Here’s another cartoon in which I express my views on Israel and the fake anti-Semitism witch-hunt that’s been launched to protect it from reasonable criticism. Israel has a policy of demolishing Palestinian settlements it decides are illegal in order to clear the land for the construction of new homes for Israeli settlers. This policy has jumped into high gear as new settler towns are being constructed in the occupied territories. The cartoon therefore shows a squad of Israeli soldiers pointing their guns at a Palestinian family as a bulldozer in the background demolishes other houses.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews, unfortunately, chooses to try to silence reporting of atrocities and wrongdoing by the Israeli state. Hence the cartoon shows someone from the Board with the Israeli flag behind him saying ‘If you talk about this, we’ll smear you as an anti-Semite’. Alan Rusbridger has said in a documentary on the Israel lobby presented by Peter Oborne that when he was editor of the Guardian, he would be met by the president of the Board and their pet lawyer if he reported atrocities by the Israelis or the allies. They would complain that the reports would provoke hatred against Jews. When the BBC correctly reported the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Lebanese Christian Phalange, who were allies of Israel, the Board accused the Beeb of anti-Semitism and biased reporting.
I’ve also added a caption that says
‘This is a public health warning by the Board of Deputies of British Jews on behalf of Israel’s propaganda department’. It follows the revelation in the Board’s statement for last year that they have connections to the Israeli embassy, the IDF and the Office of Strategic Affairs, which is the department of the Israeli state that runs official propaganda. And as so many victims of the anti-Semitism smear campaign are Jewish – four-fifths of accused Labour party members- it seems very much to me that the Board is now a sectarian anti-Semitic organisation.
Okay, it’s the beginning of March, Boris Johnson’s government has settled into its new round of incompetence and personal vindictiveness, and the Tories have been caught in another islamophobia scandal. According to the Mirror, 20 Tory members were expelled for their horrendous views on Islam. BBC Politics Live in its wisdom decided to discuss the issue of race. Unfortunately, one of the guests they chose to talk about it was Daily Heil hack Melanie Phillips. The author of Londonistan, which claims that London is now seething with Islamist terrorists and that Muslims are intent on destroying western society, her views on race are closer to Tommy Robinson than Dr. Martin Luther King. And like the rest of the Israel lobby, she confuses anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. According to Zelo Street, she began by expressing her views on the leading contender for the Labour leadership. Keir Starmer, she opined, was a ‘very decent guy’, and she was sure he was going to put in eye-catchingly good measures to get rid of people, who have not been got rid of. As for Rebecca Long-Bailey’s response to questioning the day before, she declared that Long-Bailey was trying to avoid the fact that she had gone along with something she should never have gone along with, along with many other members of the Labour Party. Which was, she then explained, that Starmer wasn’t going to get on top of this problem. And that problem went beyond the Labour Party and permeated progressive politics. And it was all about hostility to Israel. She said
“It’s wrapped up in attitudes to Israel. It’s wrapped up with beliefs that what’s being talked about isn’t really anti-Semitism, it’s not really prejudice, it’s simply an attempt to stop criticism of Israel. In other words, even among people of goodwill, there is a very widespread failure to understand quite what this thing is that has come out of the woodwork, and until and unless people are prepared to acknowledge precisely what it is, and acknowledge the enormity of it, and the depth of it, no-one’s going to get on top of it”.
As Zelo Street points out, not only is Phillips highly presumptuous in arrogating to herself the authority to define what anti-Semitism is, she expands it so that it includes legitimate criticism of Israel. Even the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which includes amongst its examples criticisms of Israel, also allows legitimate criticism.
And Zelo Street also pointed out that Philip’s opinions were at variance with the facts. After all the evidence of anti-Semitism was passed to the cops, the rozzers only charged one person. Five were arrested, but four of them – three men and a woman – were released and told they would face no further action. That’s out of a party with nearly half a million members.
The Street concludes
‘If what Melanie Phillips was talking about “goes very deep”, how come only one person was charged with an offence? After all that evidence was handed over to the Police? After all the hype, if there was such a serious problem, wouldn’t one expect the numbers to be rather more significant than that? It’s almost as if someone was exaggerating.
Not that one could ever accuse Melanie Phillips of such behaviour. Perish the thought!’
In fact nearly all the allegations of galloping anti-Semitism in the Labour Party are fact-free. The people accused and expelled, like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Martin Odoni, Mike Sivier, Cyril Chilson and many others, were smeared because they were supporters of Corbyn and/or critics of Israel. They are all genuine anti-racists, but the whole point of the anti-Semitism witch hunt is to close down criticism of Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians, regardless as to truth or legitimacy. Eleven years ago Peter Oborne, a former Telegraph journalist of immense integrity, who just before the election announced his support for Corbyn, present a Dispatches documentary on Channel 4 on the Israel lobby. He talked to former Groaniad editor Alan Rusbridger, who told him that whenever the newspaper published a piece on Israeli atrocities, the head of the Board of Deputies of British Jews would turn up with his pet lawyer, moaning that coverage of such events would result in a rise in anti-Semitism. He also discussed how the Board had accused the Beeb of anti-Semitism because it dared to cover the massacre of Palestinians by the Lebanese Christian Phalange in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during that country’s civil war. The Phalange were allied to Israel, and therefore the coverage was anti-Semitic. And so were the very respected Beeb foreign correspondents, Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin, who reported it. When the Beeb tried to defend them, the defenders, in true witch hunt fashion, were also accused of anti-Semitism. And that included David Attenborough, the very well respected wildlife presenter and former head of BBC 2 many decades ago. The documentary interviewed the Oxford academic Avi Shlaim, an expert on Middle East affairs, who revealed that the Board’s complaints had been examine by the broadcasting regulators, and rejected except on a minor point. The Beeb’s reportage had been correct.
But this is immaterial to the Board and the rest of the Israel lobby. What matters is defending Israel, whatever it does. Even when that includes shooting nurses and unarmed protesters dead and torturing children. And the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is an important weapon in its defence. Because it states that some criticism of Israel may be anti-Semitic. This is expanded to mean all, or as many as the Israel lobby can get away with. It’s why Kenneth Stern, the Zionist American academic, who was one of those who formulated the definition, has criticised it for having a chilling effect on free speech about Israel.
The Tories and the Israel lobby are terrified of legitimate criticism of Israel. So terrified in fact, that they ignore the fact that anti-Semitism is far more prevalent in right-wing parties, and that almost all of it in this country comes from the far right. And so Melanie Phillips and her ideological ilk have precious little to say about members of the Met police having connections to real Nazi organisations, or Tommy Robinson greeting his supporters with ‘Shalom’ and appealing for more money to overthrow the White race – a clear reference to the real anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
No, they’re far more worried about a united, resurgent Labour Party. A party that would allow legitimate criticism of Israel. And that says much about their racism and hypocrisy.
The media’s been full of stories about how politicians are being sent abuse and death threats, with many of these stories focusing on the internet. It’s been going on for some time, and the Labour right tried to weaponise the issue against Corbyn. Following Hillary Clinton’s lie that Bernie Sanders’ supporters were all misogynist ‘Bernie Bros’, various right-wing female MPs tried the same smear against Corbyn’s supporters. They claimed that they were receiving sexist and misogynist abuse from them. Many of these stories fell apart on inspection, and by and large I don’t think the Blairite women were getting more abuse than anyone else. Half of the abuse directed at female MPs in the Labour party goes to Diane Abbott. Some of the tales of abuse couldn’t be supported, as it seems that the messages sent could not be found or shown. And other messages weren’t sent by members of the Labour party, and so Corbyn couldn’t be responsible.
