This is a video from Double Down News, one of the left-wing internet news channels that got our right-wing, establishment media so rattled. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is the head of the Jewish Voice for Labour, and another victim of the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunts. I think she has been purged from the Labour party because she dared to criticise Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. She states here quite clearly that she is the wrong type of Jew, the Jews who aren’t shown on the media giving their support to the Palestinians despite the fact that there are thousands of them and more across the world. Instead the media goes to the Chief Rabbis, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and, heaven forfend, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, all of whom have support for Israel written into their DNA, instead of talking to anti-Zionist Jews like herself. The media presents Jews as the frightened victims of the police guarding Jewish no-go zones. Instead, the opposite is almost true. Jews are demonstrating for Palestine like other, reasonable people. They include Holocaust survivors and the children of Holocaust survivors, concerned that what was done to them will not be inflicted on another people. As for being scared and frightened, she is scared and frightened because she, and people like her, have been abused and silenced. But what is going on in Gaza is not religious, it is an attack on people by settler-colonialism, which is perpetrating human rights abuses, ethnic cleansing and plausible genocide. As for the chant ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ she states that this is about Palestinians being between those borders, with the implication that this does not mean the extermination of the Israelis.
She is given hope by the many people marching and demonstrating for Gaza across the world, including America, and trying to shut down arms factories. Many of them are Jewish, such as the young man she met today. He had family in Israel, and it was the first demonstration he’d been on, but it was the first time he felt empowered to do so.
The video concludes with her appealing to people to support Double Down News as a way of avoiding right-wing media bias.
The video shows Jewish demonstrators, including Holocaust survivors, marching and holding placards making their opposition to the genocide in Gaza very clear.
We’ve seen Israel-critical Jews smeared as anti-Semites by the official Jewish organisations in this country, like the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the United Synagogue and that rag the Jewish Chronicle. These foul lies have been picked up by Stalin Starmer and used to purge the Labour party of dissenting Jewish voices and the gentiles who supported them. Incredibly principled people like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and so many, many others. About 3/5 or 4/5 of the people purged from Labour for anti-Semitism were Jews. In addition to this, there is the media blackout on the military aid Britain seems to be giving to Israel. Mike carried a report on his site last week about nine Israeli planes landing in Britain. Private Eye in its ‘Letter From…’ column a few fortnights ago reported that British airbases in Cyprus were being used by American planes en route to the Middle East. Mike asked whether ordinary Brits had been asked about Britain being involved in the Gaza genocide. Well, no, we weren’t, and anyone who does will be accused of anti-Semitism and, if Muslim, an Islamist and fanatical supporter of Hamas. Even if they’re just going by John Lennon’s words in another grotty war: ‘All we are saying is, ‘Give peace a chance’. It’d be great to see that translated into Hebrew and Arabic.
But this story from Middle East Eye shows that anti-Zionist Jews in Germany now seem to be suffering the thin end of the wedge of corporate/state persecution. And let’s be clear here – German Jews have every right to be critical of Israel. Before the Second World War Zionism was a minor movement in European Jewry. Most Jews wanted to stick to the homelands of their birth and fight to be accepted as fellow citizens, not to migrate to a country they’d never seen, to displace people who’d never harmed them, and who belonged to a religion many Jews believed had treated them better than Christianity. The Jewish groups the Nazis really feared were the German Jewish ex-servicemen’s association. These were courageous men who had fought for their country, and who patriotism was indisputable. They couldn’t convincingly claim that Jews had betrayed Germany in front of old soldiers with war wounds and the medals to match.
And the Zionists were quite prepared to sacrifice European Jewish lives if it served their purpose. David Ben Gurion said that he didn’t care if the Nazis exterminated half the Jews in Europe, if the other half went to Israel. And then there was Rudolf Kasztner, the head of the Hungarian Zionists, who made a deal to send Jewish Hungarians to the death camps if some could go instead to Israel. As for the trial of that abomination Erich Eichner, the nascent Israeli state also followed other western countries in recruiting Gestapo agents for their intelligence services during the Cold War. For more information, please go over to Tony’s blog and start reading. It all comes from respectable historical sources and is minutely documented.
Israel gets very strong support from Germany, no doubt motivated from guilt over the Holocaust. Germany was the no. 1 holiday destination for young Israelis because of how well they were treated. But this positive attitude shouldn’t exempt Israel from justified criticism nor permit the persecution of German Jews who do not share this attitude to Israel.
‘A state-owned bank in Germany has frozen the account of a Jewish anti-Zionist organisation and demanded the group disclose a list of all its members. Judische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost, or Jewish Voice for Just Peace in the Middle East, announced on Tuesday that its account with Berliner Sparkasse was frozen on 26 March with immediate effect. “In 2024, Jewish money is once again being confiscated by a German bank: Berliner Sparkasse freezes Jewish Voice account,” Jewish Voice said in a statement on its social media platforms. The group received a letter from the bank informing it that a full list of all members, including adresses, tax documentation, income statements and other internal documents, needed to be submitted to Berliner Sparkasse by 5 April to “update customer data”. “It’s a very creepy letter. You’d think they are working together with the state criminal police bureau,” Wieland Hoban, chairman of Jewish Voice, told MEE.’
I dare say you’ve seen the various spluttering in the media and online. There’s been frothing outrage on the Islamophobic right after the events of Wednesday night. At the same time as the abortive debate on the SNP’s motion for a ceasefire in Gaza, there was a Stop the War protest outside parliament as well as other protests outside MP’s constituency offices. As a result, GB News and other right-wingers have been accusing MPs, and particularly the Labour party, of cowardice for supposedly giving in to Islamist demands. GB News in particular has been ranting about how Britain is now under Islamist mob rule, a stance echoed and repeated by others on the nationalist/populist right.
There are several criticisms of this view which clearly demonstrated it to be completely false.
Firstly, it wasn’t an Islamist protest. It was a protest against Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in Gaza, present as a reprisal for Hamas’ butchery of the kids at a music festival. As such, it naturally involved a large number of Muslims. Which is pretty much as you’d expect, as Muslims are keenly interested and deeply upset by the treatment of their coreligionists in Israel and the Occupied Territories. But the Palestinians aren’t just Muslims – they’re also Christians, and there are any number of videos on YouTube of Christian clergy and lay people being abused, spat at and struck by bigoted Israelis. This is the face of Israel that the Israel lobby and the official Jews of the Chief Rabbinate, Board of Deputies, Jewish Chronicle and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism don’t want westerners knowing about. They want you to believe that the only people persecuting Christians in the Holy Land are Muslims. It’s true that Christians are persecuted by Muslims, but they’re also persecuted by Israeli settlers and quite often the people literally standing between Christians worshipping in church and an mob of Israeli fanatics intent on destruction is the Muslim doorman. The secular Israeli state also persecute the Orthodox Jews of Jerusalem’s Old Jewry. These are the descendants of 19th century Jewish immigrants to the Holy Land, who came to practise their faith in the land of their ancestors. They reject, however, Israel as a secular state and, like their brethren and sisters overseas, believe that Israel will only be restored by divine will under the Mashiach – the Messiah. You can find videos on YouTube of them being tormented and beaten up by the IDF. If you want to know how Israel really treats the Palestinians, I strongly recommend reading the blogs and books produced by Israel-critical Jews, like Ilan Pappe, Norman Finkelstein, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni and so on. Also, the marchers for Palestine included a number of severely normal White Brits. The Islamophobes have made much of Starmer being confronted by ‘Islamist’ protesters on the train and on the station in Edinburgh. Well, I’ve seen the video, too, and most of them looked White to me.
