I have a kind of love-hate relationship with Private Eye. Mostly I like it, but today I find myself wishing there was another satirical magazine around, one that wasn’t captured by the political-media complex. One that genuinely was subversive, crusading and really brought you the news that the papers and the lamestream media wouldn’t, and didn’t want you to know about. Because Private Eye is establishment. Its founders were all public schoolboys, as is its current editor, Ian Hislop. And yesterday it showed.
It ran an article on the imminent departure from politics of Diane Abbott for her letter to the Absurder stating that Jews don’t experience racism, and when they do, it’s like the prejudice against people with ginger hair. Unlike Blacks, who were enslaved and forced to the back of the bus under segregation. She ignored the Holocaust and the fact that across parts of Europe and America various institutions, like the universities, set limits on the number of Jews they would take in case they became dominated by Jews. I’ve also heard from people of Jewish heritage that California at one time wouldn’t allow Jews to own property. Abbott is completely wrong, as she’s been told by everyone.
I don’t believe, though, that Abbott is an anti-Semite. She just doesn’t believe anyone except people of colour, and that means primarily Blacks, suffer racism. And she doesn’t want racism by non-White ethnic groups discussed, because ‘they’ would use it to ‘divide and rule’. Aside from which, as Tony Greenstein has shown citing the stats, there isn’t a lot of anti-Semitism amongst severely normal Brits. 77 per cent of British people have positive views of the Jews. Five per cent hate them, and the reminder don’t care one way or another. Given those stats, it’s easy to see how she forgot about the real persecution Jews have historically suffered.
But this was not enough for the writer of the article on Abbott’s coming fall. The anonymous author, styling himself ‘Steeplejack’, said that her views were normal for Corbyn and his faction. He then quoted some Communist who said that Corbyn never really sympathised with the Jews because of their wealth. Okay, according to the stats 60 per cent of British Jews are upper-middle class. This section of the Jewish community doesn’t vote Labour. They’re Conservatives, as shown by Ephraim Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, nipping round to No. 10 to congratulate Tweezer on her elevation to Prime Minister. The liberal parts of the community generally vote Lib Dem, according to the same stats, with only a few voting Labour. And some parts of the Jewish community are very right-wing, like the two per cent who voted for the National Front in the 1970s. ‘Steeplejack’s’ article believed that it was quite right that Abbott was going to be retired and that Corbyn had been effectively purged from the party, and ended with the announcement that they were coming after John McDonnell next.
You’ll note that at no time does the article mention that Corbyn had and continues to have the strong support of that part of the Jewish community that hasn’t become entranced by the Tories. They didn’t quote anyone from Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas or the Jewish Socialist Group. Because they are the wrong sort of Jews. They’re all evil self-haters and anti-Semites because they support him and criticise Israel. They didn’t go to Shraga Stern for comment, who welcomed Corbyn into his synagogue. Stern’s a Haredi Jew. Their theology holds that Israel will only be restored with the return of the messiah. Until then, Jews should stay patiently in exile, working for the good of the wider community. The Haredi community has a strong respect for Corbyn as he stood by them when they opposed the commercial development of their historic cemetery. But again, the wrong sort of Jews.
Now we come to the question of the identity of ‘Steeplejack’. The last of the Eye’s correspondents pushing this nonsense was outed as a Blairite Guardian hack. I don’t know who this guy is, but the pseudonym suggests he fancies himself in the mould of Fred Dibnah, the steeplejack and broadcaster. Dibnah was very good at explaining industrial history and Britain heritage of invention, but he had very reactionary views. He didn’t believe that women should go out to work, for example. ‘Steeplejack’s’ monicker suggests he is similarly right-wing, though probably not to that extent. And he’s almost certainly another establishment journalist.
Which is what is wrong with Private Eye. You get the views of the lamestream media. It’s critical, but only up to a certain extent. The magazine thus pushed the line that Starmer was an anti-Semite for all it could, because that was what the establishment was saying, and the magazine and its editor and contributors shared the same fears of a socialist revival. It also won’t tell you that the current Ukrainian president, Volodomyr Zelensky, is a quasi-dictator very much in the same mould as Putin. Because Zelensky’s on our side against Russia, and so the people must not know that the Orange Revolution was stage managed by Obama’s Victoria Nuland at the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy. Private Eye aren’t anti-establishment, just a slightly critical section of it.
John McDonnell and the Socialist group of MPs are one of the very few things keeping me in the Labour party. And now it’s clear Starmer wants to purge them, with the support of the media and goblins like Private Eye.
We are pleased to be inviting members in the South West to attend anti-semitism awareness training from the Jewish Labour Movement. It will take place over Zoom on Wednesday 6th July at 7pm.
Please email’ ————–‘to register and the meeting link will be sent closer to the date.
Best wishes,
Labour South West’
I should cocoa! The very cheek! Just in case you need reminding, the Jewish Labour Movement was one of the Jewish organisations deeply involved in the witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’. I put ‘anti-Semitism’ inverted commas because these organisations, including those outside the party like the Chief Rabbinate and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism were not, in my opinion, genuinely concerned with anti-Semitism in its true and original sense. This is a hatred of Jews, simply for being Jews, regardless of political or religious opinions on their part. I have made this point again and again on this blog, citing some of the 19th century founders and leaders of modern organised anti-Semitism in Wilhelm Marr’s Bund Antisemiten or League of Anti-Semites. The Jewish Labour Movement used to be Paole Zion, Workers of Zion, and was virtually moribund until a decade or so ago when in received an injection of cash from person or persons unknown. The Labour Party has always had Jewish members and the parliamentary party has, or used to have, slightly more than the Tories. There are a number of other Jewish organisations in the Labour party and on the left, such as Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group, not to mention Jewdas, with whom Jeremy Corbyn spent a Passover Seder. Corbyn also received strong backing from the Haredi Jews, who believe it is their duty to stay in galut, exile, until they are called back to Israel by the Messiah. In the meantime, they are to cooperate with the peoples in whose lands they reside to build better societies and to ‘pray for the health of the city’ as commanded by the Prophet in the Hebrew Bible. And I’ve no doubt there are many other Jews in the Labour party, who are not party of any Jewish organisation, because, like Dr. Jonathan Miller, they consider themselves Brits, who happen to be Jewish, and don’t want to be part of a minority.
But these Jews and their organisations are not recognised as properly Jewish and are actively opposed and maligned by the Jewish Labour Movement. The JLM’s focus, like the other organisations behind the witch-hunt, is to combat anti-Zionism and silence any criticism of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. And they do this by smearing their enemies as anti-Semites. And very many of their victims are Jews, which make their claims to be tackling anti-Semitism risible.
Mike was told by the Labour party that he would be allowed to remain in it after he was smeared as an anti-Semite if he attended anti-Semitism training by the JLM. Mike’s only crime was to point out that Ken Livingstone was entirely correct when he said that Adolf Hitler initially supported Zionism. He did. It was the Ha’avara Agreement, a shameful pact with the German Zionists to smuggle German Jews into British mandate Palestine. It was done as a way to cleanse Germany of Jews. The pact was short-lived, but it happened. Mike refused, as he is not and has never been and never will be an anti-Semite and attendance would have been taken as a tacit admission of guilt.
Jackie Walker is another of their victims. They secretly recorded her at workshop to discuss the best ways to commemorate the Holocaust. Holocaust Memorial Day not only commemorates the Jewish Holocaust, but also the many other genocides that have disfigured human history. Walker is a Jew by faith and blood. Her father was a Russian Jews, and so she knows from family experience more than most about real anti-Semitic persecution. Her mother was a Black American civil rights activist, and so was deeply concerned about another form of racial persecution against her people. Walker’s crime was to ask what the event would do about commemorating other holocausts, such as those against Black people. Since the great Black activist and scholar W.E.B. DuBois, many Blacks and White sympathisers have regarded the slave trade and slavery as a Black holocaust. Walker asked a decent question. But for some reason this was regarded as ‘anti-Semitic’ and she was smeared and purged.
I think most severely normal Brits are aware of the dangers of anti-Semitism. The documentaries about the Second World War and the Nazis shown on television necessarily include the Nazi persecution of the Jews and the Shoah. There have been a number of award-winning Hollywood films about the Holocaust and the heroes who rescued Jews, like Schindler’s List, which came out in the ’90s. I also remember the outrage and campaigning on the left in the 70s and 80s against the NF and BNP when they were marching about trying to get votes, and similar fears and disgust when the BNP briefly revived and its noxious leader, Nick Griffin, was invited onto Question Time. There are very many excellent books about the Holocaust, and some of the late Clive James’ best TV criticism is from the 70s when Fascist and Nazi scumbags like Oswald Mosley, Albert Speer and Baldur von Schirach were interviewed on British TV. James expertly took apart their lies and false protestations of innocence to reveal the real malignity underneath.
