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 SunsetTimes. 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.
Saturday was Jeremy Corbyn’s last day as the leader of the Labour Party. He stepped down with good grace, sending Labour members a letter thanking them for their support and looking back on his achievements. Although he never won an election, they were considerable. In 2017 he came within a cat’s whisker of achieving power. Decades of Thatcherite neoliberal dogma were vociferously challenged by a leader who believed in its ordinary members, and in actually doing something for the working class. He put renationalisation back on the table, as well as restoring union power, better working conditions and employment rights, and a properly funded NHS. And he gave people hope. Hundreds of thousands of people, who had left or perhaps never been members, flocked to join Labour under his leadership so that it became the biggest socialist party in Europe. And the situation with the Tories was reversed. Previously the Tories had been easily the biggest political party in terms of membership. But they’ve been hemorrhaging members due to their leadership’s absolute refusal to listen to them, rather than the corporate donors that are actually keeping the party afloat. Tory membership dwindled as Labour expanded.
This terrified the Tories, and the Blairites in the Labour party, who could feel their hold in power slipping away. So they began a campaign of vicious personal vilification and smearing. Corbyn, a man of peace and fervent anti-racist, was misrepresented as an anti-Semite and friend of terrorists. Corbyn’s own programme was pretty much the Old Labour centre ground, but he was presented as an extremist, a Trotskyite, or Stalinist Commie. He frightened the corrupt Jewish establishment through his support for the Palestinians, and so they fell back on their old tactic of smearing any and all critics of Israel as anti-Semites. He was repeatedly accused of anti-Semitism and his supporters purged from the party on charges that would not stand up in a formal court of law. The Blairites fully participated in this. Whenever the Beeb or the rest of the Tory media needed someone to attack Corbyn, a Blairite could be found to scream and shout baseless accusations. They tried to split the party, overthrow him in coups, but the mass walkout they tried to engineer never happened. One of their coup attempts was so shambolic it was derisively called ‘the chicken coup’. The new, centrist party they tried to set up was a joke from the start. It gathered little more than a few members, before fizzling out.
But these campaigns had their effect. Labour lost heavily at the last election. The key issue was Brexit, with people in the north and midlands voting for the Tories because of Boris’ promise to get Brexit done. Labour’s policies of welfare improvement and renationalisation were still immensely popular, but the abuse, lies and personal attacks had done their work. The public hated Corbyn, but if you asked them why, they couldn’t tell you. Which shows the malignant power of a mendacious, corrupt and despicable mass media.
Corbyn and his deputy, John McDonnell, have stepped down, and the party has instead replaced him with Keir Starmer as leader and Angela Rayner as deputy. It’s a lurch to the right, back to the Blairite status quo ante. Starmer has many admirable qualities. He is known for his pro bono work as a human rights lawyer, in which he took on cases for nothing. One of his clients was Doreen Lawrence, who gave him her support for his efforts on her and her former husband’s behalf trying to get their son’s killer to face justice. Starmer’s victory was almost a foregone conclusion. The press made much of the fact that he was the favourite from the first round of voting, with the support of many of the trade unions and local constituency parties.
But Starmer is a Blairite. He has promised to keep to the manifesto promises drawn up by Corbyn’s team, but it’s doubtful whether this can be trusted. As a Blairite, his instinct will be to pull the party further right – to what is mistakenly called ‘the centre ground’. He will probably jettison the promises about nationalisation, workers’ rights, a welfare state that actually gives people enough to live on, and a properly funded NHS in order to return to Blair’s tactics of triangulation. That meant finding out what the Tories were doing, then copy it. He will most likely purge the party of left-wingers, leaving it the much smaller, Tory-lite party created by Blair. And like Blair he will grovel to Murdoch and the rest of the press. Mike put up an article voicing these predictions a few days ago, and I’m very much afraid that it does look as if that’s what he’s going to do. And he won’t win back the voters Labour lost in the midlands and north. They wanted Brexit, and they turned against Labour when Starmer and his supporters insisted that it should be Labour’s policy to hold another referendum about Brexit.
There are already indications that this is the way he will go. He’s appointed to a cabinet place the odious Rachel Reeves, who has declared that Labour shouldn’t be a party for the unemployed. She announced that Labour was founded by working people, for working people, and so in power would be harder on the unemployed than the Conservatives. Well, when Labour had that attitude before the War, back in the last century, it set up what were basically forced Labour camps for the unemployed. Does she want a return to that? Or just have more people starve, as they are under the Tories.
He has also made the disastrous decision to kowtow to the Zionist organisations promoting the anti-Semitism smears. All of the candidates signed up to the demands by the Board of Deputies of British Jews for the immediate mass expulsion, with no right to any proper defence or representation, and excommunication from current members for those accused of anti-Semitism. Starmer has announced he’s determined to root out anti-Semitism in party, and has gone to meet organisations like the Board, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement. This meeting pointedly does not include the Jewish groups, that genuinely stand for socialism and which have supported Labour and Corbyn throughout – Jewdas, Jewish Voice for Labour, the Jewish Socialist Group. Starmer no doubt feels that he is clearing up the issue of anti-Semitism once and for all, but he’s just played into their hands. The loathsome Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has welcomed the move, but demanded that he now censure or expel Corbyn for anti-Semitism. Which shows you just how mean-spirited and vengeful Falter and his ghastly crew are. Starmer is now placed in the unenviable position of either attacking the party’s former leader, which will anger his supporters and lead to mass resignations, or else the CAA, Board and the rest of the scumbuckets will accuse him of being soft on anti-Semitism and kick up another round of abuse and accusations.
