Starmer Declares that Labour Has Passed the EHRC’s Stipulations on Cleansing the Party of Anti-Semitism

Or does he mean the Wrong Kind of Jews and others accused of anti-Semitism ’cause their evil socialists and critics of Israel?

I got this round-robin message from the leader of the Labour party this afternoon.

‘Dear David,

In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) published a damning report into antisemitism in the Labour Party.

At that time, I was clear the Party accepted the EHRC’s report in full and would implement all of its recommendations. We agreed an Action Plan with the EHRC in December 2020, and since then, we have worked tirelessly to right the wrongs of the past and to tear out antisemitism from our Party by its roots.

Today, it was announced that the EHRC have been satisfied with our progress and the significant changes we have made. Accordingly, the Action Plan has formally concluded.

You can watch the speech I gave today about this here.

While this is an important moment, it is not one for celebration. Rather, it is one for reflection. As to how a Party that has always prided itself on its anti-racism and its commitment to equality could have fallen so far.

This announcement demonstrates we have turned the corner. However, the job of restoring Labour is not complete. It shows we are heading in the right direction, and I assure you that there is not a hint of complacency in that confidence. I know there is still much to do.

We will not rest for a moment until not only have we changed the Labour Party for the better, but our country, too.

Thank you,

Keir Starmer
Leader of the Labour Party’

The storm of allegations of anti-Semitism against the Labour party and individual members, often men and women of deep integrity and humanity, and which cost Corbyn the election and the party’s leadership, were whipped up by a corrupt political and media establishment appalled at the prospect of a return to power of a man committed to genuinely empowering working people. They baulked at the renationalisation of the utilities, despite the fact that every day shows this is urgently needed. They hated the idea of reversing the privatisation of the NHS and most of all they feared and loathed the return of strong trade unions, workers’ rights and proper welfare state that actually supports its citizens. There was also a foreign policy element too. They also hated Corbyn because he was an idealist who shared Robin Cook’s dream of an ethical foreign policy and specifically his support for the Palestinians.

This fear and loathing was shared by the right-wing, Zionist section of the Jewish community that considers itself that communities official ‘establishment’. This included the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which in reality speaks for the United Synagogue and no-one else, two Chief Rabbis, who both led contingents of Jewish Brits on the ‘March of the Flags’ in which Israeli bovver boys terrorise the Arabs of East Jerusalem, the Jewish Leadership Council, which split with the board because they weren’t right-wing and pro-business enough for them, and various other organisations that were set up in the wake of the bombardment of Gaza to promote Israel and drive away support for the Palestinians. These included the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the woefully misnamed Jewish Labour Movement, whose members don’t have to be Jewish or even members of the Labour party. Their accusations were taken up by the British mainstream, who’d found that smearing Corbyn as a Commie and Trotskyite hadn’t worked. But the charge of anti-Semitism stuck. Corbyn backed down when he should have fought, and sacrificed his allies in the belief that this would placate his enemies. It didn’t, and people like the mighty Tony Greenstein knew it wouldn’t and tried to tell him so. But he didn’t listen.

And then there were the vipers within the Labour party, who collaborated with all this. The right-wing faction that conspired against Corbyn at every opportunity, whose members were on Conservative websites and forums, who misdirected election funding from where they were needed, organised coups and bullied Black and Muslim members. They also did their best to conceal instances of real anti-Semitism from the leadership in order to keep the smear going.

When are these malign enablers of real anti-Semitism going to be thrown out of the party?

Well, I reckon they won’t, because they supported Starmer. And Starmer was also personally keen to keep the smears going as a tool for his purges of the left. Hence, even though he was told by his lawyers that he would win a court case against one set of allegations, he folded and gave them the money they demanded.

Israel’s Far Right government this week has declared they’re going to recognise a slew of illegal Jewish settlements in Palestine as punishment for the disturbances at Christmas. This is in contravention of international law. Where’s a statement condemning this from Starmer? Oh, wait, he’s ‘100 per cent Zionist’, so there won’t be one. This is despite the fact that numerous Zionist human rights organisations like B’Tselem have condemned the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And suffered for it from militantly nationalist regimes that have declared them, like the Jews in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, to be the enemy within.

And what does this statement mean?