The same smears of abuse were also used by the Israel lobby – Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement. And the same criticisms apply here. The existence of some of these abusive texts couldn’t be corroborated, some weren’t sent by members of the party and the actual numbers of real anti-Semites in the party is actually minuscule. But nevertheless the press was full of smear stories by Blairites like Ruth Smeeth and others that the Labour Party was not a safe space for Jews, not since Jeremy Corbyn became leader.
But what the press and media do not report is the extensive smearing and bullying by the Israel lobby and ultra-Zionist activists. This is immense and horrific. Anyone – anyone at all – who dares to make the mildest criticism of Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians is immediately accused of anti-Semitism. And this is particularly true of Jews. I’ve blogged about the way Jackie Walker receives horrific abuse after her smearing as an anti-Semite and expulsion from the Labour party. Jackie, despite being Jewish by faith and blood, is told she isn’t a Jew because she’s a woman of colour. They also call for her to be lynched – an especially serious threat, as her mother was a Black civil rights activist from the American Deep South – and her body to be set on fire and stuffed into bin bags. Tony Greenstein has received emails telling him that he and his family should have been murdered in the Holocaust. He has also been assaulted by an angry Israeli.
And it goes on. Peter Oborne in his programme on the Israel lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches ten years or so ago showed how respective journalists at the Guardian and BBC were subjected to the same smears by the Board of Deputies of British Jews when they reported massacres and atrocities committed by the Israelis or their allies, the Christian Phalange, in Lebanon. These accusations were leveled at Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin. When David Attenborough stepped in to deny them, he too was accused of being an anti-Semite. And this abuse has been hurled at people like Mike and other Corbyn supporters in the Labour party. Lobster also cites formerGuardianreporter Nick Davies in their review of a book dismantling the anti-Semitism smears,Bad News for Labour. Davies described inFlat Earth Newshow reporters and journalists were subjected to horrific abuse and allegations from Israel’s supporters. John Booth, the author of Lobster’s review, writes
‘Journalists who write stories which offend the politics of the Israel lobby are subjected to a campaign of formal complaints and pressure on their editors; most of all, they are inundated with letters and emails which can be extravagant in their hostility,’ he writes. ‘Robert Fisk of The Independent has been told that his mother was Adolf Eichmann’s daughter, that he belongs in hell with Osama bin Laden, that he is a “hate peddler”, “a leading anti-semite and protofascist Islamophile propagandist” and a paedophile.’
This abuse has reached the point that according to the Lobster article, Jewish journalists are afraid to publish articles critical of Israel. Evening Standard journo Mira Bar-Hillel, who was born in Jerusalem, says that they fear retribution if they do.
And left-wing supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have also received this horrific abuse in the Labour party. Sally Eason, the founder of Labour Left Voice, was forced to leave the Labour party because of her criticisms of Israel. Eason’s Sephardic Jewish on her mother’s side. And so she was targeted for concerted abuse and trolling by a network of right-wing scumbags, including David Collier and the Gnasherjew troll farm, which was cheerfully reblogged by ‘jobbing actor’ Tracy Ann Oberman. Mike also suffers vicious abuse from people, who continue to believe the smears that he’s an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier despite his success in getting these utterly false allegations retracted from the papers that printed them. And last week I was insulted by someone angry at my support for Corbyn against the anti-Semitism smears. They sent the comment ‘Fuck you. From a Jew’. It was only one such insult, and it’s mild compared to that sent to people like Mike, Tony and Jackie. But it does show the abusive nature of Israel’s most ardent supporters.
But if you believe the media, the abuse is all one way. It’s all those evil anti-Semites in the Labour sending hatred and death threats to women and Jews. The reality is that Corbynites have also been on the receiving end of horrific abuse, much of the abuse the Blairites claim was sent to them seems to be nonexistent. And some of the most vicious, and viciously anti-Semitic abuse is that sent by the Israel lobby and supporters of Britain’s Jewish establishment. And thanks to the abuse sent by people like David Collier and his friends in Gnasherjew, Israel-critical Jews do not feel safe.
That is real, viciously dangerous anti-Semitic abuse. And it is not reported in the Media. Disgusting!
Robin Ramsay, the editor of the online parapolitics/conspiracies magazine, Lobster, has added a few new articles in his ‘View from the Bridge’ section for issue 78. One of these is about the media’s colossal, odious failure to present the real truth about the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party. Which is, basically, that the conspiracy theorists are exactly right and the whole thing is a disinformation campaign run from the Israeli embassy in London.
He begins by reporting the recent attacks on Labour for being anti-Semitic by Stephen Daisley in the Spectator, Philip Collins in the Times, and then the claim by James Cleverly, the Tory chairman, that British Jews are about to flee the UK in case Corbyn gets in. Because some Jewish friends of his told him so.
He then states that these are symptomatic of the failure of the media as a whole to tackle the real truth about these smears, and suggests why this might be so. He writes
These comments (and there were many similar in the first week of the election campaign) illustrate again the complete failure of the mainstream media to handle the Labour–is–anti-semitic operation run by the Israeli embassy in London and its assets. Why has the MSM failed so completely at this? Maybe one day some of those involved at editorial level will explain their thinking; but until then we can only speculate. Among the factors are:
* The story is too complex for the rolling 24 hour news culture and there are few journalists left in the MSM with the time to research complex stories.
* Anyone pursuing the story is going to be accused of anti-semitism or conspiracy theorising or both.
* To acknowledge the existence of the Israeli operations revealed by Al Jazeera’s covert filming, means acknowledging that the version of political reality offered by the MSM is partial at best, and false at worst. This also implies that British political journalists either don’t know what is going on or are too career-minded to stray beyond the carefully delineated boundaries of ‘serious’ or ‘respectable’ journalism.
He concludes by comparing the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, with the Zapruder film in the way this has the potential to alter research into the real conspiracy behind the Corbyn smears. This would be similar to the way the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination has provided evidence supporting the idea that there was another shooter beside Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Al Jazeera films on ‘the lobby’ may eventually be a game-changer in the way that the 1975 showing of the Zapruder film on US TV was: after the Z film the official version that all the shots came from behind Kennedy became an absurdity. After ‘the lobby’ films no-one can seriously deny the existence of the Israel lobby.
For many people outside the milieu, the Kennedy assassination really is the archetypal modern conspiracy theory with various obsessives convinced that Oswald didn’t do it, and that it was all down to the CIA and American intelligence establishment instead. While I believe that there probably was another shooter and that the question of whether there was a wider conspiracy to kill Kennedy is a good one, Ramsey’s comparison may not be so convincing to others.
But he’s right about the conspiracy to remove Corbyn and the Israelis. The Israeli government does have an office that deals with attacking and smearing critics of the Israeli state for their brutal policies towards the Palestinians. Al-Jazeera did catch Shai Masot at the Israeli embassy trying to get a Tory minister removed from the government and replaced with Boris Johnson, because the minister, Alan Duncan, was too pro-Palestinian. And one of the Labour supporters smeared as an anti-Semite is Cyril Chilson, the son of a Holocaust survivor and Soviet airman, an Israeli, who worked in the IDF’s propaganda department. He was smeared because he recognised the libels as hasbara – the Israeli term for civilian propaganda, and called it as such.
