The conspiracy/parapolitics online magazine, Lobster, has published a review of a new book on the smear campaign against Chris Williamson, Labour, the anti-semitism crisis & the destroying of an MP, by Lee Garratt, Thinkwell Books (thinkwellbooks.org), 2021, £10.00, by John Booth. Booth states that he knows Williamson personally, having sought to work as a volunteer activist in a Tory marginal. He was sent instead to work with members of his local constituency party, who were campaigning in Joan Ryan’s constituency of Enfield North. This was because, he found out later, that Ryan’s supporters put a higher priority on making sure the chair of Labour Friends of Israel retained her seat than the party actually winning an election. Which just confirms what we knew already about the Blairites and the Israel lobby: they don’t mind destroying the party, so long as they retain their grip on it. But Booth decided instead to go to Derby North to help campaign for Williamson.
The book briefly describes Williamson’s career and the attacks on him as part of the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis, the party’s inability to fight back and the process by which unsubstantiated allegations were uncritically accepted by the party as ‘patterns of behaviour’ that required condemnation and punishment. The book also includes Williamson’s correspondence with the party about these smears and attacks. It notes that Williamson had two allies in the shape of Fabian Hamilton, the Jewish MP for Leeds North East, and Laura Smith, who was at the time MP for Nantwich. It also discusses Williamson’s critics, including Ruth Smeeth, Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger, who actually stood as a Lib Dem candidate in the north London constituency in which Booth had hope to campaign for Labour. Booth is extremely impressed by a passage in Garratt’s book which makes it clear how absolutely vacuous all this screaming about anti-Semitism is. For all that the Blairites, Tories and Board of Deputies screamed that the party was a hotbed of Jew-hatred, hardly anyone has actually been arrested and charged by the rozzers despite the fact that it is a crime in this country. The passage runs
‘It should be acknowledged that, in modern Britain, anti-semitism is a criminal offence. One can, and should, report it to the police. Consequently, one would expect that any “anti-semitic crisis” in the Labour Party – at the level and over the timescale that has been alleged – would have resulted in a significant number of criminal convictions. At this point in time then, one may ask, how many Labour MPs have been found guilty of committing an anti-semitic crime? The answer is zero. For those frothing at the mouth regarding Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson or Jeremy Corbyn, this must come as a surprise. What about at the CLP [Constituency Labour Party] level? Surely constituencies such as Berger’s Liverpool Wavertree, seen by The Guardian and Berger as festering hotbeds of “anger, denial and prejudice”, would have harboured CLP individuals ripe for committing such crimes? The answer is, up to this point, not one Labour constituency member has been found guilty of committing an antisemitic crime. Indeed, to find evidence of any anti-semitic acts that have resulted in police action, anywhere in the country amongst Labour’s half a million members, is difficult. There seems to have been only a handful of members scattered around who have faced criminal charges. And to my knowledge, at this moment in time, not one of them has been found guilty. This surely is an improbable state of affairs, particularly for an issue that can easily be dealt with in court. Moreover, for such a “crisis” to lack any evidence in relation to its existence, is quite an embarrassment. One looks in vain for the simple acknowledgement of this reality in either party or the media.’
Garratt goes on to describe the anti-Semitism smear campaign as a manufactured witch-hunt comparable to that of Senator McCarthy. Booth concludes his review
There is a wider and deeper context to this “non-story” which I and 2 others, as well as targeted Jewish members of the Labour party, have tried to describe. But by narrowing the focus upon the abusive treatment of Chris Williamson and by adhering to standards higher than those of his dishonest opponents and their mainstream media allies, Garratt has performed a very valuable democratic service. Are there many people left in the Labour party to act on his warning?
I honestly don’t know, as Starmer is continuing his campaign of throwing members out on the flimsiest of excuses. That’s when he can be bothered to find one. With the Blairites and Israel lobby working hard to make sure that people only see their propaganda, I felt it important to put this review up as a reply to it. Especially to book’s like Dave Rich’s, which was part of the anti-Semitism smear campaign against Labour and promoted the lies that Corby and the party were anti-Semitic. As Rich is either head, or something big in the Zionist Federation, this is what you’d expect unfortunately.