Now I do think that the right does have a point when it comes to the massed protests outside MPs constituency offices. It does look like intimidation after MP David Freer announced he was resigning because of the abuse and threats he and his family suffered. This comes after the murder of Amess by an Islamist fanatic, as well as the attack on Lib Dem MP a few years ago by a nutter with a Samurai sword in which the MPs assistant was tragically killed, as well as the assassination of Jo Cox back in 2015 by a native British rightist. I agree with the Stop the War Coalition that such protests should not be banned, as it would isolate MPs from public opinion, but believe it was wrong to do so in this case. Not least because it hands ammunition to a government determined to curb any kind of public protest.
Secondly, the Labour party doesn’t appear to have given in, whatever it looks like from outside. From what has been said by critics of Labour’s behaviour towards the SNP motion, it appears like the opposite, carefully crafted to look like a call for a ceasefire. According to a message I put up from the StWC yesterday, Starmer presented the motion after a phone call with Israeli PM Isaac Herzog. Herzog is in no way a peacenik, and I’ve come across several quotes from him indicating that he has an absolute and unyielding hatred of the Palestinians. It looks like Starmer deliberately added his amendments knowing that this would upset the SNP and they’d walk out. Damo Kernow, the man from the ancient British kingdom of Cornwall, has put up several videos about this. He notes that Labour’s amendment stripped out any criticism of Israel and removes the stipulation that the ceasefire should be immediate. He also notes that the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, allowed the amendment to go ahead despite breaking parliamentary rules he declared were antiquated. These were rules that had last been amended in the 1980s during the IRA bombing campaign. Hoyle has very strong pro-Israel views, and proudly tells the world how his grandfather was one of the founders of Labour Friends of Israel. This now looks less like parliament caving in to Muslim opinion than a carefully crafted piece of sabotage designed to look like genuine support for a Palestinian ceasefire. Which is what you’d expect from a master of lies and deceit like Starmer. As the Native Americans used to say in Westerns during their pow-wows with the cavalry, ‘White man speak with forked tongue’. Well, definitely not all White men, but definitely in the case of Starmer. He’s made a career out of it.
But I don’t doubt that there were Islamists among the marchers. Any kind of left-wing protest attracts firebrands and extremists. I was at secondary school during the St. Paul’s riots in Bristol in 1980/81. Our school fortunately wasn’t affected, but I do remember a White guy standing on the stone square supporting the trees lining the school entrance, ranting down a megaphone trying to incite the kids to join the rioters. Mahyar Tousi put up a video showing a group of Muslims waving the black banner of Jihad, while telling the cops and everyone else that it was merely the shahada, the Muslim creed. It wasn’t, and waving an enemy banner is outlawed, so they should have been arrested. But these are the bigots and extremists, who I’ve no doubt comprised only a small minority of the crowd.
And the statement that Britain has now fallen and is now under the Islamist heel is more than a little exaggerated. Last time I looked, King Charles was still ensconced on the throne, not a caliph. Rishi Sunak is still PM – unfortunately – and not a mullah, as in Iran. I live in Bristol, which is a multicultural city with its fair share of mosques, as well as Hindu temples and Sikh gurdwaras. I haven’t seen any rampaging Muslims hordes up my way, nor from anywhere else in the city. I’ve mentioned how Patrick Christys, one of the esteemed fixtures of GB News, more Grievous Bodily than Great British, put up a video calling for sharia law to be banned. Well, last time I looked, sharia law had no official standing and only five per cent of Muslims wanted it introduced. Over 70 per cent of Muslims polled believe Islam was compatible with British society. But Grievous Bodily News has form when it comes to alarmism and scaremongering, so it’s no surprise that they’re doing it now about the protests for Gaza.
I do think, however, that we also need to be very cautious and suspicious of some of those marching. I’ve no doubt that the Islamists are trying to exploit massed Muslim opinion against the war in Gaza in the same way some Marxist sects used to practice ‘revolutionary entryism’ and deliberately infiltrate conventional, social democratic parties like Labour in order to disrupt and radicalise it. The critical event that mobilised specifically Muslim politics in Britain, according to the scholar Alfred Kepel in his book, The Revenge of God, was the confected outrage over the Satanic Forces. This was falsely accused of blasphemy by the Ayatollah Khomeini as a cynical political gesture to take the spiritual leadership of the Islamic world away from Saudi Arabia. It has led to death threats and attempts on the lives, some of them all-too successful, of the author, Salman Rushdie and his publishers. I can remember the mass book burnings in Bradford, and the rantings of its leaders, Mohammed Akhthar and Kalim Zaddiqie. Akhthar’s pamphlet, Be Careful With Mohammed, was a full-scale attack on Christianity and western secular democracy, and exaltation of Islam as absolutely perfect. It ended with a short section ‘What Western Intellectuals Think of Islam’, containing a series of quotes condemning the religion from various writers and public figures. As for Zaddiqui, He was filmed in a BBC documentary, The Trouble with Islam, telling his congregation that ‘British society is a monstrous killing machine, and killing Muslims comes very easily to them’. When he was challenged, Zaddiqui muttered some nonsense about the publication of Rushdie’s notorious book marking the beginning of ‘a holocaust of Muslims’. That was 30 and more years ago, and it’s no more come true than Alex Jones’ telling the world that Obama was going to become a dictator and put ordinary, White Christian Americans in FEMA camps. I don’t doubt that some of the Islamists who joined the marches are considering ways in which they can spread their disaffection and hate amongst bog-standard ordinary Muslims who simply want peace and dignity for the Palestinians.
We cannot let the forces of hate use the marches to spread fear of the Islamic threat on one hand, and Islamist disaffection on the other. The marches are not Islamist mob rule, and are not to be presented or used as such.
Rakib Ehsan, Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong About Ethnic Minorities (London: Forum 2023).
I first came across this in an interview Ehsan himself gave about it on YouTube. I can’t remember now what channel it was on, but I think it may have been the SDP’s as Ehsan’s politics seem similar to theirs – left-wing economically but conservative socially. He also says at the outset that he tries to bridge the gap between Blue Labour and Red Tories. I have very strong issues with both of those groups, as they cloak their Thatcherite economics that disenfranchise and exploit working people in the language of the left. See Philip Blonde’s Red Tory. The book is directed very firmly at the Labour party. Ehsan sees the party as having abandoned class based activism in the wake of the BLM movement for divisive identity politics imported from America. This is a country that has a very different history and political culture from the UK, and this is going to cost them the votes of the very ethnic minorities they seek to court.
