Labour Anti-Semitism: Starmer Once Again Accusing Jews

I had a couple of commenters come over here a few days ago to give me the benefit of their views on my article about Gary Spedding getting suspended. Spedding was all too keen to have decent people suspended and expelled on trumped up anti-Semitism charges, but has now changed his tune somewhat now that he has met the same fate. He’s been accused of passing around Green party material during the Hartlepool election. Thus Spedding now would like to offer his solidarity with others. Except when Mike asked him for an apology for calling him an anti-Semite and holocaust denier, Spedding asked why he would want to apologise to him. He hasn’t learned anything, hasn’t really changed his views. He just wants sympathy and so deserves everything he gets.

One of the commenters on my article about this said that I had a conspiratorial attitude, and a problem with people who had genuine concerns about anti-Semitism, particularly Jews. Another left a snarky comment stating that I believed all the anti-Semitic libels against the people I term ultra-Zionists, ‘who just happen to be Jews’. I deleted that comment because, sarcastic as it was, I didn’t want the anti-Semitic smears to appear on my blog, as well as the fact that I couldn’t be bother to argue against such nonsense.

In fact there is abundant evidence to show that all the anti-Semitism comes from the Labour party witch-hunters. It’s sectarian anti-Semitism directed primarily against the people that threaten the Board of Deputies’ very narrow definition of British Jewry: people like them from the United Synagogue, who wholeheartedly support Israel and demand the suppression of any reporting of its atrocities against the Palestinians. Neoliberals who support Blair and fear the revival of socialism in the Labour party, and so joined the rest of the Conservatives in looking for a way to smear Corbyn and his supporters.

Four-fifths of the people accused of anti-Semitism are Jews. They’re supposed to be self-hating. This is risible, a sick joke. There are, unfortunately, self-hating Jews. I found an academic book about the phenomenon once in the university library. In some extreme cases, they pretend to be Aryans and join neo-Nazi groups. There was a case in the ’90s of one such individual, who was the head of a neo-Nazi unit. He took his own life after being outed to his storm troopers. But none of the peeps Starmer and Evans are suspending for anti-Semitism seem even remotely like this. They look to me like decent, self-respecting, secular and Torah-observant Jews. Many of them have been victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and assault, as I’ve said ad nauseam. They’re being smeared and expelled instead because they’re socialists, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, who criticise Israel’s barbaric ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And this week, Starmer’s NEC suspended and smeared 11 more Jewish victims:  Leah Levane, Jenny Manson, Graham Bash, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Mike Cushman, Glyn Secker, Jonathan Rosenhead, Stephen Marks, Diana Neslen, Marion Roberts, Tony Booth. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is one of the leading figures in Jewish Voice for Labour, which one right-wing Labour MP tweeted should be expelled en masse along with other ‘commies’. Graham Bash is a well-respected Labour member and activist of very long standing. But they’re the ‘wrong kind of Jews’.

The Blairites running these purges make great use of the fact that real Nazis and Fascists identified Jews with capitalism, and so have accused anyone attacking big business or the financial sector of being anti-Semitic. But the Nazis also believed Jews were responsible for Communism and ‘Marxist’ socialism. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find the exact quote, but in the 1920s/30s Nazi propaganda against the SPD, the mainstream German socialist party roughly like the Labour party, was that it had been taken over by Jews. The Jews had conspired to get elected as delegates to the Reichstag and were busy expelling non-Jews from the party so they could replace them. It’s a nasty, vile piece of propaganda. And now we see something rather like it with the anti-Semitism smears. The smear merchants are claiming that the wrong type of Jews, commies and pinko lefties, are trying to take over the Labour party to oust virtuous believers in capitalism and Maggie Thatcher, and so must be purged.

But the anti-Semitism smears and lies are just one part of this general purge by Keef Stalin against the left. If he can’t smear his opponents as anti-Semites, he suspends them anyway, with no reason given. We’ve seen this with the sudden suspension of delegates to the Labour conference which begins tomorrow. It seems to be simply a method to remove delegates, who would vote out general secretary David Evans, the vile individual chiefly responsible for the purges and smear campaign within Labour. The victims haven’t been given reasons, just suspended. This is arbitrary government, the mark of the tyrant. It shows that Starmer and the NEC cannot be trusted and should not be allowed in government.

Because if they break the internal regulations of the Labour party, how much worse would they be if they felt they could break the laws of our great and beautiful country with impunity? And what would they do to real socialists, especially our Jewish brothers and sisters, if they had the power of the state?