I consider the Jewish Labour Movement to be a particularly disgusting anti-Semitic joke. It’s far nastier than the racist bilge Bernard Manning used to tell, and which was acceptable on TV in the 1970s. While crass and offensive, I don’t think Manning really meant any harm by them. He always maintained that he wasn’t racist, and personally did a lot of work for Jewish charities. Which I’m sure is right. He just didn’t recognise that they could be malign or contribute to real, dangerous prejudice. To him they were just jokes.
But the Jewish Labour Movement is malign, and it is causing real harm. It’s a sick, twisted joke, as from what I can see, it’s a complete misnomer. You don’t have to be Jewish to join or even a member of the Labour party. It’s membership is small. It used to have just over a hundred members, and its active membership was probably much lower. Compare this with Jewish Voice for Labour, which was a genuinely Jewish organisation and boasted hundreds of members. But the good peeps in the JVL were sidelined because they were Corbyn-supporting lefties who were critical of Israel. The JLM were feted by the British establishment as the true voice of Labour’s Jews, because they were fervent, panting supporters of Israel and its horrendous policy towards the Palestinians.
The JLM, formerly Paole Zion, were one of the groups throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism, and thus smearing the reputations of decent, anti-racist people. People, who had spent their lives actually standing up to racism and anti-Semitism. People had suffered real racist and anti-Semitic abuse and violence. And that included Jews. And especially Jews, because nothing as awkward as facts can contradict the establishment narrative that Britain’s Jews are a monolithic community four-square behind Israel and everything it does.
The JLM’s twisted nature is revealed in a great piece today by Zelo Street. Two of the attendees at the JLM gathering the other day, at which Angela Rayner announced she was willing to purge thousands and thousands of members for anti-Semitism (read: supporting Corbyn) were Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes. Neither of these clowns are Jews, and neither are presently members of the Labour party. Both have a slight credibility problem in their claims of Labour anti-Semitism. Ryan, a former leader of Labour Friends of Israel, was caught making up an accusation of anti-Semitism. She claimed that a respectable elderly lady, who had dared to speak to her about Israel, had told her that her son had got a job in banking by mentioning his connection to the LFI at the job interview. Jewish domination of the financial sector is an anti-Semitic trope, you see. In fact the lady hadn’t said anything about the financial sector. Her son had got his job in education. But as with these fanatical supporters of Israel, facts don’t matter. Ryan made the accusation, the poor woman was suspended and the cops turned up to inform her there’d been a complaint of racism made against her. But al-Jazeera had secretly filmed it all, and so could refute the charge.
But despite being gentiles and former members of the party, Ryan and Gapes were free to make comments about the Labour party, its leadership and anti-Semitism. And a genuine Jew, Shlomo, who supports Corbyn, wasn’t impressed. Because of the way fake Jewish organisations like the JLM and its gentile members slander, abuse and purge real Jewish Labour members and supporters like himself. Shlomo, whose monicker, I believe, is the Hebrew version of the name ‘Solomon’, tweeted about it response to this observation from Client Journalist Expert
“Not really sure why Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes are appearing at any events held by affiliates of the Labour Party”.
Shlomo replied:
“Welcome to the Labour Party where Non-Jews like Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes now decide what is Anti-Semitism and who are Anti-Semitic – while Left-Wing Jews like me are dismissed, ignored and demonised as self-haters”.
One of the issues of Labour Anti-Semitism is how Jewish Labour Members suffered abuse. But the Labour-Right ignore how Jews who have supported Corbyn have been subject to the most horrific abuse for years”.
Absolutely right. Jackie Walker, whose mother was a Black American civil rights worker and whose father was Russian Jew, has suffered horrendous threats. She’s been told she should be lynched, her bodied cut up and burnt, or put into bin bags. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the leaders of Jewish Voice for Labour, has a video on Double Down News in which she talks about the abuse she and other left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jews have received. She was first called anti-Semitic and self-hating when she was 19 by the Jewish Telegraph. Which isn’t all. She’s been at meetings where she and her fellows have been called ‘Kapos’. They were the collaborators with the Nazis in the death camps, to whom Hitler’s thugs gave the job of choosing who would be sent to the gas ovens. Yeah, the abuse these peeps get is that vile.