Part of my undergraduate course in history was on the rise of Fascist and Communist regimes in Europe, and I still have the books I bought during then. I’ve also done some reading on Fascism since then, including on its post-War varieties. I’m also interested in conspiracy theories, the most infamous of which are those about some secret Jewish conspiracy which controls both capitalism, socialism and communism to enslave the White race. These theories became prominent again in the ’90s when they were incorporated into the UFO mythology and the right-wing conspiracy theories about the Illuminati, another group who are supposed to be controlling world events, the economy and politics from behind the scenes. David Icke believed that the world is secretly run by Reptoid aliens. He caused alarm and outrage because he used quotations from the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Tsarist anti-Semitic forgery, to support his crank ideas. Icke isn’t an anti-Semite, and genuinely seemed to believe that the world was run by extraterrestrials rather than Jews. Other UFO researchers, like the late Bill English, did the same, though when they cited the Protocols they claimed they should be read as talking about the Illuminati, rather than the Jews. Nevertheless these quotations were in danger of making the Protocols seem respectable to the point where a branch of Waterstones in one of the northern towns stocked them.
I totally accept that respectable scholars and lay people have to be very careful when it comes to some of the material on topics like the Nazis and Holocaust. Real anti-Semites and Nazis try to disguise their awful views and attempts to deny or minimise the Holocaust by setting up respectable-sounding magazines. Often they use coded language. For example, a very respectable folklorist wrote a piece in one of the urban folklore magazines back in the ’90s to tell how he’d been taken in by such tactics and to warn other to be on the guard. He had been researching tales of atrocities committed by the Germans during the First World War. He came to the conclusion that one of these, the story that the Kaiser’s troops had crucified a Canadian soldier, was bogus and may have been just allied propaganda. He was then approached by a history magazine with a respectable-sounding title, who asked him if they could reprint his article. He innocently agreed, only to find out later it was a Nazi rag. Its editors were using stories of allied propaganda to suggest that the Holocaust was also nothing but fiction. But as an American judge has ruled, the Holocaust is so well documented that its existence cannot be sanely denied. The scholar was shocked and disgusted, and so wrote the article to let others know about the deception and to be on their guard about similar tactics and approaches.
As for coded language, the believers in a world-wide conspiracy to enslave humanity talk about the globalists, the Illuminati, or the global elite. Sometimes this is innocent of anti-Semitism, and they really are talking about a secretive group of leading politicos, capitalists and so on, which isn’t some Jewish conspiracy. But sometimes it isn’t, and is code for ‘Jews’. I’ve also noticed that while Simon Webb of History Debunked isn’t an anti-Semite or anti-Zionist by any stretch of the imagination, some of his commenters do seem to be. There’s a lot of talk by them about the Great Replacement, the idea that the Jews are trying to destroy the White race with non-White immigrate. There’s also comments about ‘small hatted people’, or ‘people with small hats’, which sounds very much like its about the Jews, referring to the kippa skullcaps many observant Jews wear.
Sometimes you really do need to be careful and be informed so you’re not taken in by such language and deceit. But the Jewish Labour Movement won’t help you.
They’re concerned to discredit criticism of Israel using literary criticism and citing entirely bogus conspiracy theories about the Jews from the past. Remember when Shai Masot was caught plotting with a senior British civil servant to decide who should or shouldn’t be in the cabinet? This could rightly be called a conspiracy. But if you called it that, or described the two as plotting, you were the using an anti-Semitic trope because of all the genuinely stupid, poisonous and entirely mythical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the past. The same if you report the atrocities committed by the Israeli state and IDF against Palestinians, especially if they can get in a reference to the Blood Libel, that Jews sacrificed Christian children to use their blood in the matzoh bread at Passover. This vile medieval smear has been responsible for numerous anti-Semitic pogroms. However, the Israeli state now is manipulating its memory to close down reasonable criticism. When the IDF shot a Palestinian woman a few years ago, one of the respectable newspaper cartoonists produced picture of her burning in the fireplace while Netanyahu, the-then president of Israel, hobnobbed with the US president. This was promptly denounced by the Israelis as anti-Semitic, because the fire recalled the gas ovens of the Holocaust. Similarly, when Gerald Scarfe drew a cartoon of the Israelis building their wretched wall to keep the Palestinians out using Arab blood, the Israelis again demanded a retraction and an apology because the blood supposedly referred to the infamous Blood Libel. And so another piece of entirely reasoned, reasonable and absolutely not anti-Semitic criticism and comment was again silenced. And this is what the Jewish Labour Movement also does in its events about anti-Semitism. They have nothing to do with making people genuinely aware of the threat of anti-Semitism and the way it is coded. They are all about discrediting justifiable criticism of Israel through using literary devices to make them apparently connected to past anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and innuendo.
I have absolutely no intention of going to this monstrous charade. If I want information and guidance on genuine anti-Semitism, I’d try to consult the JLM’s Jewish victims – Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Martin Odoni and others, self-respecting decent people, who have been smeared by the anti-Semitism witch-hunters as self-hating. Even though these people are Jewish and have fought against anti-Semitism and other forms of racism. Or I would contact Marc Wadsworth, the Black anti-racism activist. He was smeared as an anti-Semite, again using literary tropes, because he caught a Jewish Labour MP passing on a party brochure to a Torygraph hack. Oh, it was the trope of the disloyal Jew, they claimed. This was despite the fact that Wadsworth didn’t know the politico was Jewish, and had in the 1980s worked with the Board of Deputies about passing legislation to protect Jews against genuine anti-Semitic violence by the NF or BNP. Or I’d go to someone like Mike, who can tell fact from fiction, well-researches his stories and who was asked by a Jewish friend at College to be one of the readers in her performance commemorating the Holocaust’s victims.
All of the above have a far better understanding of anti-Semitism, or a more honest one than the Jewish Labour Movement and its highly ideological, distorted view of what counts as Jew hatred.
I’ve said it before: Judaism is a religion. The Jews are a people. Zionism is an ideology. Israel is a state. Judaism and its people are not synonymous with the modern state of Israel. Under a free society, all ideologies should be able to be examined and criticised, including Zionism. States can and do commit horrible atrocities, for which they should criticised. Israel should not be an exception merely because its people are Jews. Only hatred of Jews, simply for being Jews, should count as anti-Semitism.
Fight racism! Fight anti-Semitism! And don’t be taken in by bogus propaganda like that of the Jewish Labour Movement.
There’s a fascinating video on YouTube of the performance by Jewish radical musicians Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko of the Bundist song ‘In Zaltsikn Yam’. It was sent over the internet to the Melbourne Bund as part of the 120th anniversary celebrations of the foundation of the Bund, the mass Russian and Polish Jewish socialist party in 1897. Korolenko sings it in three languages, Yiddish, English and Russian. It’s militantly socialist and stridently attacks the rich and Zionism in no uncertain terms.
It begins with the tears of the Jews running into the sea, but the tears of the rich are clear, while those of the poor are bloody. It also sings about Jews and gentiles marching together are comrades in their shared homelands. As for Zionism, it says that the call for Jews to return to Israel is what they’ve heard from the priests. It’s just putting Jews back into another ghetto. The Zionists are concerned with the Jewish people’s fathers in their grave, but have no concerns for the present generation. But there’s a new messiah – the working man, who will transform the world.
It’s a great song which makes the Bund’s anti-Zionism very clear, preformed by too excellent musicians. It also adds further weight to the amount of historical scholarship showing that it was the secular Bund that represented the majority Jewish opinion in Poland and eastern Europe before the Second World War, and not Zionism. That said, I have issues with it that prevent me from putting the video up on this blog. I’m an Anglican Christian, but I found the rejection of the Jewish hope for the Messiah actually shocking and blasphemous. And if it shocks a gentile like me, I wonder how offensive it must be to religious Jews. I also realise that many religious Jews, even some Israelis, are critical of Israel or just disgusted at its treatment of the Palestinians. I’ve blogged before now of Haredi and other very Orthodox Jews, who believe their religious duty is remain in the countries to which Jews have been scattered, until Israel is redeemed by the Messiah. I understand from one of the Jewish anti-Zionist bloggers that one former Chief Rabbi held that view. When he was asked whether the redemption of Israel then would have the same result in the removal of the Palestinians, he replied that under the Messiah it would be done peacefully through negotiation. There are Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem that are under attack from the right-wing Israeli establishment because they criticise their country for its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. I also remember the way Israeli nationalists attacked and vilified a group of liberal Israelis because they said the kadish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, over a dying Palestinian who’d been shot by the IDF. The song interests me as a historical artefact and as part of an alternative tradition of Jewish radicalism that still holds a place in current Jewish society.