And this is not to mention his decision to take up Johnson’s offer and work with him and the Tories in a constructive relationship to combat the Coronavirus. I understand the logic on which it’s based. He wants to be seen as the good guy, putting the needs of the country above party in a show of national unity during the emergency. He’s not the only one who wanted to do this. So did Lisa Nandy. But what will probably happen is that he will share the blame for Boris’ failings, while Boris will take any credit for any positive actions suggested by Labour. That is how the SPD – the German equivalent of the Labour Party – lost when they went into coalition with Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Merkel and her party moved left. They took credit for improvements to Germany’s welfare system, like greater benefit payments, which were actually the work of the SPD. But they let the SPD take the blame for their failings. And people will be discouraged to see him and Johnson working together. They will feel that Labour has once again let them down to become another Tory party.
I hope this is not the case, and that Starmer keeps his promises to Labour’s members. And I hope that enough of the left remains in the party to hold him to these promises, and make matters extremely difficult for him if he tries to reject them. But the evidence so far is not good.
This is a very interesting and no doubt controversial video from Sam Seder’s Majority Report, in which he shows the link between Shapiro’s rhetoric about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews and an attack on a synagogue in Indiana. Shapiro is a Republican mouthpiece, a very aggressive Zionist and Jewish. Seder’s also Jewish, describing himself as ‘the most Jewish guy you know’. But Seder’s also left-wing and a determined critic of Israel. He takes Shapiro to task for his sharp distinction between good and bad Jews, based on ethnicity versus religious practice, as distinction which is also made by neo-Nazis. And ‘bad Jews’ are Jews, who vote Democrat and specifically for Barack Obama.
Seder wondered what would happen if a public figure said something that inspired someone to commit a horrible act. And not only did they inspire the perp, they also made an equation that the perp cited as the cause for his committing the horrible act. Shapiro tried this with the Nazi, who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh, claiming that the Nazi was following an ideology similar to Ilhan Omar, the Muslim Congresswoman and critic of Israel. This is untrue. The Nazi didn’t, and he didn’t cite Omar as an explanation for his murder of the Synagogue’s congregation. But it has happened in the case of Shapiro and two Nazis, who vandalised a synagogue in Indiana.
The Nazis were Nolan and Kiyomi Brewer, and their crime was painting a Nazi swastika and Iron Crosses on a wall of a synagogue in Carmel. Nolan, the husband, was apparently law abiding, docile and passive. He was drawn into it by his wife, Kiyomi. She stated in her defence that she was led into the dark world of Nazism through mainstream right-wing news sites and organisations like Ben Shapirok Breitbart and Fox News. She then moved onto Stormfront, and then a Nazi site on the Discord Server. She and her husband also stated in the court papers that they deliberately selected that particular synagogue because it was full of ethnic Jews. This follows the neo-Nazi claim that Hitler wasn’t against religious Jews, but only against ethnic Jews.
Seder then shows with a series of tweets from 2011, 2016 and this year, that Shapiro himself makes the distinction. In one, he claimed that the Jewish community had always been undermined by bad Jews, and that these bad Jews voted Democrat. In the 2016 tweet, he said that there was a distinction between ethnically and religious Jews. Bernie Sanders was ethnically Jewish, and so passed the first standard, but not a Jew at all by the second standard.
Seder also shows a clip from the interview Shapiro gave with Andrew Neil, which was so embarrassing for Shapiro that he claimed that Neil was some kind of Leftist. Neil isn’t. He’s a Tory. Neil asked him about his claim that bad Jews voted for Barack Obama. Shapiro then tried to get around it by saying that American Jews were largely secular, and so his claim about nonreligious Jews was correct. Neil wasn’t going to be diverted, and stated that he hadn’t said that. He had said that bad Jews voted for Barack Obama.
Shapiro apparently has a list of stupid things he’s said on his website, and this comment is now one of them. But as Seder shows, Shapiro was still defending his comment on Neil’s show just weeks before in 2019. This is disgusting, and he wonders how many times Shapiro can say stupid things like it, which go down on his list, before newspapers like the New York Times stop giving him fawning headlines like ‘The Philosopher for the Cool Kids’. Seder cites her a tweet by Almanaqa refuting another tweet by Shapiro denying that he planned the synagogue attack. He didn’t, and nobody is saying that he did. But his rhetoric did inspire the attackers. Seder also makes the point that this is what the Intellectual Dark Web, so beloved of extreme right-wing ideologues, is actually about – Nazi sites like Gab. He concludes by attacking Shapiro once again for his comments and demanding that he be held responsible for them.