It looks like, although the EHRC is satisfied, Starmer still intends to continue his witch hunt because there is still much work to do and we have to reflect on how an anti-racist party became steeped in anti-Semitism. Well, when you realise that the majority of those accused of anti-Semitism were Jews, who had often experienced real abuse and assault because of their religion or ethnicity, and that one of the gentiles smeared and purged was a Black anti-racist activist who had worked with the Board of Deputies to combat real anti-Semitic violence by the BNP in the 1980s, it’s clear that this is all bogus.

The anti-Semitism smears and witch hunt were a tissue of lies from beginning to end. And Starmer knows it, and supported it. And it looks like he means to keep the pressure up even after it is all supposed to have ended.

Labour & Palestine March in London in May

Here’s another email I got yesterday, this time from Labour & Palestine, who are planning a march in London on the 14th of May. This is bound to annoy ‘100 per cent Zionist’ Starmer, who is determined to purge the party of anyone criticising Israel on spurious and mendacious accusations of anti-Semitism. Which is possibly all the more reason to attend. The email runs

‘National March for Palestine – Labour & trade union bloc. 14 May, 12 Noon, Portland Place, London.

RSVP, share & invite here – retweet here to spread the word

Hello David

Now, with ever more settlements being built, 74 years after the catastrophe of the Nakba when over 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their land and homes, we need to speak up for a free Palestine.

In line with Labour Party Conference and TUC Congress policy, on May 14 we will be on the streets calling for real action and sanctions from the international community and UK Government against Israel’s continuing illegal occupation and human rights abuses in breach of international law.

March to call for an end to Israel’s oppression and to assert the right of the Palestinian people to live in freedom with justice and equality. Join us on the Labour and trade union bloc – called by Labour & Palestine and supported by a broad range of trade unions – bring along your CLP & union banners and loudly say Free Palestine!

Best wishes,
The Labour & Palestine Team.

PS: Thanks to over 500 people who joined our recent Labour Women Speak up for Palestine event – you can read Beth Winter MP’s speech here and Kim Johnson MP’s speech here.’

This is another event that I won’t be able to attend, but I’m pasting this up for everyone who is interested and can.

More Racism from Starmer as He Cuts Money for Asian Women MPs Advisors

Mike put up a story yesterday that Keef Stalin, having managed somehow to blow all the money Labour had accumulated under Corbyn, has decided to start cutting money for MPs’ advisors. Corbyn was immensely popular with the Labour membership, and most of the money raised by the party under him came from members’ subscriptions. He was popular because he stood for traditional Labour values and policies – the nationalisation of utilities, a functioning welfare state that genuinely supported the poor, the disabled, the elderly and the unemployed, a fully-funded, nationalised NHS, powerful trade unions actively protecting and advancing the interests of working people, rights at work and decent wages. Everything that Starmer either doesn’t believe in, because he and his supporters are true-blue Thatcherites, or else he’s afraid to support them in case it puts off all those Tory voters he wants to attract. He doesn’t support traditional Labour policies or values and actively distrusts the core membership. Hence his desire to attract people to the party, who otherwise wouldn’t vote Labour and all the rules enacted at the party conference to consolidate his and his factions’ grip on the party. As a result, rank and file members are voting with their feet, taking their subscriptions and donations with them. The juicy donations Stalin is trying to win from industry ain’t happening, and so Stalin is having to lay off bureaucrats. And this week he told the Asian lady MPs Rosena Allin-Khan and Preet Gill that they’d have to raise their own money to pay for advisors.

To Mike and many others, this looks like racism. While Keef has made a lot of noise about rooting out anti-Semitism – which means in practise smearing and purging left-wing Jews who criticise Israel – he ignores other forms of racism within the party. Black and Asian MPs have been bullied, but no action taken, and 1/3 of the party’s Muslim members have reported suffering Islamophobic incidents. Labour has traditionally had strong support from the Black and Asian communities because of its emphasis of equality and anti-racism. But now Labour’s front bench is actually less diverse from the Tories. Which looks like racism. And now this decision to stop the funding for advisors for these Asian women politicos.