As for the reasons the media isn’t calling it out, I think it’s probably a mixture of all three. Peter Oborne’s documentary for Channel 4’s Dispatches showed eleven years ago how the Israel lobby in this country would stop at nothing to destroy and smear critics of Israel. Independent Jewish monitoring groups were put under pressure to merge their magazines with Israeli state periodicals. Newspapers like the Guardian and its editor were accused by the Board of Deputies of anti-Semitism for accurately reporting atrocities committed by Israel and its allies, the Christian Phalange, in Lebanon. As was the Beeb and highly respected journalists like Orla Guerin when they did the same. They even tried to smear David Attenborough when he defended the Beeb’s Middle East correspondents.
The media are pushing lies by repeating these smears against Jeremy Corbyn, lies which have their origin in attempts by the Israeli state and its supporters to prevent the rise of a Labour government which genuinely wants a just peace between Israel and its indigenous Arab peoples.
This kind of follows on from the post I put up on Thursday, criticising a piece in Private Eye by their correspondent ‘Ratbiter’ celebrating Stop Funding Fake News and its attempts to cut off funding from what it considers to be extremist websites. Stop Funding Fake News has been the subject of a series of posts by Zelo Street, which has shown how the organisation is itself deeply suspect. For all its avowed concern to stop fake news, SFFN itself is less than transparent. It won’t tell you who its members are for one thing. And while it has attacked right-wing sites, like Breitbart and Tommy Robinson’s wretched website, as described in Ratbiter’s article, it’s also gone after those on the Left, like the Canary. They’re also supposed to be extremists sites peddling fake news, but as I pointed out, the Canary’s politics are those of the old social democratic consensus. The consensus that Corbyn wishes to bring back, of a mixed economy, strong welfare state, proper, effective trade unions, a nationalised and properly funded NHS, and proper rights for working people. You know, proper, constructive policies that will save this country and its people from poverty, starvation and exploitation. But Thatcherites, whether in the Tory party, or the Lib Dems and Blairites in Labour, can’t stand any of this. They can’t bear the thought that Thatcher is a goddess who failed, and that neoliberalism has run its course and been found threadbare. So Corbyn and his supporters have been accused of being Trots, Commies, Stalinists and other epithets by the papers and right-wing Labour MPs like Jess Philips.
Israel Lobby Using Anti-Semitism Smears to Suppress Criticism
But these policies are actually popular with the British public, and so the Right has taken to trying to discredit Corbyn and his followers, and more broadly the Labour party, with accusations of anti-Semitism. As I’ve blogged about endlessly, the actual incidence of genuine anti-Semitism in the Labour party is low. Very low. What riles the witch hunters is that Corbyn and his supporters are critics of Israel’s policy of oppression, apartheid and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. The Israel lobby’s only defence against these entirely justifiable criticisms is to scream ‘anti-Semitism!’ and demand that their critics should be removed from office, silenced and even prosecuted for hate crimes. And ‘Ratbiter’ and Private Eye itself has been pushing this as strenuously as the rest of the media. In his article about Stop Funding Fake News, ‘Ratbiter’s’ praise for SFFN’s attack on the Canary claimed that not only was the Canary pushing fake news, but it was also anti-Semitic and pushing conspiracy theories about Jews. None of which is true. There is a concerted campaign by the Conservative Jewish establishment in this country to close down debate about Israel in line with the demands of the Israeli government. The Israeli state even as a special government office for promoting this hasbara. This is substantiated fact. But it’s suppressed by the British establishment and media, which wants you to believe that when the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council scream at Corbyn for supporting speeches by Holocaust survivors and anti-Nazi activists, like Hajo Meyer, attacking the maltreatment of the Palestinians, these right-wing organisations speak for all British Jews. They don’t, as is very clear by the number of Jews involved in the Palestinian rights movement, the BDS campaign and who support Corbyn in the Labour party. Still, why bother about awkward facts when you’re the media, eh?
Private Eye Part of Press Smears of Anti-Semitism
I’m particular dismayed and frustrated that Private Eye has joined in with this vilification and smearing. I’m not surprised by the right-wing press – the Fail, Scum, Depress, Times and Sunset Times, as they’ve always lied about and slandered the Labour party and left-wing activists. You only have to go back two years to when the Sunset Times smeared Mike as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Or how it tried to tell the world that Michael Foot was a KGB agent, against all evidence. I’m disappointed that the Absurder, Groaniad and the Mirror have joined in with these accusation. But the Groan is in dire financial straits and has supported the Liberals in several elections. Kath Viner, the new editor, would like to make it a general political newspaper, not tied to the Left. And the Absurder and Mirror look like they’re run by Blairites.
Private Eye’s Liberal Stance and Challenge to Authority
But Private Eye’s support for the smears I find more puzzling and exasperating. OK, I realise that despite its attacks on NHS privatisation, Tory housing policy, the attacks on the disabled, the failings of the privatised water companies, probation service, and outsourcing companies like Capita and Serco, the magazine’s not actually left-wing. Its founders – Peter Cook, Richard Ingrams, Willie Rushton and Auberon Waugh were all thoroughly middle class public school boys. John Wells was the headmaster at Eton. But the magazine does have a proud tradition of standing up for those wrongly accused and questioning the actions of the security services. Paul Foot was a staunch advocate for people he believed were wrongly accused of murder. The magazine is still covering the Deepcut scandal, and what looks very much like an attempt to hide the evidence and protect the guilty by the army and the police. They’ve also covered deaths in police custody and other cases of official incompetence, corruption and wrongdoing. They even published several pieces and then a final report in the mid-90s questioning the official assertion that the Libyans were responsible for the Lockerbie bombing. They believed instead that Syria was responsible, and that blame was placed on the Libyans for political reasons: Major and George Bush senior needed Syria to join their coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. It has also defended asylum seekers, both collectively and individually, from racist discrimination, incarceration, beatings and abuse, and the threat of deportation. It is because the magazine has this proud tradition of questioning authority that I find its current support for the anti-Semitism smears infuriating.
Private Eye also Repeating British Intelligence Propaganda?
I am also aware that, as well as probing some of the actions of the British intelligence agencies, like when they have leaned on journalists to reveal their sources, they’ve also acted to promote them. There is ample evidence that the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine in 2012, which overthrew the pro-Russian president, was anything but popular. It was instead a staged coup overseen by the US statement and the National Endowment for Democracy. But from reading the ‘Letter from…’ column in Private Eye dealing with events in that country, you are told that it is all the fault of the Russians and their supporters. It also appears that the magazine does, or at least, did, have connections to MI5. Auberon Waugh was related to one of its directors or senior officials, and Lobster a decade or so ago ran a piece, ‘5 at Eye’, speculating the magazine and particularly Waugh were responsible for running the smear stories about Harold Wilson being a KGB spy. I am also aware that as a magazine that is unaligned to any political party, and which criticises and satirises all of them, it’s going to attack Labour. Corbyn, as head of the party, is fair game. And those attacks are going to come from his opponents. Which include ‘Ratbiter’, real name Nick Cohen, and whichever Blairites used to run the ‘Focus on Fact’ cartoon attacking the Labour leader.
