being locked in a battle with radical Islam. It’s a battle the Israelis themselves orchestrated in order to get as much support as possible from the West as part of the War on Terror. And Norman Finkelstein once again has pointed out that while terrorism goes back to the 19th century, the term was used most commonly after 1970 to describe Arabs and Muslims by the Israelis.

As for the narrative that the European Left are allied with radical Muslims, this was all formed at least about twelve years ago. I remember reading a review in the Spectator of a book set a few decades in the future, in which the remains of the European Socialist organisations had united with the Muslims to begin a new Holocaust against the Jews. It’s a vile, malicious fantasy, of course, and the fact that the Speccie gave a review of the book without calling it such shows how mendacious and vile Boris Johnson’s mighty organ was. The lie couldn’t really be run against Labour when Tony Blair was in charge, because of his strong links to the Israel lobby. It also couldn’t really be used against Ed Miliband, as he’s Jewish. I dare say, however, that some were probably willing to try. We’ve seen how they’ve smeared other Jews since. But they had their chance with the election of Jeremy Corbyn, who threatened the Blairites’ continued hold on power and that of the Israel lobby, with whom the Blairites were deeply intertwined.

And so these vile stories were taken off the shelf, dusted off, and decent men and women with proud personal histories of fighting racism and anti-Semitism were libelled, all because they took their commitment to combating racism and imperialism sufficiently seriously that they dared to criticise and question Israel.

Shami Chakrabarti in her report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party showed Labour doesn’t have a ‘Jewish problem’. It is the Conservatives, Blairite entryists and Israel lobby, who have a problem with the grassroots Labour membership, as they’re rejecting Thatcherism on the one hand and the Neoconservatives abhorrent colonialism and imperialism on the other, an imperialism that is also intimately bound up with Israel’s cleansing of the Palestinians.

Vox Political on Yet Another Anti-Semitism Smear against Jackie Walker

I was starting to think that maybe I wouldn’t have to write many more pieces about the anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour party after my last post, which reported that Mike has his book out, The Livingstone Presumption, which soundly refutes them. In the same piece in which he announces the publication of his book, Mike also discusses an article by Michael Segalov, who roundly denied that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were anti-Semites. Mr Segalov pointed out that the people, who put their lives and their bodies on the line time and again to protect Jews and their religion, were left-wingers, including Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters. He made the point that the real anti-Semites were the Nazis, who have no qualms of spouting their filth and making the Nazi salute right in your face. Smearing genuine anti-racists like Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters as anti-Semites devalues the word and its ability to protect Jews from those, who really wish them harm.

Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum against Real Nazism

This is all entirely correct. As I blogged yesterday, it’s been my experience too that the people, who took ant-racism very seriously and went on the marches and demos against racist and Nazi organisations were left-wingers like Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in Momentum. And there are all too genuine Nazi organisations in Britain today. One is National Action, which openly spouts conspiracist nonsense about the Jews trying to destroy the White race using Blacks, and whose members will make the Nazi salute and chant ‘Sieg heil!’ during their rallies. There’s also a miniscule National Socialist Party, who are exactly what their name suggests they are: Nazis. A few years ago there was a furore about their meeting in a pub near Bristol. Somehow the organisation had managed to book it to hold a meeting. I think they used a false name. On the day, they were there in full Nazi regalia, complete with flags. The neighbours were disgusted, properly made complaints, and the whole incident ended up on the local news. This included photos and footage of the event, showing the flags. And they were the proper, vile thing.

Jackie Walker Accused Yet Again of Anti-Semitism

Unfortunately, members of the Blairite Labour party hierarchy don’t seem to have got the message that Momentum and its members aren’t anti-Semites, and that the real threat is showing itself quite openly in the shape of National Action and the National Socialist Party. According to a story in today’s Guardian, Jackie Walker, the vice-chair of Momentum has faced calls to resign after she made ‘insensitive’ comments at a Labour party training day on anti-Semitism. She ‘incorrectly’ criticised Holocaust Memorial Day for commemorating only Jews, and is quoted as saying

“In terms of Holocaust day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all people who experienced holocaust?”

She also took issue with the definition of anti-Semitism used at the training day, and is also accused of questioning the need for Jewish organisations, including schools to have so much security to protect them from attack. Walker has made a statement denying she said this, and apologising for any offence she might have given.

Definitions of Anti-Semitism

Mike in his comments on the case begins by stating that he also appeared at an event marking Holocaust Memorial Day, where he read a piece about the Shoah by the German playwright Peter Weiss. He states he makes an attempt at defining anti-Semitism in his book, but also gives a 7-point definition of it by David Schneider. Roughly summed up, this says that you might by an anti-Semite if you don’t make a distinction between Jews and Israel, hold Jews responsible for all the atrocities committed by Israel unless they explicitly say otherwise, and believe in the stupid conspiracy theories about the Jews having control of capitalism, the government and the BBC in order to control the world. Mr Schneider says of the latter that if they have control of the Beeb, no-one’s yet told him. Which makes me wonder if David Schneider is the actor and comedian, who has been a frequent star on a number of shows, such as the spoof news programme, The Day Today, and Alan Partridge, where he played the TV host’s boss.

Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone Not Anti-Semites

Mike also makes the point that Naz Shah’s suspension has been lifted, and only one of the tweets on which the accusation against her were made could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic. As for Red Ken, they are based on ignorance of history and taking the original comments out of context. He also makes the point that Rhea Wolfson had her bid to join the NEC voted down by her constituency Labour party by Jim Murphy, because she was a member of Momentum, who were anti-Semites. Mike makes the point that it’s amazing how people could believe that an organisation full of anti-Semites would want to see Mrs Wolfson, a Jew, promoted to the party’s governing body.

Mike’s absolutely right. They wouldn’t. The real, Nazi anti-Semites are all about keeping Jews as far away from power as possible, following all that rubbish they believe of the Jewish conspiracy to destroy the Aryan race.

Wilhelm Marr and Anti-Semitism

If you want a short definition of anti-Semitism, try the one from the person, who first coined the term in the 19th century, Wilhelm Marr. Marr was an anti-Semite, and the founder of the Bund der Antisemiten, the League of Anti-Semites, if I recall correctly. He defined anti-Semitism as the hatred of Jews simply for being Jews, regardless of Judaism as a religion. The stupid conspiracy theories that have grown up around them are basically an elaboration of that, roughly based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious forgery drawn up by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, to persuade Nicholas II to persecute the Jews more savagely in the Russian Empire.

Why Security in Britain?

Mike also makes the point that the Groan’s article does give the definition of anti-Semitism that was made at the event. He also says he is confused about the need for Jewish organisations here to have high security, as the reason given was the example of the attack in Toulouse. This is in France, and the French government has been criticised for failing to protect its citizens, not just Jews. And he also makes another, very good point, that Mrs Walker’s accusers have also shown their insensitivity in not considering the harm they’re doing.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/09/29/another-anti-semitism-row-that-completely-misses-the-point/

Another Politically Motivated Smear

I think Mike’s right when he observes that the paper doesn’t supply the definition of anti-Semitism the party used at its training day. In fact, I think there is a lot that this article isn’t telling us. And it seems to me that this is yet another attempt to smear Mrs Walker as an anti-Semite, which is itself part of a wider campaign to purge politically liberal Jews from positions of leadership as part of a Neocon agenda.

Israel’s Ethnic Cleansing of the Palestinians

If you remember, Mrs Walker was accused of anti-Semitism previously, because she had dared to criticise Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and state, quite correctly, that other peoples had also experienced their own holocausts. Both of these statements are exactly true. Israel has been and is pursuing a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. It has been abundantly documented by courageous Jewish scholars like Ilan Pappe and Norman Finkelstein. I even found a copy of Pappe’s book on it, whose title calls it what it is, in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham.

The Holocaust and Other Genocides

As for other nations also having suffered their own genocides, the great Afro-American historian and one of the founders of the modern civil rights movement, W.E.B. Dubois, stated that the transatlantic slave trade had caused ‘a holocaust in central Africa’. The extent of the devastation inflicted on the African population by the slave trade is a subject of debate, and many historians of the slave trade would take issue with Dubois’ statement. But nevertheless, that is how many Blacks see the slave trade and its effects on Africa, not unjustifiably. And the campaigns to exterminate the First Nations of North and South America, beginning with the genocide of the Taino in the Caribbean, by European settlers is notorious. If you want to read about the genocide of the Amerindians in America, try the classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. There have also been campaign to wipe out Aboriginal Australians following the British invasion of that country, and a long string of other crimes against humanity, including the ethnic butchery following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, culminating in the Armenian Massacres and the Day of the Sword against the Christian population in the Empire’s Middle Eastern territories. Not to mention the horrific persecutions after the Second World War, such as the invasion of East Timor, Pol Pot in Cambodia, the Rwandan genocide and Bosnia during the break up of the former Yugoslavia.

The Guardian article states that

Holocaust Memorial Day is intended to commemorate all victims of the Nazi Holocaust, and other genocides, including atrocities in Bosnia and Rwanda.

Neocon Attacks against Jews Universalising the Holocaust

I wonder if that attitude was being seriously followed at the Labour party training day. It’s certainly the attitude of the older, mainstream Jewish organisations, but more recently this universalising of the Holocaust has come under attack from the Neocon right. For example, one of the rightwing Canadian blogs is Five Feet of Fury, run by Kathy Shaidle. Shaidle’s blog is pro-privatisation. She attacked the 2012 British Olympic opening ceremony because it celebrate the NHS, which she and the other Republicans and High Tories desperately, and openly wanted to see sold off. She was rabidly anti-Muslim, and despite indigenous Canadians. She also hated Bernie Farber, the head of the main Jewish organisation in Canada, and those she derided as ‘official Jews’. In one of her rants against Mr Farber, she attacked him precisely because he had universalised the Holocaust. This was at the time of the Darfur massacres. Mr Farber and his organisation had launched a ‘Shabbat for Darfur’. This was a ‘sabbath’ in the sense of a day of fasting and prayer. Mr Farber and the other organisers explicitly connected the genocide now being suffered by the people of Darfur, with that of other victims of similarly massacres, and the Holocaust of the Jewish people in the Third Reich.