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/09/21/also-in-the-news-starmers-racist-labour-accuses-jews-of-anti-semitism/

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/09/22/labour-conference-as-party-leaders-fight-to-destroy-democracy-isnt-it-time-for-a-no-confidence-vote/

Anti-Semitism Smear Merchant Spedding Facing Expulsion by Starmer’s Labour

Oh, what delightful irony! What goes around, comes around. And it’s come around to hit Gary Spedding. Spedding’s one of the ultra-Zionists who took it upon himself in 2018 to join Kieron Monks and the fake anti-racism outfit, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism in smearing Mike as a Jew-hater and holocaust-denier.

Mike had critiqued a piece by Monks that appeared in Prospect claiming that there was an anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Prospect is a moderate, left-wing political magazine very much like Encounter was in the ’60s and 70’s. This magazine was later revealed to have benefited from CIA funding, and there are suspicions amongst the watchers of real conspiracies and the covert activities of the intelligence agencies, like Lobster, that Prospect is similarly a conduit for secret state propaganda.

Mike briefly questioned whether Tony Blair had been influenced by a secret Jewish cabal, but the subtleties of his prose escaped, or, more likely, was wilfully misinterpreted by the anti-Semitism smear merchants. They claimed that Mike had claimed that Blair was influenced by such a cabal, and that this constituted a form of the old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jews secretly controlling events and politics. Mike was hauled up before the NEC and then thrown out. The lies against him were leaked by person or persons unknown in that august body to the Sunset Times. And in an argument with Mike on the web, Spedding repeated the smears, libelling Mike as an anti-Semite and holocaust-denier.

As has been abundantly demonstrated over and again, Mike is neither. He couldn’t afford to prosecute Spedding for libel, but he was able to clear his name by IPSO. As for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, it is in my view nothing but an ultra-Zionist front organisation. It was founded in 2012 by Gideon Falter, who was outraged that severely normal Brits didn’t back Israel during the bombardment of Gaza. It has made so many fake accusations of anti-Semitism that I feel it should really have a new name. Perhaps ‘the Campaign Against Truth?’ Or may be, as so many victims of the anti-Semitism smear campaign are Jews, ‘the Campaign for Anti-Semitism’ or ‘Campaign Against Jews’?

Further confirmation that the Israel lobby and ultra-Zionists in Labour were behind the anti-Semitism smears against Mike and the other victims is shown in one of the other names that crop up in Monks’ tweet: Dave Rich. Rich wrote a book a few years ago claiming that Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left was deeply anti-Semitic. Rich, however, was the head of a Zionist organisation, which indicates to me that he was pushing the smears to defend Israel against a Labour leader, who had been a very strong opponent of the country’s brutal oppression of the Palestinians.

Now Spedding himself is facing expulsion on the trumped-up charge of having disseminated material from the Green party during the Hartlepool by-election. Now he is complaining about the unfair and brutal treatment of people like him by Starmer. But Starmer gained the leadership precisely because of people like Spedding. And Spedding now wants to ‘join in the solidarity with the other victims’. Mike therefore doubts his motivations considering his past conduct.

Spedding is asking for an apology from Starmer, so Mike asked him if he would care to apologise to him. He was brusquely refused with the curt reply ‘Why would I apologise to you?’

Which shows very clearly that he’s still convinced of his lies and libels. Mike states that he’s toxic and so doesn’t deserve a minute of anyone’s time.

Quite. Until Spedding acknowledges that the accusations against Mike and the other victims of the anti-Semitism witch hunt are false, there can be no real solidarity between them and him.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/09/19/karma-vicious-false-anti-semitism-screamer-is-targeted-for-exclusion-by-labour/

Private Eye Criticises Rachel Riley for Hypocrisy over China

Could the media support for Rachel Riley be waning just a little? This last fortnight’s edition of Private Eye for 14th – 27th August 2020 carried a piece calling her out for hypocrisy. She’d published a link to a petition against the persecution of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government, urging people to sign it. However, a few months ago Riley had also declared that she’d made a deal with the Chinese-owned company, Tiktok, to help it produce maths tips. The Eye’s article runs

Countdown mathematical whizz Rachel Riley recently tweeted a link to a petition drawing attention to the plight of the Uyghur Muslims. It called on the UK government to impose sanctions on China for its human rights violations. “We’re listening, we’re with you… Thanks to everyone who signed this,” she wrote.