“Jews who support Corbyn have been called Self-Hating Jews, the wrong type of Jew, traitors, fake Jews, useful idiots and much much more. But this abuse does not matter to [Keir] Starmer & his allies as they don’t care when those committing the abuse come from their side”.
It doesn’t matter to Starmer, because he’s 100 per cent behind Israel and so is the rest of the British right-wing political and media establishment. Occasionally someone has the guts to make some kind of criticism, but this is never backed up by the threat of real action.
And the Blairites are also anti-Semitic on another count. According to one of them, anti-capitalism is innately anti-Semitic. Which follows Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in equating Jews with capitalism and business. Ah, but it’s acceptable because the Blairites are pro-Zionist and supporters of capitalism.
In his article about this, Zelo Street comments on the bizarre standards that allow non-party members like Gapes and Ryan to define party policy. Quite. And the Street and Jewish bloggers have also made it plain that Jews also find it offensive when gentiles try to tell them what’s anti-Semitic and what isn’t. Exactly.
Which is why the JLM is a sick, nasty anti-Semitic joke. But unlike dated, worn-out gags told by Bernard Manning, people actually believe their lies and take them seriously as the true representative of British Judaism.
And like their smears against real Jews and genuinely anti-racist gentiles, that’s not remotely funny.
More trolling from the darker parts of the internet. Mike reported on Saturday that a hashtag campaign had been started against left-wing journalist and author Owen Jones. The hashtag declared in crude language that Jones practiced the kind of solitary behaviour that tradition has it makes you grow hair on the palms of your hands and ruins your eyesight. It started after a group of Alt Right thugs shouted ‘Oi, you w*nker’ at him live on British TV. Jones himself said of the incident that if he could survive fascists chasing him on the street, then he could survive a hashtag campaign set up by people who need their hard drives checking.
Laura Murray told him that the person – and I use that term loosely – responsible for the troll campaign against him is the same individual, who posts pictures of her in a bikini in various positions in order to degrade and humiliate her. This person is one ‘Basil Brush/Bruscetta’, who is a massive fan of Rachel Riley. He endorsed a thread from Riley in which she attacked a certain 16 year old girl as an anti-Semite. Bruscetta’s website didn’t last, and was taken down. So his supporters linked it to one attacking their idol. Which apparently was done by members of the GnasherJew troll farm, David Collier and another odious jerk, Jack Silver. Collier was moaning that Twitter’s removal of the hashtag against Jones showed it to be a fake news site, as Jones is an anti-Semite and therefore akin to a Nazi!
Saaaaaay whaaaaat!
In what parallel world are this idiots living? Jones is no kind of Nazi. Indeed, he’s been criticised by Tony Greenstein – also definitely not a Nazi – for being too accommodating to the anti-Semitism smear campaign of which Riley, Collier and co. are a part against critics of Israel and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour party.
As Mike explains, the clip used to troll Jones was of the abuse screamed at him from right-wing pro-Brexit campaigners when he was being interviewed outside parliament in January. Riley also tried to attack Jones with smears and shockingly inaccurate comments about his coverage of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Mike concludes his article about this
She protested at the time that she is not a supporter of the far right. Maybe that’s true; I don’t propose to comment on it, one way or the other.
But questions need to be asked about why supporters of the far right seem so keen to link themselves with her.
There’s more that could be said about this. Much more. Alongside the comments about Jones’ supposed solitary practices was another line calling him a ‘Stalinist’. This obviously comes from the far right. In some ways it’s ironic. Stalin was a brutal dictator with a venomous hatred of the Jews. After the Nazis broke the pact they’d made for the occupation of eastern Europe with the former Soviet Union, Stalin lamented what the Soviet and Nazis could have achieved together. And one of the major figures in post-War American Nazism, Francis Parker Yockey – a bizarre figure who was very much like the Nazi playwright in Mel Brookes’ The Producers – was a supporter of the Soviet Union because he saw it as a bulwark of civilisation against the decadence caused by democracy. The real Alt Right have more in common with Stalin than they’d like to admit.