For most decent people, whether they’re Jews or not, Mr Farber’s stance was noble and honourable. He represented a victimised, persecuted people, standing up on behalf of all victimised peoples, to demand an end to the genocide of yet another suffering people. Shaidle, however, had nothing but scorn for Mr Farber, his organisation, and proposed Shabbat. She was outraged that the Holocaust was to be universalised. In her opinion, it was an event unique to the Jewish people, and should be regarded as such. She also sneered at Mr Farber and his organisation for concentrating on the threat to Jews from White Nazi organisations, and ignoring, or downplaying, the threat from militant Islam. The blog is also vehemently Zionist, regularly attacking the Palestinians as terrorists, and defending Israel’s annexation and occupation of the West Bank.

I don’t know how many readers Shaidle’s blog has. Possibly not many, but I don’t think she was alone in her views. The Tories over here definitely want to privatise the health service, as very many people have pointed out, including Jacky Davis and Raymond Tallis in NHS-SOS, and I’ve also written my own pamphlet about it, Privatisation: Killing the NHS, which is available at Lulu. Similar attacks on Islam and the mainstream Jewish organisations have also been made by Ezra Levant, a journalist and presenter on a minor right-wing cable TV station in Canada.

The Manipulation of the Commemoration of the Holocaust by Zionism

One of Prof. Norman Finkelstein’s most controversial works is his The Holocaust Industry. Prof. Finkestein wrote it a few years ago, tracing the emergence of an industry exploiting the memory of this most heinous crime from Israel’s victories over the Arabs at the end of the 1960s. He makes the case that the Holocaust has been deliberately exploited by Zionist organisations as a way of creating public support for Israel. I’ll make it very plain here to avoid any misunderstanding: Professor Finkelstein is not a Holocaust denier. He is the son of parents, who managed to survive the horror. Hence, I think, his outrage at the way its memory has been exploited for narrow political gains and the ethnic cleansing of another people.

Using the Holocaust to Justify the Occupation of Palestine

There was an example of the kind of political exploiting Prof. Finkelstein describes about a week ago. Counterpunch wrote an article criticising Binyamin Netanyahu, after he made a speech declaring that he would not halt or recall the colonisation of the West Bank by Israeli settlers, because this would violate their civil rights. And he, or one of his cabinet, invoked the Holocaust once again to justify Israel’s colonisation of the Occupied Territories. It’s disgusting to see one of the most horrific crimes of the 20th century used in a piece of twisted rhetoric to justify the persecution and dispossession of another people.

This is what makes me suspicious that there is more behind this latest smear against Jackie Walker. Despite the Groan’s protestations, there are Zionists, who would like the Shoah seen as an exclusively Jewish tragedy and resent its extension to cover the victims of other, similar crimes against humanity. It looks to me that Mrs Walker has been censured, precisely because she did universalise it and has criticised its political use by the Israel lobby.

Jackie Walker’s Black, Jewish and Anti-Racist Heritage and Activism

As for her ‘insensitivity’, I give that the same about of credence I give to the allegations against her of anti-Semitism. Mrs Walker is half-Jewish. Her mother was a Black civil rights activist, who was thrown out of America because of her activism. Her father was a Russian Jew, and so therefore probably knew more than most about real anti-Semitic persecution. She has made it clear that she has always fought against racism and anti-Semitism, and with her heritage, I do not think there are any grounds for doubting her at all. She has also stated that her partner is Jewish, and said in an interview that their family had not spoken to her after the allegations were made. This must clearly have caused her distress, so I think her accusers should be called up on their insensitivity and the emotional distress they have caused her.

The Jews and Other Victims of the Nazis

As for Walker’s own ‘insensitivity’, from the sound of it, she asked a reasonable question at a time when at least some Zionists are trying to deny the universalisation of the Holocaust, and manipulate its memory to support their own ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. It’s a disgusting attitude that insults the memory of those who suffered and perished in the Shoah. And it wasn’t just Jews, who perished in the Nazi camps. The Roma – the Gypsies, who are even now persecuted in central and eastern Europe, were also targeted for extermination by the Nazis as untermenschen, subhumans. As also were the Slavic peoples of eastern Europe – the Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Czechs and Slovaks, who were to be reduced to illiterate peasants supplying the Reich with agricultural goods, when not forced off their homelands for German colonisation and worked to death as slave labourers. And historians of the Reich have pointed out that the Nazis began their extermination campaign against the Jews with their odious Aktion T4 ‘euthanasia’ programme against the disabled. I was taught at school that altogether 11 1/2 million people died in the Nazi camps. The majority of these – six million – were Jews, but in addition to these victims there were 5 1/2 others, who included not just the aforementioned peoples, but also political prisoners – Socialists, trade unionists, Communists, anti-Nazi Conservatives, such as Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first president after the War. It certainly should not be out of the question why these victims are also not given their due commemoration along with the Jews, with whom they were enslaved and perished.