But I don’t feel I can put it up on this blog because I genuinely don’t want to offend anyone’s religious beliefs.
My issue is with the Israel lobby and Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and with the way Zionist groups are trying to rewrite history so that only they appear as the true champions and expression of Jewish political aspirations, and definitely not with Jews or Judaism.
If you want to see the video for yourself, it’s on the Bund Melbourne channel on YouTube, and has the Yiddish title of ‘In Zaltsikn Yam – Bund 120 Yoyvl 2017’.
Maureen Lipman’s the veteran British actress and comedienne who’s resigned several times from the Labour party whining about anti-Semitism. She did it a few years ago when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party because he was a terrible anti-Semite as shown by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbi and the noxiously misnamed Campaigned Against Anti-Semitism and the British press, media and political establishment. Well, the British Jewish establishment hated Corbyn because they’re Zionists, and Israel had defined Corbyn and Jackie Walker – yep, a Black Jewish academic and grannie, who I don’t believe has a single anti-Semitic bone in her body – the No. 10 threat to Israel. Because they stand up for the Palestinians for the same reason they stood up against apartheid South Africa, the campaigns against real racism here in Blighty. And that included firm opposition against anti-Semitism. One of the piccies Mike put up about the former Labour leader shows him warmly greeting a group of Orthodox Jewish gents, who were there to express their appreciation for his support to stop the historic North London synagogue from being redeveloped. I think it was the first, or at least one of the first Haredi synagogues in the UK. Which the Board of Deputies, the political wing of the United Synagogue, wished to tear down and redevelop. But the good Lord forbid anyone from seeing anything sectarian or ‘anti-Semitic’ in their attempt to demolish what is clearly an historic site dear to another part of Britain’s diverse Jewish community. Corbyn definitely ain’t an anti-Semite by any stretch of the imagination, and neither was ever a Communist, Trotskyite or whatever other bogeyman haunts the imaginations of our right-leaning press and political elite.
Lipman’s claims of anti-Semitism in the Labour leadership are also weakened by the fact that she left the Labour party, again citing anti-Semitism, years before, when Ed Miliband was leader. Yes, Miliband, who’s Jewish, the son of Ralph Miliband, highly respected Marxist scholar and immigrant from Belgium, who fought for this country against the Nazi jackboot during WWII. And who was monstered for his trouble by the Heil, who ran a hit piece against him as ‘the man who hated Britain’. Well, he hated the public schools and the British class system, which is entirely reasonable and proper. Especially when it creates thugs and parasites like David Cameron and Boris Johnson. But Miliband senior actually fought for this country, unlike Paul Dacre’s father, who stayed at home and was the rag’s showbiz correspondent. Or Geordie Grieg’s old dad, who was a member of one of the pro-Nazi appeasement groups. Why did she think the Labour party was ridden with Jew-hatred? Again, Israel. Miliband had offered mild criticism of the Israeli state’s abominable treatment of the Palestinians. This was too much for Lipman’s fanatical Zionism, and she stormed out.
Well, she was on Gogglebox last Friday with Giles Brandreth watching and commenting on last week’s ‘great telly’ (sic). One of the pieces they were watching was Matt Hancock’s resignation because of his Ugandan discussions, as Private Eye calls it, with his secretary. Lipman thought that all the abuse was dreadful, considering how well he’d done as Health Secretary. Yep! She really said that. Well, as Kryton once said about Rimmer on Red Dwarf, ‘Oh for a world class psychiatrist!’ Either that or she’s been taking some, er, heavy duty non-prescribed medication with her evening glass of Horlicks. Because Hancock’s record as Health Secretary has been abysmal. He’s corrupt, giving vital contracts away to companies, simply because his mates run them. He was unable to get proper supplies of PPE, thus causing some of our professional and heroic frontline staff to die unnecessarily and putting the lives of others in serious danger. Especially staff from the Black and Asian communities, who were particularly vulnerable and hard hit. Care homes were left exempt from measures that were in place to protect hospital patients, thus causing even more deaths among the elderly and infirm. He is responsible for running down and privatising the NHS, as part of long term Tory and Blairite policy, so that waiting lists are growing. And it’s thanks to him and Boris that Britain had the worst death rate in Europe and the second worse in the world.
There are three explanations why Lipman believes a glaring incompetent like Hancock has done a good job. The shame at appearing in Carry On Columbus back in 1992 has, after 21 years, finally caught up with her and driven her mad. Arguing against this is that Julian Clary and Alexei Sayle also appeared in it, and although it wasn’t their finest hour, both of them are still mentally hale and happy. On the other hand, perhaps whatever herbal tea she may take contains the active ingredient in Cannabis. There are strong arguments for its medical use, such as to treat the pain from some diseases as well as the sickness some cancer patients experience. But I don’t think Lipman is on it, or anything containing it or other drugs. She seems far too genteel and personally wholesome.
Which leaves the third explanation: she never was really Labour. She may have joined the party or supported it for tribal reasons. Her family, like many Jews a generation or so ago, supported Labour. But as the very Jewish Tony Greenstein has shown, that allegiance changed as the Jewish community became more prosperous. 62 per cent of Britain’s Jews are upper middle class, and accordingly vote Tory. Lipman appears to have been a Blairite Red Tory, who particularly liked Blair because he was an outright supporter of Israel. That changed when Miliband became leader and showed he had something of a backbone when it came to condemning the Jewish state’s atrocities against the Palestinians.
But Blair wanted the privatisation of the Health Service, something no real Labour party member or supporter should ever back. And it appears Lipman supports it too from her comments about how well Matt Hancock has done as Health Secretary.
That bit on Gogglebox tore the liberal mask off, and showed the Tory face underneath. She never was a real member of the Labour party, and the party lost nothing from her loud and mendacious departure.
David Friedlaender is one of the major figures of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. This was a movement of the 18th and 19th centuries in which Jews strove to reconcile their religion and ethnicity with contemporary western culture in order to take their place alongside their gentile fellow countrymen as full and equal citizens. According to the entry on him in John Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: OUP 1997) Friedlaender (1750-1834) was
A forerunner of Reform Judaism. Through his marriage he became part of a distinguished Prussian family of Court Jews and he was one of Moses Mendelssohn’s circle. He believed the Jews were ‘destined from time immemorial to guard and teach by example the pure doctrine of unity and sanctity of God, unknown to other people.’ He argued that prayers for friends and country should be substituted for the messianic hope, and that secular law should be studied rather than Talmud. He also was tireless in his efforts for Jewish political and civil rights in Prussia. (p. 359.
Reform Judaism is a particularly radical reformulation of Judaism, which took over some features of Protestant Christian worship. In contrast to more traditional forms of Jewish worship, such as Orthodox Judaism, prayers are held in the vernacular rather than Hebrew and include choirs. The movement originally believed strongly that Jews should work to become full members of the countries in which they lived, and rejected Zionism. Reform Judaism’s essential doctrines in the US were stated in 1885 in Pittsburgh, when the rabbis there declared
We recognise in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect the approach of the realisation of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice and peace among all men … We recognise in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason … We accept as binding only the moral laws and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilisation.
This suggests that instead of viewing the Messianic hope as the appearance of a Messiah to redeem Israel, they saw it as the inauguration of the new era of peace and justice throughout humanity. Their views on tradition and mdoern culture were modified at a meeting in Columbus and 1937, and the movement has since discarded its anti-Zionism. In Germany the movement accepted changes in the liturgy while remaining theologically conservative.
The article on them in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions also says
Reform congregations are united in the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and rabbis are trained at the Hebrew Union College in the USA and Leo Baeck College in the UK. Reform Judaism has no official status in Israel (though it has a few congregations and kibbutzim), because only Orthodox rabbis are recognised; and the Orthodox repudiate such Reform organisations as the ordination (semikhah) of women as rabbis. (p. 809.