Private Eye Shares Journalists with Other Papers
But nevertheless, I am extremely annoyed at the way it has joined in with the smearing of decent, anti-racist, Jewish and gentile people as anti-Semites. Like the rest of the press and media, they largely haven’t contacted them for their opinion, or given them space to explain how they were smeared. When a letter has been published in Private Eye rebutting their claim that anti-Semitism is rife in Labour, they’ve replied by quoting Jon Lansman, the founder of Momentum, who believes it is. And who has been roundly criticised for this by Tony Greenstein. Part of this might just be standard press groupthink. Private Eye, for all its attacks on the press and media in its ‘Street of Shame’ and television columns, is part of it, and some of its anonymous correspondents are no doubt journalists working for other papers. Nick ‘Ratbiter’ Cohen is a hack for the Graon and Absurder, while one of the editors and probably a reviewer for their books page was Francis Wheen, another Guardian journo. The press seem to have decided en masse that Corbyn is an anti-Semite, and for all its professed independence and criticism of the fourth estate, the Eye really doesn’t seem to want to break ranks with them in that regard.
And I also suspect that they don’t want to counter that narrative for geopolitical reasons. Israel’s one of the pillars of our foreign policy in the Middle East, and although the paper has criticised it for its treatment of the Palestinians, its attack on Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites show that there are limits to how far the magazine will go in challenging foreign policy.
Private Eye also Afraid of Being Smeared as Anti-Semitic?
I also wonder if there are more selfish reasons. As Peter Oborne showed in his documentary on the Israel Lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches eleven years ago, the Conservative Jewish establishment and the Israel lobby will smear any and all newspapers and media organisations as anti-Semitic if they criticise Israel. Even, and perhaps especially, when that criticism is justified, as when the Guardian and BBC reported on the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon by the Christian Phalange, who were allied to Israel. The Groan’s former editor, Alan Rusbridger, described how the president of the Board used to troop into his office, with his pet lawyer, demanding the withdrawal of articles critical of Israel on the grounds that they would incite the general public to hate Jews.
The Beeb’s respected Middle East correspondents Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin were also accused of anti-Semitism when they covered the above massacres. When senior Beeb officials like Sir David Attenborough defended them, they too were ridiculously accused. That should have destroyed the Board’s credibility. Instead it seems to have succeeded in emboldening the Israel lobby. Since then Israel has also denounced and lied about the Beeb’s coverage of the blockade of Gaza and the bombing campaign against Palestinians, claiming that journalists were anti-Semitic and expelling them. This does seem to have had a chilling effect at the Beeb. And not just at the Beeb – the Groan and the Absurder have also fallen in line. And I think Private Eye’s determined promotion of the anti-Semitism smears may also be part of this. They’re also, I suspect, afraid of the Board turning up in their offices to accuse them of anti-Semitism. Back in the ’60s and ’70s when the magazine appeared more louche and subversive than it is now, some newsagents refused to stock it. In the 1990s WH Smith withdrew one edition from its shelves because of a joke on the cover about the prurient public interest in the death of Princess Di. I think the magazine is still terrified of some kind of boycott by distributors, which may well be the result if the Board did decide to start accusations of anti-Semitism against them.
What Can Be Done?
So there are a variety of reasons why Private Eye is pushing the anti-Semitism smears. But speculating on their motives doesn’t make it any less infuriating that they’re doing it. I’ve thought in the past of writing letters of complaint to the Eye, explaining that the accused aren’t anti-Semites, and asking for an explanation. But what’s the point? The letter would either be ignored, or a short, edited version would appear in the magazine, which would allow them to reply quoting Lansman or someone else that anti-Semitism is rife, etc. And I might be unfair here to the magazine, but I don’t want to find myself smeared as an anti-Semite in turn and have my name or address passed onto the trolls that appear online to howl abuse at Mike, Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein.
And so there doesn’t seem to be much hope of challenging the Eye in its pages. The only option left is to carry on critiquing its lies and those of the rest of the media in the hope that more and more people will realise that it and they are smearing decent people simply for political advantage and to keep a vicious, corrupt government installed.
This is the video I’ve just put up this evening discussing the Israel lobby and the anti-Semitism smears. I begin by saying that this follows on from the video I made about Chris Williamson’s suspension from the Labour party and the smears against him. I also make it clear that I have very harsh words to say about the Israel lobby and the Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies of British Jews. I am not an anti-Semite, and condemn categorically all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. And I absolutely despise the vile conspiracy theories about the Jews running the world, that resulted in 6 million innocents being murdered in the Holocaust death camps.
But some conspiracies do exist. And this is one of them. Conspiracies are covert, secret political plots, which this is. I explain that the anti-Semitism smears are Israel’s defence against criticisms of its oppression of the Palestinians. Ten years ago the journalist Peter Oborne made a documentary for Channel 4 about this, and the way the Israel lobby exerts influence in parliament with the groups Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel. It has also tried to silence reporting of Israel’s atrocities by the press and media. One of the speakers in Oborne’s documentary is Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian. He says that whenever they reported Israel’s crimes, someone would come along from the Board of Deputies with a lawyer and accused them of anti-Semitism. And the same was done to the BBC. When they reported the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Christian Phalange, Israel’s allies, the Israel lobby accused them of anti-Semitism. This included reporting by respected journalists like Jeremy Bowen or Orla Guerin, who should be above reproach. The Beeb referred the case to an independent watchdog, who stated that their reporting was objective. Avi Shlaim, a respected Israeli professor of Middle Eastern studies at Oxford University also appears in the documentary to confirm that the reporting was correct.
I say that if the Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies confined themselves to spiritual matters and defending Jews against genuine anti-Semitism, I would support them. Any decent person would. But they don’t. They are part of this smear campaign. And the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, is in my view a horrendous bigot. When he was Chief Rabbi he caused outrage by calling Reform Jews ‘enemies of the faith’. This is the language of persecution. It is the language used by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages against heretics, Jews and Muslims. And it is the language radical Protestants also used against others. Sacks was also responsible for leading a contingent of British Jews on the March of the Flags in Israel. This is a day when the Israeli equivalent of boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, vandalising their homes. It is done to keep them in their place, like the EDL and other Fascists in Britain marching into Muslim areas, the BNP marching into Black and other areas, where the people are ethnic minorities, and Oswald Mosley and the BUF marching into Cable Street to terrorise the Jews there.
I state that not every Jew is a supporter of Israel, and until recently Zionism was a minority position amongst Jews. The Yiddish-speaking masses of the Bund in eastern Europe, the Jews of Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Romania, wanted to remain in the countries in which they were born. The same in America, where American Jews had a comfortable life. There is also a strand of Orthodox Judaism that rejects Zionism. This believes that the restoration of Israel can only come by the hand of the Almighty through the Messiah, when it will be aided by the nations of the world. Its restoration as a secular state or by secular power is a blasphemy.