More Hatred against Muslims than Jews in France and Britain?

I also don’t think Mrs Walker was at all out of order when she asked why Jewish organisations, including schools, needed so much high security. I am not complacent about anti-Semitic hate crime against them. The threat of Daesh is very real, as is the murderous buffoons of National Action and the National Socialist Party and related sects. But if the situation in France is comparable to that of England, then Jews are much less likely to suffer hate crime from mainstream British society than Muslims. One of the reasons the French government was keener to protect Muslims from hate crime than Jews, was because more French people considered the Jews to be French than felt that way about Muslims. In polls, only about 5 per cent of French people said that they did not consider Jews really French. While that’s clearly troubling, it’s also somewhat reassuring as it says that 95 per cent of all French people consider Jews to be French. The number of French people, who don’t consider Muslims to be French, is much higher. My guess is the situation in Britain is probably similar, and that more mainstream Brits consider Jews to be properly British than they consider Muslims.

Muslims Also Victims of Islamist Terrorism

Al-Qaeda and Daesh also do not limit themselves to killing only Jews. They kill and maim all Brits, including Muslims. That was abundantly shown in the 7/7 bombings. It was also shown earlier this week, when a young man, who had fallen under their influence, was found guilty of murdering the imam at his local mosque. The imam performed healing rituals using amulets. While this is common in parts of Islam, it is condemned by Daesh. The man was described as ‘self-radicalised’, and had come under their influence through the net. Motivated by the Islamic States sectarian intolerance towards other Muslims, he attacked and killed the imam. Just like Daesh are butchering other Muslims in Iraq and Syria, for having the temerity to hold different views about what it means to be a member of the ‘umma, the Muslim community. Muslims are as at risk from their attacks as the rest of British society.

High Security Imprisoning British Jews and Black Americans?

I think also think that Mrs Walker’s question was justified following remarks about the amount of security around Black schools in America. The left-wing internet news and politics show, The Young Turks, had a piece the other day comparing Black American schools with prisons because of the amount of security. Mrs Walker, as a woman of colour, may well have been worried that the Jewish community was also going to suffer from the same imprisonment behind walls of security designed to protect them. After all, the article states that she was particularly worried about schools, such as that attended by her daughter. While the reasons for the security are different for Black and Jewish communities – its their to protect Jews from attack by outsiders, while it’s present in Black schools to protect the children from the violent criminality that plagues many poor communities – Mrs Walker may well have been worried that the sociological and psychological effect would be the same. If that is the case, then she asked a reasonable question with only the best intentions at heart.

Jackie Walker Smeared; They Owe Us an Explanation

It is therefore my belief that the truly wronged party in this instance is Mrs Walker. This seems to be yet another attempt to smear her character as part of a campaign by the Israel lobby against the country’s critics. As I said, it looks like there is a concerted neocon campaign to make sure that only Zionists have ownership of the memorialisation of the Holocaust, to the exclusion of more liberal voices from the rest of the Jewish community. And I can understand Mrs Walker’s opposition to seeing the Jewish community and its schoolchildren walled off from everyone else behind high security. I feel dismayed by the amount of security schools generally have to maintain, with locked gates, though I well appreciate the need to protect our young people from those, who would do them harm.

I think rather than Mrs Walker being queried and investigated for anti-Semitism and ‘insensitivity’, it is the anonymous organisers of this training day, who deserve to give the rest of the Labour party, both Jews and gentiles, an explanation.

For Netanyahu’s grotesque invocation of ‘human rights’ to justify the ongoing colonisation of the West Bank, see the Counterpunch article ‘The Human Rights of the Settler’, by Neve Gordon and Nicola Perugini, at http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/13/the-human-rights-of-the-settler/

National Action Targets the Universities

In my last post, discussing Mike’s announcement that he has just published book, The Livingstone Presumption, refuting the anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour party, I also discussed the openly Nazi character of the real, anti-Semitic, Fascist fringe. Mike had announced his book was coming out in an article at Vox Political, commenting on a piece by Michael Segalov in yesterday’s Independent, which itself refuted the allegations against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, though sadly not against Naz Shan and Livingstone. Mr Segalov had stated that the people, who really put their lives on the line to protect Jews and their religion were the Left, including the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. He made the point that smearing them as anti-Semites devalued it as a weapon against the real Nazis, and left Jews more vulnerable. He made the point that the real anti-Semites were very clear in their Nazi views, and would make the Nazi salute in front of your face.

A few days ago Michelle posted a comment in response to a piece I had written about the continuing decline of the English Defence League, and included a link to a talk to a left-wing meet-up group by Matthew Feldman, an academic specialising in the study of Fascism. Dr Feldman and the group discussed the differing forms of the extreme right, from openly Fascist groups, through to Far Right organisations like the English Defence League, and right-wing Conservatives like the Traditional Britain group. And one of the Nazi groups is National Action. This was formerly the youth wing of the BNP, I believe. And they are openly Nazi and anti-Semitic. Dr Feldman showed a video of one of their demonstrations, spouting the usual Nazi conspiracy trash about Jews using Blacks to destroy the White race, complete with cries of ‘Sieg Heil!’