I’m blogging about this because this isn’t just an American problem. In this country the lamestream media, the Conservatives and the Blairites in the Labour party are using the same Nazi distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews to smear the Jewish supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, as Jewish and gentile left-wing bloggers like Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni, David Rosenberg, Jewish Voice for Labour, Mike Sivier, Tim Fenton of Zelo Street and Tom of Another Angry Voice have pointed out.
It isn’t quite a distinction between ethnic and religious Jews, as the racism has included very religious, ultra-Orthodox Jews like Shraga Stern. But there is a particular venom within the Zionist right at Israel-critical Jews, like Greenstein and Jackie Walker, who are subjected to the vilest abuse. Abuse which would be considered anti-Semitic if it came from gentiles.
And right-wing Zionists do ally themselves with the Islamophobic and Nazi right. They have links to Tommy Robinson and the EDL, as well as Paul Besser and Britain First. Tony Greenstein’s put up long articles identifying the organisations and individuals involved. These include Jewish Fascist organisations, like Herut. When the Board of Deputies and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis organised their farcical rally against the Labour party last year, two of the Zionists attending sported T-shirts bearing the Kach logo. Kach was a Judaeo-Nazi terrorist organisation banned in Israel. And then there’s the antics of the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who led a British contingent to the March of the Flags day in Israel. This is when Jewish Nazi thugs march round the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, vandalising homes and businesses and intimidating the locals. The same Jonathan Sacks, who declared Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. Which is the rhetoric of persecution.
Those smeared as an anti-Semites by the witch-hunters – the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies and so on – have received death threats. Jackie Walker has been horrendously vilified. She has been told that she’s not Jewish, because she’s Black, and that she should be lynched and her body burnt or put in bin bags. Chris Williamson, the Labour MP, who rightly said that Labour had given too much ground to those making false accusations of anti-Semitism, has also received death threats.
So I wonder how long it’s going to be before someone attacks a Jewish supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and then states in court that they were doing it because he or she was ‘the wrong type of Jew’, and they were radicalised by Sacks, Mirvis, Gideon Falter and Marie van der Zyle.
According to next week’s Radio Times, the Beeb will be broadcasting a special documentary, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?, next Wednesday, 10th July 2019, at 9.00 pm on BBC 1. The blurb for it on page 78 of the magazine runs
Interviews with insiders and access to confidential communications and documents tell the story of how the anti-Semitism crisis gripping the Labour party developed. In a Panorama special, John Ware reveals the evasions and contradictions at the heart of the party, which leader Jeremy Corbyn says has anti-racism at its core.
Now, will this be a genuinely unbiased report, or will it once again that the Beeb’s reporting of the Labour party, and particularly this issue, is massively biased? From the blurb’s wording, I’m not optimistic. The phrase ‘evasions and contradictions’ seems to suggest that the party is genuinely anti-Semitic, despite Corbyn’s claim to be anti-racist. I don’t doubt that most of the airtime will be occupied by the witch-hunters, the smear merchants and Conservative and Zionist establishment mouthpieces, including the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbis Sachs and Mirvis, Gideon Falter and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, all screaming that Labour is anti-Semitic, because of their fanatical opposition to even the mildest criticism of Israel.
And how much airtime will be given to those refuting these allegations, groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas or the victims and their organisation, Labour Against the Witchhunt. Will we see Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Martin Odoni, Mike Sivier, Cyril Chilson and so many, many others, appear on the programme to present their case, and show how they have been smeared and libelled by the Blairites and Zionists? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. I dare say there might be a token appearance by one or two, but I haven’t heard of Mike being contacted by the programme’s producers, for example. I realise Mike’s only one of those attacked, but he was sufficiently important to the smear merchants that the Sunday Times as well as the Labour party smeared him as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. And this all happened suspiciously at the same time as Mike was standing for election as a local councillor in his part of Wales.
The Radio Times lists the producer as Leo Telling, and the executive producer as Neil Grant, so these are two of the people responsible for it. It will be very interesting indeed to see what the programme does say, and how it represents the massive injustice inflicted on the anti-racists the witch-hunters have so vilely maligned.
Tony Greenstein has today put up on his blog a review of Karl Sabbagh’s The Anti-Semitism Wars: How the British Media Failed their Public, published by Skyscraper Publications. This is a full-scale attack on the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party and particularly Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, as well as the Israel lobby, the Jewish establishment, including former Chief Rabbi and Fascist marcher Jonathan Sacks, and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who have been its promoters. The contributors include not only Sabbagh, but also Tony Greenstein himself, Cyril Chilson, Tom Suarez, Eve Mykytun, and Kerry-Ann Mendoza. This is about the way the Israel lobby and its various organs and supporters have vilified and tried to silence perfectly decent, anti-racist people, like Mike, simply for the crime of legitimately criticizing Israel, or defending those who have. And absurdly, many of those who’ve been smeared have been Jewish, like Greenstein and Chilson, a former Israeli officer, now naturalized British academic.
The first chapter, by Sabbagh, describes the beginning of the smears and witch hunt with Gordon Brown’s urging the Labour party to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the Zionist smears against Corbyn after he told two Zionist activists making a nuisance of themselves at a pro-Palestinian event that they didn’t understand the British sense of humour, and examining the role of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Jonathan Sacks in claiming that anti-Semitism was now on the rise in Britain.