This hostility undoubtedly explains why the late Jonathan Sacks, when he was Chief Rabbi, declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. This was the language of religious bigotry, the type of statement made by the fanatically intolerant before beginning their persecution and violence against their religious enemies.
As for the ordination of women, one American Jewish community made the news last year through their ground-breaking step of ordaining a Black woman as rabbi. Which should be a riposte to the racists out there who claimed that Jackie Walker, one of the peeps smeared as an anti-Semite by the fanatics in the Israel lobby, couldn’t be a Jew because of her skin colour.
The I.H.R.C. definition of anti-Semitism permits reasonable criticism of Israel, but claims that denying Jews their national right to a homeland is anti-Semitic. This is highly questionable for a number of reasons. There are a number of other nations, who at the moment don’t have their own state despite their aspirations. These include the Basques and Catalans in Spain, and the Scots in Britain. Yet there is no international declaration that states that refusal to recognise their aspirations for a homeland constitutes a form of racism.
There have also been different movements in Judaism, that rejected Zionism. On the one hand there are the ultra-traditional Haredi, who reject Israel on the theological grounds that it can only be founded by divine action through the Messiah. On the other there were Reform Jews and their predecessors, who rejected Zionism because the saw the Jews’ real homelands as the current countries in which the lived. Jewish anti-Zionist bloggers such as David Rosenberg and Tony Greenstein have pointed out that Zionism was very much a minority position amongst European Jewry before the horrors of the Second World War. In America there was little interest in Israel among Jews until the late 1960s and the emergency of Neo-Conservatism. Greenstein and the Israeli historian and critic of his country’s barbarous maltreatment of the Palestinians, Ilan Pappe have shown that rather than being pro-Jewish, Zionism has been itself tinged with anti-Semitism. Many gentile Zionists supported the movement as a way of removing Jews from their countries. It’s why Hitler initially signed the Ha’avara agreement with the Zionist leaders to permit and encourage Jewish emigration to Palestine. Pappe in his book Ten Myths About Israel includes an episode that clearly demonstrates this link between anti-Semitism and Zionism. In the 1920s Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, approached a German nobleman for his support. He noted that the man had taken an interest in it, and asked him why he didn’t support it. The aristo replied that he hadn’t, because he didn’t want people to think he was an anti-Semite.
And many of the opponents of Israel’s persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, both Torah-observant and secular, are self-respecting Jews. But they’re smeared as self-hating and anti-Semitic by the country’s fiercely intolerant defenders.
But the example of David Friedlaender shows that if denial of Jewish nationalism is defined as anti-Semitic, then some of Jewry’s most ardent and tireless workers for emancipation, dignity and equality, who believed passionately in their religion and their people’s destiny and witness to the God of their ancestors, are Jew-haters. Which is ridiculous and absurd, or so it seems to my non-Jewish eyes.
I’m sure that some criticism of Israel is undoubtedly anti-Semitic. That of real Nazis, for example. Their hatred of Israel is part of a general, virulent, genocidal hatred of Jews. But the rejection or just simple criticism of Zionism by self-respecting Jews and their gentile allies, who genuinely despise anti-Semitism along with other forms of racism and Fascism, is clearly very different.
It strikes me that the inclusion of anti-Zionism in the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism is simply sectarian bigotry. Some Jews are supporters of Israel, others, who may be no less Jewish, aren’t. Just as some of the gentile critics and opponents of Zionism may the Jews’ most committed defenders and supporters.
A far better definition of anti-Semitism, and one that needs no examples to clarify it, is the simplest. It’s hatred of Jews as Jews, regardless of religion or ideology. That was definition used by the man who coined the term ‘anti-Semitism’, Wilhelm Marr, founder of the Bund Antisemiten in 19th century Germany.
The Board of Deputies, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Chief Rabbinate and other Zionist organisations have no business trying to foist such a partisan and highly discriminatory definition on the Labour Party or anyone, whether Jew or gentile.
Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension was lifted yesterday and he was readmitted to the Labour party. So there was, unsurprisingly, a mass outcry by the usual troublemakers, liars and smear merchants. Starmer responded by fudging the issue and refused Corbyn the Labour whip. This is, as Mike has pointed out, gross political interference of the type which the EHRC report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party condemned in the first place. He has also broken any number of Labour party internal regulations, as the Skwawkbox has clearly demonstrated. He’s done absolutely no good, except to annoy people with an unacceptable compromise. Unacceptable, because Corbyn’s supporters are still outraged by his unjust treatment of the Labour leader, while the smear merchants won’t be satisfied by anything less than his expulsion and the complete prostration of the Labour party to their own ultra-Zionist views.
Margaret Hodge
Among those crawling out from under the rocks to attack Corbyn were Margaret Hodge, Jessica Elgot, Rachel Riley, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Community Security Trust, none of whom are unbiased by any means. Hodge is the stupid, lazy and arrogant Labour MP who got herself suspended for calling Corbyn a ‘f**king anti-Semite’ in parliament. She then got herself readmitted after she started bleating about how terrifying her suspension was, and that it must have been like the terror experienced by German Jews under the Third Reich when they were waiting for a knock from Gestapo.
Her treatment was nothing like that horror, and she insulted the victims and families of those, who really had been imprisoned in the concentration camps. Her suspension was extremely lenient, no doubt helped by the fact that the media was very definitely on her side. Others would have received far harsher punishment. And her stupid, facile comments prompted an outrage response from Jews and gentiles, whose relatives had been victims of the Nazis.
But we shouldn’t be quite so surprised at her tactlessness. This is a woman who signally failed to do anything about real Nazism and anti-Semitism in her constituency. So much so that when the BNP had seven members elected to the local council in Tower Hamlets, their leader, Derek Beacon, sent her a bouquet of flowers in appreciation. She was also responsible for suppressing a report into child abuse in the council, then tried to blame its suppression on Corbyn. Apparently she was threatening to the leave the party if Corbyn was readmitted. If she did, it would be no loss to anyone, but unfortunately she hasn’t.
Jessica Elgot, Israel Lobbyist
Jessica Elgot is another Blairite, and if memory serves me right, she used to work for one of the Israel advocacy organisations. Which should immediately tell you that she isn’t concerned about genuine anti-Semitism, but simply protecting Israel.
Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Gaza and Islamophobia
The same applies to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its odious boss, Gerald Falter. Falter founded it in 2014 or thereabouts because he was shocked at the way British public opinion had turned against Israel because of the bombing of Gaza. His wretched organisation is tinged with Islamophobia. On its website it declares that most anti-Semites are Muslims, and one of its patrons is a Hindu bigot who hates Islam, Christianity and those at the very bottom of the Hindu caste system. This character founded Operation Dharmic Vote to mobilise right-wing Hindu voters partly because he was outraged that high-caste Hindu doctors had to treat the people previously described as ‘the Untouchables’.
Community Security Trust and Violence Against Protesters
Then we come to the Community Security Trust, a volunteer police force set up to protect Jews and their property from attack. This would be all well and good, if that was all it did. But its members are supposedly trained in self-defence by the Israeli security forces and have been responsible for instances of violence themselves against protesters demonstrating against Israel. In one case Jewish and Muslim demonstrators were forcibly separated. Others were struck and beaten, including women, the elderly and a rabbi.
There’s also more than a little racial favouritism being shown in the establishment of the CST. I don’t know of any other ethnic group, which is allowed to have its own volunteer police trained by a foreign country. It can be argued that other ethnic groups deserve such a force more, as this is relatively little anti-Semitism compared with the prejudice against Blacks, Asians and Muslims. Can you imagine the reaction of our absolutely unbiased right-wing press if, say, Britain’s Black community had their own police force organised and trained by the Jamaicans or Nigerians? Or the Hindus trained by the Indian army? Or British Muslims with Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan? They’d have a screaming fit and yell that we were being taken over by foreigners. But the CST is allowed to continue with the full cooperation of the British state and police.
Rachel Riley
As for Rachel Riley, this is a woman, who seems to have a visceral, personal hatred for the Labour leader and his supporters. She was on Talk Radio yesterday telling the world how terrible the Labour leader was, because he laid a wreath on the grave of the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in 1974 when he was attending some kind of gathering in Tunisia. This would have been extremely difficult, as Zelo Street has pointed out, because those monsters are buried in Libya.