Contrary to identitarian propaganda, Britain and its people aren’t racist, although racism still exists and needs tackling where it does. The supposed privilege Whites enjoy over people of colour disappear when examined in detail. Some ethnic minorities are surpassing Whites in school grades, pay and employment. There are also differences in achievement between White demographic groups. Working class White English males are nearly at the bottom, with only Irish Travellers below them. Chinese and Indians outperform Whites. Black Africans are also outperforming Whites academically. There is no overarching ‘BAME’ community, as these are very different peoples who have different levels of achievement. Black Africans, for example, are much more successful than Afro-Caribbean peoples. The success and growing achievements of people of colour is being obscured by the grievance narrative that they are all being held back by systemic racism. As a man of mixed Bangladeshi-Uttar Pradeshi heritage, he felt particularly insulted when Jeremy Corbyn declared that only Labour could unlock the potential of Britain’s Black and Asian communities. This attitude, he warns, is going to cost the Labour party the votes of Britain’s non-White communities. Rather than being obsessed with racial grievances, these communities value the two parent family, religious faith and are patriotically British. It is these values, that are despised by the woke left, that produces their increasing academic, economic and social successes. This success should be celebrated, and the White population, which is trailing behind in many instances, could, he dares to suggest, take a leaf out of their book. At the last election, one million people of colour abandoned Labour for the Tories.
Brexit Not Fascist Project of Nostalgic White Supremacists
He is also a Brexiteer and is at pains to argue that Brexit wasn’t the project of Fascist, backward-looking Whites. Many of the Whites who voted for it did so because they came from communities who believed the country had been harmed by the EU, not because of immigration. And a large proportion of the non-White population also voted Leave. One in three Asians did so. They feared the immigration to this country of large numbers of people from parts of Europe which were much less tolerant of non-Whites. They also wanted Britain to establish greater contact with the Commonwealth.
Ethnic Disparities Based on Other Factors Apart from Racism
As for the disparities between ethnic groups in sport, jobs and education, some of this is down to class, and differences in culture and job expectations. For example, Bangladeshis largely do better than Whites at school, but come from a very traditional culture that sees women’s place as being in the home. There is thus a relative lack of Bangladeshi women in the workplace. He also discusses the question of the absence of British Asians in cricket played at the county and national level. This comes from the allegations of racism at Yorkshire CC. He states that this was clearly a case of racism, and that the club was racist hellhole. But he quotes several British Asian cricketers that there are particular attitudes in British Asian culture against playing cricket professionally. Asian parents want good, secure jobs for their children – jobs like doctor or dentist. Professional cricket is very insecure, and so their parents will try and steer their kids away from it. As for the police, in many instances it’s a matter of family tradition, with children following parents and relatives in the force. Thus, White people tend to predominate simply because of family tradition. And on the subject of the cops, he cites evidence that shows that most people of colour are satisfied with their local police forces. Indeed, more non-Whites trust the cops more than White British. This does not include the Metropolitan Police, who are distrusted because of their proven racism, misogyny and other forms of bigotry. He believes that this could be tackled by breaking it up into smaller, local forces, and letting local forces also run the parts of the Met that extend into surrounding counties like Kent.
Regarding Islam, he cites the statistic that three-quarters of Muslims believe that Britain is a good place to be one. This is much more than the general British population. More Muslims are also concerned about the threat of Islamism than Whites. He also criticises the Labour MP Naz Shah for claiming that the Prevent programme was resented by Muslims for demonising them when the stats showed that 53 per cent of Muslims weren’t aware of it.
Black and Asians Patriotic Brits
The Black and Asian communities were also generally more patriotic and had a greater trust in British democracy, although this was much less so in the younger generation. 78 per cent of older Asians had faith in British democracy, but only 58 per cent of the younger generation, just a bit lower than Whites at 62 per cent. He put this down to the older generation coming from countries which were unstable with very repressive regimes, tracing the history in particular of the British South Asian community. This began after the War with Sikhs from the Punjab, who had been displaced from Pakistan and given poor quality land in India. They were then followed by Gujuratis seeking employment in the NHS. And then came the ethnic cleansing of the Ugandan Asian community by Idi Amin and his policy of Africanisation. The South Asians in Africa were employed as middle ranking officials and businessmen between the White colonial officials at the top and indigenous Africans at the bottom. There were already immigration restrictions in place, but they were admitted by Ted Heath. I’ve heard again and again, including from Asian speakers at our local church, that the Ugandan Asian community is still grateful to Britain because of this.
He also has immense respect for the Queen and King Charles. The Queen had a strong sense of duty to the Commonwealth, while our current liege lord is strongly multicultural. He said in his coronation speech that Britain is a ‘community of communities’ and that he wanted to be known as ‘Defender of Faith’, meaning all Britain’s religious communities, not just the Anglican church. On the subject of which, he notes the strong contribution made by Black Africans to keeping it alive in the face of the massive secularisation of the White population. He states that you are far more likely to get a sense of the deep antiquity of Christianity in Britain in an African cafe eating Jellof rice in London than in many White communities. It is ridiculous to blame the Queen for the evils committed under imperialism and colonialism, and Britain’s non-Christian religions are certainly not resentful of Christianity. He takes issue with the secularists in the Labour party, who feel that religion is outmoded and dangerous. They are actively putting non-Whites off, because these cultures have a very strong religious identity. More Muslims see their religion as important to their identity than Whites. The Labour party has a strong tradition of Christian Socialism, and these non-Christian religious communities would like to see it revived.
Importance of Education to Indians and Chinese
He also puts the growing success of the Indian and Chinese communities in education and professionally to strong families and religion. He cites statistics showing that children from stable, two parent homes are less likely to join criminal gangs, are more emotionally stable, and do better at school and in the world of work. Far fewer Asian children live in single parent families than Whites. They, and the Chinese, are also very aspirational. They want their children to do well, make sure they work hard at school and in the case of the Chinese make sure they keep away from bad influences. They also have the support of the wider community, with elders actively taking an interest in the welfare and progress of the young. He does not decry single mothers, recognising the immense hard work so many do to raise their children, and that the relaxation of the divorce laws were brought in for the very good reason of allowing women in particular to escape abusive marriages. But it has had a devastating effect on marriage and the family in Britain. 63 per cent of Afro-Caribbean children live in one parent families, and 43 per cent of Black African. 25 per cent of Whites also are being raised in families largely without a father. This is holding these groups back, and he dares to suggest that Whites could take a leaf out of the Asian communities in starting to value marriage and the family more. I am in complete agreement, and don’t think this is at all controversial.