The hashtag campaign against Jones was also supported by Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin, the man who broke UKIP. I think Sargon’s Jewish, and he has argued online with the Alt Right. But despite describing himself as a ‘classical Liberal’ – for which read ‘Libertarian’ – Sargon’s own politics are so close to that of the Alt Right that some have commented that he is a gateway to them. A soft introduction leading to the harder, more racist stuff further away from the mainstream.
Despite Collier and co.’s claim that they’re fighting anti-Semitism, they’re doing no such thing. Like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, they’re almost completely uninterested in real, right-wing anti-Semitism. They’re against anti-Zionism or simply criticism of Israel, which they deliberately conflate with anti-Semitism. And they attack it on the left for two reasons.
At the most superficial level, they do it because they’re bullies.
The people they attack, people like Mike, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Sally Eason and so on are decent people. They aren’t trolls, and so don’t response with the high level of abuse the real anti-Semites would. GnasherJew and Riley’s fan are not going to attack the trolls that post real anti-Semitic material, like those who consider the Holocaust a great joke, because their campaign of hate wouldn’t touch them. The trolls would just start making coarse comments on their sexuality, which would probably be homophobic and accuse them of being paedophiles. Further attacks on them by Riley’s fans and Collier and his fellow scumbags would just be treated with amusement, and provide them with further ammunition for trolling them. But the people on the Labour left GnasherJew and Riley attack instead aren’t like that. They can be bullied and cowed. And so they do.
And there’s no great mystery why racists like the Alt Right support Riley.
Tony Greenstein has observed that historically, Zionism’s allies have always been the Far Right. The Islamophobic right in Britain – Britain First and the English Defence League strongly support Israel because they hate Muslims. Tommy Robinson even boasted that if there was a war with the Palestinians, he’d fight for Israel. They also admire Israel because it’s the kind of ‘ethnostate’ they’d like to create in the West. Richard Spencer, the founder of the Alt Right, appeared on Israeli TV, where he declared himself to be a White Zionist. Just as Israel is a racial state in which the only true citizens are Jews, so Spencer and co. wish to create a White ethnostate in America, where only Whites will enjoy full civil rights and Blacks, Asians and Hispanics will have been ‘peacefully’ cleansed.
And the Alt Right also have an enemy in common with Israel’s supporters, at least on the Right.
They hate and fear genuine left-wingers. Which is why they were both determined to bring down Jeremy Corbyn. He was both a critic of Israel and determined to bring back the welfare state, strong trade unions and a mixed economy. All of which are abhorrent to those on the Far Right, like Spencer and Sargon, and the Blairites in the Labour party. Which is why you had the Blairites in the Labour party, like Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel, sneering at Corbyn’s supporters in Labour as ‘Stalinists’, ‘Trotskyites’ and Communists.
I am not accusing Riley of being a Fascist or a member of the Alt Right. But she needs to think very clearly about the way she is supported by them, and do what she can to discourage it.
Otherwise some would be justified in calling her a hypocrite. If not worse.
Last week, Boris Johnson appointed Priti Patel to be the new Home Secretary. This is deeply ironic, as the thoroughly objectionable Patel was thrown out of the cabinet by Tweezer in 2017 after she was caught holding unscheduled meetings with Israeli ministers and supporting their objectives in the UK, purely on her own initiative. The woman, who is now in charge of British national security, is actually a threat to it.
This is not hyperbole. Israel is a foreign power, no matter how many Zionist fanatics claim criticism of it is offensive because it’s important to their sense of Jewish identity. It’s supposed to be a friendly country, but all too frequently doesn’t behave like one. Allied, friendly nations aren’t supposed to spy on each other. But Israel does. They were caught spying on British citizens back in the days of Thatcher. She, however, certainly didn’t tolerate it. Not only did she thoroughly reprimand the Israelis, she also threatened to have their spy base over here closed down and thrown out of the country. The Israelis duly apologised and stopped.
This was in complete contrast to what happened when they did the same under Blair. Instead of threatening to close them down, the war criminal gave them a mild reprimand, essentially a slap on the wrist. Possibly he was prevented from going further because the money that funded his office, and which allowed him to be independent of the trade unions he despised, was raised through Lord Levy, whom he had a met at a gathering of the Israeli embassy, and came from pro-Israeli businessmen.