Is this the same Rachel Riley who tweeted “This should be fun” in response to an announcement in June that she’d signed up to help TikTok’s move into the UK education market, producing mathematics tips for the platform?

The Chinese-owned video sharing app has long attracted privacy concerns and has been banned by the Indian government after claims that it was using data illegally and secretly collecting information from phones when the app was downloaded. Meanwhile, TikTok’s domestic Chinese version, Douyin, is heavily censored under Chinese government rules.

Most concerning to Riley, however, might have been the news in November that TikTok had suspended the account of 17-year-old Feroza Aziz after she highlighted human rights abuses against … the Uyghur Muslims. As Riley puts it, this should indeed be fun.

I’ve got absolutely no problem with Riley supporting a petition against the vicious genocide being waged against the Uyghurs. She’s quite right to point it out and demand government action. And I don’t find her support for TikTok particularly hypocritical either, even if it does conflict with her new attitude towards the state persecution of the Muslim people by the Chinese authorities. What I do find hypocritical is her own vicious bullying and smearing of decent, anti-racists and genuine opponents of anti-Semitism, simply because they support Jeremy Corbyn or are critical of the Israeli state’s 70 year long campaign of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinians. Riley certainly isn’t alone in this. The smears were made and repeated by just about the entire right-wing British political and media establishment, including Private Eye. Which makes the Eye’s article, now criticising Riley for hypocrisy, somewhat ironic. Riley and her best buddy Tracy Ann Oberman were given extensive support for their accusations and smears by the media, who have promoted her as some kind of doughty campaigner against anti-Semitism. Except, when it comes to critics of Israel, in my opinion she isn’t. She’s confusing it with anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism, as defined by Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites in 19th century Germany and coined the term, is hatred of Jews simply for being Jews. Zionism is a political ideology, which has historically been adopted by both Jews and non-Jews. In the early 20th century Zionism was itself so closely associated with real anti-Semitism, that one sympathetic German nobleman refused to support Theodor Herzl’s movement because he was afraid that people would think he was a Jew-hater. And Israel, of course, is a country. It is not synonymous with the Jewish people as a religion or people, no matter how much legislation Netanyahu passes declaring that it is. And it is definitely not anti-Semitic to criticise it for its barbarous maltreatment of the indigenous Arabs.

But Rachel Riley and Oberman appear to believe that it is. As an example of how twisted their views are, one of the two even compared the Durham Miners’ Gala last year to the Nazis because the band played ‘Hava Nagila’. Which they do every year. And their response to personal criticism appears to be to threaten their critics with a libel action. Mike is currently fighting Riley, because he reblogged and commented on her calling a 16 year old schoolgirl with anxiety an anti-Semite on social media. This led to the girl being attacked online by a crowd of Riley’s supporters, all because the girl had declared her support for the former Labour leader. And a few days ago, Oberman threatened Gary Spedding with a libel action for stating that she had her faults. These included, according to Spedding, not standing with Jewish people of colour. Oberman decided that Spedding was accusing her of racism, and so threatened him with a writ. See https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/tracy-ann-oberman-meltdown.html

In my view, Oberman and Riley are legalistic bullies, seeking to close down legitimate political and personal criticism through malicious accusations of anti-Semitism and suits for libel. I don’t quite know what has caused the Eye to publish an article critical of Riley, but it might be that some in the media might just have realised that just as Riley and Oberman can threaten and sue ordinary members of the public, so they can also turn on them. Of course, it may also be that the Eye is entirely disinterested in this matter, and is just calling out what they view as double-standards by another celeb.

Whatever the reality, Riley and Oberman’s malicious behaviour, as I see it, needs to be stopped. Which is why it’s important that Mike wins the case they have brought against him. Perhaps if Riley and Oberman meet with enough failure, the rest of the media may also stop giving the two their uncritical support.

Israel Lobby Thugs Try to Close Down Book Launch with Threats and Intimidation

This can’t be left unchallenged. Yesterday a group of thugs from the Israel lobby, egged on by their fellows and supporters on social media, forced Waterstones in Brighton to abandon a book launch. When the event was moved to the Rialto, they tried the same tactics there, only for the management of that venue to stand firm.

The book in question was Bad News for Labour: Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief by Greg Philo, Mike Berry, Justin Schlosberg, Antony Lerman and David Miller. This is a critical examination of the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour party, particularly the denunciations of the party last summer that claimed it was institutionally racist and an existential threat to Britain’s Jews. The promotional material about the book, published by Pluto Press, however, states that

This book clears the confusion by drawing on deep and original research on public beliefs and media representation of antisemitism and the Labour Party, revealing shocking findings of misinformation spread by the press, including the supposedly impartial BBC, and the liberal Guardian.