On the subject of religion, he states that he has mixed views on the subject, wondering if it really is outmoded and dangerous, especially after the terrorist attacks of 7/7 and the massacre of schoolgirls by a suicide bomber at the Ariana Grande concert. But the stats also show that people, who have a strong religious faith are generally more mentally stable, more optimistic and with a higher degree of life satisfaction than atheists. He also believes that respect for the cultures of ethnic minorities should not be used as a pretext for avoiding tackling crime and extremist attitudes in those communities, which could be excused by their perpetrators as part of their culture.
Britain Not Racist Country
He also cites the statistics showing that Britain is not a racist country. A large majority of Whites -well above 70 per cent – believe that Englishness is a matter of values rather than colour. The number of people linking Englishness to White ethnicity is low, and fell markedly in the last decade. Britain has robust laws against racism and discrimination, and the level of real racism, including abuse and violence, is lower in Britain than in many continental countries like France, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. This, he claims, shows the falsity of the Remain argument that views the continent as a paradigm of anti-racism in contrast with evil Britain. Anti-Black racism also isn’t confined to Whites. Eight per cent of Blacks in Britain have experienced discrimination at the hands of other Blacks. 84 per cent of Brits have no problem with a person of colour heading the government. Rishi Sunak, regardless of his wretched political policies, is an example of Asian success, who should be celebrated. His parents both worked in the medical sector – I think his father was a pharmacist. Sunak was privately educated, rising professionally and politically.
This is where the book is really controversial. He takes these stats showing that Britain isn’t a racist country from a variety of reports, including those of CRED and Sewell. The last was commissioned under the Tories, and came under widespread attack for supposedly erasing the reality of racism in Britain. This was despite it being written by mostly Black and Asian academics. Various Labour MPs accused it of being Fascist, with one even Tweeting an image of a Klan meeting underneath. The Black and Asian politicians, who do not accept that Britain is racist, like Kemi Badenoch, are subjected to horrendous racist abuse as Uncle Toms and worse language. He himself has been attacked in these terms. His favourite has been that he is a ‘Muslim Mosley’. Well, I’d say that the Muslim Mosleys were the Islamists convincing lost and alienated Muslims to join Daesh, or march around our cities demanding sharia law while waving the black flag of jihad. The British left, and primarily the Labour party, has taken over dangerous and divisive identity politics imported from America. What many of the people of colour demanding these policies want is not equality, but preferential treatment. He is also suspicious of many of those attacking Islamophobia, as he suspects that many of those are Islamists using it as a strategy to introduce aspects of sharia law. I think he’s right here, as the mass protests against the autistic schoolboy for Islamophobia when he scuffed a Qur’an, a horrendous blasphemy under Islam, certainly shows. He is against the European Court of Human Rights ruling that businesses are allowed to discriminate against women wearing the hijab if this threatens to be disruptive. He points out that the hijab simply covers the face. It is not like the niqub, which covers the whole body, including the face. The ruling threatens to prevent devout Muslim women from finding work outside the home and bring them into contact with mainstream society.
Attacks on Corbyn
Naturally for a man of the right he gives Jeremy Corbyn a good kicking. He claims that Labour lost the 2019 election due to his inability to tackle the anti-Semitism crisis and the promotion of identitarian politics. But this wasn’t the case. Corbyn had very wide support and paradoxically a greater share of the vote than Blair and New Labour, regardless of the fact that it was the poorest electoral performance for the party since the 1930s. What brought him down was a very manufactured campaign by the British right and the official Jews of the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate and various pro-Israel groups. They were alarmed by his championing of the Palestinians against the oppression and ethnic cleansing of the Israeli state, and so did everything they could to smear him as an anti-Semite. Corbyn has a long career of standing up for Jewish Brits, but this counted for nothing to people who regard any opposition or criticism of Israel as an anti-Semitic. As for the real anti-Semites in the Labour party, the true nature of the crisis was kept hidden from him by right-wing intriguers and traitors within the party. People like Margaret Hodge, who admitted she did everything she could to stop Labour being elected.
Rejection of Labour’s Proposed New Equality Act
He respects the Labour party for the anti-racist legislation it passed in the 70s as well as the Equality Act passed by Blair, but is firmly against Labour’s promised new Equality Act demanding affirmative action. The majority of Black and Asian people do not want or need it. Indeed, he claims that there is a suspicion that Labour will hold people of colour back in order to stop their success invalidating the claim that their lagging behind Whites is all due to racism. He is also critical of organisations like the Runnymede Commission pushing this narrative. Twenty years ago the Commission praised Britain for its multicultural tolerance. Now it claims that Britain is marred by deep structural racism. But British society isn’t racist and hasn’t become worse. It is just that the Runnymede Commission, in order to keep itself relevant, has joined BLM and the other grievance mongers. Labour’s embrace of these groups and individuals, such Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, is putting voters, including those of colour, off. And they may well abandon the party because of it.
The Trans Issue
He also has controversial views on the trans issue. He states that trans people should enjoy the same protection from abuse, discrimination and violence as other protected groups. However, transwomen should not be allowed to enter women’s private spaces such as prisons, toilets and changing rooms. In many ways, this is common sense as trans identified biological male rapists have been put in women’s prisons in California and Scotland, and there has been an outcry against it. The SNP lost much of their support when they also placed these dangerous men in women’s prisons. It does conflict, however, with the view that ‘trans women are women’, even if they are not biologically, and so trans activists and supporters will naturally find it very offensive. And he is also not afraid to call divorce parties degenerate as part of the collapse of marriage and the nuclear family in the west.
Radical Attacks on Marriage and the Family
This is a controversial but necessary book. Controversial because it overturns the received wisdom about British ethnic minorities as the victims of systemic racism needing aid and allyship from mainstream White British society. The statistics about the beneficial effects of growing up in two-parent family are almost certainly correct. They’ve been reproduced several times before. This will jar with some on the radical left. There has been an attack on traditional European marriage since the time of the 18th century French philosophes. Free love instead of marriage was embraced by 19th century Romantics like Shelley and Byron. It has also been part of the Anarchist critique of capitalism as well as Marxism. Marx states in The Communist Manifesto that it degrades women and believed it was dying out among the working class in his own time. This was further expanded by Engels in his The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State, which also drew on the Das Mutterrecht of the German antiquarian, Backhausen. Backhausen had believed that society had passed through several phases of development – a communal society without institutional marriage, followed by matriarchy and then finally patriarchy. Archaeologists and historians have since rejected this. Historical research has also shown that marriage very definitely wasn’t dying out among the 19th century working class. Nevertheless, marriage has been attacked by radical activists. I can remember the controversy about Pebble Mill, a BBC lunchtime magazine programme in the 70s, when they invited on a couple who very definitely believed that marriage was dying out, and that this was a very good thing indeed. Over the other side of the Channel, the Postmodernist Marxist Althusser attacked marriage and the family as part of the sociological infrastructure of capitalism and feudalism.
