Introducing Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi: One of the ‘Wrong Type of Jews’

Double Down News are another left-wing, alternative news site and agency. In this video, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of Jewish Voice for Labour, talks about the abuse and attempts to silence her she and the other left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jews have faced. She describes what a breath of fresh air Jeremy Corbyn was and the hope he gave people like herself, that there would be real change at last after 30 years in the Labour party. She talks about the eminent Jewish academics, who have criticised the establishment’s exclusive concentration on support for Israel as the defining factor in Jewish identity, and the powerful role left-wing Jews like herself have played in combating racism and prejudice all over the world, from the battle against Mosley’s BUF to the American Civil Rights movement and apartheid South Africa.

Anti-Semitic Abuse for Being Pro-Palestine

She begins by describing the abuse she personally got when she was 19 and presented a pro-Palestinian talk at Uni. she was called ‘safe-hating’, ‘the wrong kind of Jew’, ‘anti-Semitic’ and a ‘kapo’. This is especially despicable, as they were the Jewish collaborators with the Nazis in the concentration camps. She is bitterly critical of this type of abuse, not just because it’s especially offensive for people who have really suffered under Nazis and other vicious anti-Semites – she equates it with being called a ‘paedophile’ – but because it also delegitimises the struggle against real Fascists. Here the video shows footage from the notorious Charlottesville Nazi gathering, with the storm troopers of the Alt Right marching along chanting ‘The Jews will not replace us.’ Wimborn-Idrissi’s talk and the abuse she received was covered by the Jewish Telegraph, who put it all on the front page. Which shows you what a despicable, right-wing establishment rag it is.

Heijo Meyer and Israel’s Nazi-like Persecution of the Palestinians

She also gives the real truth about Corbyn’s infamous attendance at the speech given by Heijo Meyer, which was used to pillory Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Of course he’s no such thing, and the video shows images of the greatest prime minister Britain rejected demonstrating against racism, including his arrest for protesting against apartheid. Meyer was a Dutch Holocaust survivor – and the video shows this with Meyer rolling up his sleeve to show the tattoo on his forearm which the Nazis used to mark the inmates of the death camps. Meyer’s was speaking at a Holocaust Memorial Day event. He was describing how the techniques used by the Nazis to dehumanize people like him – Jews – in the camps to enable them to murder them are also being used by Israel against the Palestinians. And what Wimborne-Idrissi says is horrifying is that the parallels are there.

This section of the footage is grim, as it show the Palestinian victims of Israeli aggression – homes in rubble, a disabled person tipped over in their wheelchair by Israeli squaddies, a little girl with horrifically blackened, swollen eyes.

The talk was part of a series of events that also showed other communities had suffered oppression, like the Travellers. But they were shouted down by a very obnoxious, very vociferous group of Zionists. She found it deeply disgusting that these people were trying to shout down and intimidate an eighty year old man, and urged Corbyn to call the rozzers to have them removed. And in fact the fuzz were prevailed upon to do their duty. But unfortunately by that time they’d been successful in drowning out the Travellers, so that people hardly heard a word from them.

The Media Silencing of Left-Wing Jews

Naomi points out that the media refuses give Jews like her a voice. Instead they give space to organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism as if they were long established and authoritative. There the video show a group waving placards, ‘Labour – For the Many Not the Jew’. This is the mendacious slogan dreamed up by novelist Howard Jacobson when he was in New York. Which is a good and sufficient reason for no-one to buy his books or listen to anything he has to say ever again. It also shows the Beeb’s Kirsty Wark and other journos as an example of this media bias. But Jews have opposed Zionism and Israel for a long time. This is accompanied by images of prominent Jewish critics of Zionism like the awesome Norman Finkelstein and various anti-Zionist Jewish conventions. Some of these are in Black and White, and are of packed, mass meetings. One looks like the Bund. This was the mass socialist party of eastern European Jews. Its slogan was ‘Wherever We Are, That’s Our Homeland’, and they were fiercely anti-Zionist.

She talks about Marek Edelman, one of the heroes of the Warsaw Uprising, who said that ‘to be a Jew is always to side with the oppressed, never the oppressor’. And that was why Jews like her aligned with the oppressed and fought against racism, and why it was just so revolting that their opponents wished to associate Jewry with the type of people they’d always fought against. She tells how the Jewish journalist, Anthony Lerman, has published articles attacking the anti-Semitism smears in the Labour party, and also Kenneth Stern’s criticism of the abuse of the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism. Stern is the Jewish academic, who formulated it. He meant it to be used in compiling statistics about anti-Semitic abuse. But he is concerned about the way it is being used to silence critics of Israel. He testified on this to Congress, and the video has a clip of his speech. He says he’s worried about the way its being used against Jewish non-Zionist college students and the way organisations are compiling dossiers and passing round opponents on critics of Israel. The anti-Zionist college students should also be heard. This is significant, because I think Stern is himself a Zionist. He’s just a decent man and not a racial fanatic like some of the organisations abusing his definition of anti-Semitism. But unfortunately all you hear are the pro-Israel fanatics. You don’t hear or see anything broadcast or printed by Lerman or Stern, except a few learned articles if you look online.