And we’ve seen over here how the Israelis have absolutely no qualms in meddling in our politics with al-Jazeera’s revelations in their documentary, ‘The Lobby’. This caught Shai Masot, an official at the Israeli embassy, conspiring – and that is the right word – with a member of the civil service – to have Alan Duncan dropped from Tweezer’s cabinet because he was a supporter of the Palestinians. He was to be replaced with someone more supportive of the Israelis. Like Boris Johnson, whose name was most definitely mentioned. And then there’s the still murky links between Joan Ryan and Labour Friends of Israel and the Israeli embassy. Ryan was caught on camera stating that she’d been given a million pounds by the Israeli government, but didn’t say what the money was for. So what was it for? It’s an obvious deduction that the money was given to make the Labour party, or at least certain individuals within it, more pro-Israel. But, alas, we didn’t learn how, and asking questions of that sort gets you tarred as an anti-Semite. Even if it’s a fair question to ask of money coming into any political party, from any foreign government.
The Israelis are also known for carrying out assassinations and other intelligence operations abroad. A few years ago it was reported by the mainstream media that an Arab militant had apparently been shot by the Israeli intelligence services in one of the other Arab nations. The Beeb report made it clear that this was not an isolated incident. But the Israelis also aren’t afraid of carrying out such operations in friendly countries in Europe. Back in the 1990s the cops in one European country caught Israeli spies trying to snatch a Arab militant from a block of flats. I think it might have been in Switzerland, but a friend of mine tells me it was Sweden. Whatever. These idiots, who were less James Bond as Johnny English, decided that their operation should best be done under cover of darkness. So they cut the electricity to the entire building at the junction box. Sweden’s – or Switzerland’s – finest were alerted, and hurried round to throw the clowns into the party van. There was much anguished comment in the paper afterwards over how the Israeli security services, who once smuggled Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin to the West three days after it was made by the Russian president, could have fallen so low. How was it that such an efficient, highly professional organisation could now have become a bunch of bungling morons?
And I’ve also heard friend of friend stories from people in this country, which claim that they were spied upon by Mossad for their contacts with other Israelis. How much truth there is in these rumours I honestly don’t know. I’ve never asked the people concerned themselves, and it could just be paranoid rumour and nothing more. Like some of the stories about people being spied on by MI5, the CIA, the KGB or the Red Chinese or whoever. On the other hand, as the Israelis have been caught interfering in our politics and spying on us and other friendly nations, it could well be true.
By making these highly unofficial meetings with senior Israeli figures, Patel showed she was quite prepared to work with them outside the knowledge and permission of her own government. She was prepared to collaborate with them against her own government. And in appointing her to his cabinet, Boris Johnson has shown that he has absolutely no objection to his ministers operating in this way and that he will docilely accept Israeli interference in British domestic affairs, even when they undermine the normal processes of democracy.
Priti Patel is a threat to British national security and the personal safety of British citizens. Just as Boris is also ready either to look the other way, or willing comply with Israeli conduct that would be roundly condemned and prosecuted by other leaders and nations.
This is another issue that I couldn’t let pass without comment. On Friday on the Beeb’s satirical news quiz show, Have I Got News For You, Ian Hislop took it upon himself once more to push the establishment smear that anti-Semitism is rife in Labour. The editor of Private Eye was responding to a question about the expulsion of Alistair Campbell, Blair’s former spin doctor, by the party for saying he voted Lib Dem in the elections. As Mike and Martin Odoni have shown on their blogs, Labour has Campbell bang to rights. What he’s done is very much against Labour party regulations. And Martin has further pointed out that there is no hypocrisy on Jeremy Corbyn’s part for his congratulation of George Galloway when he won Bradford West for the Respect Party. He was only doing what other Labour leaders have done before, such as Neil Kinnock when he congratulated John Major on becoming leader of the Tories. There really isn’t any comparison of the two cases. See
Campbell whined about how there was a difference between his case and those of members accused of anti-Semitism. Mike pointed out that Campbell’s whinge was a case of sour grapes, and there were differences between his and other Labour party members. Like Kerry-Ann Mendoza, the mighty chief of The Canary, had been thrown out of the party for admitting she voted Green before she joined the Labour party. As for those accuse of anti-Semitism, if they are high-up in the Labour party, and aren’t supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, an excuse will be found not to investigate them and exonerate them. If they’re high-profile supporters of Corbyn, any excuse will be found to expel them. As happened to Mike, who didn’t get any right to appeal.
