The Labour party conference is looming and Arise, the Labour festival of left-wing ideas, has sent these suggested motions out to their supporters so they can propose them to their local constituency parties, in the hope that they’ll accept them and propose them at conference. The email I had and the proposed motions run:
‘Model Motions Recommended for Labour Party Conference 2022
Hello David
Please find below and online here suggested model motions for Labour Party Conference. The deadline for submissions is Thursday 15 September 2022 at 5pm and the word limit is 250 words. They are on supporting public ownership, defending asylum seekers, supporting a pay rise for workers plus those unions taking industrial action to this end. and speaking up for Palestine.
Best wishes, The Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas Volunteer Team.
1) Public ownership Motion from the Labour Assembly Against Austerity
Public Ownership is Necessary and Popular
Conference notes: That public ownership is popular with voters, with polling indicating these levels of support:
Energy – 66% (Survation, 2022)
Water – 69% (Survation, 2022)
Royal Mail – 68% (Survation, 2022)
Railways – 67% (Survation, 2022)
Buses – 65% (Survation, 2022)
Social Care – 64% (Survation, 2020)
NHS – 84% (YouGov, 2017)
Additionally, 61% of the public think local and central government should try to run services in-house first, before outsourcing (Survation, 2015,) 82% want schools to mostly be run in the public sector (Survation, 2020;) and 63% want utilities to mostly be run in the public sector (Survation, 2020.)
Conference believes:
The crisis caused by soaring energy bills and the scandal of raw sewage being dumped into rivers this Summer have highlighted the failures of privatisation in Britain.
Private companies are making mega-profits from public services – these vast sums should instead be invested to improve services, to give their workers a pay increase and to lower costs for consumers.
That the Tory corruption and outsourcing crises during the pandemic have further illustrated the need for public ownership and democratic control.
A clear commitment to extending public ownership of key utilities and public services can be a big vote winner for Labour.
Conference resolves:
To oppose further Tory privatisation and outsourcing, including of the NHS, education and council services.
To support public ownership of key services and utilities including energy, water, railways, buses, social care, the royal mail and the NHS.
2) Motion on asylum seekers & Rwanda from the Arise Volunteer Team:
Labour should oppose the sending of asylum seekers to Rwanda
Conference notes:
the commitment of both candidates in the recent Tory leadership to the unethical, inhumane and racist Tory policy of forcibly sending asylum seekers to Rwanda, and the widely-condemned Nationality and Borders Act (NABA,) with its two tier system of ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ refugees that would prevent some 99 percent of refugees from seeking asylum and its threat to the citizenship of 6 million people in Britain. UNHCR said the Nationality and Borders Bill would “penalise most refugees seeking asylum”.
the scale of opposition to the Government’s inhumane treatment of refugees who just want to rebuild their lives here in safety.
the decision of the European Court of Human Rights which forced the cancellation of the first scheduled flight on 14 June 2022.
Public polling shows increasing support for asylum seekers’ rights, including their right to work.
Other disastrous aspects of the ‘hostile environment’ policy over recent years including the Windrush Scandal and the notorious ‘Go Home’ vans.
Conference resolves:
For the Labour party to clearly oppose this obscene Tory policy in its entirety as part of campaigning for an end to the ‘hostile environment’ and against racist anti-immigrant narratives, including through a commitment that the next Labour Government will immediately cancel the Rwanda Asylum Scheme.
To oppose “no recourse to public funds”, NHS access restrictions and other ‘Hostile Environment’ policies.
3) Pay and backing trade union action motion from the Labour Assembly Against Austerity:
Britain Needs A Pay rise
Conference notes:
Twelve years of the Conservative Government’s low-pay agenda has significantly diminished the real value of people’s incomes with average real wages still below 2008 levels;
The situation is getting worse. Real pay dropped by 4.1% in June compared to the same period last year, with record falls of 3.4% in the private sector and 6.7% in the public sector;
The imposition of significantly below-inflation pay awards which amount to real terms pay cuts;
An increase in trade union campaigning for improved pay awards, from protests to strike ballots and industrial action;
That 76% of people support the view that pay should rise in line with the cost of living (Survation August 2022)
Conference believes:
Below-inflation pay offers will increase poverty and hardship;
That the Government should not impose real terms pay cuts on public sector workers;
It is wrong that many private firms are imposing real terms pay cuts while making big profits, awarding bonuses and large dividend payments;
Recent trade union campaigns, including strike action, have led to numerous enhanced pay awards.
Conference resolves:
To oppose the Conservative Government’s imposition of real terms pay cuts;
To support inflation-proofed increases in pay in both public and private sectors and urgent measures to restore the real value of pay lost under successive Conservative Governments since 2010;
To support a National Minimum Wage of at least £15 an hour.
To support trade union campaigning, including through backing workers taking industrial action, to achieve these aims.
4) Palestine motion from Labour & Palestine / Palestine Solidarity Campaign
Justice for Palestine
Conference strongly condemns:
Israel’s renewed bombing of Gaza in August 2022 killing 44 Palestinians, including 15 children, and notes the UN Special rapporteur description of it as an act contrary to International law.
the Israeli army’s killing of the Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and beating of her coffin bearers by Israeli police.
the outlawing of 7 NGOs including Addameer; the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and Defence for Children International – Palestine.
Conference recognises that these events are illustrative of the conclusions of leading human rights organisations including B’tselem, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International that Israel is committing the crime of apartheid against the Palestinian people, and further erode any possibility of a just solution.
Conference notes policy passed at Labour Party Annual Conferences 2018 ,2019 and 2021 in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against Israel’s ongoing violations of their rights and of international law.
Conference Resolves:
To support the application made in April to the International Criminal Court (ICC), calling for an investigation into the Israeli government’s systematic targeting of journalists.
To stand in solidarity with all human rights defenders and fully oppose the Israeli government’s attempts to silence them
To adhere to an ethical policy on all UK trade with Israel in line with policy passed at previous Conferences, including banning trade with illegal settlements and ending the ongoing arms trade.
To oppose fully any UK legislation aimed at preventing legitimate and democratic solidarity actions in support of the Palestinian people.’
These policies are popular and necessary. Among the polls showing public support for renationalising the utilities, I’m massively impressed that 82 per cent want schools to be in public hands. As for the motion on Palestine, it really amazes me how anyone in a genuinely left-wing party could support the closure of quangos devoted to protecting women and children. If ‘100 per cent Zionist’ Starmer supports this, then he’s a depraved monster, utterly unfit to govern any country devoted to humanity and the rule of law. This shows that hardly anybody wants academies or a return to grammar schools, despite the Tories constantly pushing them. I’m going to check with my local constituency party to see if these or similar are among the motions they are going to discuss this Thursday prior to conference. If they aren’t, I will propose them.