Fleeing Real Anti-Semitism, and Hope for the Future

She also talks about some of her and her families experiences as refugees from the pogroms and persecutions in eastern Europe, of not fitting because you’re weird with a funny accent. But there has to be hope. Jeremy Corbyn brought 300,000 new people into the party. And an increasing number of a new generation of young Jews, especially in America, are turning away and against Israel.

She concludes by praising Double Down News for giving left-wing Jews like herself a voice, and urges people to support it.

Meet The Wrong Type of Jew, The Media Doesn’t Want You To Know Exists | Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi – YouTube

Naomi makes excellent points, and people should hear not just her voice, but the many other Jews like her. She is right to point out, early in the video, that the political and media establishment are anti-Semitic in their attempts to create the impression that Jews constitute a single, monolithic block. That’s what their oppressors have always done.

Unfortunately the media has shown that they have absolutely no intention of giving any space to good peeps like Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas and the Jewish Socialist Group. The Beeb, a company which increasingly looks like it has a proud future behind it, has been one of the leaders in pushing the anti-Semitism smears. And it wonders why it comes fifth ranked as trustworthy by the British public, lower even than Channel 5.

The Beeb is reviled as left-wing and ‘woke’ by the Tories and their poodle media because of its anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic stance, and ’cause they see it as anti-Brexit. But in domestic politics and economics, it’s solidly pro-Tory and pro-Israel. Hence its steadfast refusal to let any other voice be heard, Jewish or gentile, to contradict the anti-Semitism.

But left-wing, sincerely anti-racist folks of all religions and ethnicities have and are waking up to the Beeb’s disgusting bias. Which is why they’re joining the right in switching it off.

If we are going to hear the real truth, it has to come from news sites like Double Down News, Sam Seder’s Majority Report and the David Pakman Show in America, Amy Goodson of Democracy Now! and Abby Martin of Tele Sur, Ash Sarkar of Novara Media and Kerry-Ann Mendoza of The Canary. She’s another anti-racist gentile, who’s been accused of anti-Semitism, despite having a Jewish partner. Seder and Pakman are both Jewish. Seder has described himself as the most Jewish guy you know, and has no time whatsoever for Israel screaming anti-Semitism ever time America cuts its aid budget.

When we hear the truth, more often than not it comes from these broadcasters. Because it surely is not coming from the establishment media.

New Labour’s Connections to Fascism

Yesterday the EHRC’s report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party was published, and was spun for all it was worth as confirmation that Jeremy Corbyn was anti-Semitic and so was the party under him. Except for all those brave, Zionist Blairites that spoke out and denounced him and his followers, of course. Followers that included large, vocal numbers of entirely self-respecting Jews, who were attacked and vilified as self-hating anti-Semites themselves.

One of those, who decided to put his oar into all this was Ed Balls, a former New Labour cabinet minister. As Mike has pointed out on his blog, this is very much a case of a man in a glass house throwing stones. Not only did Balls once turn up at a party dressed as a Nazi, he also presented a BBC programme a year ago in which he met real Nazis. Apparently he even said he liked them, and that they were nice. So there’s just a little touch of hypocrisy here.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/10/28/ed-balls-speaks-out-about-labour-anti-semitism-who-cares/

Now dressing up as a Nazi for a student party is obviously tasteless and offensive, but doesn’t necessarily mean that someone’s a Nazi. But some of the accusations of anti-Semitism used against Corbyn’s supporters were far less substantial than such pranks. For example, there was the lad, who posted an image of a Jobcentre with the slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ on its sign. This was supposed to be anti-Semitic for disrespecting Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. But this ignores the fact that the slogan was used on all concentration camps, including those housing gentile political prisoners. And the slogan accurately describes the Tory mentality towards the disabled and long term sick. Iain Duncan Smith actually said so in an online article, before someone told him that quoting the Nazis approvingly doesn’t look good, and he removed the offending paragraph.

If you want a second example, consider the press feeding frenzy which occurred when Corbyn was seen to nod in agreement when Heijo Meyer, a Holocaust survivor, said that Israel was doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to him. Oh, the anti-Semitism! What foul perfidy and Jew-hatred! Except that Nazis don’t usually agree with Holocaust survivors. The Nazi strategy is to try to deny that the Shoah ever happened, or claim that it was somehow smaller than it really was. They don’t usually support Holocaust survivors, who speak about their experiences.

And there’s obviously a profound difference between Israel and Jews. The two definitely aren’t synonymous, and according to the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism which the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbi were so desperate to foist upon the party, it is anti-Semitic to confuse the two. Which is very obviously the case with Corbyn’s accusers. It isn’t anti-Semitic to criticise Israel for its crimes against the Palestinians, any more than attacking Saudi Arabia for its human rights record automatically means that you hate Arabs.