Benefits of Religious Faith
Similarly there is abundant evidence supporting the view that religion is beneficial to one’s wellbeing. A few years ago medical researchers claimed that having a faith in general added six months to one’s life. And back when the New Atheists were beginning their assault on religion neurologists found that people who had mystical experiences were generally in no worse mental health than the rest of the population. This obviously isn’t something secular and atheist activists want to hear. Nor do I think they really want to hear that in general, non-Christian minorities don’t have an issue with institutional, public Christianity. The claim that they do tends to come from secularist and atheist organisations like the Humanist Society as part of their project of removing Christianity and other forms of religion from the public sphere. The philosopher Bruce Trigger tackled this subject in his Religion in Public over decade. He claimed that many Jews did not want the bishops removed from the House of Lords because, so long as they were, it created a public space for religion in politics.
Ethnic Success Also Due to Differences in Culture and History
I also think that the stats showing that Britain is not an intrinsically racist country is likely to be true, even if the report that argued this was commissioned by the Tories. If it is untrue, then it has to be shown to be untrue through further sociological research and polling. The argument that it must be the case from ethnic disparities is false, because as Thomas Sowell has shown, different ethnic groups have different attitudes and economic and professional specialities due to their history and quite often geographical location. The Chinese and Gujuratis are, like the Jews, ‘middleman cultures’ strongly based on trade. They therefore tend to surpass other groups in business, as do the Lebanese in South America. Ehsan himself argues that the success of various ethnic groups depends on the cultural resources and the attitudes and material advantages they may have enjoyed when they left their country of origin. Ugandan Asians have prospered, despite having been robbed of nearly everything they owned by Amin and his thugs, because they were business and professional people. Afro-Caribbeans, however, generally speaking lack this entrepreneurial and professional background and so lag behind. And the idea that all White people are privileged is going to ring particularly hollow for White working class boys and the hollowed out coastal towns and post-industrial communities. The instant dismissal of the claim that Britain isn’t racist is based on prejudice rather than genuine scepticism.
Changes in Patterns of Racism Since the Experience of the First Afro-Caribbean Migrants
The attitude of the identitarian left that Britain must be intrinsically racist seems to come mostly from the experience of Afro-Caribbeans, who are generally more distrustful of the police and democracy than other groups. They have indeed, along with the first generation Asian immigrants, suffered real racism in the form of institutional discrimination – no dog, no blacks, no Irish – racist bullying and violence, particularly from real Fascists in the shape of the BNP, National Front and other lowlifes. It is Afro-Caribbeans in particular who lag behind Whites. This history has bred an attitude among many that Britain is racist and hostile, backed up with convoluted and contrived arguments from the Postcolonial set. This has become part of the general culture of the left, because of the long tradition of anti-racism and anti-imperialism. It looks plausible, because for over four decades now the received view has been that Britain is racist to a greater or lesser extent, even though the situation has changed and is now becoming much more complex. Diane Abbott didn’t want to discuss inter-ethnic minority conflict and racism, but this attitude is contradicted by rioting last year between Hindus and Muslims in Leicester. Ehsan points out that this shows that ethnic conflict isn’t just something confined to Whites. And there is now and industry of grievance mongers in academia and woke capitalism, whose careers are centred around portraying White Britain as innately oppressive, that Blacks and other people of colour are always victims and that Whites should feel guilty as racial oppressors tainted with the blood of the indigenous peoples they exterminated and enslaved.
Multiculturalism Pulling Ethnic Groups Apart, Not Together
Ehsan notes that while Britain may be more tolerant than other countries, there is still a problem in pulling the different ethnic groups together. He cites further statistics shown that a majority of Brits feels more needs to be done on this count, and argues that was is needed is a common set of shared values. But this is one of the problems of multiculturalism. Blair recruited as his community representatives people who very definitely not representative of their communities and determined to push their own sectarian or ethnic politics. And the attack on the welfare state has meant that different communities are competing against each other for government funding and aid. For all his faults, Corbyn did represent a return to class politics, which is another reason why there was such a concerted attempt to remove him. If the working class in general receives proper welfare support, there is less jealousy and resentment between ethnic groups, and so Whites in particular are less inclined to heed racists like the BNP.
Blue Labour and Attacks on the Welfare State
As for the position that government action is needed to strengthen the family, I agree. But this goes further than simply making it a matter of tax. And I am very suspicious of the right when they claim to strengthen the family. All too often it is based around the view that it’s declined due to the welfare state, and so the first thing they do is cut welfare support even further while loudly crying, like Thatcher, that it’s more self-help and will make people more self-reliant.
He is critical of the Tories as a corrupt group wrecking the economy for their own benefit and hope that Labour will put forward pro-working class policies. But this won’t come from Blue Labour any more than it will supposedly come from Red Tories. What comes from the Blairites and the other Thatcherite infiltrators is more privatisation, including that of the NHS, more cuts to the welfare state and more attempts to strangle the unions, all of which you can see in Stalin’s leadership of the Labour party.
This book is necessary as it argues against the current racial narrative from a man of colour, who clearly believes that such narratives are damaging the Labour party. Certainly racial attitudes have changed radically in my lifetime and it is time that the debate recognised this. But at the same time, as Ehsan is careful to state, racism still exists and needs tackling where it does.
This short video from Middle East Eye came up on my YouTube feed yesterday, and I immediately felt I had to put it up. It contradicts the right-wing propaganda that the pro-Palestine marches are displays of anti-Semitic hate, organised by Muslims determined to use it as a trojan horse to bring down western democracy and secularism.
It’s of a Jewish chap talking to the camera, stating that he’s there with the Jewish bloc to support Gaza, and peace and justice for everyone. What is being done to Gaza cannot be justified, not the attacks on hospitals and the deaths of children. He was with the protesters a few weeks ago, and they were wearing the kippahs – the Jewish skullcaps – and so obviously Jewish. A group of Muslims came up to them and said that after Palestine was freed they could come to their homes, because Jews and Muslims are brothers. He would therefore encourage other Jews to come down to the march, wearing their kippahs. They’d experience nothing but love.
Well, what can you say? The right-wing media, politicos, including Starmer in the Labour party, and the British Jewish establishment – the Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies will definitely not want this to be shown on mainstream news. He’s very definitely the wrong sort of Jew, and so will get the pro-Likudniks in British politics very upset. Which is all the more reason to watch it.
I’ve just been watching the BBC news. I tend to avoid because of the Corporation’s rightwing bias, but this time I think the Beeb has done a good job in its coverage of today’s protests calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This will no doubt send the Conservative guardians of public opinion and morality even more bug-eyed and apopleptic at the Beeb than they are already. They’ve been complaining that it’s too left-wing and biased in favour of the Palestinians, and in today’s coverage the Corporation broke another taboo: it showed members of the Jewish community at the protests. These included members of the ultra-Orthodox community for whom Israel can only be refounded by the Mashiach – the Messiah. Until then they are commanded to remain in exile, working for the good of the city – the wider community in which they live. It also included more secular or assimilated Jews, who politely explained that there were many Jews deeply concerned about the conflict and who disliked the way it was dividing Jews and their Muslim friends. They looked forward to peace and the renewal of friendship between the two communities. The people making these common sense statements included a bloke wearing big, bright red specs of the kind you only used to see on Elton John in the 1970s and then Timmy Mallet, and a senior lady who reminded me a bit of June Whitfield.