I wonder how far the Islamophobia is linked to Keef’s Zionism. Keef has declared himself to be ‘100 per cent’ Zionist, and the organisations determined to protect Israel from criticism for its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians seem to have a deep distrust and hostility towards Islam and Muslims. Tony Greenstein has reported that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism declares on its website that most anti-Semites are Muslim. But it doesn’t seem to supply any information or stats to back this up. The Community Security Trust, a private police force that stewards Zionist rallies, has forcibly separated Jewish and Muslim protesters, because Heaven forbid that Jews and Muslims should ever unite in friendship against a state many Jews believe violates the fundamental liberal principles of Judaism. And sections on the media aren’t any better. GB News followed the rest of the political pack last week in declaring that Judaeonazi Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely had been chased off campus by Palestinians. And various other news outlets claimed that the protests against her visit to the LSE were organised by ‘Islamists’. Well, I’ve no doubt Palestinians were among the groups protesting against her. And they have good reason, as she supports pulling down their towns and villages to build Jewish settlements. I’ve also no doubt many Muslims were also present, as in my experience most Muslims bitterly resent the maltreatment of Palestinians. But there were also ordinary students and Jewish groups protesting as well. Mike in one of his pieces has a photo of a group from Na’amod, a British Jewish group which opposes Israeli occupation and apartheid. But they’re the wrong kind of Jews, the sort that aren’t featured on the news and who are actively being purged by Starmer.

But I also wonder if there isn’t something else going on with the withholding of money from Rosena Allin-Khan. If I recall correctly, she was one of the candidates for the party’s vice-presidency. I think she’s actually of mixed Polish and Pakistani heritage. But I’ve also got a feeling she’s a doctor. When I saw her at the hustings in Bristol, she spoke passionately about class and racial barriers, but also about the NHS.

And so I wonder if Stalin’s decision to do this isn’t just an attempt to silence two Asian women parliamentarians, but also one of the party’s most vocal defenders of the NHS.

Stalin is a Blairite, and Blair was fully behind the Thatcherite privatisation of the Health Service, though he also kept the Health Service fully funded. At the moment the Labour front bench is fighting the Tory privatisation, but I do wonder for how long. Because I feel that as soon as Starmer gets into office, and someone from Virgin Health, Bupa, Circle Health or any of the other private healthcare companies comes along with a nice, juicy cheque, he’ll ditch his commitment to keeping it nationalised.

It’s starting to seem to me that he’s starting on its supporters.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/12/06/labour-cash-crisis-now-starmer-is-cutting-mps-advisers-starting-with-asian-women/

Jackie Walker on the Abuse of Anti-Semitism to Silence Israel’s Critics

This is the second video put up on YouTube in March 2017 by Brighton and Hove Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. In this first, Tony Greenstein, the veteran Jewish anti-racism and anti-Zionism activist, spoke about how false accusations of anti-Semitism were used by the Israel lobby to defend the indefensible – Israel’s brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians. In this video another great anti-racism activist, Jackie Walker, continues the theme.

Targeting Walker and Jeremy Corbyn

She begins by introducing herself as a life-long anti-racist activist, teacher, trainer and writer, and that as a young woman she was involved with SWAPO, the anti-apartheid movement in Namibia, and went on from that as a natural progression to supporting the Palestinians and criticism of Israel. She states that it is very clear from watching documentaries like the al-Jazeera film, the Lobby, that the reason her posts were so delved into and organisations like the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Labour Movement had such an attraction for her is because they target anyone, who is any way prominent (as a critic of Israel). She states that she’s only a minor figure, as Tony Greenstein keeps reminding her, but he’s right. And this shows the level of paranoia and resources that is going into the campaign against activists like her.

She says it’s no coincidence that they had no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party until Jeremy Corbyn, one of the best-known anti-racists on the left, became leader of the Party. Can you imagine what happened in Tel Aviv, she asks the audience. She states that she will get into trouble for saying it, so she’ll say it again: accusations of anti-Semitism have become weaponised. It’s a weapon that doesn’t just affect individuals like her, but affects communities, families, Labour parties, and people who support the struggle to have better human rights. She states that she doesn’t have a problem with those on the Right and Zionists. They’re just doing their jobs. They’re our enemies. Her problem is with people, who are supposedly on the Left, who are actually undermining the campaign for justice in Palestine all the time.