This will undoubtedly annoy the Blairites, especially the motion on Palestine. I’ll let you know if they start throwing around any fake accusations of anti-Semitism again.
And now, as the late, sorely missed computer-generated video jockey Max Headroom said, ‘More – of the same’. Here’s another deeply satirical musical attack on the Tories and their backers in industry, the media and the aristocratic landlords from Commoners Choir and their channel on YouTube.
It’s presented as a school lesson, showing us the bastards who underfund everything, rarely work, don’t pay tax, print lies, fiddle accounts, and frame our laws. The bastards making money responsible for starting wars, play golf while damning the poor, privatising everything they can while going grouse shooting, and tell lies. The same people who botched the response to the Coronavirus, failed to prevent further deaths by going into lockdown as soon as possible, botched supplying the protective masks and equipment. The Tory and industrial elite that deliberately don’t employ enough staff and underpay those they do, curtail public rights of way, cut grants and condemn the sick. The aristos and toffs who use public school arithmetic to drag everything back to the 19th century and before. They are arms merchants, landowners, the proprietors of the news media, and the rich figures who hypocritically front appeals while enjoying obscene wealth themselves. It also has a go at beardie Branson for suing the NHS and then grovelling for the state to bail him out. It ends with the request that people remember what they learned today, with images of people demonstrating against the privatisation of the NHS and the message spoofing the government’s own warnings about the Coronavirus – ‘Stay alert> Stop the bastards> Save Lives.
It’s less music than an old-fashioned schoolroom chant accompanied with the images of the offenders themselves. They are too numerous to list, but obviously include Johnson, Cameron and co. as well as Murdoch, the Barclay twins, Margaret Thatcher and many, many more.
I’ve probably said before that I’ve got mixed feelings about Private Eye. The magazine joined the rest of the media in howling that Corbyn was an evil Commie and an anti-Semite. On the other hand, it has itself published some excellent material exposing Israel and its horrific crimes against the indigenous Arabs. I found this article extensively describing them in it’s edition for 15th – 28th June 2018. Titled ‘Israel Watch’, the article runs
“On 1 June, as the Campaign Against Arms Trade revealed the UK’s rapidly increasing exports to Israel, and Buckingham Palace announced Prince William’s forthcoming trip to Jerusalem and Ramallah, Razan Najar, a 21-year-old Palestinian woman volunteering for a medical team, was shot dead by Israeli Defence Force soldiers near the Israel-Gaza border. The UK may have sold them the bullet.
As the UK government continues its amoral pursuit of post-Brexit trade with anyone who’ll have us, it is to be hoped this is not why William is pressing palms. At least ministers can pretend that they will raise human rights abuses as the other side signs the cheques.
Yet Israel does more than shoot Palestinians it claims looked iffy through a rifle sight. It removes their moral status as bearers of rights, a crucial first stage in all historical abuses of peoples. Nowhere is this more evident than in its approach in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
No-derogable means no exceptions: not in times of war; not if you’re the head of the CIA; not if you’ve been watching 24 on Fox. Signatories to the declaration agree this, and are obliged to codify it in law. On 14 December 1978, signing the Declaration for Israel, Yehudi Zvi Blum told the UN that the principles enshrined in it were given to the world by the Jewish nation 3,0000 years ago as “the equality and brotherhood of man, the intrinsic dignity and value of the human being and the ideals of social justice”. Yet Israeli law contains no specific criminalisation of torture.
Until 1999 the Israeli Security Agency, ISA, relied on a 1987 state commission which suggested that “psychological pressure” and “moderate physical pressure” were permissible “to prevent terrorism”. Their methods went far beyond any reasonable interpretation of these terms, and in 1999, Israel’s high court declared torture in interrogation illegal – except, crucially, for agents investigating “ticking bomb” cases. Such ticking is, of course, in the ear of the beholder.
The US senate’s own report on black-site torture revealed that, despite claims regarding “ticking bombs”, such torture delivered no useful intelligence. Evidence shows that while torture may persuade people to do things they don’t wan to do, they are only likely to tell you what you want to hear.
Israeli human rights groups, based on hundreds of affidavits from interrogated Palestinians, suggest that ISA uses torture in interrogation, including beatings, kicking, sleep deprivation, stress positioning, sexual abuse, painful shackling, assault with rifle butts, mock executions and threats against family members. Such treatment is described by the state as “special measures”, in tones reminiscent of “enhanced interrogation”. Not a single criminal investigation has been launched into a complaint against an ISA Interrogator.
Israel claims that UN conventions do not apply to Palestinians under occupation. It’s a steep slope, when you exclude the people of your choice from universal human rights. Prince William tread carefully, lest he slip.”
I’ll make it clear before I start that I despise and condemn terrorism by anyone. Furthermore, I don’t doubt for a single second that Israel isn’t unusual in it use of torture against terrorists and the minorities it oppresses. China and indeed the neighbouring Arab states do exactly the same. However, Israel and its supporters over here have a campaign to smear anyone revealing Israeli torture and atrocities against the Palestinians as an evil, genocidal anti-Semite. It’s been used against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, many of whom are decent, self-respecting Jewish peeps. Peeps, who have often lost loved ones to the Holocaust and suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and assault. And Starmer is continuing this campaign of vilification and purges.
The Israeli state doesn’t just use such interrogation techniques against adult. It also uses them against children. And many of the Jews that attack and criticise Israel for its human rights abuses are motivated by their reading and observance of the Torah and the Hebrew Bible, which Blum declared was behind Israel’s signing of the Declaration of the Human Rights. Other, secular Jews are motivated by the values of liberal Jewish culture in which they grew up. As for the Israeli human rights groups criticising the Israeli state, Netanyahu’s vile regime passed, or tried to pass legislation silencing groups like B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The last is a group of Israeli ex-servicemen and -women, who tell the stories of atrocities they have witnessed and in which they participated. There were polls a few years ago showing that the majority of Israeli respondents wanted such organisations and their members stripped of their citizenship.
This is the state that Keef Stalin supports ‘100 per cent’, and whose critics within the Labour party he is determined to silence and expel. Revolting!