I also state that Jews, who speak out about Israel and its crimes suffer appalling abuse. They are called ‘self-hating’, accused of anti-Semites. I mention how Tony Greenstein was told by an opponent that they wished his family had died in the Holocaust. In the Labour party, the smears began a few years ago when Ed Miliband – who was Jewish! – was leader of the Labour party. He was accused of being anti-Semitic, or the Labour party was accused of being institutionally anti-Semitic. This was the first time Maureen Lipman resigned from the Labour Party. It has got worse under Jeremy Corbyn, because Corbyn is a supporter of the Palestinians. He is not an anti-Semite and is a fervent anti-racist.
This is all being done by the Israelis through the Ministry of Strategic Affairs by cabinet Minister Gilad Erdan.
Here’s my blurb for the video:
The current anti-Semitism smears in the Labour Party are a response by Israel to criticisms of its oppression of the Palestinians. They have been used to try and silence newspapers and broadcasters like the Guardian and BBC. Nearly a decade ago Peter Oborne made a documentary for Channel 4 describing this and the methods they use to obtain parliamentary support. Britain’s Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies of British Jews are part of this smear campaign, although many Jews do not support Israel. And those who also voice criticisms are smeared as ‘self-hating’ and anti-Semitic. The smears started when Ed Miliband was leader of the Labour party, despite the fact that he was himself Jewish, and have increased under Corbyn, who is a supporter of the Palestinians but not a racist or anti-Semite. I am fervently opposed to racism and anti-Semitism, and absolutely condemn the vile conspiracy theories about world Jewish power that led to the murder of six million innocents in the Nazi death camps.
The media smears claiming that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party are viciously anti-Semitic seem to have died down somewhat recently. This is no doubt due to Labour having folded and succumbed to the immense pressure to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in toto, which is being used, against the wishes of the man who devised it, to silence criticism of the state of Israel and its murderous oppression of the Palestinians. But Private Eye seems determined to maintain the smear.
In last fortnight’s issue, for 11-24 January 2019, the magazine chortled in a piece, ‘What the Papers Don’t Say’ on page 7, about how the Groaniad did not report how Emily Thornberry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, was jeered when she said at a Jewish charity event when she said that Jeremy Corbyn had been too upset to address the Labour party’s anti-Semitism claims. Which was in contrast to the Torygraph, Scum, Fail and the Times.
Then in the ‘Rotten Boroughs Awards 2018’ on page 18 there’s the piece ‘Jewish Humour Award’, which gives this dubious honour to Hounslow for Labour councillor Nisar Malik, whom it describes as ‘something of a conspiracy theory enthusiast, especially when it comes to the you-know-whos.’ Malik tweeted that “the Zionist lobby controls all the media”. This amused the Eye’s contributor, as ‘the Z-word’ was spelt ‘zaniest’. ‘Those screwball Illuminati jokesters get everywhere!’ the Eye guffaws.
Ian Hislop’s mighty organ has shown how determined it is to repeat the anti-Semitism smear against Labour by posting a reply to a female Momentum member, who sent them a letter denying it. They replied by saying that Momentum itself had admitted that there was an anti-Semitism problem in the Labour party. This is the view of Jon Lansman, Momentum’s founder, but is very much denied by many of the organization’s members and especially its former vice-chair, Jackie Walker, and her fellows on Labour Against the Witch-Hunt. But the Eye hasn’t bother to talk to them, or showed any inclination to do so. It’s thus no surprise that it sneers at the Groaniad for not reporting the jeers against Thornberry at the Jewish charity event, rather than questioning the other papers and those jeering Thornberry for their acceptance and determination to promote nothing but a vile Zionist smear.
As for Nisar Malik, I don’t know anything about him rather than what the Eye has said about him. It might be that he’s as anti-Semitic as the Eye claims, but that’s not clear after the newspapers smeared Mike as one, along with Ken Livingstone, Mark Wadsworth, Jackie Walker and so on. Malik’s wrong about the Zionists controlling the media, but they are under very heavy pressure from the Israeli state and the Jewish establishment over here not to report Israeli atrocities or crimes against humanity. I’ve posted up on this blog the documentary Peter Oborne made eleven years ago for Channel 4’s Despatches on the Israel lobby, in which the former editor of the Groaniad, Alan Rusbridger and Jewish media figures, and academics, including the respected Oxford professor of Middle Eastern studies, Avi Shlaim, described how the Israel lobby and the Board of Deputies of British Jews had tried to close down accurate reporting of atrocities committed by Israel and its allies, the Christian Phalangists in Lebanon, with accusations of anti-Semitism. These were made not only against Rusbridger, but also the Beeb and its reporters Jeremy Bowen, Orla Guerin and then Dimblebore when said the accusations were ridiculous. Malik has a very, very good point to attack this very strong Zionist bias.
And now in this fortnight’s issue for 25th January to 7 February 2019 the magazine is trying to maintain the smear by very carefully reporting the accusations leveled at some of those smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour party. This is in the article ‘Unskilled Labour’ by ‘Ratbiter’ in the mag’s ‘HP Sauce’ page. This is about how Labour is supposedly unprepared for a snap general election, due to subscription income falling. Other allegations are that the party doesn’t have the strategy and isn’t putting in the funding to fight marginal seats, various candidates have been dropped because they are unsuitable due to conspiratorial beliefs about the Manchester Arena bombing and the murder of Jo Cox and unpaid tax. But what is remarkable is how it reports that the party is also suffering pressure on its finances due to legal action by those it has smeared and unjustly expelled as anti-Semites. ‘Ratbiter’ writes
While subscription income falls, costs are rising – not least thanks to legal bills from Corbyn’s friends, who cannot take exclusion from the fold now that they feel the party has power in its grasp.
Marc Wadsworth, an old Corbyn ally, is suing Labour for expelling him after he reduced the Jewish MP Ruth Smeeth to treats at the launch of a report on, of all things, anti-Semitism. Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, candidate for South Thanet, has raised more than 4,000 pounds and retained leftish brief Michael Mansfield QC to challenge the national executive’s decision to block her candidacy because she brought the party into disrepute by banging on about Hitler, Zionism and Ken Livingstone.
Some, but not nearly all of this, is true, but even the truthful bits are very misleading. Labour Against the Witch-Hunt was formed long before the media started admitting that Labour had a chance of winning a coming election. The same with those members, who have been unjustly and foully smeared as anti-Semites, like Mike. They are friends of Corbyn, but they’re motives are getting proper redress and admission back into the party they’ve always supported, and would still demand this whatever the party’s electoral chances were. But putting it that way makes it seem that they’re all infiltrators, just in it for power. It’s a continuation of the Blairite/ Tory smear that they’re entryists.
Now let’s deal with the Eye claim about Wadsworth. Yes, at least one of the papers did accuse him of making the odious Ruth Smeeth cry. No, that’s not why the party expelled him. They accused him of anti-Semitism because he had made a comment about her handing material to a journo from the Torygraph. She tried to claim that he was using an anti-Semitic trope of being party of a Jewish conspiracy to smear her. The Blairite/Zionist kangaroo court couldn’t make that stick, because it was all too clear that Wadsworth was anything but an anti-Semite. For crying out loud, he worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews to get tougher legislation passed in the 1990s to combat real Nazi attacks on Jews in Thanet. This was dropped in favour of the catch-all claim that he had brought the party into disrepute. He hadn’t. Smeeth had with a completely and utterly false and libelous claim, which the gutter press was all too keen to repeat.