Bringing in discussions around the IHRA definition, anti-Zionism and Israel/Palestine, as well as including a clear chronology of events, this book is a must for anyone wanting to find out the reality behind the headlines.

The authors are mainstream academics specialising in media studies, Jewish/Gentile relations and anti-Semitism. Mike, in his excellent article on the issue, gives their academic fields and qualifications. They are

Greg Philo is Professor of Communications and Social Change at the University of Glasgow, and Director of the Glasgow University Media Unit. Mike Berry is a lecturer in the Journalism School at Cardiff University. Justin Schlosberg is a media activist, researcher and lecturer in Journalism and Media at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a former Chair of the Media Reform Coalition and Edmund J Safra Network Fellow at Harvard University. Antony Lerman is Senior Fellow at the Bruno Kreisky Forum for International Dialogue in Vienna and Honorary Fellow of the Parkes Institute for the Study of Jewish/non-Jewish Relations at Southampton University. He has written on multiculturalism, racism, antisemitism, and Israel/Palestine for the Guardian, Independent, New York Times, Haaretz, Prospect, Jewish Chronicle and London Review of Books. And David Miller is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Bristol. He is a founder director of Public Interest Investigations and a director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies. 

As Mike points out, they are academics, not anti-Semites. The two don’t go together, except in the pseudo-academia set up to provide a spurious intellectual veneer for the real hard right. Which these professors certainly don’t represent.

But this hasn’t stopped the Israel lobby and its supporters, both institutional and individual, going berserk and throwing around gross accusations of – what else! – anti-Semitism. The event was supposed to begin at 7.30, and would feature a panel discussion with the authors and Ken Loach. Two venues were forced to cancel it through intimidation and bullying that was so intense, an employee at one of the venues could not return to work.

The organisations supporting the bullying, and claiming the event was anti-Semitic were the Board of Deputies of British Jews and Sussex Jewish Representative Council. The individuals giving their support to it included one charmer giving his Twitter handle as #JC4 and then an icon of a toilet, Neil Barstow, Natalia Sloam, Nobody Norman Esq, Heidi Bachram, Ian Mackintosh, Jane Habib, Curry Fleur and Fiona Sharpe.

Mike states that he would like to see all the above interviewed by the rozzers about the threats suffered by the staff at Waterstone’s and the Rialto. He states it is especially abhorrent coming from those, who claim the moral high ground, and are using threats of violence to silence those they have smeared as anti-Semites and prevent them from exonerating themselves. He also points to a Tweet by one Gary Spedding, a venomous individual, who wrote an on-line article smearing Mike as an anti-Semite, which he refused to take down when Mike contacted him to show it was wrong. Spedding also added a few more ad homs against him on the way. It is to be hoped that Spedding also gets his collar felt about this.

Mike goes on to state that he does acknowledge that there is anti-Semitism in the Labour party. It just doesn’t exist in the book the Zionist fanatics were attacking, nor amongst the staff at Waterstones or the Rialto.

He concludes

These aren’t campaigners fighting prejudice against Jews.

They are vicious, hate-filled bigots.

And they need to be stopped before they seriously harm somebody.

One more thing – they did get an aspect of their campaign right: the slogan “Don’t host hate”. That’s a good slogan, and it can very clearly be applied to these bigots.

So I’m having it. If you see these people, or anyone else pushing their message, then flag it up with #DontHostHate

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/09/24/bullying-bigots-tried-to-stop-book-launch-when-will-they-be-arrested/

Tony Greenstein, another victim of the anti-Semitism smear campaign, and a self-respecting Jew, who has always campaigned against racism and anti-Semitism as well as Zionism, has more information on this disgraceful thuggery on his blog at:

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/09/book-burners-r-us-waterstones-shameful.html

Tony begins his article by describing the way the Israel lobby tried to prevent the performance of the play, Sedition, by the socialist playwright Jim Allen, 25 years ago. This drew the Israel lobby’s ire because it was about the 1944 trial in Jerusalem of the Zionist leader, Erich Kasztner, who had made a deal with Adolf Eichmann which sent half a million Hungarian Jews to death in Auschwitz. The play was due to be staged at the Royal Court. It was taken off, but so great was the public indignation against the attack on it, that it was performed instead at London’s Conway Hall and became the subject of a book, Dramas Played Off Stage.