There was a very interesting piece by Cahal Milmo in yesterday’s edition of the I, for Saturday, 29th August 2020. The MoD has released a series of papers in response to a question in parliament, showing that the British armed forces are training those of 17 states guilty of human rights violations. The article, ‘Britain trains soldiers for repressive regimes’ runs
The British military has provided training to the armed forces of a succession of repressive regimes from Belarus to Bahrain, according to official records.
A list of countries receiving training from UK armed forces since 2018 includes 17 nations formally designated by the British government as “human rights priority countries”, where there is particular concern about repression or other abuses.
The training ranges from instruction on piloting state-of-the-art fast jets for allies such as Saudi Arabia to officer training for China.
In Belarus, where the authorities have this month been condemned for a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators and armed forces have been placed on a state of high alert, Britain provided an advanced command course for senior officers.
The training,k detailed in records released by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) following a parliamentary question, drew condemnation from campaigners who said it put Britain at risk of becoming “complicit” in gross breaches of human rights.
Andrew Smith, of Campaign Against Arms Trade, said: “Many of these armies have appalling human rights records and have been linked to brutal oppression as well as international aggression.
“By training and collaborating with despots, dictatorships and human rights abusers, the UK risks making itself complicit in the abuses that are being inflicted.” The group said it wanted to see an investigation into precisely which military forces the UK had given training to and whether they had been subsequently linked to repressive actions or other breaches of basic liberties.
However, the defence ministry insisted that all of its training abroad emphasised the observation of human rights protections.
A spokesman for the MoD said: “Every defence relationship is taken on a case-by-case basis. Any defence engagement is designed to educate where necessary on best practice and compliance with international humanitarian law.”
The figures suggest that more than half of the 30 countries on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s human rights priority list have received training assistance from British forces. They include Uzbekistan, Sir Lanka, Bahrain, Egypt and Pakistan.
I’m not surprised by any of this. We already sell armaments to vicious, repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia. Britain has also used private mercenary companies as a method of unofficially sending military assistance to repressive regimes, such as Keenie Meenie Services, (KMS), founded by retired Brigadier Mike Wingate Gray, a friend of Maggie Thatcher, and whose son Arthur is a mate of princes William and Harry. Among other nasty regimes, KMS has provided troops for Sri Lanka, the Nicaraguan Contras and the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, as well as Sultan Qaboos of Oman. On the other hand, they don’t seem to have provided any assistance to the Khmer Rouge during the 1980s. This was probably done by the SAS. See ‘Profiting from War’, John Newsinger’s review of Phil Miller’s Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away with War Crimes (London: Pluto Press 2020) in Lobster 79, Summer 2020 . See https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster79/lob79-keenie-meenie-review.pdf
I’ve no doubt that the training given by the official British armed forces does stress the observance of human rights. However, this still does not absolve us of training the troops of brutally oppressive regimes, which those providing the assistance must know will ignore anything they are taught about observing human rights.
The mercenaries, however, are rather different. They don’t just providing training, but have actually participated in atrocities. During the proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the head of the CIA’s Afghan Task Force declared that Thatcher was to the right of Attila the Hun and remarked on the lack of any legal restraint on MI6. Miller’s book quotes him as saying that they had a willingness to do jobs he wouldn’t touch. This comes from a senior figure in the organisation that helped overthrow Salvador Allende in Chile and install the Fascist dictatorship of General Pinochet.
Britain has spent too long training and providing guns and troops to the world’s thugs and butchers. It’s long past time we stopped. But the last time anyone suggested we should have an ethical foreign policy was Robin Cook under Tony Blair. Which after the Iraq invasion sounds like a very sick joke.
On Friday, Mike published a very enlightening article showing just how concerned the Tories are about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia: they aren’t. They actually apologized to them about it. It seems that after BoJob announced sanctions against particular Saudi individuals for their crimes against humanity, the Defence Secretary Ben Wallace phoned up the Saudi prince serving as their defence minister and apologized. This wasn’t publicized over here, but it was loudly trumpeted in the Saudi state press, and only reported in Blighty by the Independent.
We’ve got absolutely no business selling arms to Saudi Arabia in the first place. A few years ago a Nigerian academic appeared on Radio 4 recommending a change of allies in the Middle East. Instead of supporting Israel and Saudi Arabia, we should support and ally ourselves instead with Turkey and Iran. It’s a radical plan that has absolutely no hope of success, but it would be better than those two highly draconian and intolerant regimes. Turkey, until the accession of President Ergoyan, aspired to be a modern, western-looking, secular state. That was the programme of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Attaturk. Turkey has also has its problems with human rights abuses, such as its ethnic cleansing of the Kurds and official denial of the Armenian massacres. Iran is also a theocracy, but despite the Shah’s regime, which turned it into an absolute monarchy, and then the Islamic Revolution of the Ayatollah Khomeini, it does have a democratic component. They have a parliament – the majlis – whose members are elected, as is its president, although progress to a genuine, western-style democracy is blocked through an elected Supreme Leader, another ayatollah, and the Pasdaran, the Revolutionary Guards. But even with these anti-democratic institutions, both countries are more tolerant and democratic than Saudi Arabia.
Iran officially recognizes in its constitution the country’s religious minorities – the Zoroastrians, descendants of the original monotheist faith of the Persian Empire, Armenian Christians and Jews. Four seats are reserved for them in the majlis. And despite American and Israeli propaganda to the contrary, Iranian Jews are tolerated and treated quite well. Possibly this is because some of the country’s great patriots of the 20th century, who were determined to resist its annexation by the imperial powers, were Jews.
This is in stark contrast to Saudi Arabia, which is an absolute, theocratic monarchy. The only tolerated religion is Wahhabi Islam. All other faiths, even they are varieties of Islam, are strictly proscribed. The Shi’a minority live in villages without electricity or running water. Their religious books may be seized and destroyed. And as the west has made grief-stricken overtures of sorrow and contrition for its racial intolerance and slavery, the Saudis have made no such gestures on their part. A few years ago one of the country’s leading clerics – I think it was the Grand Mufti, rather than the Sherif of Mecca, declared that the Shi’a were ‘heretics’ and ‘worthy of death’. It’s a declaration of genocide, an exact counterpart of the slogan ‘Baptism or extermination’ of the German crusading orders in their campaigns against the pagan Slavs in eastern Europe. Saudi Arabia only outlawed slavery in 1964, but it still occurs today in the appalling exploitation of migrant labourers under the countries’ sponsorship system. Domestic servants are also kept in conditions no different from real slavery, including those taken to Britain and Europe by their masters.