Greenstein’s article covers his own suspension from the Labour party, but also argues that the anti-Semitism smears are part of concerted campaign by the Deep State. This is because the American, British and Israeli authorities see Corbyn as a threat. This campaign is being run through the Guardian, and particularly its columnist, Jonathan Freedland, who also writes for the Jewish Chronicle. Greenstein supports this claim by citing the book, Inside the Company about the CIA’s destabilization of South America by a former agent, Philip Agee. He also notes how the Beeb’s journo, John Tusa, also fronted stories from the Agency. He then goes on to describe the witch hunt against the Labour party in more detail.
Sabbagh is another victim of anti-Semitism smears. A medical journalist, his crime was to write an article describing the Deir Yassin massacre in 1981, just as a group of doctors were preparing to fly to Israel for the ‘medical Olympics’. Sabbagh wanted to warn people that the event may be held in an Israeli mental hospital, some of whose wards were the scene of the atrocity. He, the organization he worked for, and the medical journal which published the article were then subjected to a deluge of complaints and accusations of anti-Semitism chiefly from outraged Jewish doctors, beginning with the Israeli Medical Association.
This campaign of abuse, vilification and intimidation began again in 2008 against Dr Derek Summerfield when he dared to write an article in the British Medical Journal about the effects of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The campaign was organized by the Zionist lobby group, HonestReporting.
Chilson describes his persecution and suspension from the Labour party, because he dared to post comments criticizing Israel on Twitter. It shows just what a farcical kangaroo court the disciplinary panel hearing his case was. Members of the panel interrupted his testimony, threatened to throw him out, and then were astonished at the end when he refused to agree that the hearing was fair!
Suarez’s chapter describes how the Israel lobby tried to shut down his lecture tour promoting his 2016 book, State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, describing atrocities by the Irgun and Lehi terrorist organisations. The campaign was joined and aided by the Israeli embassy and the Daily Heil, as well as the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Directors of British Jews.
The book also includes a piece on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism by Appeal Court Judge Sir Stephen Sedley making it very clear that it isn’t fit for purpose.
Eve Mykytun’s article is an expose of the tactics the Israel lobby uses to silence its critics. This shows how the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its founder and leader, Gideon Falter, lies to smear people, and grossly misuses and inflates statistics. The article examines two cases of people, who hold genuinely anti-Semitic views, who were prosecuted by the state at the instigation of the CAA. Another, genuine anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon, also appears, who asks what Jewishness means if Israel is a Jewish state, as well as attacking Falter for ‘making his living from anti-Semitism accusations’.
Chapter 8 is a transcript of Al-Jazeera’s programme, The Lobby, which exposed Shai Masot at the Israeli plotting to decide who should be in the cabinet, and Joan Ryan in the Labour party making a false accusation of anti-Semitism against another member.
Chapter 9 is an interview by Kerry-Ann Mendoza of Stephen Orszczuk, the foreign editor of Jewish News, one of the newspapers that combined with the Jewish Chronicle and another rag to smear Corbyn. Oryszczuk criticized this vilification, and went on leave from the paper soon after.
Chapter 10 comprises a report from the Committee for Privileges and Conduct of the House of Lords about an accusation of anti-Semitism against Baroness Tonge. She had chaired a meeting at the Palestine Return Centre as part of a campaign to obtain an apology from Britain for the Balfour Declaration.
There are also several appendices. The first is a collection of quotes from prominent Zionists about gentiles, which would definitely be considered anti-Semitic if non-Jews had made them about Jews. The third is an extract from the Media Reform Coalition report, Labour, Anti-Semitism and the News.
Greenstein concludes his report by saying that is packed with information, making it and will be a handy reference to the anti-Semitism smear campaign which all activists should have, and giving details how it can be ordered from him through his paypal account.
This looks like a very thorough exposure of the malign lies and racism of the Israel lobby and their smears of decent, anti-racist men and women. I’ve no doubt that the campaign of persecution against Corbyn and his supporters is being done by the Deep State, as Corbyn’s support of the Palestinians challenges British colonial and post-colonial policies towards supporting Israel against the secular Arab states in the Middle East. And many journalists and researchers have demonstrated how the smear and vilification campaign against Israel’s critics are being directed by the Israeli state and its Office of Strategic Affairs.
And the Zionists are also deeply racist. Mike found that out when they smeared him. When they couldn’t get the better of him in an argument he had with them over the Net, they resorted to sneering and belittling him as a non-Jew. They are also viciously anti-Semitic towards those they consider to be ‘the wrong Jews’. People like Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni and Jackie Walker, who criticize Israel and follow the Bund’s line that Jews’ homelands are where they happen to live around the world with the non-Jewish peoples of that country. These Jews, who like Cyril Chilson may be the children of Holocaust survivors, are subject to the most disgusting abuse as ‘kapos’, and told that they and their families should have died in the Holocaust.
This is a book, which should be in the bookshops, instead of some of the mendacious books, like the one by a Zionist, that maintain the smears. But I doubt very much that it ever will be. The mere idea of this book being published at all is probably enough to send the Israel lobby, the Jewish press, the Board of Deputies and the corrupt British media establishment all howling with rage.