National Action are a danger, but they’re also more than a little ludicrous as well, especially to anyone who’s watched The Blues Brothers. Watching their Nazi antics brought to mind the scene in that movie, where the two heroes come upon a rally by the National American White People’s Party. Amid boos and insults, the leader of this bunch of Nazis spouts the same nonsense about the Jews using the Blacks to destroy the White race, before then leading his stormtroopers to make a pledge of allegiance to Hitler. Jake and Ellwood then do what most people would want to do, and drive straight through the whole rabble, sending the Nazis running in all directions.

Dr Feldman mentioned in his talk that National Action were trying to target university students for recruitment. This is disturbing, but I think they’re going to have a very hard job. It’s not that I don’t think they are racists at university. There probably are, but probably no more so than in the general population, and possibly much less so. There have been a series of studies, which show that racism is more prevalent amongst the older generation. Today’s young people have been born into a culture where Blacks and Asians are more accepted, there are more Black and Asian role models and celebrities, and racism is generally much less acceptable. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t there, as the persistence of racist violence and the rise of Islamophobia after 9/11 shows. But it does mean that there is much more opposition to Nazi organisations like National Action than there was over three decades and more ago, when the reaction to mass non-White immigration gave the NF the hope of overtaking the Liberals as the country’s third party.

National Action are also going to have problems, because universities, like every other commercial or public institution in Britain, is bound by laws to respect diversity and protect people from prejudice and discrimination. This includes gays, the disabled, and ethnic minorities. The type of people, Nazis target and despise. I don’t think the NUS is nearly a strong as it was, but when I was at college the National Union of Students had a policy of offering a ‘No’ platform to racists and Fascists. Put plainly, the NUS weren’t going to help, or give any places in the union hierarchy, to Nazis.

And outside the union and the university, there are also a number of groups and societies on campus devoted to supporting and protecting minorities and disadvantaged groups, like Jews, Blacks, Asians, Muslims and other religious groups and women. These are naturally going to oppose any attempt by the Far Right to make inroads into the university and start campaigning for discrimination and intimidation there. Back in the 1980s there was a notorious incident when Patrick Harrington, another long-standing member of the extreme Right, then a student, was thrown off campus after a campaign by the other students, who refused to tolerate his presence. One of the leading members of National Action, according to the anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, has similarly been forced to leave university. And when I was studying at Bristol uni a few years ago when the BNP looked like they just might make a breakthrough into mainstream politics, I came across a group of students on campus, who were trying to raise a petition to have the BNP banned.

And lastly, there’s the nature of universities as seats of learning that also makes it that little bit more difficult for Nazis to recruit. I put up a little piece attacking the conspiracy nonsense National Action sputter in the last blog post. Universities, as places of education, are going to contain people, who have real knowledge of the nature of Fascism. University libraries are also going to have texts by historians and other scholars which refute their claims. All someone has to do to find out for him- or herself what the Nazis were really like, rather than what groups like National Action want to present them as, is simply go to the uni library, and look on the shelves or through the on-line catalogue for books which refute them, point by point, and footnote by footnote.

I’m not complacent about the rise of Fascism. You can’t be – not after the rise in racist abuse and violence after the Brexit vote. But I am confident that the kids at university today will not be at all receptive to the poisonous nonsense spouted by National Action and related groups.

And if you have any doubts about the massive lack of respect the real Nazis have for university, read Matthew Collins’ Hate. This is his account of his own career in the Far Right, and the violence he saw. There’s a passage in there, where he describes the behaviour of one of the stormtrooper groups, when they held some kind of rally or meeting in one of the universities. They more or less barricaded themselves into the library, and pestered and intimidated the students there. It’s a graphic demonstration of the anti-intellectualism of the thugs, who form these movements’ membership. It completely refutes any pretensions their leaders have to intellectual respectability.

I can’t think of many unis, that would want that on campus. Not university management, not staff, not students. National Action can expect to have a very hard time recruiting there.

Vox Political Launches New Book Against the Anti-Semitism Smears

Mike yesterday announced the publication of his latest book, The Livingstone Presumption. This is written to refute the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in the Labour party, along with other MPs, councillors and activists such as Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone. It was the allegation against Ken Livingstone that the book’s title alludes to. It’s available now as an e-book, and will shortly appear in print.

I’ve no doubt it provides an excellent deconstruction of the real reasons for these slanders. Of course, I’m Mike’s brother, so naturally I support it’s publication. But more than that, I’m confident that Mike, as an excellent journalist, has got the facts absolutely right, and shows the real reason for these disgraceful smears. As I’ve pointed out, these have been made against decent people, many of whom have dedicated their lives and political careers to fighting anti-Semitism and racism, and which include Jews, and people of Jewish heritage.