Tony continues

That is what we need to see happen with Bad News for Labour. The Zionists know that their anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour Party is fraudulent and that they have cowed and coerced timid Corbyn into going along with the nonsense that the Labour Party is full of anti-Semites including himself. We must ensure that this book is publicised because it contains all the ammunition and evidence we need to demonstrate that the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign has nothing to do with antisemitism and has no evidential basis. 

It is shocking enough that the supporters of Israeli Apartheid have been able to ‘persuade’ through threats and abuse, venues like the Holiday Inn, Jury’s Inn and Friends Meeting House into cancelling meetings with Chris Williamson. The cancellation on Monday night of a book by 5 academics of Bad News for Labour – Antisemitism, the Party and Public Belief takes this one step further. It is an attack on freedom of thought and inquiry and demonstrates the police state mentality of Zionism’s rabid supporters.

He goes on to quote the great German Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, “Where books are burned, in the end, people will be burned” – which prophesied the mass book-burnings and murder of the Nazis. Justin Scholsberg, one of the authors, said last night that it was worse than McCarthyism and approached the book-burnings of the Nazis. Tony states

Cancelling a book launch and threatening to boycott Waterstones for holding the event is a Nazi tactic. It demonstrates just how far along the road to destroying our civil liberties and freedom of speech the Zionists have travelled. Literally Zionism is the enemy of a free society, not only in Israel/Palestine but in Britain, Europe and the United States.

He then goes on to discuss the culpable silence of the so-called liberal press about this incident, except for The Canary and the Skwawkbox, and calls upon his readers to imagine the outrage the Right would go into if the Left had done something similar against the genuinely racist books some of them have produced, like Douglas Murray’s racist Strange Death of Europe – Immigration, Identity and Islam.

And there’s much more in his very full article about the incident and the excuses made by Waterstone’s CEO for pulling the book launch from his store.

Tony and other Jewish anti-Zionists have long provided very detailed descriptions of just how violent and threatening the militant Zionists are, and their determination to shut down any criticism of their favourite apartheid state. They smear their opponents as anti-Semites – decent people like Mike, Martin Odoni, Tony Greenstein himself, Jackie Walker, Cyril Chilson, and Chris Williamson, so that they receive vile abuse. Some, like Walker and Williamson, have been sent death threats. Greenstein has also been assaulted by Jewish American Zionists. And a little while ago Tony also put up a piece describing how the CST – the paramilitary Community Security Trust – which is supposed to defend Jews, acts like Fascist stormtroopers when stewarding pro-Israel events. This includes beating up Muslims and anti-apartheid Jews. One rabbi was even hit in the face by these squadristi.

The people organising this campaign of abuse and intimidation should be called to account. And this includes the Board of Deputies. They are not above the law, and they are repeatedly demonstrating glaringly clearly that they do not represent the Jewish community of this country as a whole. They only represent the United Synagogue, and the pro-Israel branch of that. They are a viciously sectarian organisation, who actively support those who raise their fists at the people they consider the ‘wrong sort of Jew’. 

Israel Lobbyists Smear Mike Again, Run Away When Refuted

Mike on Monday put up another piece, describing how he was smeared once again as an anti-Semite in an article, ‘Labour’s Anti-Semitism Problem’, by a couple of hacks called Kieron Monks and Gary Spedding. This was over what Mike had written about the belief that Blair had been unduly influenced by a group of Jewish advisers. Mike went on the attack to defend his reputation, and pointed out that he had not written what Monks’ claimed he had, and that he had in any case taken his words out of context. Monks tried arguing back, but when the force of Mike’s argument proved too much for him, retreated and went silent. He ran away, leaving his mate Spedding to try and defend his libel. Spedding didn’t fare any better either, and this resulted in Spedding not only abandoning the argument, but blocking Mike on Twitter.

You can read about the incident at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/03/05/another-article-alleges-anti-semitism-about-me-author-refuses-to-acknowledge-his-mistake/

Mike makes several very good points in his article about it, not least that all the relevant information about these claims and accusations is up on his blog, if the writers of such articles would actually care to read what he has to say.

But they don’t, because they’ve already decided that Mike’s an anti-Semite. And it’s not because of any genuine concern for anti-Semitism. Monks’ real motivation in writing the article is clearly shown in the title, and in one of the people he hashtags at the bottom of his tweet about it, Dave Rich.