This is not what the right and the supporters of Israel want to hear, and they definitely don’t want you to see it. Netanyahu has passed a law saying that every Jew is a citizen of Israel. Except those Jews from the diaspora who enter the country with liberal opinions about how the Palestinians should be treated. They tend to be shown the door and put on the next available flight back home really quickly. The various official Jews – by which I mean those groups and institutions that claim to speak for the Jewish community – have been very concerned to spread the idea that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel and that the country is very important to their Jewish identity. Now I note that none of the Jews interviewed said anything about the Israeli state’s decades’ long persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the commentary from the Beeb’s journo made the usual platitudes about a two-state solution. Pro-Palestinian activists have moved on from this. They feel it’s unrealizable, and want a single state uniting both Jews and Palestinians where both are equal under the law. As the Palestinians are in theory and Likudnik propaganda, but very definitely not de facto. But I suppose this is enough on mainstream British news in the present circumstances. The Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies of British Jews would, I believe, very definitely not want these decent people to be given a voice on national television. For the same reason they blew their tops when Jeremy Corbyn went and spent an agreeable Passover Seder with the good folks at Jewdas. As for friendship and Jews and Muslims uniting together to protest the Israeli state’s brutality, well, the awesome Tony Greenstein put up a piece about the Community Security Trust and their thuggery at an anti-Israel protest years ago. They forcibly broke up and separated Jews and Muslims, and weren’t at all reluctant to use their fists. One elderly rabbi got punched in the face. The CST was set up to steward Zionist demonstrations and protect Jews and Jewish institutions like schools, synagogues and cemeteries. But when they use violence against peaceful members of the British Jewish public, you could be forgiven for wondering who was going to protect the Jewish community from them.
And Starmer will definitely be annoyed at them getting airtime. He doesn’t want a ceasefire, because it will encourage Hamas. He’s been joined in that opinion by Our Favourite Internet Non-Historian. This has enraged and upset very many people in Labour. The number of local councillors who have resigned is now up to 36, and the heads of two local authorities, Pendle and possibly Sheffield, have sent Stalin letters deploring his continuing refusal to demand peace and calling for his resignation.
Brilliant!
Three-fifths of the Labour members purged by Starmer, David Evans and the other right-wing conspirators and Thatcherite infiltrators for anti-Semitism are Jews. These men and women ain’t, as they’ve been smeared, self-hating anti-Semites. They have been severely normal, self-respecting Jews of a range of backgrounds, who object to the barbarism of the Israeli state. And very many of the gentiles purged for the same reasons are certainly not anti-Semites either. But they are dangerous because they are critical and intelligent and informed. I believe that the department of the Israeli state that monitors and counteracts anti-Israel activism once declared Jackie Walker to be the joint no. 2 worst enemy of Israel. Jackie Walker, not an Islamist terrorist in a suicide vest! Walker’s a lady of a certain age and an academic. She’s a dedicated anti-racist and has been fighting racism since the 1970s. Which is no doubt why Israel’s Office for Strategic Affairs and the rightists in the Labour party wanted her gone. Just as they wanted Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of Jewish Voice for Labour purged. She’s another respectable lady who uses arguments and facts to express her hostility to Israel’s racism and barbarism. They, and the others purged, give the lie to the claim that Israel is supported by all Jews, everywhere, and that if you support the Palestinians then you must be a bomb-throwing terrorist glorying in the blood of innocents. Unfortunately, there were also some of those at the march, but the Beeb claimed it was mostly peaceful. I don’t doubt it was.
I’m very glad that the Beeb has shown ordinary Jewish Brits marching in friendship with Muslims for peace in Gaza.
May we see more of that in defiance of the right’s demands for more biased, pro-Israel coverage.
I’m afraid I haven’t posted much over the past few days as most of its been about conflict in Gaza, and there’s just so much coming out about it that I really can’t keep up. I have, however, noticed the anti-left, anti-Palestinian bias of certain news outlets and organisations, such as the New Culture Forum and the Lotus Eaters and the appearance of the current head of the Jewish Chronicle, Jake Wallis Simon, to tell everyone that the protests against Israel and its barbarity towards the Palestinians is just ‘Israelophobia’. I think he’s written a book of that title, telling everyone that hostility to Israel is simply a matter of anti-Semitic prejudice.
Er, no. No, it isn’t. Israel’s critics, like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker et al, as Jews are naturally extremely well-informed about Jewish history and the history and vile politics of the Israeli state. Greenstein and Walker both took the side of the Palestinians through their own research, not out of some pre-existing self-hatred or hostility towards the Jewish people. In the case of Tony, I think it started when, as a schoolboy, he took the side of the Palestinians in a school debate about Israel and the Palestinians. And what he found and read convinced him that the Palestinians were right, and had been unjustly persecuted. Jackie came to supporting the Palestinians through protesting against apartheid in South Africa. She was asked by a friend why she protested against it in South Africa, but not in Israel. Like Tony, Jackie’s very definitely Jewish, the daughter of a Russian Jewish father and a Black America Civil Rights worker mother. Her partner’s Jewish, and her daughter goes to a Jewish school. Many of the books against the Israeli persecution of the Palestinians are written by Jews or by gentiles, who support them. One of the books I’ve got on it has the title Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. This discusses not only the brutality of Israeli colonisation, but also the contempt the founders of Israel had for diasphora Jewry, which Tony also discusses in several of his articles. There are also Israeli human rights organisation campaigning against the oppression of the Israeli state. These include B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The latter is an organisation of ex-Israeli soldiers, which exists to talk about the atrocities they have seen and committed. As for Muslims, the impression I had is that they are very well informed about the Israeli state’s persecution of their coreligionists. The closure of mosques, for example, by the authorities is covered in their equivalent of parish magazines in a way that isn’t done elsewhere.
Hamas are a bunch of terrorist murderers, but the Israeli response has been massively disproportionate and constitutes war crimes in its turn. Also, support for the Palestinians does not equal support for Hamas and support for terrorism, despite the impression given by some of the marchers on the pro-Palestinian protests. There is a question of bias and spin in all this. The Muslim marchers on one protest were supposed to have carried Hamas flags and the black flag of jihad. But Mike didn’t see any evidence of this in the pictures the right produced of this march, and I can’t say I’ve seen any either. Some prats do seem to have been waving the jihad flag around, and there are accusations that some of the participants in another protest were chanting ‘jihad’. It’s certainly possible, but doesn’t mean that everyone there marching wants another genocidal war in the Middle East.