Going on to Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, it seems she was smeared and expelled for precisely the same reason Mike was. He also wrote a piece taking apart the smears against Ken Livingstone. These were that he had claimed that Hitler was a Zionist. He wasn’t, and Leninspart never said he was. The Leninist newt-fancier had outrageously told the truth and said that the Nazis had made a deal with the Zionists to send Jews to the nascent Jewish colony. This is the Ha’avara agreement, which is accepted, documented historical fact. It is mentioned on the website of the Holocaust memorial museum at Yad Vashem in Israel, and by Zionist historians of the Shoah. But this is too much for the Blairites, the Israeli state and the Israel lobby to stomach. And so they’ve libeled entirely decent, anti-racist individuals as anti-Semites.
The intention behind these smears has been to purge the party of Corbyn’s supporters, a move of which ‘Ratbiter’ evidently approves from the tone of the article. And the way these smears were done looks very much like an infringement of electoral law. Like the way Mike was smeared as a Jew-hater and Holocaust denier when he was standing as a candidate for his local council. Someone within the Labour party was obviously very much afraid that he would win, and so they leaked the smear to their friends in the press, a smear that was heartily taken up by Mike’s loudmouthed Tory opponent.
But there is absolutely no mention of this from the Eye.
Which makes you wonder how much of the rest of the material in ‘Ratbiter’s’ article is true. As for ‘Ratbiter’ himself, I believe Tony Greenstein on his blog outed this person’s real identity after he made similar misleading claims about Labour and anti-Semitism in Private Eye.
Despite the fact that Eye’s founders were all public schoolboys, as is Hislop and his deputy editor, Francis Wheen, the Eye has something of a countercultural reputation because of its irreverent approach to authority. But here the magazine seems to be staunchly following a very establishment line to prevent real change for this country by maintain the press narrative of Labour anti-Semitism.
The I’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is one of the few Fleet Street columnists, who I respect. She writes about racism, but acknowledges that it is not confined to Whites hating Blacks, but affects people of all races and colours. She’s also a genuinely moderate Muslim, fiercely critical of the bigots and preachers of hate in her religion, and condemns the White, non-Muslim politicians who pander to them in the hope of garnering votes.
Tweezer’s Denial of Asylum to Asia Bibi, Pakistani Persecuted Christian
A few weeks ago, she attacked Tweezer for refusing sanctuary to Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan. Other companies have offered to take Bibi in, but not May, who feared that it would upset this country’s Muslims. Alibhai-Brown then described the case, showing how dubious the accusation was, and the prejudice and hatred Pakistani Christians face. She also stated that the country was also unsafe for Shi’a Muslims like herself. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had intended it to be a secular state with separation between state and mosque. But this had swiftly been overturned, most notoriously by the military dictator General Zia ul-Haqq, who ruled the place in the 1970s. Everything she said was correct. The Beeb has also screened documentaries about the arrests of people in Pakistan for blasphemy. It’s a crime that carries the death penalty, and Bibi has spent over a decade on death row. Most of those accused, however, are Muslims, and it looks very much like the majority of accusations are false, being used as a weapon in family and clan disputes. In the case of Bibi, she was accused of blasphemy by a group of women with whom she was working. They sent her to fetch water for them to drink. She stopped to take a drink herself, so they accused her of ‘polluting’ it before going to accuse her of blasphemy. Everything about it says to me that this is all about caste. Islam in Pakistan has a caste system like India, though not as severe. Many of Pakistan’s Christians are sheikhs, one of the lowest castes, working as bonded labourers in the brick kilns. It looks like Bibi was one of these low caste workers, and the Muslims for whom she fetched the water were outraged at her taking a drink from it because they believed that the touch of a low caste person polluted it. Just like high caste Indians at one time would throw away their food if even the shadow of one of the Dalits, the Untouchables, fell on it.
There’s more to be said about the case, but Alibhai-Brown was right to attack the vicious, murderous bigotry behind the accusation and Tweezer’s own cowardice in refusing to give Bibi asylum. I’d go further, and say that while there is a danger that the preachers of hate in British Islam would try to capitalize on Bibi being given asylum, that’s no evidence for not admitting her to Britain. And it also shows Tweezer’s low view of British Islam, if she thought the intolerance of bigoted minority was worth capitulating to. Not all Muslims are fanatics and bigots by any means, but Tweezer’s refusal to take in Asia Bibi suggests that she feels that nevertheless, enough of them are. It’s a decision which would delight the Islamophobes, who believe that all Muslims are a threat to traditional British religious freedom, and that liberal governments are too afraid to confront them.
Alibhai-Brown on Israel’s Persecution of the Palestinians
In yesterday’s I for the 27th November 2018, Alibhai-Brown tackled the plight of the Palestinians and their oppression under the Israelis in an article entitled ‘The Holy Land needs some goodwill: Plight of the Palestinians should be remembered by all’, on page 15. She began the article by stating that Christmas is the time when devout Christians turn their minds to the places where Christ lived, preached and died, and that there is a massive tourist industry in the Holy Land. It is a country which contains sites sacred to all three of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that for centuries the religions coexisted in peace.
This is true no longer, as Israel increases its dominance. She states that Bethlehem has been turned into an open air prison, and that last year Palestinian Muslims were denied entrance to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. Netanyahu’s oppression of the Palestinians is supported by Donald Trump and American Christian fanatics, whose decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem shows that Muslim Arabs mean nothing to him and his government.
Shalhoub-Kavorkian and Dimbleby on Oppressed Palestine
She then goes on to quote Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kavorkian of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on the routine brutality and second class status of the Palestinians. The prof. wrote
Violence is central to the political logic of the Israeli state and its occupation of Jerusalem. Enacted in the hundreds of daily acts of harassment perpetuated by heavily armed soldiers, police, settlers, and undercover security personnel belonging to the state of Israel, much of the violence occurs routinely and it goes largely unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Palestinians, native to and residing in Jerusalem, are categorized by Israeli law as ‘permanent residents’ or as foreign residents who hate to prove to the Ministry of Interior that their ‘centre of life’ – where they live, go to school, get medical care and pay for utilities are all taking place in Jerusalem.
She then moves on to discuss a ‘poignant’ book on Palestine, published by Jonathan Dimbleby, now the presenter of Question Time in 1980. This was when he was the maker of foreign documentaries, and the book was accompanied with photographs by Sir Donald McCullin. The book apparently shows the great diversity of Palestinian life and culture as well as moving tales of dispossession and pain. Re-reading it now, she realized how much worse their plight had become. She quotes the book as saying
The struggle is still presented in a woefully lopsided fashion: a small embattled, occasionally obstinate but usually admirable democratic state (Israel) under challenge from a despicable, occasionally pathetic, but usually brutal gang of desperadoes (the PLO).
Defending Palestine and Anti-Semitism Smears
She is very aware that simply discussing the plight of the Palestinians is met by accusations of anti-Semitism. She writes
Now the reporting of Israeli injustices brings on instant accusations of anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately, she also swallows the line that Israel was created in response to the horrors of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. It wasn’t. Jewish colonization began long before, after the Balfour Declaration during the First World War. She states that Israel exists and must exist as a safe homeland, before going to make the point that the horrors of the Nazis’ persecution don’t give Israel the right to break international laws and violate the human rights ‘of those whose land was taken to create their homeland’.
