Anti-Semitism Accusations: My Email to Private Eye

I have also written an email to Private Eye informing them that I have been unfairly accused of anti-Semitism, and offering to give them more information on this sorry affair and the process by which innocent people are smeared and purged from the Labour party. This, I say, will correct their previous biased reporting in favour of the witch hunters. The email runs

“Dear Sir,

I am a long term reader of your magazine, which have greatly enjoyed. I have followed with interest your coverage of the mass accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour party and the purges of those accused. I regret to say that I have found this coverage to be almost wholly one-sided. You have given little opportunity for the victims of what can only be described as a witch-hunt to speak for themselves. Worse, you seem to have blindly followed the media groupthink and automatically assumed that the Labour party did have a severe anti-Semitism problem, that Jeremy Corbyn was an anti-Semite, and that those accused were indeed guilty.

This left me somewhat perplexed, as your magazine has a strong tradition of criticising Israel and standing up for those, who have been falsely accused. I am offering you the opportunity to correct this bias.

Yesterday I received a message from the Labour Party Complaints Team informing me that I was being investigated for anti-Semitism, based on an article I had published on my blog as far back as 5th December 2020. In this I agreed with another blogger, Tony Greenstein, a proud Jewish critic of Zionism, that Zionism was an internalised Jewish version of anti-Semitism and that Israel is indeed a racist, colonialist state. The argument is supported by solid historical scholarship, quoting reputable historians and the major figures in Zionist history themselves.

I am not an anti-Semite, a form of racism that I find particularly abhorrent and have published very many pieces on my blog attacking it and other forms of racism, as well as its political expressions, Fascism and Nazism.

I am offering you the chance to hear about this witch hunt and the perversion of justice used by the NEC and the anonymous accusers from one of its victims. If you wish to hear about all this from the horse’s mouth, as it were, you may contact me at the above email address or by telephone at [redacted]

Yours with very best wishes,

David Sivier, BA (Hons) History; MA History, PhD Archaeology.”

I doubt this will do any good. When Hislop has published letters from the victims of the witch hunt, it is immediately followed by an editor’s comment stating that Labour must have an anti-Semitism problem based on the comments of Jon Lansman. Lansman is one of the founders of Momentum, who is still claiming that Labour is riddled with Jew-hatred despite the evidence to the contrary. But still, I am determined to fight this and publicise it as much as possible in order to embarrass the party apparatchiks behind it.

And I’ll let you know if I get a response from Private Eye.

Anti-Semitism Accusations: I Demand My Accusers’ Identities

Firstly, my thanks and warmest appreciation for all the readers of this blog, who have liked my previous post reporting that I have been unfairly smeared as an anti-Semite by the Labour party simply for criticising Zionism and the state of Israel’s barbarous, racist, colonialist treatment of its indigenous people, the Palestinians, and the messages of support I have received.

I am determined to fight this as hard as I can, but I have little hope of winning due to the perverted nature of what passes for justice in the Labour party. My accusers have, I am sure, already made up their minds that I am guilty, and I expect that in due course they will try and haul me before a kangaroo court and expel me. If I’m very lucky, they might offer me the chance of recanting and being trained in anti-Semitism awareness by the Jewish Labour Movement, which should really be called the Ultra-Zionist Bowel Movement. I am currently in formulating my reply and refutation of the accusations.

I note that once again, my accusers remain anonymous, contrary to natural justice and English legal tradition. I have therefore written to the Complaints Team demanding to know the identities of my accusers, as well as the members of the NEC who decided it had merit. I also demand copies of any correspondence between them and my accusers, and to see the NEC’s minutes regarding the decision. Here is my email:

“Dear Sir,

Thank you for informing me about the allegations of anti-Semitism that have been made against me and the consequent investigation. You shall have my reply, as requested, by the end of this week. In the meantime I have the following objection to make against the complaints process. This is the anonymity of my accusers.

The anonymous accusation is against British justice and is the hallmark of persecutory dictatorship.

As students of classical history will recall, anonymous informants were used by Roman tyrants such as Nero and Caligula. It has also been used more recently by Fascists and Nazis, as well as the Leninist-Stalinist regimes of the former Soviet bloc. The Stasi, the German secret police, had boxes of files from about ¼ of the population of the former East Germany, snitching on their friends and neighbours. I am personally acquainted with Muslim asylum seekers here from the highly despotic regimes in their home countries. They have told hair-raising stories of friends of their, who were ‘disappeared’ due to such informants. Is has been said that this is a witch hunt, but history also shows that medieval and 16^th and 17^th witches were treated with much better justice. In the papal states, the accused witch was allowed to face her accuser in court. She was tried by a jury, and had the right to a lawyer. If she could not afford a lawyer, one would be appointed for her. In England the vast majority of witches were acquitted.

Here it is different. The accused ‘witch’ is tried in a kangaroo court, in which he or she is denied knowledge of his or her accuser’s identity and the opportunity to question them. I have seen ample evidence that the judges are politically appointed and that the officers of these tribunals do as they have been directed by people at the highest levels of the Labour party bureaucracy. This is against natural justice and the custom and practice of English law, many of whose greatest jurists and legal theoreticians, I need hardly mention, have been Jewish. As have been so many victims of these wretched kangaroo courts.

I demand justice. I demand to know the names of my accusers and the right to challenge in an open tribunal.

I would be very grateful, therefore, if you would supply me with the names and email addresses of my accusers and the organisations to which they belong. I also request to see any correspondence between them and the NEC about me. I also demand to know the names of the members of the NEC, who decided that these accusations had sufficient merit to warrant an investigation. I also wish to see the relevant NEC minutes in which my case was discussed and the decision taken.

If this is not done, I intend to take this further with the relevant authorities such as the Information Commissioner. 

I would greatly appreciate your cooperation in this matter.

Yours faithfully,

David Sivier”

I doubt very much I shall be given them. Others have made the same request, and met the same flat denials. But the point needs to be made, and made repeatedly.

The Labour party is acting like a Fascist or Communist regime in withholding the identities of the accusers and the party officials responsible for these decisions. And I will continue to make this point so long as they accuse me and others of these abominable views.