But the right is definitely spinning this as the evil anti-Semitic socialist left allying with the anti-Semitic Palestinians and Muslims to attack the completely innocent and virtuous state of Israel. Muslims and anti-racist activists have already commented on how British Muslims are seen as ‘the enemy within’, and it’s being spread to include the socialist left. One of the right-wing news channels – I’ve forgotten which one – had some pundit on who claimed that if Israel went, the West would be next. And a few days ago GB News had on an academic from a Jewish university in Vienna, who lived in the last Jewish area in the Austrian capital. This gentleman declared the present wave of Muslim unrest over Israel to be ‘the end of Jewish life in the West’.
He gave as his reasons the security threats to European Jewish institutions, such as synagogues and schools, incidents of anti-Semitic abuse and violence and the statistic that 70 per cent of French Jews would like to leave France. I find that hard to believe. No details were given of who carried out the poll, how reliable it was and the bias or otherwise in the questions asked. Back in the 90s and Noughties there were concerns about the way the French state seemed keener to clamp down on cases of Islamophobia than against anti-Semitism. The Financial Times explained it was because there was far more prejudice against Muslims then against Jews. Far more French people considered Jews fellow countrymen than Muslims. The lack of action didn’t come from indifference or hostility to Jews, but from the opposite: the French people, as a whole, were not anti-Semitic and regarded the Jews as part of themselves. Muslims, on the other hand, were far more vulnerable.
The academic was also worried about the loss of Jewish influence. There were only 400,000 Jews in Britain compared to 4 million Muslims. As the Muslim population increased, so would their influence amongst politicos. This is a fair point, but the size of the Islamic population didn’t stop the right-wing British establishment and that part of the Jewish community that considers itself the official leaders and spokespeople for British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Chronicle and associated grotty journalists running a very successful smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn. And whatever some fanatics scream, the severely normal British public aren’t anti-Semitic. Tony demolished this claim with some stats a few years ago showing that the overwhelming majority of Brits either had a positive view of their Jewish comrades, or didn’t think they were either particularly good or evil. The real anti-Semites were very much in a minority at 7 per cent. I dare say it’s gone up since, but almost certainly not as much as the right would like us all to believe.
And it looks very, very much like shabby fearmongering. Round about the time of the invasion of Iraq, the Spectator published a glowing review of a nasty little novel set later this century. In fact, I think it may have been set about now, in the ’20s. This imagined a future France, where the remains of the socialist left had united with militant Islam to seize power. France was now a Muslim state, and there was a new Jewish Holocaust underway.
And then when Corbyn was leader of the Labour party we had rather excitable individuals making the same exaggerated claims. Various celebs on the internet were tweeting to each other that it was like 1930s Germany all over again. Which it definitely wasn’t. If it had been, they’d have been in absolutely no position to complain about it on the net, nor would they be free to pursue careers or run businesses. And the only public performances they’d be allowed to do would be those designed to humiliate them. There were also various TV executives declaring that British Jews weren’t safe before departing for Israel. I have a feeling that one those saying that actually returned to Britain a few years ago, but I might be wrong.
I don’t see any of that. We had a protest in Bristol against the situation in Gaza. This was just for peace, with no racial denunciations. I haven’t come across any reports of Jewish Bristolians being abused or molested. There was Palestinian embassy in Bristol’s Old City, but I haven’t heard anything about that for years and there hasn’t, as far as I know, been any Muslim demonstrations here calling for the Jewish community’s death. What I do see is a temporary crisis, which certainly has the possibility to get much worse, the racial aspects of which are being grossly exaggerated in order to scare Jews and ordinary Brits into supporting Israel and against the socialist left.
This is a short clip from the Katie Halper Show on YouTube. I think Halper is a Jewish American, as much of her show is devoted to Jewish issues. In this clip, she talks to Miko Peled, a Jewish film-maker, about his forthcoming movie The General’s Son. They’re just finishing this off and seeking distributors. The film’s clearly based on the book of the same name by Peled himself, as shown on the bookshelf behind him. One of the segments in the movie, which is shown in the video, is of Holocaust survivor Jacques Bude stating very clearly why he hates Zionism. Bude and his parents were Jewish Germans, who were sent to Auschwitz where his parents were murdered. He was rescued by the Belgians and then raised in an orphanage. Then wealthy Zionists paid for him to emigrate to Israel. Bude didn’t want to go, as Belgium was his country and the Belgians his friends. But he had to. This is what, he says, wealthy Zionists do: they pay for other people to go to Israel. Once there, in the period of 1949-52, he saw the militarism and violence of the new state and the way cities like Jaffa were emptied. It disgusted him so much that he couldn’t wait to get out. He states that he especially loathes what is being done to the Palestinians because it’s done in the name of his parents.
This is exactly the kind of testimony and material the British and American establishment doesn’t want you to see, and especially not the self-appointed ‘official’ Jews of the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the United Synagogue and wretched, zombie rags like the Jewish Chronicle. They’d like us all to follow Netanyahu’s line that all Jews everywhere are joyful, patriotic citizens of Israel and that those who aren’t, are vicious, self-hating anti-Semites allied with gentile Jew-haters bent on their people’s destruction. This is the pretext by which ‘100 per cent Zionist’ Keir Starmer has been throwing out the true, Corbynite, Labour party in order to make it nice and safe for Thatcherite capitalism. About 3/5 or 4/5 – I’ve forgotten the exact proportion – of those expelled are Jews or of Jewish heritage. These, as I have said repeatedly, are decent people, who’ve fought real racism and anti-Semitism all their lives and frequently suffered abuse and blows for their Jewish identity. But we’re supposed to ignore the evidence and accept totally uncritically the allegations of anti-Semitism against such principled people as Jackie Walker, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Martin Odoni and Tony Greenstein. And turn a blind eye or even support the results of such accusations when thugs firebomb the homes or property of one of these accused, as happened to a Jewish lady in Devon. She was put on a map of anti-Semites by one of these self-appointed witch-hunting organisations.
It says something about the power of these organisations and the way they successfully misdirected people’s attention away from the fact that so many of the people denouncing Israeli’s treatment of the Palestinians were Holocaust survivors. Remember when the papers all screamed that Corbyn was an anti-Semite because he nodded at a meeting where the speaker compared the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing to that of the Nazis? The speaker at the conference, who had said that, was Heijo Meijer, a Jewish Dutchman and Holocaust survivor. But if anyone has the moral authority to make such a comparison, he has. Ditto with some of the surviving fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto, who belonged to the Bund and continued fighting for their people and their people’s true homelands – Poland and the countries of eastern Europe – when the Zionists had fled. The establishment can’t attack these heroes, so they ignored them to direct all the hate onto Corbyn.