Corbyn’s critics have been presented as representative of the British Jewish community as a whole. They aren’t. They are representative only of the right-wing, ultra-Zionist British Jewish establishment. Corbyn had many friends and supporters in the Jewish community, as have others, who have been smeared as anti-Semites, like Ken Livingstone. Corbyn was particularly respected by the Haredi community for his help in preserving their historic burial ground from redevelopment. He was also supported by Jewish Voice for Labour and Jewdas, with whom he spent a Passover Seder. Which enraged the Board of Deputies, who claimed it was a snub to the ‘Jewish community?’
Jonathan Sacks, Sectarianism and the March of the Flags
What Jewish community? As many Jewish left-wing bloggers have pointed out, there is no monolithic Jewish community, and the Board of Deputies only seems to represent the United Synagogue. And many of Corbyn’s other critics seem to be members, such as the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. Sacks died last week, and obituaries appeared praising him and his work. I’ve no doubt he was an excellent fellow in many respects, but he was also a sectarian bigot with a fanatical devotion to Israel. He caused outrage a few years ago when he, an Orthodox Jew, declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. This is the language of religious hatred, uttered by bigots before launching terrible attacks on their victims. Christian anti-Semites no doubt have said the same when persecuting Jews. Sacks was also an opponent of homosexuality, before opportunistically changing his mind and declaring that people had to be more open and accepting. He also led a group of British Jews on the annual March of the Flags in Jerusalem. This is the Israeli equivalent of the various Orange marches in Northern Ireland, when the Protestants of the Orange Order march through Roman Catholic areas. In the case of the March of the Flags, it’s when Israeli boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem to provoke and intimidate them. During these marches, Palestinians are insulted and abused, and their property vandalised. Liberal Jewish organisations asked Sacks not to go, but he refused. But what I also found interesting was that he seemed to be another member of the United Synagogue. The obituaries mentioned that he belonged to the Union of Hebrew Congregations, which looks to my inexpert eye as the United Synagogue by any other name.
The United Synagogue and the Corbyn Smears
Some of the Jewish journos, who took it upon themselves to write pieces smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite are also members of the United Synagogue. The I published several of these pieces, noting at the bottom of the article the writer’s membership of the denomination. Which raises a few questions.
Are all, or the majority of those smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semites members of the United Synagogue? And if they are, who decided that the United Synagogue and its members spoke for all of Britain’s Jews? After all, it’s as if someone decided that only Tory Anglicans represent British Christianity. And when they produce stats claiming that Israel is important to the identity of 77 per cent of British Jews, is this really representative of all of the British Jewish Community? Or is it once again just confined to the United Synagogue?
All of Britain’s Jewish community deserve to be heard on the issue of Corbyn and Israel, not just Tory-voting ultra-Zionists and the United Synagogue.
I know this is a provocative question, but it needs to be asked. Yesterday Mike put up an excellent piece about the hypocrisy and moral cowardice of the Labour leadership. Angela Rayner had admitted that Jeremy Corbyn was right when he said that the amount of anti-Semitism in the Labour party was exaggerated. Nevertheless, it was right to suspend him because of the hurt they caused. Mike points out in his article that Rayner has effectively admitted what the victims of the anti-Semitism smear campaign have known for years – that Labour will expel people who tell the truth about it. He also says
“Hurt” and “distress” are irrelevant if they are not based on facts. And how do we know that the people saying they were “hurt” and “distressed” actually were? There are a lot of liars out there.
Quite. As the old saying goes, ‘truth hurts’. And it seems from this that the self-proclaimed ‘Jewish community’ that claims to be so hurt, simply can’t or won’t handle the truth. But then, they don’t represent the Jewish community, and they aren’t really hurt by anti-Semitism.
Organisations behind Anti-Semitism Smears Unrepresentative of Britain’s Jews
How dare I say these terrible things, which I dare say some people could twist to sound anti-Semitic. Easily, because the facts are on my side. The people behind the accusations and smears that Jeremy Corbyn and the party he led were anti-Semitic most certainly don’t represent all of the Jewish community, but Zionist sectarians. Tony Grenstein and other great, self-respecting Jewish anti-racists and critics of Zionism have pointed out again and yet again that these accusations come from Zionist organisation. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism was founded in 2012 or thereabout specifically to combat the rising hostility to Israel provoked by the bombing of Gaza. Labour Against Anti-Semitism are pretty much the same type of people in the Labour party. The Jewish Labour Movement used to be Paole Zion, Workers of Zion, and is the sister party to the Zionist Israeli Labour Party. In my view, both of these groups are deceptively and deliberately misnamed. The Campaign Against Zionism should be renamed the Campaign For Anti-Semitism, as it exists solely to manufacture accusations of Jew-hatred. As for the Jewish Labour Movement, it’s been shown that you don’t have to be Jewish or a member of the Labour party to join. It’s really a Zionist infiltration group, but obviously ain’t going to describe itself as such. And they will probably accuse you of spreading the anti-Semitic trope of Jewish conspiracies if you do. Nevertheless, it’s the truth. And the truth ain’t racist or anti-Semitic. It just is.
Chief Rabbis Sacks and Mirvis Ultra-Zionists
As for Chief rabbis Jonathan Sacks and Ephraim Mirvis, or ‘Mirv the Perv’ as I think he should be known, both of these gentlemen are, in my opinion, racist ultra-Zionists. Yes, I realise that over here they talk the language of anti-racism and interfaith dialogue. But Mirv spent years learning the Torah in one the hardline Israeli settlements. The settlers, or at least a very large majority of them, believe that all of Eretz Israel should belong to the state of Israel, and the Palestinians expelled and their lands colonised by Jews. Sacks and Mirvis also took contingents of British Jews to the March of the Flags in Jerusalem, despite pleas from British Jewish organisations not to do so. What’s the March of the Flags? It’s the day when the Israeli equivalent of Fascist boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem waving the Israeli flag and vandalising Palestinian property. Palestinian kids are told not to go out on that day for fear of assault by these thugs. I see no difference between it and the Orange Marches through Roman Catholic areas in Northern Ireland. Or indeed through the attempted marches of Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists through the East End of London and other Jewish areas in the 1930s.
Board of Deputies Zionist and Sectarian
Then there’s the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which sounds like it should represent the whole Jewish community. It don’t. It doesn’t represent secular Jews, who comprise a third of all British Jews. They also don’t represent the Orthodox, who have their own, separate organisation. And they really don’t represent Haredi Jews, who reject Israel because it’s a secular state. For the Haredi and Jews like them, Israel can only be restored by the Almighty through the Messiah. Until that time, the Children of Israel are required to remain in galut – exile – and pray for the health of the city, just as their ancestors did in exile in Babylon. Haredi Jews are viciously persecuted by the Israeli state because they refuse to recognise it. From what I gather, they are due to overtake the United Synagogue as the main Jewish sect in Britain in a few decades. And they have particular respect for Jeremy Corbyn for the efforts he and Diane Abbott have made on behalf of their community.
Tony Greenstein and others have pointed out that the Board of Deputies is, by its constitution, a Zionist organisation. So it obviously doesn’t represent non- or anti-Zionist Jews. These range from religious Jews, like the Haredi, to politically liberal and secular Jews, who object to the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Whether religious or secular, these Jews believe that by doing so, Israel is violating the central tenets of traditional Jewish morality. As someone once said, ‘To be a Jew is always to side with the oppressed, never the oppressors’. In fact, the Board really only represents the United Synagogue. And probably not all of them, as some have sitting representatives where there hasn’t been an election for years. Other synagogues won’t allow women to vote. And the fact that it is the United Synagogue driving these smears is shown very clearly in many of the articles the I has published smearing Labour as anti-Semitic. Alongside the name of the author of so many of these hit pieces was the statement that they were a member of the United Synagogue. The Board is therefore a sectarian organisation, that no more speaks for the whole of the Jewish community than the Archbishop of Canterbury speaks for all British Christians, who are also divided into a number of different sects and denominations.
Corbyn Not Anti-Semitic
As for the hurt these mamzers claim to have felt, it’s a peculiarly selective kind of hurt. The South African Jewish politico, Andrew Feinstein posted a video this weekend showing very clearly that Corbyn wasn’t an anti-Semite. This includes footage of the former Labour leader denouncing it and all other forms of racism in a fiery speech in 2002 and of him meeting and being warmly greeted by members of the Jewish community, including a rabbi. Feinstein showed stats from a 2015 survey showing that Labour had the second-lowest incidence of anti-Semitism in British political parties. Two years later, another survey showed that Labour was the joint lowest.