I fervently wish Karl Sabbagh, Tony Greenstein, Cyril Chilson, Kerry-Ann Mendoza and everyone else who contributed to it all the very best, and hope that it enjoys excellent sales. May it lead to further exposes and demolitions of the Lobby, its vile undermining of our democracy and political parties, and its attempts to create division and fear between Jews and gentiles.
I found this passage on the condemnation of gossip by the rabbinical sages of late antiquity in the book, Knowledge Goes Pop, by Claire Birchall (Oxford: Berg 2006). Birchall is, or was, a senior lecturer at Middlesex University, and the book, subtitled ‘From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip’, is about popular knowledge, such as conspiracy theories and gossip and how it is formed and shapes the way people see the world. The book also examines how valid it is compared with official knowledge, and the question of ‘why does such (mis)information cause so much institutional anxiety?’.
The chapter on gossip contains a discussion of its condemnation in the Bible in both the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament, before going on to describe how it was also attacked by the great Jewish sages of the Talmud. The passage reads
Editors of The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion explain that the rabbis of classical Judaism in late antiquity warned against gossip in the most heightened terms. For example, the rabbis claimed that slander, talebearing, and evil talk were worse than the three cardinal sins of murder, immorality, and idolatry. Indulging in lashon ha-ra is seen to be akin to denying the existence of God (see the entry for ‘Lashon Ha-ra’ in Zwi Werblowsky and Wigoder 1986). Of note for our discussion later concerning the unstable verity of content transmitted through gossip is that while Judaism distinguishes between slander (lashon ha-ra) which refers specifically to true talebearing, and motsi’shem ra (causing a bad name) which applies to untrue stories, ‘both are totally forbidden by Jewish Law’ (Zwi Werblowsky and Wigoder 1997:648). Here, then, the verity of the gossip is not at issue, but rather the very act of passing potentially damaging information on whether true or false. (Pp. 98-99).
In Mike’s case, and those of the countless other decent people like him, who have been libelled by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement, the truth of the accusations made against them is very much the issue. In the case of these decent, anti-racist people, the stories and claims made by Gideon Falter’s outfit and the JLM are very much a case of motsi’shem ra – causing a bad name – as they’re intended to be. They’re intended to smear and provide grounds for the expulsion from the Labour party of critics of Israel and left-wing opponents of the Blairites.
This passage also shows how the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement conveniently forgot these moral injunctions when they decided to vilify and malign those of opposing viewpoints. And this includes self-respecting Jews, who have lost relatives in the Holocaust, and/or have been subject to real anti-Semitic abuse and violence themselves.
But this doesn’t alter anything: their tactics of smear and libel are nevertheless condemned in the Talmud, no matter what specious stories they may make, claiming to be defending Jews, or rather, Israel, from anti-Semitism.
Here’s a political development that the Tories really won’t welcome. They’ve been trying to present themselves as a new, anti-racist party, ever since David Cameron made a great show of cutting links with the Monday Club, and throwing out members connected with the BNP and the rest of the Fascists. They’re now trying to present themselves as completely untouched by racial or religious prejudice, unlike the terrible Labour party, which is infested with anti-Semites.
In fact, the Labour party is not infested with anti-Semites. The incidence of anti-Semitism under Corbyn in the party has gone down, whatever spurious poison Gideon Falter and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Frankie Boyle, David Baddiel, John Mann, Ian MacNichol and the rest may utter to the contrary. And very many of those accused of it, as I’m heartily tired of saying, are anything but. They’re decent people, who’ve fought against, and often suffered genuine anti-Semitic abuse and assault. Their real crime is that they despise the Israeli government and its persecution of the Palestinians. Or have made the point, as Jackie Walker did, that other nations and ethnicities have also endured genocides comparable to the Holocaust under the Nazis, and these should also be commemorated. The Tories and their allies in the press and in the Blairite right in the Labour party are weaponising such accusations in order to unseat Corbyn. Whom they fear and despise as someone, who genuinely wants to do something for the poor, rather than wreck this country and its great people with more neoliberalism.
And the Tories are as nasty as ever. There’s the same racism there. In fact, the levels of it in the Tories are much higher than in Labour. And Mike put up a post the other day, reporting on the suspension of a number of Tory candidates in the run up to the council elections for racism. Many of those were suspended for Islamophobia.
Now the Muslim Council has stepped in, and demanded that the Tories launch an investigation into it. In this video from RT, the terrible Russian propaganda outfit reports that they have a called for an independent inquiry due to Islamophobic incidents within the party now occurring weekly. Their letter to the Tories lists three council candidates, who were suspended. They are:
Mark Payne, suspended for Islamophobic tweets on social media.
Alexander van Terheyden, for the same.
And Darren Harrison, who had links with Generation Identity, which RT describe as an anti-Islamic organisation.
The report shows some of their posts, as well as comments from people determined that the Islamophobia in the Tory party has gone on far too long: Simon Maginn, Crumpets and Tea and Rachel Swindon. The latter’s name seems familiar. I think she may well be one of the people Mike follows on Twitter.