The Alt-Right and Zionism

The reason Israel has put millions of pounds into undermining the BDS is not for no reason. It is a recognition of the fact that what’s happening in Gaza is being steadily raised. And as it is, we see this strange thing happening with international leaders who seem to be getting closer and closer to Israel. We see it in particular in America. And most people find that link between the Alt Right and support for Zionism very strange. But as an anti-racism campaigner, it makes total sense to her. All nationalist ideologies have more in common than things that separate them. Trump can speak a language that the Chair of the Board of Deputies of British Jews can understand, particularly when he supports Jewish settlements, or even now beginning to lay the groundwork for suggesting that the two-state solution is dead. And this plain-speaking at last may be a good thing. She thinks that for most of them this might clear the ground, as the establishment of Jewish settlements has shown that the two-state solution is unworkable. She says that as someone, who has relatives living in the settlements in Israel. ‘And let me tell you’, she states, ‘there’s no way those people are leaving’.

BDS a ‘Strategic Threat’ to Jews

Netanyahu has branded the BDS movement and people like them ‘a strategic threat’. They’re up there with Iran’s nuclear weapons, Hamas and no doubt a few other enemies of Israel. She finds it extraordinary that she, at the age of 63 and a grandmother of three, is up there with Hamas. It’s even more crazy in that the Wiesenthal Centre, who compile a list of the top ten threats to Jews in the world included Jeremy Corbyn and her at No. 2.  Yes, she’s the No. 2 threat to Jews, not Hamas. This is why the campaign against them is led by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and why they’re really gearing up on it. She makes it clear that it is not easy thing for her to resist what’s happening to her. She’s making light of it, but it’s destroyed her life, because she’s become that crazy woman who won’t be silent about the injustice she sees, or be bullied by them. She won’t allow people, who tell her that they want to see her put in a plastic bin and burnt, or put in a concentration camp, or call her any of the names they want to, silence her. And one of the reasons is that she has had racial abuse as a Black person for 63 years, and she’s got to that point you do when you get older when you can’t be a***ed any more. But she no longer has a job or young children to look after. She’s told her adult children to come off twitter so they don’t see what’s being said about their mother. She then tells the story about how she shared a platform in Norwich with a young teacher, who had the temerity to read out a poem that his children had written about children in Palestine. This man almost lost his job due to the wave of criticism that was sent to his headmaster. Every single time she goes to a meeting there are attempts to shut it down. This is even to the point that they had a security officer come into the middle of the room, as someone had said that there was a rabid racist speaking and it was going to cause trouble. This was one of the nicer techniques they use, along with the new definition of anti-Semitism, which makes it more difficult for people to speak out. This is what is happening to free speech.

The Left Particularly Under Attack

She goes on to address those of the audience, who are in the Labour Party, mentioning that she’s on her second suspension, and who think this is just a fringe problem. She asks them to think about, because it is people on the Left, who are being picked off, attacked and gagged. She is sure that had she gone quietly, they’d leave her alone. But she won’t go quietly, and there are things that are going to happen which people should look out for. Addressing the audience again, she says that those of them, who saw the film the Lobby will have seen the involvement of the Jewish Labour Movement. The Jewish Labour Movement have an affiliation with the Labour party for historical reasons, and are actively lobbying for all the changes that will come in at Conference this year. This will mean that any kind of criticism of Israel will become such a hot potato that it will become very hard to discuss it in the Constituency Labour Parties.

The Jewish Chronicle and the Other Papers

She goes on to make the point that her second suspension wasn’t for anti-Semitism, although she knows that the papers said it was. They lie. They lie in a very interesting way. She doesn’t think it’s a conspiracy, but what happens is that the Jewish Chronicle  gets a story, runs it, and the other newspapers then run the same story. But they don’t come back to you to question it. They run exactly the same story. She also says, in reply to those, who’ve asked her why she hasn’t sued them, it’s because she’s not a millionaire. According to her lawyers it would cost half a million pounds to run something because of the type of case it would be, so if people would give her the money, she would be quite happy to run a case of defamation both against the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Deputies. 

The JLM and the Labour Party

JLM are very much building up their position within the Labour party. She points out that you don’t actually have to be Jewish to be a member, and may be what needs to happen is that ‘you lot’, meaning the audience, should all join the JLM. And so there’s a question about the validity about the JLM being the voice of Jews. But what the JLM is, is a very effective voice of the Right. As such they now have a position on the NEC, and a position on the Equalities Subcommittee. That means that when people like herself and Greenstein are being suspended for being racist – because that’s all anti-Semitism is, there’s nothing special about anti-Semitism, it’s just racism, and every racism has its particularity – they’ll come up with their own ideas about what anti-Semitism is. She states that she would like to ask the Labour party, and has asked the Labour party about it, and it would be interesting to see their answer, that she was suspended the second time for comments she made at a training session. She asks the labour party if they have investigated who leaked that to the press, because it was during the Labour party conference and you couldn’t get in unless you were a party member. She has suggested that the person who brought the Labour party into disrepute was the person, who leaked that tape. There are also people, who think they know what that person was. But she hasn’t had a reply on that at all.