Feinstein’s arguments should carry particular weight, as he has personal, family experience of real, murderous anti-Semitism. His mother’s family is a holocaust survivor, who lost 39 members of her family in Auschwitz. Feinstein has not only been to Auschwitz, but has also lectured there. I believe he was also subjected to anti-Semitic abuse by a real Fascist, which is where the vast majority of real anti-Semitism lies.
Hypocrites Behind Smears Not Concerned with Greater Anti-Semitism in Tories and Fascism
I believe the same stats showed that there was more anti-Semitism in the Tory party. And certainly the internet fan groups for BoJob and Jacob Rees Mogg the blogger Jacobs Mates dug up includes among their vicious racists and Islamophobes anti-Semites, who believe that non-White immigration is an evil plot by the Jews to exterminate the White race. Labour was placed under immense pressure to adopt the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism in full, complete with examples. But no such pressure was placed on the Tories, who haven’t. It’s a peculiar kind of hurt, that has no objection to anti-Semitism in the Tories, but like Violet Elizabeth Bott in the Just William books ‘thcweems and thcweems’ until it’s sick at its much lower incidence in Labour.
Anti-Semitism Smears Weapon to Defend Israel against Criticism
Of course the Jewish organisations accusing Labour of anti-Semitism aren’t doing it because of real anti-Semitism. They’re doing it because they want to defend Israel. Israel’s behaviour towards the Palestinians is indefensible on rational, factual grounds, so all they can do is smear critics as anti-Semites. As Norman Finkelstein, another leading Jewish critic of Israel has said, the Israel lobby is a machine for manufacturing anti-Semites.
And Jews like Andrew Feinstein are horrified and sickened by the cynical, political use of such accusations, not least because it cheapens the deaths of the six million, who were murdered by the Nazis.
Jewish Critics of Israel Victims of Anti-Semitic Ultra-Zionist Smears
But this is precisely what the people behind the anti-Semitism smears are doing. And many of the people they smear are self-respecting Jews, who as critics of Israel can, like Shraga Stern, a Heredi supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, justly claim to have been victims of sectarian anti-Semitic abuse and vilification.
Conclusion
The Jewish organisations claiming to have been hurt by Labour anti-Semitism are liars, both about the incidence of anti-Semitism in the Labour party and their motives for denouncing it. They were protected and supported by a lying Labour party bureaucracy, and are now by a lying Labour leadership. And these smears were spread by a lying British political and media establishment terrified of a revived Labour party that would actually do something for working people. Who of course include Jews. Always have done, always will do, ever since it was founded.
‘Hurt’ nonsense! This is a nasty pack of lies that smears decent people, cheapens real victims of anti-Semitism and desensitizes people to the real anti-Semites in the Fascist fringe. How utterly, utterly contemptible!
I should have realised it wouldn’t last. Last fortnight’s Private Eye carried an article about the leaked Labour party document revealing the antics and intrigues of Blairite party bureaucrats to prevent the party winning the 2017 general election. Although the article accepted uncritically the leaked document’s false assumption that Labour was a hotbed of vicious anti-Jewish hatred, it nevertheless seemed to take seriously the document’s allegations that a series of highly placed Labour apparatchiks had been doing everything they could to sabotage its election chances in order to get rid of Corbyn. Now that attitude has been completely reversed.
In this fortnight’s Private Eye, for 8th – 21st May 2020, there’s another article about the document. Titled ‘Party Poopers’, this has returned to the magazine’s old line of pushing the anti-Semitism smears along with the rest of the lamestream media. The article views the leaked document as a series of terrible libels against people, who were genuinely exposing massive anti-Semitism. These people were also being victimised for their participation in the Panorama programme, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’, were suffering vicious personal abuse, including being targeted by an online Nazi group. Fortunately they’re being defended by defamation and privacy specialist (sic) Mark Lewis.
The article runs
Like a retreating army planting booby traps, Labour’s routed Corbynistas have left Keir Starmer some unexploded bombs: most notably the 860-page report on the supposed complicity of anti-Corbyn officials in hindering investigations into anti-Semitism.
They have left the party open to investigations by the information commissioner and Inspector Knacker – and multiple actions for libel and breach of privacy. Not content with electing one lawyer as leader, Labour may soon be enriching more of them.
The report, commissioned by general secretary Jennie Formby, created a stab-in-the-back narrative by alleging that Labour lost the 2017 general election because, in the words of John McDonnell, staff undermined the leader in a “shocking act of treachery”. It implied that anti-Corbyn officials sat on complaints of racism to make him look bad. Criticising “whistleblowers” who appeared in a Panorama film about Labour and anti-Semitism, it said the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) should “question the validity of the personal testimonies”.
Party lawyers advised Formby she couldn’t submit the report to the EHRC, let alone publish it. After an unknown Corbyn supporter leaked it over the Easter weekend, however, online activists were quick to share unredacted copies – including much confidential personal information.
A shower of writs is now about to descend on the party. At least 30 former Labour officials have contacted defamation and privacy specialist Mark Lewis – so many that Lewis has signed up other lawyers who are twiddling their thumbs in lockdown to deal with the backlog. Labour will ahve to deal with the fallout without Formby, who announced on Monday she was stepping down as general secretary.
The leaked report was based on 10,000 emails and private WhatsApp messages in which Labour employees bitched about their bosses, as employees tend to do. The information commissioner, who has the power to set multi-million-pound fines, is said to be taking the data breach seriously – all the more so because Labour has still not met its legal obligation to contact all the victims of the data breach to warn them that information they had the right to expect would remain private was in the public domain.
Equally angry are members of the public who are identified in the report as reporting incidents of anti-Jewish hatred – and whose names are now in the possession of neo-Nazi groups. The far-right website Unz Review used Formby’s dossier to name Labour members who complained and to denounce them as agents of “Jewish control” behind “the conspiracy to undermine and destroy Corbyn”. The group Labour Against Anti-Semitism has asked the police to investigate. Its lawyers have also hired private detectives to find who leaked the report.
One lawyer involved expects about 40 privacy and libel actions, estimating that even if Labour settles them at once, the cost to the party will be £2.5m. But Corbyn supporters on Labour’s national executive committee could try to block retractions and apologies. If so, the costs will explode.
Let’s deal with a few irritating little details Private Eye doesn’t mention. It claims that the plotters’ emails were leaked. They weren’t. The plotters did the intriguing using Labour’s computers, and duly handed them over when they were asked as part of the inquiry. They surrendered that information themselves. If they had wanted to keep it all private, they should have used their own machines.
They also went much, much further than bitching about their bosses. Their anti-Corbyn scams included mocking up fake videos to mislead Corbyn that the anti-Semitism allegations were being effectively handled, when they were allowing those same allegations to pile up. They ran two sets of campaigns in London with the intention of ensuring election victories solely for members of the Blairite right. They also suspended constituency Labour parties that were on the verge of deselecting the sitting MP, like Angela Eagle’s in Liverpool. Leading conspirators also acted as members and moderators on Tory online groups, and openly wished for Conservative and Lib Dem victories. This is against party rules, and the same conspirators had also thrown out other members of the party for doing the same, such as one individual who made the mistake of liking an internet comment by a Green politico.
The Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ was a farrago from start to finish. It’s producers were already biased against Corbyn, and it allowed members of the anti-Corbyn groups to make their allegations of anti-Semitism without revealing their membership of the same groups. Mike, Zelo Street and any number of other left-wing news sites and blogs have torn it to shreds.
Now look at the way it deliberately connects the leaked report with Nazism. The allegations of intrigue and plotting are described as a ‘stab-in-the-back- narrative. This is the same language historians use to describe the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that propelled Hitler to power: that Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the Jews so that the country lost World War I. Then it brings in the real Nazis, Unz Review.
If innocent people are being target for anti-Semitic abuse and attack by real Nazis, then it is absolutely disgusting.
But the Eye is also hypocritical in not mentioning the abuse and intimidation heaped upon their victims by the anti-Semitism smear merchants. People like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Mike, who is still accused of being an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier, even though he won his IPSO complaint against the newspapers who so libelled him. Mike, and other victims of the anti-Semitism smears, also had their private information leaked to the press. Mike has also complained to the Information Commissioner about it, but so far the Commissioner has done nothing. This awkward fact also isn’t mentioned by the Eye, because Hislop’s mighty organ has also done everything it can to push the anti-Semitism smears. And some of the witch-hunters’ victims have suffered far worse than abuse and death threats. One commenter on Mike’s blog posted that he had also been smeared as an anti-Semite by David Collier, part of the GnasherJew troll farm. Not only did Collier smear him, but he also doxed him as well, putting his personal details up on his wretched website and then camping outside his door. Collier has so far not taken the information down.