And it explains precisely why the Saudis are indiscriminately bombing and killing civilians, women and children, and mosques, hospitals and schools in Yemen.
We went to war in 1939 against a regime that was determined to the same to the Jews, as well as the Gypsies, Poles and the other Slavonic peoples of eastern Europe. If you want to hear some real horror stories, talk to Poles, Ukrainian and Russians about what happened when the Nazis and the SS moved in and occupied their countries, as well as the horrors Jews, Gypsies and the disabled went through.
Why should we be arming a similar regime?
And the Saudis are spreading this intolerance. Many Muslim countries were traditionally much more tolerant and pluralistic. One of Mike’s photos he brought back from his time in Bosnia showed a church and a mosque that were right next to each other. It’s a very clear demonstration that in that part of the country, Christians and Muslims had been friends and definitely not at each others throats. But I’ve read comments again and over again in books and articles from more moderate Muslims from different nations lamenting the increasing fanaticism in their countries. And they state that those responsible for it went to study in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Bosnian Islam, thanks to these influences, has become more rigid and austere. In the Balkans Islam was spread by the Sufi mystical orders that served that Turkish troops as chaplains. These forms of Islamic piety also absorbed elements from Christianity. But these are being purged as Wahhabism is exported to Bosnia. A few years ago the government was sending in bulldozers to destroy the traditional Muslim gravestones in its cemeteries.
And we shouldn’t sell the arms for simply self-preservation.
The Saudis have also exported their religious intolerance by funding and arming terrorist groups. Forget the stuff about Iran being responsible for most of the world’s terrorist groups. Muslim terrorism only ever counted for a fraction of global terrorism. Most of the terrorist groups around the world are either nationalists or Marxists. But it seems to me very strongly that the Saudis surpassed Iran long ago as the suppliers of Muslim terror. They matched the Americans in funding and supplying the Islamist guerrillas against the Russians in Afghanistan. The suppressed passages in the official report about 9/11 made it clear that atrocity was funded and led by the Saudis. It was impossible to follow the trail all the way, but the evidence pointed all the way to the top. And the reports on al-Qaeda’s campaigns in Iraq and Syria published in the volume Unmasking Terror: A Global Review of Terrorist Activities, edited by Christopher Heffelfinger and published by the Jamestown Foundation in 2005 state very clearly that al-Qaeda in those nations was being funded and supplied by the current head of Saudi intelligence. The Saudis were favourably disposed to Daesh, and only turned against them when ISIS declared the jihad against them.
If we sell them armaments, there is a very real chance that they will make their way to terrorists who will use them against our brave boys and girls and our allies.
The argument for selling what David Cameron called ‘this wonderful kit’ to Saudi Arabia and other nations is that this supposedly opens these countries up to other British products. It doesn’t. They don’t purchase more ordinary, peaceful British goods. They just concentrate on weapons. Weapons that they don’t actually need. We sold them, or one of the other Arab states, a whole batch of jet fighters a few years ago, despite the fact that the Saudis had no need for them, nowhere to put them, and no maintenance infrastructure.
But it all makes the arms companies richer. And they, no doubt, are also donating very handsomely to Tory party coffers.
In my last piece, I discussed Tony Greenstein’s examination of the leaked report into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Greenstein shows that report still uncritically accepts the existence of mass Jew hatred in the party, and the necessity of conducting a purge of members accused of it. But he shows that these allegations and the witch-hunt were entirely motivated by a corrupt political establishment, including and especially that of Britain’s Jewish community, which simply wanted to oust Corbyn and protect Israel and its decades-long ethnic cleansing of the country’s indigenous people. His article is an effective expose of the witch-hunt, its smears against decent, anti-racist people, like Tony himself, and the absolute stupidity of Corbyn and his team in complying with the smear merchants’ demands. As part of his case, Tony shows how real anti-Semites, far from fighting Zionism as Zionist propaganda claims, actively supported and promoted it. Tony writes
‘Zionism has never fought anti-Semitism just anti-Zionism
One thing missing from any discussion of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is that Zionism has no interest in opposing anti-Semitism.
‘Maybe there was some kind of fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin)
The above quote is from Boris Johnson’s book 72 Virgins published in 2004. As The Independent notes it depicted Jews as controlling the media, amidst a torrent of racial slurs and stereotypes. Yet the Board of Deputies and the Zionists said nothing. If their real concerns were about anti-Semitism then they would surely have said something?
Indeed when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister they fell over themselves to congratulate him. Johnson’s previous record as a racist, anti-Semitism included, was ignored. He was, after all, a strong supporter of Israel.
Imagine if Corbyn had penned such a book? Corbyn was criticised by the Zionists for not mentioning anti-Semitism when reviewing Imperialism by John Hobson, a standard academic textbook, because he didn’t mention that a few lines out of 334 pages were anti-Semitic. The hypocrisy of the anti-Semitism mongers is breathtaking but the authors of the Report never seemed to notice these double standards.
When Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, wanted to hold the First Zionist Congress in 1897 his choice of venue was Munich. The Jewish population promptly rose up in protest and accused the authorities of anti-Semitism. Why? Because the Zionist proposition that Jews formed a separate nation from other Germans meant that they were therefore aliens. This wasexactly what the anti-Semites were saying.
Alfred Rosenberg, Minister for Ostland and the Nazi Party’s main theoretician, who was hanged at Nuremburg in 1946, wrote that
‘‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations.’[Francis Nicosia, Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p.25]
As author Francis Nicosia noted, Rosenberg
‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’ and he ‘sanctioned the use of the Zionist movement in the future drive to eliminate Jewish rights, Jewish influence and eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.’ [TRPQ, pp. 25-26]
Francis Nicosia, the Raul Hilberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University and himself a Zionist wrote that:
whereas today non-Jewish criticism of Zionism or the State of Israel are often dismissed as motivated by a deeper anti-Semitism, in Herzl’s day an opposite non-Jewish reaction, one of support for the Zionist idea, might have resulted in a similar reaction. [Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany p.7]
When Herzl sought the support of the Grand Duke of Baden, the uncle of Kaiser Wilhelm II, for Zionism the Duke’s
‘chief misgiving was that if he supported the [Zionist] cause, people would misinterpret this as anti-Semitism on his part.’ (Diaries of Herzl]
Zionism was unique as a movement amongst Jews because it accepted that anti-Semitism was the natural biological reaction of non-Jews to the Jews in their midst. As Herzl wrote in his Diaries:
“In Paris… I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” [The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, London: Gollancz, 1958, p.6]
This was in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair which culminated in the triumph of Emile Zola and the Republicans and a defeat for the clerical and military caste that wanted to restore the monarchy.