It’ll be interesting to see how the Tories respond to this. It was one of the Muslim Tories, who said in an interview a week or so ago that Islamophobic incidents occurred weekly in the Tories. Simon Maginn in the post RT shows in their video states that there have been demands for an investigation by the Muslim Council for two years now. The Tories have obviously ignored it, and will most likely do their best to sweep it under the carpet. While their more than willing to exaggerate the incident of racism in Labour, when it comes to them they make a great show of punishing the person responsible, quite often trivially, and then briskly declaring that the issue is over and the problem dealt with.
It isn’t. Not by a long chalk.
The Tories are a deeply racist party, and Islamophobia is only part of the problem. We’ve seen just how racist they are in their treatment of the Windrush Children, the victims of the Grenfell Tower Fire, and the rest of Tweezer’s despicable ‘hostile environment’ policy. The Muslim Council’s call for an investigation into Tory Islamophobia is to be welcomed. But this is just the tip of a very nasty iceberg.
And while we’re at it, please can we have an investigation into anti-Semitism in the Tory midst. Despite their claims that they don’t have it, and it’s only in the Labour party, Anti-Semitism does exist in the Tories. And if the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is to be believed (they’re not, but let it go for the sake of argument) and anti-Semitism is rampant in British society, then it needs to be examined and combated in the Tories.
Except that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Jonathan Arkush, the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, won’t want to do that. They’re true-blue Tories, whose interest in anti-Semitism seems simply to be to use against Jeremy Corbyn and critics of Israel. And as Tories, they definitely don’t want anti-Semitism investigated in the Tory party.
In which case, they are letting their political bias allow the real anti-Semites and Nazis to go unpunished. And perhaps, if they are unwilling to defend Jews from real, vicious persecution, they should resign. Or submit to another, genuinely impartial inquiry, to see if they are doing their job.
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.
This is one of the classics of the graphic novel. Joe Sacco is an American journalist. He spent two months with the Palestinians in late 1991 and early 1992 in Gaza and the West Bank during the time of the first Intifada. He wrote and drew Palestine after his return to the US, basing it on his notes, publishing it as a nine-part comic strip. These were later collected into a single volume to form the graphic novel. The book also has a kind of introduction, ‘Homage to Joe Sacco’, from Edward Said, the author of Orientalism, critic of western imperialism and attitudes to the Arabs, and himself a Palestinian.
This is precisely the type of book the Israel lobby does not want people to read. Not BICOM, not the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which was set up because Gideon Falter, its founder, was worried about British attitudes becoming more hostile to Israel after the blockade of Gaza, not the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion and the companion party to the Israeli Labor Party, not the various ‘Friends of Israel’ societies in the political parties, Tories and Labour, nor the Jewish Leadership Council and definitely not the Board of Deputies of British Jews. All of them shout ‘anti-Semitism’ at anyone who dares to publish anything critical of Israel, or show the barbarity with which it treats the Palestinians.
The book shows Sacco’s experiences as he goes around Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, talking to both Palestinians and Israelis, meeting them, entering their homes, and listening to their stories. He starts the book in Cairo, the beginning of his journey to Israel, and to which he returns at his departure. During his time there, he visits the Vale of Kidron, the Arab quarter of Old Jerusalem, Hebron, Ramallah, Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza strip, as it then was, Balata, another refugee camp on the West Bank, Nablus, the town of Gaza itself, and finally Tel Aviv.
It’s not an easy read. This is an occupied country during deep unrest, and the threat of violence and arbitrary arrest and detention without trial is every where. There are patrols of soldiers, demonstrations, explosions and stone throwing. And he shows, with quotes, the contemptuous, lofty and hostile attitude the early Zionists and Lord Balfour had for the indigenous population. He quotes Balfour as saying
‘Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-long tradition, in present needs, in future hopes, of far profounder import than the desire and prejudices of 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land. We do not propose even to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the inhabitants’.
Ben Gurion thought it would be simple to expel the Palestinians, because he felt they had no real attachment to their homeland. He wrote that the Palestinian ‘is equally at ease whether in Jordan, Lebanon or a variety of other places’. With the approach of war, he made it clear their expulsion was going to be through military force: ‘In each attack a decisive blow should be struck, resulting in the destruction of homes and the expulsion of the population.’ When that was done, ‘Palestinian Arabs have only one role – to flee’. He also quotes Golda Meir, who stated that a Palestinian people, defining itself as a Palestinian people, did not exist, and ‘we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They do not exist’. 400 Palestinian villages were razed in the war marking the birth of Israel. Meir’s lie – that the Palestinians don’t exist as a people – is still repeated by Republican and pro-Israel bloggers. Golda Meir was also concerned about the Palestinian population outstripping that of the Israelis, another issue that is still very alive today.
His hosts are polite, welcoming him into their homes, and plying him with tea. But occasionally there is an outburst from one of them, when he’s asked what the point of him being there, of them talking to him, is. Because other journalists have been there too, and they’ve talked to them, and nothing has happened, nothing has changed. They also talk to him about the other factions, and of the peace process. In a separate text at the beginning of the book, he states that, while the peace process set up the Palestinian authority and gave them a government, it changed nothing for ordinary Palestinians, and the occupation and theft of land by the Israelis still goes on.