No mention of any of this from Private Eye!
On then, to Mark Lewis. The Eye’s description of him as specialising in defamation and privacy issues is one way of viewing him. In fact, he’s Rachel Riley’s pet lawyer, and the one she uses whenever someone criticises her for smearing and bullying decent people as anti-Semites and Nazis simply because they support Corbyn.
And finally, there’s the whole issue of ‘Jewish control’ in the Labour party. In fact, a large number of the victims of the anti-Semitism smears are themselves Jewish, because the ultra-Zionists of the Israel lobby cannot tolerate the idea that any Jew does not support Israel and regards its ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians as abhorrent. Yet there are any number who do, from the Haredi who believe Jews must continue to live in galut – exile – until Israel is truly restored by the Messiah, to politically liberal Jews, who believe that Israel’s maltreatment of the Arabs violates the liberal principles they view as being intrinsic to Judaism. As the saying goes, ‘to be a Jew is always to identify with the oppressed, never the oppressor’. It violates the commandment in Deuteronomy that the Jews are not to maltreat the ‘stranger in the land, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’. These entirely decent, self-respecting people are smeared, insulted and sometimes physically attacked, like the non-Jews the witch-hunters have also targeted. Some of them have even been the victims of real anti-Semitic assault themselves, or, if non-Jewish, they’ve been attacked because they’ve dared to defend Jews or have Jewish friends, partners and relatives.
But no-one from the press, including Private Eye, has ever asked them about their experience.
And the talk about ‘Jewish control’ is designed to stop any objection to the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ demand for the right to interfere in the Labour party. By demanding that the Labour leadership contenders, including Starmer, sign up to their wretched 10 Pledges against anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies of British Jews now exercises a very high level of control over the party. They want the right to decide who should be allowed membership, including seeing confidential personal information. They have also demanded that members should not be allowed to share platforms with those expelled for anti-Semitism.
These demands are unreasonable, dictatorial and one-sided. No such demands have been made of the Tory party, Lib Dems or anyone else.
By talking about Nazis and their denunciation of the Blairites’ intrigues and plotting as ‘Jewish control’, the article is clearly intended to make any objection to the Board’s demands seem anti-Semitic. But the Board has overstepped the boundaries of reasonable criticism into comprehensive involvement with these demands. And there are party political motives at work here. Not only does the Board uncritically support Israel and its atrocities, but it is also partisan in its political support here. The Board’s president, Marie van der Zyl, has sent messages of support and congratulations to Tweezer when she took office as Prime Minister. It’s possible that individual members of the Board may not be Tories, but to me it looks extremely likely that Zyl and the Board will use the anti-Semitism smears to demand the expulsion of anyone, who either criticises Israel or seems serious about returning the party to its socialist roots.
I’ve said many times that Eye publishes some excellent stuff, but I am exasperated by its complicity in the anti-Semitism smears. I despise the way it, and the rest of the media, has steadfastly refused to cover the people, who have been unfairly defamed and threatened by the witch-hunters simply because they criticise Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. And this article is another example of the same. I notice that the article is also unsigned. It is not credited to ‘Ratbiter’, perhaps because ‘Ratbiter’s’ real identity as Nick Cohen of the Guardian and Absurder is too well-known.
But like Cohen’s articles, this is yet another disgraceful smear and another vile attempt to keep the witch-hunt going and the witch-hunters safe from retribution for their foul activities.
As Asa Winstanley, another anti-racism activist falsely expelled from the Labour Party for anti-Semitism remarks, this is beyond thoughtcrime. It’s pre-crime. Mike in his article about Keir Starmer reprimanding the respected Black women MPs Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy also mentions that the witch-hunters are demanding he censure their next target, Salma Yaqoob. Yaqoob is a prospective Labour candidate for mayor of the West Midlands, and a patron of the Stop the War Coalition. She is also due to appear in an online discussion from the Coalition about the new Labour leadership’s position on anti-war issues and Palestine on the 8th of this month, May 2020, alongside Paul Kelemen, the author of The British Left and Zionism: A History of a Divorce, and Tony Greenstein, ‘Jewish socialist and anti-war campaigner’. And it is his appearance on the panel that has sent the witch-hunters into a fearful bate, as Molesworth would sa.
Greenstein is very definitely a Jewish socialist and anti-war campaigner. He a fierce, bitter opponent of Fascism and racism. This means that he also criticises Zionism for Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and the movement’s own crimes against Jews. He has pointed out again and again that throughout their history Zionists and the Israeli state have supported Fascists against Jews and other ethnic minorities when it has served their purpose. Israel sought out an alliance with another White Supremacist state, apartheid South Africa. In the 1970s and ’80 they also allied with Fascist regimes in South and Central America, including Guatemala during its dictatorship’s genocidal civil war with the Mayan Indians, and the neo-Nazi regime in Argentina, which targeted Jews for torture, massacre and murder. At the same time, the Board of Deputies of British Jews attacked the Anti-Nazi League in this country, forbidding Jews from joining it or allowing it to hold meetings in synagogues, because the founder was an anti-Zionist. Some left-wing Jews, who defied the ban and joined it nonetheless, like David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, say that there were rumours that the Board opposed it for different, racist reasons: they didn’t want Jews joining the Black and Asian fight against racism.
Yaqoob’s appearance was picked up by Ian Austin, the former Labour MP complaining of anti-Semitism while the real reason was that Jeremy Corbyn had returned it to its socialist ideals. He has complained to Starmer and demanded Yaqoob’s suspension. Hence Asa Winstanley tweeted
This racist fanatic wants a prominent Muslim woman expelled from Labour for a future event with the “wrong” kind of Jewish person.
This is beyond Thought Crime, it’s Pre-Crime.
Jackie Walker, another Jewish anti-racism activist smeared as an anti-Semite and expelled from the Party, also commented: It’s open season on black women.
Kerry-Ann Mendoza, the mighty head of The Canary said
During the smear campaign a few years ago, the Board, Campaign for Anti-Semitism, Jewish Leadership Council and the other pro-Israel groups and their supporters waved placards at their protests bearing the slogan ‘Labour Party – For the many, not the Jew’. It was a play on Corbyn’s slogan ‘Labour – for the many, not the few’. According to Tony Greenstein, it was made up by British literary author, Howard Jacobson, when he was living in New York. It was supposed to show how anti-Semitic the Labour Party is. But the witch-hunters themselves have particularly targeted Jewish critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists. These entirely decent, self-respecting men and women have been viciously smeared as ‘self-hating’. The Board and the other pro-Israel organisations have also misrepresented themselves as standing for Britain’s Jewish community as a whole. They don’t. Board doesn’t represent Orthodox, Haredi nor secular Jews. It really only represents the United Synagogue. I find it very significant that when the I ran an article from a Jewish journalist denouncing Labour as anti-Semitic apart from their own columnist, Simon Kelner, that journo was always described as a member of the United Synagogue. As a Zionist organisation, the Board also doesn’t represent anti-Zionist Jews. The Board and the other organisations attacking Labour and Corbyn were also incensed when the Labour leader attended a Passover Seder with Jewdas, a left-wing Jewish group. This was another anti-Semitic affront to the Jewish community. They were the wrong kind of Jew! Which is itself a noxious, anti-Semitic gesture.
In fact the Board and the other witch-hunters targeting of Jews means that you could reasonably invert their slogan so it reads ‘Board of Deputies – For Israel, not the Jew’.
It was Tony Blair’s administration that launched the invasion of Iraq, against which the Stop the War Coalition protested, and the Blairites shared the same goals as the Neocons. After George Dubya left office, and was replaced as President by Barack Obama, it was Blair and Sarkozy in France who really wanted an attack on Libya and the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafy. The result has been the destruction of one of Africa’s most prosperous states, which had a strong welfare system and was relatively secular. It has now been replaced in some areas by a hard-line Islamist theocracy, which has returned to slavery with Black migrants now being openly sold in markets. Before the appearance of Coronavirus plunged the world into lockdown, the American right seemed also to be preparing and agitating for a war with Iran. The Neocons also want that country’s regime overthrown because of its militant opposition to Israel, accompanied by frankly genocidal rhetoric, and its defiance of American hegemony in the Middle East. They and their Saudi allies also covet its oil reserves, which they also wish to seize, just like they did Iraq’s.