Michael Segalov on the Left against Real Nazis

Mike announced the book was out in an article he wrote yesterday commenting on a piece by Michael Segalov in an article in the Independent. Segalov stated in the Independent that Corbyn’s supporters weren’t anti-Semitic. Far from it. In his experience, they were the people, who were most active combating the real, and openly Nazi, anti-Semitic far right. Mike quotes him writing

For years now I’ve travelled across the UK to report from far-right, fascist and neo-Nazi rallies, and the counter-demonstrations that take place alongside. I’ve seen the real threat that faces Jews in the country, those who profess hatred for Jews and our religion, who wear swastikas as badges of honour, who’ll salute like a Nazi in front of your face… It’s the left, and Corbyn’s supporters, who’ve put their bodies on the line time and time again to protect us from these racist organisations.

That’s why these cries of anti-Semitism make a mockery of a real and present danger. Corbyn’s commitment to fighting discrimination and prejudice has been well documented for decades. His supporters are those who’ve stood alongside him. Accusing these people now of peddling prejudice is nothing but political point-scoring at its worst. It undermines real hatred, and waters down the impact of calling out anti-Semitism when it rears its ugly head.

Unfortunately, Mr Segalov still believes that Ms Shah and Red Ken are anti-Semites, but states that they are not supporters of Corbyn. Ken’s a very long-standing member of the party, while Shah supported Yvette Cooper against Corbyn in the Labour elections.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/09/27/new-book-highlights-the-real-reasons-for-anti-semitism-allegations-in-the-labour-party/

Naz Shah and Livingstone Not Anti-Semites

Segalov’s wrong about Shah and Red Ken. Mike’s pointed out that Naz Shah has good relations with her local synagogue, something I’m very sure she wouldn’t enjoy if she were any kind of anti-Semite. As for Red Ken, I’ve pointed out time and again the stance he has always taken against racism, whether against Blacks, Jews, the Irish or whoever, to the point where he and the GLC in the 1980s became ridiculed and reviled for it. The Leninist Newt-Fancier devoted several chapters in his 1987 book, Livingstone’s Labour not just to arguing that the Labour party should pay far more attention to empowering the Black community and combatting racism against them, but also to denouncing the recruitment of real Nazis by the secret state after the Second World War. These had been given sanctuary in Britain, as the authorities believed they could be useful in the struggle against Communism. Those recruited included people, who had participated in the most disgusting crimes perpetrated against the Jews by the Third Reich, including pogroms and the Holocaust.

The Zionists Relationship with the Nazis vs. Jewish German Patriots

Red Ken is not an anti-Semite. But he is a critic of Israel, a committed the terrible offence of being absolutely factually correct when he stated that Hitler had supported Zionism. He and the Nazis had, briefly, at the beginning of the regime, as a tactic for removing Jews from the Reich. This is documented history. As is the Zionists’ own cynical, utilitarian attitude to the butchery of the Jewish people by the Nazis. They were in favour of it, as they believed this would encourage more Jews to emigrate to Israel. They bitterly resented Jewish German patriots, like the Jewish Servicemens’ League, which not only fought ardently against the persecution of the Jews in Germany, but was also an acutely uncomfortable reminder that Jews had loyally served their country in the carnage of the First World War, and were no more treacherous than any other German. It’s another documented historical fact that German Jews had responded with a wave of patriotism in the 19th century when the restrictions against them serving in the armed forces were lifted. They volunteered along with their gentile comrades for service in the Great War. It’s one of the supreme, tragic ironies that Hitler’s captain, the commanding officer, who recommended him for the Iron Cross, was Jewish.

The British Left against Fascism

But Mr Segalov is entirely correct when he states that it’s the left, and Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters, who will put their bodies on the line to fight to protect Jews and others from the real racists. It was my experience growing up in the 1980s that the people, who joined Rock Against Racism, marched against the BNP, and fought in gang battles in the street against them, were exactly the same types Tom Watson sneered at when he described Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters as ‘hippy Trotskyite rabble’. Or whatever it was. It was the same type of people, who joined CND and joined groups and wore the T-shirts demanding ‘Justice for Nicaragua’, when that country was being ravaged by the Contras. It was the same type of people that published leaflets and flyers pointing out Thatcher’s support for the Far Right, and real Fascists like Pinochet and lesser known butchers in Latin America.

The Far Right and Nazism

Unfortunately, Mr Segalov is not exaggerating when he says that the real Nazis will openly make the Nazi salute in front of you, and who do wear swastikas as badges of honour. Way back in the 1960s and ’70s the National Front indeed strutted about in Nazi uniform. Andrew Brons, one of the fixtures of the Far Right for all these decades, was arrested in the 1970s, according to Private Eye, for screaming Nazi slogans at frightened elderly ladies in Birmingham. He was then apprehended by a policeman, who had a very Asian surname. According to the Eye, Brons patronised him with a lecture about how he was allowed to do all this because of the fine British tradition of freedom of speech. Obviously, he ignored the hypocrisy of using that argument when, as a Nazi, he clearly didn’t believe in it. He then further insulted said copper by telling him that he wouldn’t understand such elevated concepts as he was racially inferior. This is clearly not the kind of thing to say to someone, who has the power to arrest you. I have the feeling that Brons spent the rest of the conversation trying to explain himself down at the police station.