The title of Monks’ piece is the same as a book written by Dave Rich, and published last year by Biteback. This claimed that there was a rising tide of anti-Semitism on the Left, ever since the Liberal party had got involved in an anti-Israeli politics in the 1970s. I can’t remember where I found it, but I read a review somewhere that pointed out that Rich was another prominent member of the Israel lobby, and that what really concerned him was that the Left were taking the side of the Palestinians against Israel. In short, he’s another Zionist upset that people are criticising and protesting about the Israeli state’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and trying to shut them down by libelling them as anti-Semites. Ditto for Monks and Spedding, who obviously share his views.

As for the accusation that Blair was unduly influenced by a group of Jewish advisers, it is true that Blair received much funding during the run-up to the Iraq invasion from businessmen connected to the Israel lobby, though a campaign run by Lord levy and Peter Mandelson. John Booth describes this in his ‘Labour, Corbyn and Anti-Semitism’ in Lobster 74. He writes

In contrast, this is Jon (now Lord) Mendelsohn speaking to Jewsweek.com on 8 September 2002: ‘[Tony] Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party . . .Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs. The milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Friends of Israel meetings.’ Mendelsohn was speaking during the build-up to the Iraq war. At the time Corbyn was indulging in what the New Labour fundraiser would probably style ‘cowboy-and Indian politics’ by helping create the Stop the War Coalition. 7 Mendelsohn was a close associate of Michael (now Lord) Levy in drawing down funds from Israel supporters, a programme also well described in Robert Peston’s Who Runs Britain?. The ITN political editor in his informative 8 chapter ‘Democracy for Sale’ makes clear that a good deal of that funding was not from Labour supporters, but from those, including previous Conservative backers, who identified with Blair and his support for Israel and the Iraq war.

He also goes on to discuss the connections between the Israeli embassy and the various Friends of Israel organisations, which have been making the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn and his supporters.

Mendelsohn is a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), membership of which, as he says, attracted many of the New Labour intake in 1997 and which resembled a passport to promotion for many of them. Not all have stayed in party politics since Labour’s 2010 defeat. Former Cabinet minister and chairman of LFI James Purnell is now a senior BBC executive and is talked of as a possible future director-general. LFI supporter Lorna 9 Fitzsimons, formerly Parliamentary Private Secretary to Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, became chief executive of the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) after losing her parliamentary seat in 2005. Most of the LFI supporters still in Parliament or subsequently elected to it were opposed to Corbyn’s 2015 election as leader and tried to unseat him the following year. From their ranks – some of them here supporting LFI chair Joan Ryan – have come many of the well-publicised claims of anti-semitic 10 abuse that has attended Corbyn’s rise. 11 As the Al Jazeera documentary series, The Lobby, exposed earlier this year, there is a very close working relationship between the Israel embassy in London and the Friends of Israel groups in Parliament, including the one chaired by Enfield North MP Ryan. 12 There is also a strong link between the embassy and the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that has led criticism of Corbyn and was very active on the ‘anti-semitism’ issue at the Brighton conference. Two JLM officials, Jeremy 13 Newmark and Mike Katz, were backed by Yvette Cooper, a Corbyn rival for the leadership in 2015, when they unsuccessfully stood as Labour candidates in the general election.

And no, before anyone asks, Booth’s article is not remotely anti-Semitic. It begins by describing the warm welcome given to Jewish speakers at Labour’s Brighton Conference last year, including Naomi Klein, Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, who declared that the party did not have a problem with Jews, and, of course, Ed Miliband. Wimbourne-Idrissi later that day went on to launch Jewish Voice for Labour, along with a number of other, very prominent Jewish activists, including a former member of the Israeli Defence Force.

The article also discusses the close relationship between the Blairites and the Israel lobby, and how the rise of Corbyn and the leftward turn of the party threaten the Thatcherite entryists, and their backers in the media, such as the Groaniad. It challenges their views on the neoliberal consensus, as well as their political careers. Hence they have resorted to smearing their opponents as anti-Semites. And before Booth talks about Mandelson, he writes about how Marek Edelman, a hero of the Warsaw Ghetto, was persona non grata in Israel because he supported the Palestinians. He stated that to be a Jew means that you always side with the oppressed.

Edelman’s a true hero, and Rich, Monks and Spedding are definitely siding with the oppressors. Hence their participation in the smearing of Labour members and supporters, who criticise Israel’s maltreatment of the Palestinians, or who, like Mike, simply defend those, who do, on grounds of historical accuracy.

Lobster 74 is at https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue74.php

Go and read the whole article to find out what these mendacious accusations are really about, and the noxious politics behind them.