She concludes by telling her audience to keep their ears out, it’s an ongoing situation, they’re here in a struggle, they’re up against extraordinary forces, and she promises that, as insignificant as she is, so long as she can keep annoying them, she will keep buzzing.

Walker and Greenstein’s experience of being vilified, smeared and abused as anti-Semites is typical of those of the many other decent members of the Labour party, who’ve also been libeled as anti-Semites. And they’re also stymied in their campaigns to clear their name because of the huge expenses of the British judicial system. Jenny Randles, a UFO investigator, who was smeared with a different accusation connected with the world of UFOs, declared that the British legal system considers you guilty until declared rich, which aptly describes the situation. Mike and Tony Greenstein, however, have been helped by being able to start a crowdfunding appeal on the internet. But even so, considerable obstacles have been placed in their way of ever obtaining justice.

Walker’s revelation that, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, she and Corbyn are the number two threat to Jews around the world just shows how skewed and perverted the Zionist worldview is. That they consider two anti-racist older people, one of whom is a Jewish granny, a major threat to Jews above Hamas and many other explicitly anti-Semitic groups, is a twisted obscenity. I can remember the various documentaries celebrating Simon Wiesenthal when I was growing up. He was a Nazi hunter, and rightly admired and celebrated for bring people, who had perpetrated the most horrific crimes against humanity to justice. For the Wiesenthal Centre to mix entirely decent people like Walker and Corbyn in with real Nazis devalues Wiesenthal’s work, and should discredit the Centre itself.

And the various nationalisms certainly do have more in common with each other than differences. It’s why Alt Right figures like Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Milo Yiannopolis and the islamophobe Tommy Robinson have been welcomed in Israel. In fact the founder of the Alt Right has declared himself to be a ‘White Zionist’, and wants to create a White ethnostate in America the same as Israel is an ethnostate for Jews. Zionism is simply another form of racial nationalism, and so their enemies aren’t those on the extreme Right so much as the real anti-racists, and opponents of anti-Semitism, like Greenstein, Walker, Martin Odoni, Mike, Ken Livingstone and so many others. The Right has a near monopoly of the press, and even left-wing newspapers like the Guardian and the Mirror repeat the anti-Semitism lies and smears.

But the truth is coming out through the internet, and the more the establishment lies, the more people are increasingly seeing through them. And I hope this process goes on, until the press and the Israel lobby is completely discredited, and the reputations of those they have smeared vindicated and restored. 

 

 

Labour MP Gerald Kaufman Attacks Israel for Its Nazi Crimes in Gaza

It wasn’t just the Irish challenging their governments over support for Israel during the bombardment of Gaza. In the video below from 2009, posted on YouTube by setfree68, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman also bitterly criticises Israel for its attacks on civilians. Kaufman himself, as his speech makes very clear, was Jewish and his family also suffered under Nazi persecution, with many of relatives being murdered. He makes an explicit parallel between the way the Nazis treated them and the other Jews, and how the Israelis were then treating the Palestinians. Kaufman was one of the MPs, who lost his seat and was convicted of fiddling his expenses during that scandal a few years ago. Nevertheless in many ways he was a fine politician, and certainly spoke the truth here with real moral courage that certainly was not shared by the former Labour leader, Tony Blair.

He begins by addressing the deputy speaker, and describes how he was brought up as an Orthodox Jew and a Zionist. On a shelf on his family’s kitchen was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund into which they put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine. He first when to Israel in 1961 and states that he has since been there more times than he could count. He has family and friends in Israel, one of whom fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973, and was wounded in two of them. He states that he is wearing a tie-clip made from a campaign decoration awarded to one of his friends, which he presented to Kaufman. He states that he knew most of the prime ministers of Israel, starting with the founding PM, David Ben-Gurion and describes Golda Meir as his friend, along with deputy prime minister Yigal Alon, who was the general, who won the Negeb for Israel in the 1948 War of Independence.