It was the Zionist acceptance of anti-Semitism as something that was natural, which could not be fought and only utilised, that was the basis of the collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists. When German Jews and world Jewry were aghast at the assumption of power by the Nazis in January 1933 and instituted a boycott, the Zionists only saw a golden opportunity. David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister saw Hitler’s rise as:
a rare opportunity to achieve the “Zionist solution”, the only true solution to the problem of the Jewish people.’ [Yechiam Weitz, Jewish Refugees and Zionist Policy during the Holocaust, p.355, Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Volume 30, 1994 – Issue 2]
Dr Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian wrote that:
‘As the European Holocaust erupted, Ben Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism… Ben Gurion above all others sensed the tremendous possibilities inherent in the dynamic of the chaos and carnage in Europe… In conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the advantage of Zionism. … (The Modern History of Israel, pp. 187/8)
Ben Gurion’s deputy, Berl Katznelson was even more explicit. The rise of Hitler was
an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have [Nicosia, ZANG, p.91]
Nor was this attitude to anti-Semitism confined to the pre-State days. When there arose in Argentina in 1976 a neo-Nazi Junta, the first in the post-war era, it targeted Jews. The most famous victim was Jacobo Timmerman, Editor of La Opinion. He was released and deported to Israel after having been savagely tortured. With the advent of the Lebanon War, Timmerman fell out of love with Israel.
The Argentina Junta murdered up to 3,000 Jews. According to Juan Pablo Jaroslavsky of the Barcelona-based Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared
“Jews represented more than 12 per cent of the victims of the military regime while constituting under 1 per cent of Argentina’s population,” See Jews targeted in Argentina’s dirty war,
What was Israel’s reaction? There wasn’t one. Instead it took the opportunity of the United States’s decision to cut off arms sales to this vile regime to increase its own arms sales. During the Falklands/ Malvinas war Israel became the Junta’s main arms supplier.
Not once did Israel condemn the anti-Semitism of the Junta. Zionist organisations in the United States instead defended the Junta, minimising its atrocities. The Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires refused to help or grant visas to Jews that the Junta declared were subversives. The Knesset refused to discuss what was happening in Argentina during the 7 year life of the Junta.
An article in Ha’aretz, Argentine-Israelis Urge Israel to Disclose Past Junta Tiesdescribes how Wanda Clara and Marcus Weinstein appealed to Israel concerning the arrest and disappearance of their son Mauricio. Weinstein said he felt the Israeli diplomatic representatives
“cared little interest about the disappeared Jews, including his son and a second Israeli citizen.”
This is the bastard ‘Jewish’ state that Lansman and the Momentum authors of this Report defend with the sterile accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’.’
This is a lengthy passage, which I’ve reproduced in full because it is such a comprehensive refutation of a central ultra-Zionist claim. Ken Livingstone was smeared as an anti-Semite and suspended from the party because he correctly stated that Hitler supported Zionism. Which the Fuhrer did, initially, through the Ha’avara agreement. And my brother, Mike, was accused of anti-Semitism in turn because he wrote a piece, The Livingstone Delusion, showing that the Spartacist newt-fancier was correct. Mike is currently suing the party for breach of contract for their treatment of him.
And the Israel lobby and its supporters are still making the grotesque claim that somehow Zionism = Judaism and Zionists are the Jews’ friends. In her response to the decision of a judge in her ongoing case against Laura Murray that Murray had made a factual statement, which had a tendency to be defamatory – but crucially did not rule that it was – Rachel Riley claimed that he had ruled in her favour. She concluded her tweet by thanking all her supporters, whom she claimed were opponents of anti-Semitism and the friends of Jews.
While Riley has been the target of real anti-Semitic abuse, I believe, many of the people she has accused of anti-Semitism were simply supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. She accused them, and Corbyn himself, of being anti-Semitic, because he was a critic of Israel. And it seems that she also subscribes to the absolutely false belief that Zionism = Judaism, and Zionists are the most ardent defenders of Jews against prejudice and hatred.
But they aren’t. Time and again Zionists have been supported by real, genocidal anti-Semites and Fascists, to the point where they have actively colluded in the murderous persecution and genocide of Jews, so long as Israel’s interests are served.
It has frequently been the case that the Jewish peoples’ real defenders – and their greatest heroes – have been anti-Zionists. And it is these people, that the self-appointed witch-hunters have smeared and libeled, and twisted history through lies and propaganda to misrepresent themselves as the real protectors of the Jews.
I’ve just received a pamphlet from Keir Starmer’s campaign team, promoting him as the future of leader of the Labour Party. It begins with this quote
“I’ve spent my life fighting injustice. I’m standing to be leader of our Labour Party because I’m determined to unite our movement, take on the Tories and build a better future. If all parts of our movement come together, we can achieve anything.”
There’s a brief biography that runs
A Life Devoted to Fighting Injustice
Keir is the son of an NHS nurse and a toolmaker. As a former human rights lawyer, Keir is dedicated to Labour’s core principles of fairness and justice.
He has devoted his whole life to fighting injustice and defending the powerless against the powerful, as his ten-year unpaid battle over the McLibel case goes to show. he has fought against the death penalty abroad, defended mining communities against pit closures, and taken up hundreds of employment rights and trade union cases. After being the Director of Public Prosecutions, he was elected MP for Holborn & St Pancras in 2015, later becoming Shadow Brexit Secretary. Defeating Boris Johnson is a huge task but Keir knows that if we bring our movement together and stay true to our values, we can win, and change Britain for the better.
As leader of the Labour Party, Keir will contine to fight for justice in all its forms: social justice, climate justice, economic justice.
There’s then three columns of endorsement from people such as Dawn French, Rokhsana Fiaz, the elected mayor of Lewisham, Laura Parker, the former National Coordinator of Momentum, Emma Hardy, the MP for Hull West and Hessle, Aneira Thomas, the first baby born on the NHS, Sarah Sackman, a public and environmental lawyer, Alf Dubs, the refugee campaigner, Paul Sweeney, the former MP for Glasgow North East, Ricky Tomlinson, David Lammy, the MP for Tottenham, Doreen Lawrence, Konnie Huq, the TV presenter and writer, Mick Antoniw, the member of the Welsh Assembly for Pontypridd, Ross Millard of the Sunderland band, the Futureheads, Lucio Buffone, a member of ASLEF and LGBT+ Labour national committee member, and the Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis.