Pro-Palestinian Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
The article then goes on to discuss the book, Walking to Jerusalem, by Justin Butcher, a playwright and activist, whose launch she attended. This is the record of a pilgrimage made by hundreds of ordinary people, who went on foot to Jerusalem, funded by a small charity, the Amos Trust. The pilgrims arrived just before the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, in order to ‘change the record of a hundred years of injustice to the Palestinian people.’ She states that the marchers included Jews, which should surprise no-one, who knows how very many Jews are critical of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and the crimes committed in their name by Netanyahu’s thugs.
She also notes that over 200 Gazans were killed by Israeli forces, some of whom were medical workers and journalists. Settlers were stealing more land and homes. Although some Israelis were also wounded and killed, and too many live in fear, this was an unequal clash.
Alibhai-Brown’s Call for the Public to Contact their MPs
She concludes the article
Maybe one thing we can all do this Christmas is to ask our MPs to be more openly critical of Israel and do what the walkers did – support peaceful Palestinian men, women and children who have for so long been denied rights, livelihoods and dignity. Sometimes goodwill is the best present.
Alibhai-Brown and the Anti-Semitism Smears against the Labour Party
It’s a good article, but marred by Alibhai-Brown’s own behaviour towards Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. When the Israel lobby and Conservative media and Jewish establishment once again attacked Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour for not signing up to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, Alibhai-Brown was one of the hacks denouncing the Labour party as full of anti-Semites. But this article suggests she know how false at least some of those allegations must have been. But there is no retraction. The Fleet Street Groupthink about the Labour party, and the bias of the I’s editor and proprietor apparently appear to be too strong.
She also must realise that with the Israel lobby holding power in both the Tories and the Labour party through their ‘Friends of Israel’ groups, and the Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour party, any chance of MPs stepping out of line to risk their careers defending the Palestinians is remote. Not while there’s a chance that someone at the Israeli embassy will pick up where Shai Masot left off and start deciding that they’re a person, who shouldn’t be in the next cabinet. And although the media may claim that the affair’s all over, their haste to do so shows that the conspiracy – and the accusations of anti-Semitism against people like Mike who correctly called it that – has had the desired effect. MPs aren’t going to risk being sidelined or thrown out as anti-Semites if they dare confront the lobby.
The Israel Lobby and the Suppression of Pro-Palestinian Reporting
As for Dimbleby and his book, I very much doubt there’s much chance of anyone at the Beeb now being so courageous in criticizing Israel. Ten years ago Peter Oborne made his documentary on the Israel lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches. This showed not just the extent of the lobby in the parliamentary parties, but also how they bullied and intimidated journalists with accusations of anti-Semitism. This included Graoniad editor Alan Rusbridger, and several very well respected Beeb journos, who dared to describe the atrocities committed by Israel and the massacres by its allies, the Lebanese Christian phalange, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. These accusations were found by the broadcasting regulatory bodies to be without foundation. But that tactic is still being used by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the other thugs and bully-boys in the Israel lobby.
And this tactics will continue to be made, unless more people stand up to it. Corbyn and his supporters aren’t anti-Semites, but they were smeared as such simply because they defended the Palestinians. The Israelis are afraid that there just might be a foreign prime minister, who doesn’t defer to them, and won’t tolerate their persecution of the indigenous Arabs. Alibhai-Brown must surely realise this, but she joined their attacks on Corbyn and Labour anyway.
And those attacks on Corbyn and politicians like him will continue, unless journos like Alibhai-Brown practice what they preach and actively support and defend him and other Israel-critical politicos in their columns against such mendacious and false accusation of anti-Semitism.
If not broken up altogether, as the malign, libellous and morally corrupt organisation it really is. I’ve commented already on a post Mike put up on Thursday, reporting the barrage of criticism the Board of Deputies had called upon itself from outraged citizens up and down this country. They were enraged at the Board’s comments on the Gaza massacre, and the way they placed the blame, not on the Israeli squaddies, who murdered 60 people and wounded 200 more, but on the victims. Ah, it was all the fault of Hamas, who put all the 40,000 or so Palestinians massing at the fence, up to it. After all, 50 of those killed were members of Hamas.
It doesn’t matter if they were members of Hamas or not. They were unarmed. This makes their killings assassinations, which is the mark of a death squad. Which is Fascism.
Also, what about the 10 that weren’t members of Hamas? They didn’t deserve to die. Not least the baby that was killed when Israeli squaddies threw a tear gas grenade into a tent.
Liberal Judaism and Yachad wrote letters to the Board stating that the Board had grotesquely misrepresented their views. And ordinary, individual Jews were also incensed. One of them was the comic actor David Schneider, who said very plainly that the Board didn’t represent Jews like him.
Mike opened his article with the smug face of the Board’s president, Jonathan Arkush, who he said was soon to be ex-president of the Board.
Arkush is a nasty piece of work, not least for the way he’s weaponised the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party, and tried to make Corbyn the sole person responsible for it. It’s a lie, as he must surely know, as anti-Semitism has gone down in the Labour party under Corbyn. It’s now lower than in ordinary British society. And as Mike’s repeatedly pointed out, if you want to see real, baying racists and anti-Semites, with the vilest of views, you have to look at the Tory and Tory affiliated web-pages.
But when Arkush and the Board attack the Labour party for being anti-Semitic, this is only a cover for their real concern: to stifle criticism of Israel. And the Israel lobby has been using that smear since the 1980s. So much so that the American Jewish critic of Israel, Dr. Norman Finkelstein, has described it as a machine for manufacturing anti-Semites.
It’s a tactic shared and employed wholesale by the odious Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. And it was explicitly set up to stifle criticism of Israel caused by their treatment of Gaza. It’s founder, Gideon Falter, was left unnerved by the popular opposition to Israel aroused by the bombardment of Gaza in 2007 or so. He did what the Israel lobby always do in such circumstances, and defined criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Oh yes, in debates the pro-Israel pundits and speakers will allow that Israel should rightly be the subject of criticism where it’s justified. But in practice, any support for the Palestinians is met with outrage, and claims of anti-Semitism. Especially if you call it an apartheid state, or point out just how similar it is to Fascism or the Nazi policies towards the Jews before they embarked on the horrors of the ‘Final Solution’ in 1942.
The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism hasn’t said a peep about the Gaza massacre. They don’t represent British Jewry in the same way as the Board, and so there’s no call for them to. But you can bet they’ve been watching the wave of outrage against the Board for its vile comments, and been taking notes, if not names. The Israel lobby hates even the reporting of atrocities committed by Israel or its allies. They alleged that respected BBC foreign correspondents Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin were anti-Semites for their reports on the conflicts between Israel and its neighbours. They were particularly upset by Bowen’s report that the massacres of Muslim Palestinians by the Christian phalange in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon were committed by Israel’s allies. Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, described in an interview with Peter Oborne in his Despatches programme on the Israel lobby how he was regularly placed under pressure by the Board demanding that he retract articles on Israeli crimes and human rights violations because they are anti-Semitic.
It isn’t just the Board that needs to be investigated and reformed because of their support for the shooting of unarmed civilians. It’s the entire Israel lobby, including the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Their patrons, as Mike and Tony Greenstein has pointed out, are largely Tories with a history of racism and Islamophobia. And they have been principally involved with the anti-Semitism smears against members of the Labour party, in conjunction with pro-Israel organs like the Labour Friends of Israel. There have been calls for the latter group to be expelled from the party, just as there has been an internet petition on Change.org to have the CAA deregistered with the Charity Commission for being a political organisation, not a charity.