He also reveals that the Israelis appropriate 2/3 of the land in the West Bank for their own us, which includes the establishment of Israeli settlements, which are illegal under international law. And the governments gives Israelis plenty of incentives to move to them. They’re given a government grant if they do, lower interest rates on loan, the housing itself is cheaper than in Israel, and an income tax rate of 7 per cent. The settlers themselves can be extremely aggressive. Sacco’s hosts tell them about incidents where settlers have come into Palestinian villages, smashing windows and demanding that the owners come out. Of people shot by them, and the trivial sentences given to the settlers guilty of this. They’re given jail sentences of a few months. If they’re convicted in the first place. Palestinians who shoot and kill Israelis are jailed for years. Some lavish homes do exist in Palestine, occupied by Arabs, but most live in very bare houses, often with leaking roofs, which are vulnerable to storms.
His cartoons show what his Palestinian hosts tell him it’s like in prison camps like Ansar III, with crowds of prisoners crammed into small, bare rooms with no heat and poor ventilation. There are also few eating utensils, to the various political factions in the camp – Fateh, Hamas, Popular Front, organise meal times so that everyone gets a turn with the cup and plate to eat and drink. Several of the people he talks to were arrested simply on suspicion. Israeli law allowed them to be held without charge while evidence was compiled, with his captors returning to court over and over again to request a few more days more, until the judge finally listens to their lawyer, has the procedure stopped and the prisoner released. He also shows how the prisoners were tortured through beatings, being forced to stand for hours with bags over their heads, a process permitted under Israel law. A judge ruled that torture could not be used, but what methods were to replace them were kept secret. So many Palestinians have been incarcerated, that a green identity card showing a man has been in jail is a matter of pride. And not to have been to prison correspondingly is a mark of shame.
He talks about how the Israelis have a deliberate policy of not allowing the Palestinians to industrialise, so that they compete with the Israel. The State has also put obstacles in place to prevent Palestinian farmers competing with Israelis. They also deliberately uproot the olive trees many Palestinians grow to support themselves. The Israelis also appropriate most of the water, and dig deeper wells, so that the Palestinians have a much poorer water supply and their own wells are becoming increasingly saline. As a result, unemployment in Gaza was at 40 per cent. And Sacco himself was approached several times by Palestinians, hoping he could do something so that they could leave and go abroad to study or find work.
He describes a school, without electricity, as well as a school for the deaf, which is supported through volunteers and whose staff complain of their lack of training for dealing with people with disabilities. He also hears and illustrates the story of one Palestinian woman, whose son was shot by Israeli soldiers, but was prevented from taking him directly to hospital. Instead she was ordered to go hither and thither, where she was told a helicopter was waiting to take her and the boy. When she gets there, there is no helicopter. She eventually takes him to the hospital herself in a car, by which time it’s too late and the lad dies.
The book also shows the mass of roadblocks and the permit system which Palestinians have to go through to go to Israel. At the same time, Israelis are simply allowed to whiz through in their separate lanes.
Sacco also doesn’t shy away from showing the negative side of Palestine – the anti-Semitism, and particularly infamous murders, like the killing of Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro, and the massacre of the Israeli Olympic team by the terrorist group Black September. This can turn into support for the murder of Israeli civilians. There’s also a chapter on the plight of Palestinian women, This is a society where women are still very much treated as inferiors and subordinates, where honour killings are carried out as the punishment for female adultery. It is also a society where collaborators are murdered, and those, who belong to the wrong faction may also be shot and killed.
The book was written 27 years ago, but nothing really seems to have changed since then. The illegal settlements are still there and expanding. Settlers are still seizing Palestinian homes and property, the apartheid separating Israelis from Palestinians is still in place, unemployment is still high, and Palestinians are still being treated as foreigners, refugees and second-class citizens on their own land.
However, some attitudes are changing. The Israeli liberals Sacco talks to only support the Palestinians up to a point. When pressed, some of them will say that Israel should keep the Occupied Territories, because they seized them in war. Or that they need to keep them for security reasons. But an increasing number of young Jews in America and elsewhere are appalled at the continuing maltreatment of the Palestinians and are becoming increasingly critical and hostile to Israel because of this. And there have also grown up major opposition groups like the human rights organisation B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence in Israel.
The Israeli state and its lobby and supporters in this country and others are increasingly scared. It’s why they’re trying to pass laws to criminalise the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in America, and to outlaw criticism of Israel in this country through tortuous definitions of anti-Semitism that are stretched to include it. It’s why they’re smearing, with the connivance of the right-wing media, the Blairites in the Labour party, and the Conservatives, decent people, who have fought racism and anti-Semitism, as anti-Semites.
Very long, detailed books have been written about Israel’s brutal treatment, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Sacco’s Palestine presenting this as graphic novel, is an example of how comics can also be serious literature, tackling a difficult subject with both narrative and artistic skill and style. I’ve mentioned on this blog before the alternative comics that were also published from the ’60s to the 1980s/1990s on political topics, including the Israeli maltreatment of Palestinians in Pat Mills’ Crisis. Palestine is very much in that tradition, and in 1996 won the American Book Award.