And there’s also a streak of islamophobia in the witch-hunters a mile wide. People have turned up at pro-Israel and anti-Palestine protests wearing Kach T-shirts. This is a far-right organisation banned in Israel for terrorism. They also wear T-shirts and wave placards for its successor, the Jewish Defence League, which is also banned. One of the witch-hunters turned up next to one anti-Palestinian demo two years or so ago next to Paul Besser, the intelligence officer of the infamous islamophobic group, Britain First. These pro-Israel demonstrators also include open supporters of Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. One of the Board’s members even appeared with him in a video for Rebel Media, a far-right Canadian internet broadcaster.
It therefore very much seems to me that Austin and the other witch-hunters, by making this complaint against Yaqoob, are desperately trying to keep debate and criticism in the Labour party of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians very firmly closed. They are also seeking to keep Blair’s Neocon agenda alive in Labour. And they are terrified of Muslims and Muslim influence in the Labour Party. There have been polls showing that 85 per cent of British Muslims support Labour. Muslims are one of the largest ethnic minorities in contemporary Britain. The Radio Times a few years ago covered a radio programme about Jewish comedy and literary festivals that were being held up and down the country. These festivals were open to the wider British population. According to the Radio Times, they were partly being held in order to encourage the broader population to support the Jewish community at a time when that community felt its respect was slipping away and being replaced by concern for other ethnic groups.
Now I’ve got absolutely no objection to such festivals, whether by Jews or any other religious or ethnic group. And with the Far Right on the rise in Europe, Jews do need the support and solidarity of non-Jewish anti-racism activists. But Austin’s complaint about Yaqoob, a Muslim patron of the Stop the War Coalition, suggests that the general insecurity felt by part of the Jewish population is shared by the Israel lobby. And they’re scared of competition from Britain’s Muslims for our sympathies.
The witch-hunter’s targeting of Salma Yaqoob is therefore about preserving the Neocon project and protecting Israel from criticism by silencing genuine anti-racism activists, particularly Jews and Muslims. It’s yet another example of the racism of the Blairite Right.
This is absolutely atrocious behaviour from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for which they should be roundly condemned by every genuinely anti-racist person in the country. Mike today has reported that the Board, led by its odious president, Marie van der Zyl, should expel two of its highly esteemed Black women MPs. The women they’re targeting are the Labour veteran, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Why? Because they attended a conference on Zoom in which they took questions from the audience, which included two former Labour members, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker, whom the Israel lobby and Conservative – including Blairite – establishment had smeared as anti-Semites. And because Keir Starmer had stupidly tried to win their approval by signing their wretched ‘Ten Pledges’. One of these was that Labour Party members would not share a platform with those expelled from the party for anti-Semitism.
The Board is an unrepresentative body. Despite it claims to speak for all of Britain’s Jews, it really speaks for a tiny minority, the United Synagogue. It does not represent the Haredi Jews nor the Orthodox, who have their own bodies. Furthermore, it explicitly defines itself in its constitution as a Zionist organisation, which means that it does not represent non-Zionist Jews, of which there are many. The Board is, like the rest of the British establishment, by and large very Tory, though I would not care to say that all of its members are. Starmer, and the rest of the Labour leadership candidates, has given them, an organisation outside the Labour Party and hostile to it, dictatorial powers over whom it may accept as members, how they are to behave and with whom they may associate. Many of their demands, as Mike and others have pointed out to me, would not stand up if challenged in a court of law. Indeed, I have heard that they run directly counter to it. To many people, van der Zyl’s and the Board’s obnoxious demands look like both a domineering attempt to dictate to the Labour party and its members, and also a racist attack on two distinguished Black female MPs.
And not only is the Board morally wrong to demand their expulsion, it is also technically wrong according to the terms of its own wretched pledges. Jackie and Tony weren’t on the platform. They were members of the audience. And neither of them were expelled for anti-Semitism.
Mike reproduces a number of tweets from Labour members and supporters, who are very much aware of the gross injustice and sheer arrogance of the Board’s latest demand, and strongly condemn. They include Jackie Walker, the Alternative Daily News, ‘Saboteur Aesop’, ‘Stevewhiteraven’, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, Clare Curran, the Rt Rev’d Mojito and Simon Maginn.
Mike considers that this has put Starmer in quite a quandary, as if he gives into the Board there will be such a mass walkout that by Christmas it will only consist of him and Rayner.
As well as being racist, it also looks very politically motivated. The right has hated Abbott since she was a radical young firebrand in the 1980s. She was one of the first of the wave of Black and ethnic minority MPs that were then entering parliament, along with the late Bernie Grant. She was among the Labour MPs smeared by the Scum in the 1987 election. They claimed that she had said that all White people are racist. They hate her because she is very loud and outspoken in her attacks on anti-Black, anti-Asian racism. But she is also a close friend, and, so I have heard, a former lover of Jeremy Corbyn. This looks very much like the Conservative Board using this as an opportunity to attack a Labour MP they have always loathed.
Despite their claims, the Board and the Israel lobby have a very poor record when it comes to combating racism when it does not involve Jews. David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, a veteran anti-racist campaigner, states in one of the pieces on his blog that when he was in the Anti-Nazi League, the Board forbade Jews from joining or holding their meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because the founder of the Anti-Nazi League was an anti-Zionist, and they wished to stop impressionable Jews hearing criticism of Israel. But other Jewish left-wingers suspected there was also another agenda, to stop Jews supporting Blacks and Asians.
The Board’s demands for the two women’s expulsion also resembles the racist undertones behind the Blairites’ and Israel lobby’s demand for the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth. Wadsworth is a genuine anti-racist activist. He worked for the parents of Stephen Lawrence to meet Nelson Mandela, and with the Board in the 1980s to stop anti-Semitic assaults by the BNP around the Isle of Thanet. But he was the man, who supposedly made a Jewish Blairite MP cry when he caught her passing information on to the Telegraph at a meeting, and called her out for it. An angry squad of Blairites, including, I believe, Luciana Berger, descended on his hearing to demand his expulsion. All of them were White, and critics said it looked very much like a White lynching party about to attack a Black.
Jackie Walker, a very respectable anti-racism educator and activist, has also been subject to viciously racist abuse since the Israel lobby smeared her as an anti-Semite. Apart from the grotesque hate messages she’s received demanding that she should be hanged, or burnt and her body dumped in bin bags, she’s also been racially abused by Jews. She’s Black, and so, according to their limited ideas, can’t be Jewish. I got news for them. There have been communities of Black Jews in Ethiopia for a very long time. There are also Black Jews in the West. There’s a professor of Afro-Jewish Studies at one of the American universities, an American synagogue has even made a Black woman its rabbi. And some of the older readers of this blog will remember a certain Sammy Davis jnr, a very popular singer, dancer and film star, who was a member of the famous ‘Rat Pack’ which included Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
But the Israel lobby also includes some individuals, who can certainly be fairly described as being Far Right. One of the ultra-Zionists, who turns up to protest pro-Palestinian meetings, was formerly a resident of apartheid South Africa and, it seems, very comfortable with its official racism. Others have links to the EDL and other islamophobic groups. Jonathan Hoffman, the former head of the Zionist Federation, has appeared at protests alongside Paul Besser of the extreme right-wing group, Britain First. There is also a couple who turn up to such protests, including those organised against Corbyn by the Campaign For Anti-Semitism and the Board of Deputies, wearing Kach T-shirts. Kach are an extreme right-wing Israeli terrorist group. There have also been Jews, who are extremely sympathetic to the British Nazi right. One Tory MP in Barnet, according to one anti-Zionist Jewish website I read, who used to complain that it was a pity the Conservatives and BNP were separate parties, as it divided the Nationalist vote. The great historian of the British Jewish community, Geoffrey Alderman, was also under pressure from the Board to remove the finding in one of his books in the 1970s that two per cent of the Jewish community support the National Front against Blacks and Asians. There were also some Fascists, who had no hatred of the Jews. Matthew Collins of the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism groups, Hope Not Hate, formerly a member of the BNP and other Nazi groups, recalls being told by another by another Fascist that he really couldn’t understand hatred of the Jews. This interesting snippet is in his book, Hate.
It is therefore completely possible and sensible to talk of Jewish White supremacism and anti-Black, anti-Asian racism.
Marie van der Zyl’s attacks on Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy is not only another partisan, Conservative, Zionist attempt to dictate to Labour under the spurious pretext of combating anti-Semitism, it also looks very much like anti-Black racism.
As one of the Tweeters quote by Mike says, get the Board out of the Labour party.
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