He states that his parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland, and that most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust. His grandmother was ill in her bed when the Nazis came to her hometown of Stashev, and she was shot dead in her bed by a German soldier. He then goes to state that his grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. He mentions that on Sky News a few days previously an Israeli arm spokeswoman Major Liebovich was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians. The total, he says, is now a thousand. Leibovich replied that five hundred of them were militants. That, he states unhesitatingly, is the reply of a Nazi. He says that he supposes that the Jews fighting unhesitatingly for their lives in the ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

He then goes on to discuss Hamas and the problems they pose for a proper peace. He states that the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, asserts that her government will have no dealing with Hamas because they’re terrorists. Livni’s father was Atan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Tzvi Liun, who organised the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, which killed 91 victims, including four Jews. Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern Gang massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin. Today, the present Israeli government indicates that they would be willing in circumstances acceptable to them to negotiate with the Palestinian president, Abbas, of Fatah. He declares that it’s too late for that. They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat. who was a friend of Kaufman’s. Instead they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah where Kaufman visited him. It’s because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death that Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006.

Hamas, he says clearly, is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected and is the only game in town. The boycotting of Hamas, including by our own government, has been a culpable error from which dreadful consequences have followed. He says that the great Israeli foreign minister, Abba Eban, with whom Kaufman campaigned for peace on many platforms, said ‘You make peace by talking to your enemies’. However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1 1/2 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2 1/2 million more Palestinians in the West Bank, who are treated like dirt by the Israelis with hundreds of roadblocks and the ghastly denizens of the Jewish settlements harassing them as well. Kaufman predicts that a time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel. It’s time for our government, he declares, to make clear to the Israeli government that its conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, he says, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal, which is impossible for them to achieve. He concludes with the stinging words ‘They’re not simply war criminals, they’re fools!’

The video ends with the address of a couple of websites. I haven’t visited them, and so I can’t vouch if they are reasonable websites or not, so be careful.

Kaufman’s statesmanlike speech makes it very clear that he isn’t a knee-jerk anti-Israeli, nor is he ashamed of his Jewish background. Indeed, from this it’s clear that he’s proud of his connections to Israel. But like very many decent people of every race and creed, he was disgusted by the Fascistic violence of the Israelis against the indigenous Arabs.

He is also absolutely correct about Israel’s cynical exploitation of gentile guilt over the Holocaust. This is quite different from the proper commemoration of the Holocaust and its victims, which should serve as a reminder that terrible atrocities were committed in civilised Europe, and that such horrors could indeed occur again if it is not properly remembered. And we need that now, when real Fascists, Nazis and anti-Semitic regimes are taking power in Hungary, Poland, the Baltic States and Ukraine.

But the Israelis and their supporters do exploit the Holocaust. We’ve seen it with the way the Israel lobby smears their opponents as anti-Semites, and people like Mike as Holocaust deniers. Indeed, Margaret Hodge used the Holocaust to smear Corbyn when she whined that her suspension was like that of the Jews in eastern Europe waiting for the Nazis’ knock at the door. Of course, it was nothing like that, and Jews and non-Jews, whose relatives really had suffered arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis angrily reminded her of that. Norman Finkelstein also addressed it in his book, The Holocaust Industry, in which he described how the Israeli state and greedy lawyers enrich themselves by suing governments and organisations for compensation and monies owed to Holocaust survivors and their families, but then swallow this in legal fees. Thousands of Holocaust survivors have been swindled like this, and left in poverty in Israel.

As for Hamas, they’re horrific. But they were democratically elected, something Killary lamented in a recorded phone call. The time is long past when governments around the world should be indulging Israel and its genocidal policies. But they will, because of geopolitical reasons. Israel is the West’s key ally in the Middle East, along with Saudi Arabia. And they sell guns and other weapons to eastern Europe, as well as no doubt buying all that ‘wonderful kit’ David Cameron raved about as an arms factory in Lancashire.

The Democrat politicos who aren’t going to AIPAC this weekend have made a great moral decision. It is one which I hope more of the world’s politicians follow, and that I hope it also pays off as an increasing number of people in America and Europe turn away from Israeli brutality. As for Kaufman, he may have been a crook, but he would have been a far better Foreign Minister than that clown Boris.