For a moment in the 1990s and 2000s the BNP dropped the costumes and tried to present themselves as a mainstream party, oriented towards community politics. They were still racist and anti-Semitic, but they tried to disguise it. Now that the BNP has all but collapsed, parts of the Far Right in this country have gone back to open Nazism. The most blatant of these groups is National Action, formerly the youth wing of one of the Far Right parties. If memory serves me right, it was either the BNP or National Front. Michelle, one of the commenters on this blog, sent a link in her comment to an earlier piece I wrote, to a discussion of the Far Right in one of the left-wing political meet up groups. This was a talk, followed by a question-and-answer session, presented by Matthew Feldman, a university lecturer specialising in the study of Fascism. Dr Feldman illustrated his lecture with numerous videos, one of which was truly chilling. It showed National Action at one of their demos quite openly shouting anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi nonsense. They were spouting the old conspiracist canard about the Jews using Blacks to destroy White racial purity in order to further the Marxist agenda of overthrowing White civilisation. Herbert Marcuse and the Frankfurt school were also thrown in as example of ‘cultural Marxism’.

Marxism Not Anti-White Racism

It’s all nonsense. Marx never wrote anything about destroying White civilisation. He and his collaborator, Engels, were interested solely in examining the class nature of history and modern capitalism as part of their programme of liberating the working class. They also had some disgusting racist ideas themselves. Marx hated the Slavonic peoples, as he believed that their economic and social ‘backwardness’, as he saw it, would make them a dangerous counterrevolutionary force, and looked forward to the day when they, and other similar ‘backwards’ peoples, like the Celts and Basques, would die out. He also sneered at his German rival, Lassalles, as ‘the Jewish n*gger’.

No Anti-White Jewish Conspiracy

There has never been any kind of Jewish conspiracy to destroy White civilisation. This is just a vile product of the diseased imagination of the Nazis, and their successors in the American right-wing conspiracy culture. Jews were part of the campaign to gain civil rights for Blacks in America, as many Jews had strong connections with Black communities through their jobs, such as teachers in Black majority schools and neighbourhoods.

Gramsci and Cultural Hegemony

As for ‘cultural Marxism’ and the Frankfurt school, this is also a confusion of them and the ideas of cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was an Italian Communist, who attempted to explain the persistence of capitalism and its support amongst the working class, by suggesting that this was due to the basis of modern culture in the ideology and values of upper and middle classes. This was so pervasive, that it was automatically seen as natural by the workers, despite the fact that it directly went against their interests. Marx himself had already argued much of this in his theory of ‘false consciousness’. Gramsci turned Marxist tactics on its head by arguing that what was needed to liberate the workers was to challenge capitalist culture, rather than the traditional Marxist tactic of changing capitalist culture by attacking its basis in the economic structure of society.

The Frankfurt School and the Origins of Fascism in Mass Culture

There’s a section on the Frankfurt School by Jean Seaton in her chapter ‘The Sociology of the Mass Media’ in the book on the British media which she co-authored with James Curran, Power Without Responsibility: The Press and Broadcasting in Britain (London: Routledge 1988) pp. 221-7. She points out that the Frankfurt School were left-wing German emigres, who had been forced to leave Germany through the rise of the Nazis. They believed that Fascism had its origins in modern mass culture, and applied this analysis to modern American society. Rather than being left-wing ideologues dedicated to the destruction of traditional, White, Christian society, she points out that actually their views weren’t that far from those of British critics of modern mass society, whose views were based in a far more traditional, British, non-Marxist set of cultural values.

Cultural Marxism: What It’s Really About

As for the term ‘cultural Marxism’, this is also the boneheaded product of more confused thinking. It seems to be a garbled notion of the distinction many academic Marxists drew in the 1980s between what was ‘Marxist’ and ‘Marxian’ in order to keep their jobs. Thatcher passed a law making it illegal for Marxists to hold posts at the universities. They responded by denying that they were Marxists, but held ‘Marxian’ cultural views. It was a fine, and actually rather artificial distinction, but it nevertheless allowed them to keep their jobs. However, this has been taken over by the radical right, who have thrown it into their scrambled notion of Gramsci’s hegemony.

National Action also make their Nazism very clear in their costume and conduct. As well as shouting Nazi ideology in the streets, they also openly wear Nazi-style clothes and regalia. In the video Dr Feldman showed as part of his presentation, they did indeed openly make the Nazi salute, shouting ‘Sieg heil!’ as they did so. National Action aren’t the only openly Nazi group on the Far Right. There’s even a small, National Socialist party, whose members include the infamous racist responsible for killing and mutilating innocent people in a series of three nail bomb attacks on Black, Asian and Gay pubs and cafes in London. His victims included a bride and an unborn child. The members of this minuscule party do turn up and parade around in Nazi uniforms and insignia.

The Left Not Anti-Semitic, But Anti-Racist

While Mr Segalov is wrong about Ken Livingstone and Naz Shah being anti-Semites, he is certainly right about the openly Nazi character of part of the Far Right, and about the way the Left, including supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, have attempted to right them, including physical assault. Matthew Collins in his book, Hate, about his own career in the BNP and NF, states at one point that the Communist Party used to provide its members with self-defence training so that they could attack any Nazis they encountered on building sites. Mr Segalov is right to point out how wrong and damaging it is in the struggle against real racism and anti-Semitism to malign Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters so. Mike book also puts the record straight on this, and about the smears against Naz Shah and Livingstone.