Hislop, however, is ignorant of all of this, and followed Campbell’s line, ranting that no-one had been expelled for anti-Semitism with a sneer at Ken Livingstone. Livingstone, he claimed, was particularly foul because he had said that Hitler was ‘a little bit Zionist’.
This comes just after the Equalities and Human Rights Commission announced it was investigating Labour for anti-Semitism, and the MP, Peter Willsman, was suspended on anti-Semitism charges. Why? He claimed quite reasonably that the Israeli embassy may be interfering in the internal politics of the Labour Party. It is an entirely reasonable question, given that Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official guilty of plotting to decide with British civil servants which Tories would serve in May’s cabinet, offered Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel £1 million in funding at a Labour conference. See
As for the assertion that Livingstone was somehow lying about Hitler’s support for Zionism, no, it’s historical fact. Mike, Tony Greenstein, myself and many, many other bloggers have made it very clear that this is so, quoting chapter and verse from the relevant sources. As has John Newsinger, a historian at one Bath’s excellent universities, who is a regular contributor to the conspiracy magazine, Lobster. Hitler and the Nazis did indeed initially support the Zionists from the cynical motive of simply wishing to get the Jews out of Germany. It’s called the Ha’avara Agreement, and there’s even a page about it on the website of the Holocaust Memorial at Yad Vashem, in Israel.
But history, genuine history, in this case, rather than establishment smears, appears to be utterly foreign to Hislop in this issue.
Just as it is to his magazine, Private Eye. I still read it, and it contains much excellent material, but it has consistently smeared Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites. These have included smear pieces from its correspondent ‘Ratbiter’, alias the Groaniad’s Nick Cohen. Like the rest of the lamestream media, it completely accepts the anti-Semitism smear unquestioningly. And it has never, ever interviewed anyone on the receiving end of those smears, like Mike, Martin, Tony, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Cyril Chilson and on and on.
If you’re falsely smeared as an anti-Semite, Ian Hislop and his magazine were support the smear and the smearers, not you.
Which gives the lie to his claim that his magazine is somehow anti-establishment and brings you the stories the other parts of the media won’t touch. Admittedly, this is often true, but on certain issues Hislop, Private Eye and Have I Got News For You solidly toe the establishment line. The anti-Semitism smears about the Labour party is one case. The claim that Putin is the aggressor in the Ukraine and a threat to the freedom of the eastern European states is another.
I’ve been tempted many times to write a letter of complaint to Private Eye about their promotion of the anti-Semitism smears, but I’m afraid it would do no good. They either wouldn’t publish it, or would publish it in a very carefully edited form that would deliberately weaken my argument and allow them to publish a reply that appeared to refute it completely. Or else I’d find that my details had been passed on to the CAA or other Zionist smear merchants and trolls, and I’d be accused in turn of being an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier like Mike. Are Hislop and his crew at Private Eye that nasty? I hope not, but as they are part of the media establishment, and the media establishment is that vicious, I’d rather not find out.
As for Have I Got News For You, Hislop and the Beeb were boasting a few months ago that people trust it more than the ordinary newspapers, especially asylum seekers, who come from countries where the state heavily controls and censors the news. This is dangerous, because the BBC itself is very heavily biased against Labour, and consistently follows the Tory, government line. Which is unsurprising, given the number of Beeb newsroom staff, who left to find jobs working as the Tories’ spin doctors. Have I Got News For You appears to be impartial, but it also follows the government line in pushing certain interpretations of news stories. The fact that the Maidan Revolution in the Ukraine in 2012 was carefully orchestrated by the American State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy, will definitely not be covered, either by the mainstream British news or by Have I Got News For You and Hislop’s mighty organ, Private Eye. And neither will they ever publish the truth behind the anti-Semitism smears.
Hislop once again ignores history to smear Livingstone, the Labour Party, and everyone, who has been false accused of anti-Semitism. And despite the satire, Have I Got News For You is, like much of the Beeb’s news coverage when it comes to Labour, fake news.