As for meeting Nazis and describing them as nice people, unfortunately, I can well believe that some of them are personally nice people. A German Jewish bloke, who infiltrated a neo-Nazi organisation leading to its exposure in the German media, said the same about some of them when he was interviewed. He said that amongst the Nazis he met were ordinary, otherwise decent Germans, who believed the Holocaust never happened. That’s part of the danger. Murderous, dangerous ideas can be held by otherwise entirely decent people. One of the Islamist scumbags who murdered Lee Rigby all those years ago put up a video telling the world that he was really a nice person, who would help old ladies up the stairs. And I dare say he was right. If all Nazis and jihadis were antisocial, ranting, bullying maniacs, nobody would join them or stay in their organisations for very long. They’d leave because of their noxious personalities. But unfortunately, Nazis and other murderous extremists don’t always behave like their stereotypes, and this does mean that they can appear plausible. That fact that Ed Balls personally liked some of them doesn’t mean that Balls is a Nazi. Just like the fact that because Corbyn appeared alongside Palestinian activists, who had terrible views on killing Israelis, doesn’t mean that Corbyn supported their views. But no such doubts were extended to the Labour leader.

It was almost to be expected that Balls or one of his New Labour colleagues was going to comment about all this. Not only was Balls a former cabinet minister under Blair and Brown, but like Blair and other members of the New Labour clique, he’s also an alumnus of BAP – the British-American Project for the Successor Generation, to give it its full title. This was a Reaganite scheme in which promising British politicos from all parties were sought out and given opportunities to work and study in America in order to cement the Atlantic alliance. After going on one of these BAP jaunts to meet American right-wingers, Blair returned to England convinced of the need to retain our nuclear deterrent, while previously he had believed in getting rid of it.

America supports Israel, and Blair and Brown were ardent supporters of America, and so it follows that they too would support Israel. Apart from the fact that they supported Israel anyway, for which Blair received funding from pro-Israel Jewish businessmen. This was garnered through the efforts of Lord Levi, who Blair met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy. And mentioning that doesn’t make you an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist either.

But Blair also had personal connections to Fascism. He was mates with Berlusconi, whose Forza Italia party was in coalition with the Alleanza Nazionale. The Allianza Nazionale were former Fascists, after the neo-Fascist party, the Movimiento Sociale Italiano or Italian Social Movement, was dissolved by its leader, Gianfranco Fini, and reformed as a centre-right Conservative party. The best comment I’ve seen on Fini was in the pages of a book I read on Fascism years ago. It showed a photo of Fini when the Fascists were discarding the black shirts and adopting business suits in an attempt to make themselves look respectably middle class. It was called ‘filofascismo’, presumably a portmanteau of the Italian for filofax and Fascism. Fini appeared in a suit and round-rimmed glasses with business jacket slung casually over his shoulder. The photo was captioned ‘Would you buy a used ideology from this man?’ The answer is, ‘No, no, I definitely wouldn’t. Not even dressed up as Conservatism’.

More sinisterly, David Mills, the husband of New Labour minister Tessa Jowell, was a lawyer engaged to defend a genuine Fascist. I got a feeling this guy was one of those responsible for the Bologna railway bombing in the late ’70s. This was a Fascist terrorist atrocity in which the squadristi bombed that Italian town’s railway station, killing and maiming something like 121 people.

This shows up New Labour’s hypocrisy and that of the Tories and their accomplices in the media even more. Corbyn, like other members of the Labour left, was smeared as a supporter of the IRA because of his concern for a just peace in Northern Ireland. He wasn’t, and various Ulster Loyalists have said that he was fair and perfectly civil and friendly towards them. But this was ignored in the scramble to vilify him as a supporter of Irish nationalist terrorism. But obviously, as David Mills’ example shows, it’s perfectly acceptable to the British right for the spouses of New Labour ministers to work for genuine Fascists responsible for killing and mutilation of over a hundred innocents.

And that should also raise genuine questions of anti-Semitism. The Italian Fascists originally hadn’t been anti-Semitic. Mussolini himself had ridiculed Hitler’s biological racism, but as Nazism took over from Italian Fascism as the more influential movement, Mussolini tried to ingratiate himself and his regime by adopting racism. In 1937 the Fascists published their manifesto on race and passed legislation defining the Italian people as Aryans, and banning Jews from certain professions. The Charter of Verona, which set out the ideology of Mussolini’s rump Fascist state in Salo, declared that Jews weren’t part of the Italian nation. And contemporary Italian Fascists, like Fascists everyone, are violently anti-immigrant and racist.

Considering Blair’s and co.’s connections to real Fascism, Balls has got absolutely no business accusing Corbyn and his supporters of anti-Semitism whatsoever.