The back page contains his ‘My Pledges To You’. He says
My promise is that I will maintain our radical values and work tirelessly to get Labour in to power – so that we can advance the interests of the people our party was created to serve. Based on the moral case for socialism, here is where I stand.
His pledges are as follows
Economic Justice.
Increase income tax for the top 5% of earners, reverse the Tories’ cuts in corporation tax and clamp down on tax avoidance, particularly of large corporations. No stepping back from our core principles.
2. Social Justice.
Abolish Universal Credit and end the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime. Set a national goal for wellbeing to make health as important as GDP; invest in services that help shift to a preventive approach. Stand up for universal services and defend our NHS. Support the abolition of tuition fees and invest in lifelong learning.
3. Climate Justice
Put the Green New Deal at the heart of everything we do. There is no issue more important to our future than the climate emergency. A Clean Air Act to tackle pollution locally. Demand international action on climate rights.
4. Promote Peace and Human Rights.
No more illegal wars. Introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international peace and justice.
5. Common Ownership.
Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.
6. Defend Migrant’s Rights.
Full voting rights for EU nationals. Defend free movement as we leave the EU. An immigration system based on compassion and dignity. End indefinite detention and call for the closure of centres such as Yarl’s Wood.
7. Strengthen Workers’ Rights and Trade Unions.
Work shoulder to should with trade unions to stand up for working people, tackle insecure work and low pay. Repeal the Trade Union Act. Oppose Tory attacks on the right to take industrial action and the weakening of workplace rights.
8. Radical Devolution of Power, Wealth and Opportunity.
Push power, wealth and opportunity away from Whitehall. A federal system to devolve powers – including through regional investment banks and control over regional industrial strategy. Abolish the House of Lords – replace it with an elected chamber of regions and nations.
9. Equality.
Pull down obstacles that limit opportunities and talent. we are the party of the Equal Pay Act, Sure Start, BAME representation and the abolition of Section 28 – we must build on that for a new decade.
10. Effective Opposition to the Tories.
Forensic, effective opposition to the Tories in Parliament – linked up to our mass membership and a professional election operation. Never lose sight of the votes ‘leant’ to the Tories in 2019. Unite our party, promote pluralism and improve our culture. Robust action to eradicate the scourge of antisemitism. Maintain our collective link with the unions.
This is all good, radical stuff, but there are problems. Firstly, his commitment to taking ‘robust action to eradicate the scourge of antisemitism’ and his decision, along with the rest of the Labour leadership contenders, to sign the Board of Deputies’ highly manipulative pledges, means that more people are going to be thrown out of the party without any opportunity to defend themselves, based only the allegations of anonymous accusers. We’ve seen innocents like Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Mike Sivier, Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni and so many others suspended and thrown out through the party’s kangaroo courts. One poor lady has died through the shock of being so expelled, even though she was a passionate anti-racist. This isn’t justice, it’s a pledge to renew the witch hunt.
As for promoting peace and human rights – how long will that last with the Board of Deputies demanding to supervise everything relating to Jews? Israel is a gross violator of human rights, but the Board has consistently defended it and its deplorable actions. Their demands that Labour adopt the IHRC definition of anti-Semitism was to stifle criticism of Israel by declaring them ‘anti-Semitic’. This pledge might be genuine, but the momentum anyone applies it to Israel the BoD will start howling ‘anti-Semitism!’ again and decent people will start getting expelled. Especially if they’re Jewish.
And his plan for giving Britain a federal constitution doesn’t seem to be a good one. From what I’ve read, it has been discussed before, and while it may solve some problems it creates others. It’s supposed to be no better than the current arrangement, which is why it hasn’t been implemented.
I also don’t back him on Europe. Oh, I’m a remainer at heart, but I think a large part of the reason we lost the election was because, instead of accepting the results of referendum, Labour pledged itself to return to the EU. This was partly on Starmer’s insistence. He is right, however, that EU nationals in the UK should have voting rights.
But I have to say that I don’t trust Starmer. His campaign team were all supporters of Owen Smith, one of those who challenged Corbyn’s leadership. They include Luke Akehurst, one of the leading figures of the Israel lobby within the Labour Party. Tony Greenstein a few days ago put up a piece arguing that, whatever he claims to the contrary, as Director of Public Prosecutions he always sided with the authorities – the police, military and intelligence services – against everyone else.
My fear is that if he becomes leader of the Labour Party, he will quietly forget these pledges and continue the Blair project.
John Newsinger, whose book The Blood Never Dried: A People’s History of the British Empire I blogged about yesterday, is one of the many anti-Zionist and Israel-critical Jews, whose voices the Tory and Jewish establishments are both keen to marginalise and silence. Decent, self-regarding Jewish anti-racists, who also oppose Zionism, like Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker, have been smeared as ‘self-hating’ and anti-Semitic because they expose the racism, apartheid and ethnic cleansing at the heart of the Israeli state. They have been purged from the Labour Party along with committed non-Jewish anti-racists like Ken Livingstone and the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, who have also criticised and denounced Israel. ‘Red’ Ken was particularly smeared, partly because he stated quite correctly that Hitler initially supported Zionism. This is factually correct, however unpalatable it is to modern supporters of Israel. Before the Nazis decided on their horrific ‘Final Solution’, they weren’t particularly concerned what happened to the Jews as long as they were cleansed from Germany. They therefore made a short-lived pact, the Ha’avah Agreement, with the Zionists to smuggle German Jews into Palestine, then under the British mandate. Tony Greenstein blogged about the Ha’avah agreement in support of Leninspart, showing that it is established, respectable documented history, and even posting photos of the extremely rare medal the Nazis struck to celebrate the visit of one of their storm troopers to the Jewish community in Palestine. He also quoted extensively from the memoirs of Theodor Herzl, Zionism’s founder, to show how he regarded the anti-Semites as the Zionists’ most valuable allies.