It has been the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism that libelled Mike as an anti-Semite and holocaust denier just because he had the temerity to defend Ken Livingstone. Just like they’ve libelled and smeared so many other decent people, Jew and gentile, even those, who have spent their lives combating racism and anti-Semitism. Even those, who have suffered genuine anti-Semitic abuse and assault themselves.
And just as many British Jews were rightly angered by the Board’s comments about Gaza, so Jewish Brits have also been annoyed by the way the Campaign presumes to speak for them. Especially when its pronouncements are made by gentiles like Luke Akehurst or Stephen Pollard, who then go on to declare that all British Jews, as Jew, must support Israel. They are rightly incensed at being told what they must believe as Jews by those, who aren’t.
Criticism of the Israel lobby should not stop at the Board and its vile president. It has to go beyond, to organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, BICOM and others.
Arkush should be called on to resign for his comments. And so should Gideon Falter, and his wretched smear group be broken up for its similar tactics, libels and goals.
Presented by the Conservative journo Peter Oborne, this is a very hard-hitting and extensive investigation into the malign influence and tactics of the Israel lobby. It covers not just the soft corruption of political lobbying – the various donations in money and paid trips to Israel given to Tory and Labour politicos, but also the co-ordinated smear campaign against anyone who dares to speak out in favour of the Israeli state’s victims. It’s a smear campaign that has seen very respected members of the Jewish community, including senior rabbis, and BBC journos like the late Orla Guerin, Jeremy Bowen and even Jonathan Dimbleby accused of anti-Semitism. The result has been that the Beeb was pressured not to put out an appeal for the victims of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and there was complaints about its coverage of those murdered by Israel’s allies in the Christian Fascists of the Lebanese Phalange in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. And there has been constant pressure by these same bullying thugs on the Groaniad under its former editor, Alan Rusbridger. Who really does look like Harry Potter. Much of this pressure and screaming abuse seems to have come from America. The organisations are carefully structured, so that they keep the total number of donations secret, and their donors hide behind anonymity. When investigated they repeat the same, smooth words about just trying to keep the argument open by presenting Israel’s case, or mutter platitudes about supporting a two-state solution. All the while doing their level best to make sure that their voice is the only the British public hear, and rabidly pursuing business deals on stolen Palestinian land.
I’m afraid I may have misheard some of the names in the programme, and so misspelled them, but they should be roughly accurate.
The documentary begins with the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the Conservative Friends of Israel. Despite the horrendous carnage and destruction wrought, David Cameron in a speech made no mention of this, but instead praised the Israelis and his pledged his lasting support to them if he became Prime Minister. It was this that prompted Oborne to launch his own investigation into the Israel lobby. He makes the point that they have influence on both sides of Parliament, as shown by an exchange between a Conservative MP, who was a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, who asked a question about Israel’s continuing safety. This was answered by a Labour MP, who was a member of the Labour Friends of Israel. Oborne then interviews Michael Ancram, former Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2003-5, about the Israel Lobby’s influence. as well as Sir Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Iran from 2003-6. Dalton states clearly that the Israel Lobby does exist, and is important in defining the debate about Israel and the Palestinians. The Conservative Friends of Israel is highly influential, and boasts that it includes 80 per cent of all Tory MPs. Its chair, Richard Huntingdon, received £20,000 last year (2008) in donations, and gave £34,000 to the Conservatives. And the director of the No. 10 club, that exclusive Tory fundraising outfit in which, for a mere £50,000, you can meet David Cameron or have lunch with William Hague, is also included. The Tory Friends of Israel also arrange paid trips to Israel for MPs. So far there have been more of these than equivalent trips to America and Europe combined. Oborne states that in fairness, he has to say that he went on one of these, and there was no pressure to report favourably about Israel. But two MPs, who went on one of these trips, then received afterwards £25,000 in donations. This prompts Oborne to ask Ancram if this explains the soft line taken by the Tories about Israeli influence, and why the Tories don’t like to talk about it.
The documentary then moves on to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during which 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed, and $3.6 billion’s worth of damage inflicted. Michael Howard gave William Hague £25,000 in donations. Hague then made the mistake of making a speech criticising the Israeli response to Lebanese attacks as disproportionate. As a result, Lord Kalms, a CFI donor and head of the Dixons electronics chain, was outraged, and threatened to withhold further funding. Which he did, and Hague never received a penny more. The Israel lobby attacks even the mildest criticism of Israel. The director of the CFI, Stuart Pollak, had a meeting with David Cameron after the speech. Then, at his lunch with the CFI, Cameron didn’t mention the Lebanese invasion at all.
The programme then moves on to the organisation’s income, as revealed by the Parliamentary Accounts Register. For comparison, the pro-Arab lobby revealed that they had been given £43,000 in donations. How many had the CFI been given? No-one knows. They didn’t register any. They’re structured as a group of individuals, and are not incorporated, so they don’t have declare any under the rules. In 2008 the CFI gave the Tories £2 million, but this is not the whole story. One Tory MP said that after a chance meeting with Stuart Pollak, he received two donations from businessmen he had never met, and who did not live in his constituency. The CFI gave £30,000 to Cameron’s team. And in 2005 Cameron met Plocha Zabludowicz, who gave the future Tory PM £15,000 and a further £35,000 to Tory Central Office. The total figure for the donations given by the CFI is £10 million, more than the other lobbies.
Then there’s the incident of the UN vote over a motion censuring both Hamas and Israel for the carnage in Gaza. The CFI rang Hague up to condemn the resolution and demand that he criticise it. Which he duly did.
But the Israel Lobby only became really powerful in Britain under Maggie’s favourite Labour pet, Tony Blair. Jon Mandelsohn, a prominent pro-Israel lobbyist, stated that ‘Zionism is pervasive in New Labour’ and ‘It is axiomatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings’. There are more Labour MPs in Labour Friends of Israel than their opponents across the benches in the Tory Friends of Israel. The documentary describes how Blair met the rock entrepreneur, Lord Levy, at the Israeli embassy, who then raised £15 million for the Labour party before the row over ‘cash for questions’. When Blair became PM in 1997, he gave Levy a life peerage. Levy, however, was unpaid and never a formal servant of the British state, so that the deals he made as Blair’s special envoy to the Middle East between Israel and the Arab nations could be kept secret. The programme interviews Prof. Avi Shlaim of Oxford University’s Middle East department, who states that he considers Levy has damaged Britain’s reputation in the Middle East.
The documentary then moves back to CFI lobbyists at the Tory party conference. Their purpose there is to make sure Cameron’s policies are in line with Israel’s This means that Michael Kaminski, the Polish leader, who heads a small, far right nationalist party, is lionised by the Tories, despite his record of making anti-Semitic remarks and his refusal to apologise for the suffering of Jewish Poles during the Second World War. Stuart Pollak was most keen not to have Cameron’s speech to the CFI at the Tory conference covered. He is shown waving the camera crew away. The CFI totally support Kaminski. They also plead that they’re totally transparent through the distinction between their donations as a group, and those of individual businesspeople.
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