The Israel Lobby, Liam Fox and the Planned Bombing of Iran

I found a few more bits and pieces on the Israel Lobby going through some more recent back issues of Lobster on the net. I know there’s a risk of sounding fixated with them, but much of the hostility against Jeremy Corbyn from the Blairites is directly due to the Blairite’s strong connections to the lobby. The lobby’s influence is also extremely strong in the media, which is why, apart from the space given to ludicrous allegations of anti-Semitism against perfectly decent people, you rarely hear reports condemning the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And it seems that it was the machinations of the Israel lobby that nearly got us involved in an American-Israeli plot to bomb Iran.

Liam Fox and Werrity Scandal

Remember the scandal that erupted a few years ago over the improper relationship between Dr. Liam Fox, then Secretary of State for Defence, and his adviser, Adam Werrity. Werrity had been Fox’s flatmate. Fox was nearly prosecuted for breaching various ministerial codes of conduct over his relationship with Werrity. He met Werrity over 40 times both abroad and in the Ministry of Defence, and a full report revealing Fox’s misdeeds was published by the cabinet secretary, Gus O’Donnell. This revealed that Fox had not informed his permanent secretary that he had tried to obtain funds for Werrity, and had blocked other civil servants from attending meetings alongside him. Fox had also ignored calls to distance himself from him.

See Lobster 65, ‘Tittle-Tattle’, by Tom Easton.

All that was covered in the media, if I recall correctly. I think Mike also wrote a few pieces about it, as it’s yet another example of the ministerial corruption that soon accompanies the Tories into office.

About a year and a half previously, in Lobster 62, Robin Ramsay in his ‘View from the Bridge’ column, discussed a piece about the Werrity scandal by Craig Murray in his blog. Murray was the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, who lost his job because he dared to start making waves about how corrupt and brutal the Uzbek dictator was. It was information that the British government and business establishment really didn’t want to hear, or the public knowing, as they were desperate to conclude various trade deals. So Murray got the sack.

In his article, Murray revealed that at last someone in the mainstream media had had the courage to talk about the possibility that the Werrity affair was part of a operation by the Israeli secret services, and stated that this had been a major concern of the MOD and government officials. He wrote

‘A mainstream media source has finally plucked up the courage to publish the widespread concern among MOD, Cabinet Office and FCO officials and military that the Werritty operation was linked to, and perhaps controlled by, Mossad – something which agitated officials have been desperately signalling for some days.

“Officials expressed concern that Fox and Werritty might even have been in freelanced iscussions with Israeli intelligence agencies” write Patrick Wintour and Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian.

As I have been explaining, the real issue here is a British defence secretary who had a parallel advice structure designed expressly to serve the interests of
another state and linked to that state’s security services. That is not just a sacking offence, it is treasonable.’

Ramsay goes on to state that in a later article, Murray cited answers to questions he and Jeremy Corbyn had put to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to show that the Werrity scandal wasn’t an intelligence operation, but part of the preparations for an ‘Anglo-British-Israeli’ attack on Iran. I think Ramsay might mean that the attack was planned by America, Britain and Israel. Unless Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh devolution had gone much further than everyone knew.

Ramsay then remarks that Murray didn’t comment on the incompetence of using Werrity, the Defence Secretary’s bagman, as part of the plot, and suggests that the bizarre dealings had been deliberately exposed by Whitehall civil servants determined to stop the attack going ahead.

This seems all too plausible to me. Netanyahu was desperately trying to get America to attack Iran, including scaremongering about Iran being a few months away from having a nuclear bomb. This was rubbish. Netanyahu’s generals and his own intelligence services told him so. But this didn’t stop the old butcher turning up in front of Congress or the UN with entirely fraudulent diagram to hawk his lies. Fortunately, nobody believed him, which is why the situation in the Middle East hasn’t become very much worse.

This little incident also adds yet more information explaining why the Israel lobby has such desperate hatred for Corbyn. Not only is one of the few politicians genuinely trying to stand up for the rights of the Palestinians against their oppression and brutalisation by the Israelis, he’s also an obstacle to the foreign policy objectives. Netanyahu, his hawks and the neocons in Britain and America wanted to attack Iran, and he and Murray helped prevent them from doing so. Hence the splenetic attempts to portray him and his supporters as anti-Semites, when they are no such thing.

Labour Friends of Israel in Liverpool

If memory serves me correctly, Luciana Berger, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, and Louise Ellman, representing Liverpool Riverside, have also attacked Jeremy Corbyn. It’s probably no coincidence, then, that they are both members of Labour Friends of Israel, which has been responsible, in my opinion, for many of the smears of anti-Semitism against Corbyn and his supporters in Momentum. Berger is a former director of the organisation, and Ellman is, or was, its deputy chair.

See Tom Easton, ‘Tittle-Tattle’, in Lobster 59, p. 89.