Newsinger is a long-time contributor to the conspiracies/parapolitics journal Lobster. He is the senior lecturer in History and Cultural Studies at Bath Spa University College. Although he also has his differences with the Trotskyite newt-fancier, he published a piece in that magazine showing very clearly, again with copious documentation, that Livingstone was right. He also describes Herzl’s positive attitude towards European anti-Semites as a source of support for the Zionists, and the Zionists’ initial collaboration with the Nazis in the Jewish settlement of Palestine in The Blood Never Dried. He writes
While the settlers on the ground inevitably looked to the Turkish government for support and protection, the international Zionist movement was concerned to persuade European governments to pressure the Turks into being more sympathetic. This involved developing a relationship not only with the rival European empires, but also with openly anti-Semitic governments and politicians. Indeed, according to one historian, Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism
regarded the anti-Semites as his most dependable friends and allies. Rather than attack and denounce anti-Semitism, Herzl declared that ‘the anti-Semites will be our most dependable friends, the anti-Semitic countries our allies.’
The Zionists, at this time, argued that there was no place for Jews in countries like Russia, Germany, France, Britain or the United States, and this sentiment was reciprocated by anti-Semites in those countries. They could cooperate on the basis of this shared understanding. (p. 123).
Of the collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis, Newsinger writes, pp. 129-30,
One other point worth making here is the extent to which the Zionist movement actually collaborate with the Nazis in the 1930s, in particular with the SS. To be blunt, they found they had a shared interest in the eviction of Jews from Germany. Reinhard heydrich no less, later to be the architect of the Holocaust, in September 1935 protclaimed his solidarity with Zionism in the SS newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps. The Nazis, he made clear, were “in complete agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry itself, the so-called Zionism, with its recognition of the solidarity of Jewry throughout the world, and the rejection of all assimilationist ideas”. Adolf Eichmann, a key figure in the destruction of Europe’s Jews, actually visited Palestine in 1937 at the invitation of the Zionists. The Gestapo worked closely with Mossad, the Zionist agency handling illegal immigration. In 1939 Heydrich was demanding that Mossad should be sending off “400 Jews per week … from Berlin alone”. This cooperation extended to the SS providing the Haganah with smuggled arms.” The moral bankruptcy of the Zionist movement is nowhere better demonstrated than in Ben Gurion’s response to the possibility of thousands of Jewish children being admitted into Britain after the Kristallnacht progrom in Germany. On 7 December 1938 he told a meeting of Zionist leaders
If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of those children, but also the history of the people of Israel.
With the Nazis, of course, there was to be no such choice.
Mike was also suspended, expelled from the Party and then smeared as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier – things that he is most definitely not – because he wrote a pamphlet, The Livingstone Delusion, defending Leninspart and showing that he was not an anti-Semite, and also actually right about the initial relationship between the Zionists and the Nazis.
But Newsinger’s book, well-documented and written by a proper, academic Jewish historian, shows that Mike, Tony Greenstein, Livingstone, and all the others were factually correct. It is the Zionists who are peddling anti-Semitic lies in order to cover up Zionism’s shameful record.
Mike’s expulsion, along with those of the other victims of the witch hunt, like Tony, Jackie, Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Martin Odoni, Cyril Chilson and so many, many other decent, innocent people, is a glaring injustice that needs to be reversed. Now.
Mike and the great Jewish anti-racist, anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein have both extensively covered and refuted the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunts against the Labour party. And as Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis published his latest attempt to revive them, they have both put on their blogs a series of posts which very effectively demolish the smears and the Chief Rabbi’s pretence that he’s motivated by a genuine fear for the safety of Britain’s Jews.
Here’s a photo Mike put up on his blog, from a tweet by Mirvis congratulating him on gaining 10 Downing Street.
And this image, of Mirvis gurning next to Netanyahu, or, as I’ve heard him described by one Jewish academic, ‘that bastard Netanyahu’, was tweeted by Zoe Zeero.
Her caption reads
With predictable timing, the same week that Labour announces they would no longer continue to sell weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia, out pops the Tory-donating, Netanyahu-supporting Rabbi to denounce Labour.
In 2015, not that long after the bombardment of Gaza which led to the loss of 2000 Palestinian lives including 500 children, Rabbi Mirvis wrote that ‘Israel would not survive without its weapons.
The rabbi, who used to live in Israel and is personal friend of both Boris Johnson as well as Netanyahu, has frequently defended Israel’s right to bomb Palestinians.
It is then followed by a series of internet addresses supporting her statement.
And Tony Greenstein put up this photo of Marie van der Zyl, the current president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, personally protesting against Chris Williamson speaking in Brighton.
Hold on! Wasn’t she down there protesting because the former Labour MP is a vicious anti-Semite? Well, ostensibly yes. Even though he isn’t a Jew-hater, as Greenstein, Mike, and Williamson’s many supporters, gentile and Jewish, have pointed out. Zyl, and the rest of the Board of Deputies, are Tories to a man and woman. They’re also arch-Zionists. It’s written into the Board’s constitution, so that anti-Zionist or simply Israel-critical Jews aren’t represented.
Mirvis and his predecessor as Chief Rabbi, R. Jonathan Sacks, and the Board and rest of the anti-Semitism smear merchants are Conservatives and ultra-Zionists. They hate and fear Corbyn and his supporters, left-wing, traditional Labour members and supporters like Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Mike, Martin Odoni and all the others, because they want to overturn four decades of Thatcherism. Four decades of our state industries, including the NHS, being sold off. Four decades of the unions being smashed, the poor, the unemployed and the disabled being demonised and denied proper state support. Four decades of racism against Blacks, Asians and now, most particularly, Muslims. Four decades of workers’ rights being eroded, and exploitative contracts introduced, all in the name of creating a fluid labour market. Four decades of poverty, misery, starvation, despair and death.
All for the profit of the very rich, the corporate giants donors giving money to Tory and New Labour coffers.
And let’s make it very clear: they certainly do not represent all of Britain’s Jews by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve blogged before about how unrepresentative the Chief Rabbinate and the Board are. They only represent the United Synagogue. They don’t represent secular Jews, who don’t attend worship, nor the Orthodox. And they really don’t represent the Haredi Jewish community, who have repeated written letters in support of Corbyn because Corbyn has always been a friend to Jews and defended their interests. In the case of the Haredi community, this was particularly demonstrated when he prevented a historic burial ground from being redeveloped.
David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has particularly pointed out that they don’t represent the Jewish poor, Jewish single mothers and other Jewish peeps facing the same issues of poverty, marginalisation and disenfranchisement as the wider British public. They don’t represent the Jews, who work in and support our NHS and public services, or who depend on them for their healthcare and supplies of electricity and water. The ordinary people, who use buses and trains to get to and from work, the shops or school.