Regarding the film, I remember watching news reports and items a few years ago that mentioned that the son of an Israeli general, and several serving members of the Israeli armed forces hated their country’s policy towards the Palestinians. This sounds like Peled himself, from the title of his book and film. I don’t think Halper is anti-Zionist. She’s posted another video in which the Israeli ambassador attacks the anti-Semitic comments of an American politico. But it may be she is just being fair.
I wish Peled every success for his film, and hope he gets general distribution so that people can see the other side of this story from the Israeli perspective our mainstream media wants to suppress.
David Rosenberg, Battle for the East End: Jewish Responses to Fascism in the 1930s (Five Leaves Publishing 2011).
Here’s something to cleanse the palate after the discussion of fascism and the Tufton Street gangs of free trade looters. While looking for books on fascism on Google, I found this book by David Rosenberg. I’ve got a feeling he may be the same David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, who was one of the advisors to Jeremy Corbyn and is The Wrong Kind Of Jew. He’s very firmly in the tradition of the Jewish Bund, the mass Jewish socialist party of Poland and Russia. As well as opposed to capitalist exploitation, they were also anti-Zionist and wanted Jews instead to remain in their home countries to live as free people with the h same rights and privileges as their gentile fellow-countrymen. Their anthems are on YouTube, and I’ve put up a number of them here.
The blurb for the book on Amazon runs
‘During the 1930s, Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts intensified their campaign against the Jewish community, particularly in London’s East End. As that campaign became more overtly antisemitic, and more physically intimidating, Jewish groups debated how to deal with the fascist threat, ultimately building their own defence organisations and forging alliances with others. The simmering tensions in East London culminated in the Battle of Cable Street, when more than 100,000 people, mainly from the local Jewish and Irish communities, prevented Mosley’s troops marching through the East End.’
Tony Greenstein, another Jewish critic of Israel, has also written a book about the fight against Mosley thugs in Brighton and the south coast. Unfortunately, despite being a self-respecting Jew who was obviously proud of his townsfolk’s resistance to the BUF, he was also smeared as an anti-Semite and thrown out by the Blairites. One of the points he makes is that the Jewish people who fought Mosley with the Irish, trade unions and Commies did so on their own initiative. The Board of Deputies told them instead to stay indoors and not fight back. Which is something to think about the next time Marina van der Zyle starts shouting that the Labour party is institutionally racist and it’s only the Board standing up for Jewish people.
Or does he mean the Wrong Kind of Jews and others accused of anti-Semitism ’cause their evil socialists and critics of Israel?
I got this round-robin message from the leader of the Labour party this afternoon.
‘Dear David,
In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published a damning report into antisemitism in the Labour Party.
At that time, I was clear the Party accepted the EHRC’s report in full and would implement all of its recommendations. We agreed an Action Plan with the EHRC in December 2020, and since then, we have worked tirelessly to right the wrongs of the past and to tear out antisemitism from our Party by its roots.
Today, it was announced that the EHRC have been satisfied with our progress and the significant changes we have made. Accordingly, the Action Plan has formally concluded.
While this is an important moment, it is not one for celebration. Rather, it is one for reflection. As to how a Party that has always prided itself on its anti-racism and its commitment to equality could have fallen so far.
This announcement demonstrates we have turned the corner. However, the job of restoring Labour is not complete. It shows we are heading in the right direction, and I assure you that there is not a hint of complacency in that confidence. I know there is still much to do.
We will not rest for a moment until not only have we changed the Labour Party for the better, but our country, too.
Thank you,
Keir Starmer Leader of the Labour Party’
The storm of allegations of anti-Semitism against the Labour party and individual members, often men and women of deep integrity and humanity, and which cost Corbyn the election and the party’s leadership, were whipped up by a corrupt political and media establishment appalled at the prospect of a return to power of a man committed to genuinely empowering working people. They baulked at the renationalisation of the utilities, despite the fact that every day shows this is urgently needed. They hated the idea of reversing the privatisation of the NHS and most of all they feared and loathed the return of strong trade unions, workers’ rights and proper welfare state that actually supports its citizens. There was also a foreign policy element too. They also hated Corbyn because he was an idealist who shared Robin Cook’s dream of an ethical foreign policy and specifically his support for the Palestinians.
This fear and loathing was shared by the right-wing, Zionist section of the Jewish community that considers itself that communities official ‘establishment’. This included the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which in reality speaks for the United Synagogue and no-one else, two Chief Rabbis, who both led contingents of Jewish Brits on the ‘March of the Flags’ in which Israeli bovver boys terrorise the Arabs of East Jerusalem, the Jewish Leadership Council, which split with the board because they weren’t right-wing and pro-business enough for them, and various other organisations that were set up in the wake of the bombardment of Gaza to promote Israel and drive away support for the Palestinians. These included the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the woefully misnamed Jewish Labour Movement, whose members don’t have to be Jewish or even members of the Labour party. Their accusations were taken up by the British mainstream, who’d found that smearing Corbyn as a Commie and Trotskyite hadn’t worked. But the charge of anti-Semitism stuck. Corbyn backed down when he should have fought, and sacrificed his allies in the belief that this would placate his enemies. It didn’t, and people like the mighty Tony Greenstein knew it wouldn’t and tried to tell him so. But he didn’t listen.
And then there were the vipers within the Labour party, who collaborated with all this. The right-wing faction that conspired against Corbyn at every opportunity, whose members were on Conservative websites and forums, who misdirected election funding from where they were needed, organised coups and bullied Black and Muslim members. They also did their best to conceal instances of real anti-Semitism from the leadership in order to keep the smear going.
When are these malign enablers of real anti-Semitism going to be thrown out of the party?
Well, I reckon they won’t, because they supported Starmer. And Starmer was also personally keen to keep the smears going as a tool for his purges of the left. Hence, even though he was told by his lawyers that he would win a court case against one set of allegations, he folded and gave them the money they demanded.
Israel’s Far Right government this week has declared they’re going to recognise a slew of illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine as punishment for the disturbances at Christmas. This is in contravention of international law. Where’s a statement condemning this from Starmer? Oh, wait, he’s ‘100 per cent Zionist’, so there won’t be one. This is despite the fact that numerous Zionist human rights organisations like B’Tselem have condemned the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And suffered for it from militantly nationalist regimes that have declared them, like the Jews in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, to be the enemy within.
And what does this statement mean?
It looks like, although the EHRC is satisfied, Starmer still intends to continue his witch hunt because there is still much work to do and we have to reflect on how an anti-racist party became steeped in anti-Semitism. Well, when you realise that the majority of those accused of anti-Semitism were Jews, who had often experienced real abuse and assault because of their religion or ethnicity, and that one of the gentiles smeared and purged was a Black anti-racist activist who had worked with the Board of Deputies to combat real anti-Semitic violence by the BNP in the 1980s, it’s clear that this is all bogus.
The anti-Semitism smears and witch hunt were a tissue of lies from beginning to end. And Starmer knows it, and supported it. And it looks like he means to keep the pressure up even after it is all supposed to have ended.
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