That redoubtable campaigner against all forms of Fascism and racism, including Zionism, Tony Greenstein, put up a post on Saturday reporting that 5,680 people have signed the petition calling for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to be deregistered as a charity. Under the rules of the Charity Commission, charities have to be apolitical. The CAA clearly isn’t, as despite its monicker, as it pays precious little attention to real anti-Semitism. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is the malign, and highly political organisation, that libeled Mike and so many others in the Labour party as anti-Semites simply because they have criticised Israel, defended those who did, and worse, actually have historical fact on their side. It’s real purpose is to defend Israel by smearing its critics, as the Israel lobby has been doing pretty much since the 1970s.
Greenstein begins the article with the words
Some 5,680 people have signed a petition calling on the Charity Commission to deregister the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. It brings the whole charity sector into disrepute. There is no discernible public benefit arising from its operation. It is widely suspected to be funded by the Israeli state as part of its anti-BDS dirty tricks operations.
He then notes that Gideon Falter, the head of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, is also the director of the JNF UK. This the Jewish National Fund, the organisation that owns 93 per cent of all land in Israel, and which recently fought a decision by the Israeli courts to make it rent its property to non-Jews, like Arabs.
Greenstein then goes on to discuss two instances out of the very many cases where the CAA has libelled people as anti-Semites. One was a young Palestinian woman, Malaka Mohammed Shwaikh, a Ph.D. student as Exeter University. Shwaikh comes from Gaza, and was understandably furious and distress at the Israeli bombardment of her home. She used very strong words to describe her attitude to Israel, which the CAA twisted to make it appear she was anti-Semites. This was repeated in the press, including Mail and the Express. The university’s student guild investigated the claim, found it was false. Shwaikh was exonerated, and the press, including the Heil and Depress, had to issue corrections.
The other example is Jackie Walker. The CAA claimed that she had asked if Hitler could be blamed for the Holocaust. In fact, she said no such thing, but was just repeating a quote from Nahum Goldman, the President of the World Jewish Congress and the Zionist Organisation. And Goldman himself had been quoting the former Israeli president, David Ben Gurion.
Greenstein then goes on to show the immense hypocrisy of the CAA and the press repeating its lies in its treatment of headlines about the Jewish American banker, George Soros. The newspapers ran stories about Soros claiming that he was manipulating British politics. This is close to the anti-Semitic tropes of Jewish bankers controlling world politics. It’s the myth that the CAA and its fellows claimed Mike was repeating when he described the attempts by the former Israeli embassy official, Shai Masot, to interfere in British politics as a conspiracy. But it’s one rule for the CAA and quite another for everybody else.
Greenstein also discusses how the CAA has written 200 odd articles attacking Jeremy Corbyn for supposedly backing anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers. Which is another gross libel. And it is also massively Islamophobic. It has smeared Britain’s Muslims by claiming that they are more likely than anyone else to be anti-Semitic. Among its patrons is the notorious Tory islamophobe Bob Blackman, who caused a storm by posting some highly offensive posts expressing his hatred of Islam and Muslims.
He also has this to say about the extreme right-wing views of the former head of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross.
The Charity Commission has, until recently, been Chaired by the Islamaphobe and right-wing bigot William Shawcross. Shawcross was an ex-Director of the cold war Henry Jackson Society and he was reported in the Guardian as having said in 2012 that ‘Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”. The CAA, in response to a petition calling on the Charity Commission to deregister them tried to intimidate Change.org into taking the petition down (they failed!).
He continues
This has however got to be the beginning of the campaign to remove this political cancer. The CAA needs to be treated as any other racist and fascist organisation. It’s actions against genuinely anti-Semitic individuals are a mask for its real purpose. It pursues individuals like Alison Chabloz, a complete nonentity with severe personality and mental health problems, whilst refraining from criticising any anti-Semitic organisation that is pro-Israel. When the Tory newspapers launched a campaign against George Soros, using the traditional anti-Semitic meme that he was an international Jewish financier who was trying to ensure that Britain remained subject to the control of ‘global interests’, the CAA exonerated them. It’s headline was: ‘Today’s article in the Daily Telegraph about George Soros’ intervention in British politics is not antisemitic, but editors chose their headline poorly. Yes quite. And its reaction to the Sun’s ‘Puppet Masters’ headline? There wasn’t one!
And concludes his article by urging his readers to reblog his article, and urges people to email the current of the Charity Commission, Ms Grenfell, to make their views known regarding the Commission’s inactivity to date to act against the CAA.
Greenstein is himself Jewish, like so many of the other people the CAA and their fellows have smeared as an anti-Semite. The number, who’ve signed the petition is low. It’s about the same number of people, who signed a petition calling on Tony Blair to stand on his head and spin in the early part of this century. But it also shows that a growing number of people are becoming aware of how fraudulent and politically motivated the CAA’s claims of anti-Semitism are. And the more people they smear, the more this number are going to grow, despite the efforts of the right-wing press to try and back them up.
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 