Mirvis, van der Zyl and the rest only represent their community’s rich elite. As Tony Greenstein has pointed out, they risk encouraging the very anti-Semitism they claim to condemn by appearing to show that the Jewish community is composed of nothing but rich capitalists determined to stamp out any movement that wishes to empower working people.
Their actions and attitudes conform to the anti-Semitic stereotype the real Jew-haters and Fascists have used to stir up resentment and hatred against the Jewish people.
And as ultra-Zionists, Chief Rabbis Sacks and Mirvis, and van der Zyl and the Board, have followed Israel’s lead in using spurious claims of anti-Semitism as a weapon against legitimate criticism of Israel for its barbarous maltreatment of the Palestinians. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement were explicitly set up to counter criticism of Israel following its bombardment of Gaza. Corbyn has been attacked and vilified, not because he is a genuine anti-Semite, but because he wants a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
As do many Jews and Israelis, who have also been viciously smeared as anti-Semitic and self-hating, by people like Sacks, Mirvis and van der Zyl.
Don’t be taken in by the Tory lies and ultra-Zionist propaganda. These three pictures show the real motivations behind the anti-Semitism accusations. They also show that the Tories have nothing really left to use against Corbyn and Labour except these fake accusations.
Vote them out, and Corbyn and Labour in! Because Corbyn, unlike the Tories, will make a better Britain and, as the Labour pledges on race and faith shows, he is serious about tackling racism.
And that has always included defending Jews, fighting anti-Semitism and fighting for all the British people’s poor.
Last Saturday’s edition of the I also carried a story reporting that a Polish paper was planning to print stickers attacking gay rights. The article, ‘Paper prints anti-LGBT stickers’, by Samuel Osborne, on page 31, ran
A Polish newspaper plans to hand out “LGBT-free zone” stickers in its next issue. Gazeta Polska tweeted a preview of the stickers, which show a rainbow flag with a black cross over it.
The weekly publication, which has a circulation of about 11,000, openly supports the conservative governing Law and Justice Party (PiS). The stickers are due to be distributed on Wednesday with next week’s issue.
Georgette Mosbacher, the US ambassador to Poland, criticised the move.
She tweeted: “I am disappointed and concerned that some groups use stickers to promote hatred and intolerance.
“We respect freedom of speech, but we must stand together on the side of values such as diversity and tolerance.”
Earlier this year, another right-wing newspaper in Poland published an article on its front page on “how to recognise a Jew.”
This is chilling stuff, showing how quickly the Law and Justice Party, and similar governments in the rest of eastern Europe, are quickly dragging their nations into very real Fascism and anti-Semitism. This is the same government, remember, which against the express wishes of the mayor of Warsaw, allowed far right, Fascist organisations to march alongside ordinary, patriotic Poles on their national holiday celebrating Poland’s liberation from German, Austrian and Russian imperialism. The Law and Justice Party is strongly anti-gay, nationalistic and with a strong current of anti-Semitism. There was an international outcry a few years ago when they introduced a law criminalising the mention or discussion of Polish collaboration in the Holocaust. I gather, however, from a Polish commenter to this blog that the law doesn’t, however, prevent all discussion of Polish collaboration in this most horrendous of war crimes.
However, as with Viktor Orban’s similarly intolerant and Fascistic Fidesz government in Hungary, there’s been precious little denunciation of the Polish government’s increasing turn to Fascism from the official Jewish bodies in this country, like the Board of Deputies, or papers like the Jewish Chronicle. Why? Poland, Hungary and other eastern European countries are purchasing arms from the Israelis. And so readers of the Groaniad a few years ago were treated to a nauseating piece by Stephen Pollard, the Jewish Chronicle’s non-Jewish editor, informing them that Poland’s government wasn’t anti-Semitic. They were ‘good friends of Israel’.
Yes, they are ‘good friends of Israel’. And that’s a major cause of offence to many Israelis. Jewish bloggers and commenters like Tony Greenstein and David Rosenberg over here have reblogged stories from Israeli papers about Israeli human rights activists, who are outraged by the way any number of very real Fascists from right across the globe have been welcomed by the Israeli state. All they have had to do is pay an official visit to the Holocaust monument at Yad Vashem, and their own mass murders, assassinations, torture and mass imprisonments are discreetly overlooked.
Let’s also make it very clear that while anti-Semitism and racism is rising in eastern Europe, just as it is over here, not all Poles or eastern Europeans are racists or sympathetic to the far right. Way back in April, David Rosenberg put up an article describing a ceremony the previous day held at the Ghetto Fighters’ monument in Warsaw, celebrating the heroic uprising against the Nazis during World War II. The folks assembled for the event flew the red flags of the Jewish Bund, the Jewish socialist group, along with one for the International Brigade from the Spanish Civil War. This celebrated the Poles who left their country, to fight against Franco and the Fascists. One side of this flag was in Yiddish, commemorating the Jews, who fought in the Naftali Botwin company in the Dombrowski battalion. There was also a choir from one of the Warsaw schools, which has a multicultural curriculum. These were mostly, if not almost all non-Jewish, but they proudly sang the Yiddish songs of the Jewish resistance, like “We will Outlive Them!’
There were Poles, who courageously defied the Nazis and aided and rescued Jews, and are commemorated with their own memorial in Poland. And the Polish nation itself, along with the other Slav peoples, suffered their own horrific persecution under the Nazis. Hitler considered the Slavs, like the Jews and Gypsies, to be subhuman. An area of land extending deep into Ukraine was to be cleared of its traditional inhabitants and colonised by Germans. If the Nazis had won, the Slavs would have been reduced to an agricultural peasantry, whose only function was to provide food for their Nazi masters. Non-Jewish Poles were massacred, pressed into force labour, and had their villages destroyed. And Hitler had worse planned. He said that the war against the Poles would be a war of extermination.
But the re-emergence of real, vicious racism and intolerance in eastern Europe, which extends not just to gays and Jews, but also to Muslims and other non-Whites, is being ignored by the British Jewish establishment and the Israeli state. David Rosenberg has blogged about his concern for these nations’ Jewish minorities, as have other Jewish commenters, including senior academics. But the very real threat these communities face is ignored, because the Israeli state and the British Jewish establishment that supports it, is more determined to destroy genuinely anti-racist critics of Israel through false charges of anti-Semitism.
Which shows just how hypocritical organisations like Jewish Chronicle, the Board of Deputies and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism really are.
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