There’s an ominous piece in today’s I, Monday, 8th April 2019, reporting that a charity, the Hansard Society, has found that British people are increasingly fed up with parliamentary and looking instead for a strong ruler that govern without its consent. The article by Joe Gammie, ‘Britons want new rules – and new leaders’ runs
Growing public dissatisfaction with Britain’s political system is leading people to entertain “radical solutions” which challenge the core tenets of democracy, a charity has warned.
The annual Hansard Society audit of political engagement found that nearly three-quarters of people felt the UK’s system of governing needed “quite a lot” or “a great deal” of improvement.
At 72 per cent, this is the highest level in the 15 years the audits have been published – worse than the previous peak of 69 per cent in the 2010 study which was taken in the aftermath of the MPs’ expenses scandal and the financial crises.
The research and education charity warned that the increasing public dissatisfaction with the system of governing meant some people were saying Britain needed a “strong leader willing to break the rules” and that the country’s problems could be better deal with if the Government did not not have to worry about parliamentary approval.
Dr Ruth Fox, the director of the Hansard Society, said: “This year’s audit of political engagement shows that the public are not apathetic about politics, but they are increasingly dissatisfied with the way our system of governing works – so much so that sizeable numbers are willing to entertain quite radical solutions that would challenge core tenets of our democracy. (p.6).
The article seems to be saying that a majority of Brits now want a strong ruler, who gets things done without parliamentary checks. It means they’re turning to centralised, authoritarian, personal government. And the end of that road are the highly authoritarian regimes of leaders like Putin, or outright dictatorship.
I have some caveats about the article. It doesn’t describe how the polling was conducted, how large the canvassed groups were, or its composition. There is no information on precisely which sections of society made up the polled group, or their voting preferences or political allegiances. I’ve also read similar scare stories in the press before, where an organisation claimed they had found, for example, that 2/3 of Brits would support a strongly anti-immigrant party of the type of the BNP or National Front. In fact, while there is massive demand for restrictions on immigration, and as we’ve seen with successive governments, a very harsh, punitive approach to immigrants and asylum seekers, there’s very little support for the parties of the extreme Right. They’re a danger, and shouldn’t be encouraged, but they attract only tiny minority of supporters. People instead look to the mainstream parties to formulate and carry out policies against immigration. I think the same attitude underlies the comments here, if they can be believed. Those demanding a more centralised, personal government doubtless want it carried out within the system, rather than parliamentary democracy to be smashed and completely overthrown by an aspiring dictator like Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists tried in the 1930s.
If there is such radical dissatisfaction with parliament, my guess is that it’s being fueled by the continuing debacle over Brexit, where the different factions in the Tory party are tearing each other to pieces, coupled with Tweezer repeatedly trying and failing to get it all past parliament. In these circumstances, it looks like the 72 per cent demanding a strong leadership against parliament are supporters of Tweezer, who have swallowed her lies and those of the Tory press that the reason no progress is being made is entirely due to treacherous MPs blocking her proposed deal. And not because the deal itself is rubbish and massively unpopular. If there’s a problem, then it’s not with parliament, or rather, not directly, and the solution is not to take power away from it and give it to a Russian-style silovik, or strong man. The proper solution would be to demand a general election to break impasse, one that would put a Labour government and Jeremy Corbyn into No. 10, and allow some real progress to be made.
But this is completely unacceptable to the Tories, for obvious reasons, and the rest of the neoliberal media-industrial complex, who wish to keep the Tories in No. 10 and blame parliament, not the PM, for the continuing massive failure of Brexit.
And this is extremely dangerous. When parliamentary democracy fails, Fascism seizes power. Both Hitler and Mussolini gained power through the failure of parliamentary democracy. In both Germany and Italy, the mainstream parties elected to parliament refused to work with each other. Hitler and Mussolini were then invited by the governing party to join a coalition in order to give them a majority. They did so, and then passed legislation giving their parties an overwhelming majority, and then destroying parliamentary democracy altogether through banning rival parties and elevating Hitler and Mussolini to positions of supreme leadership, Fuehrer in German, Duce in Italian.
There is also another danger to parliamentary democracy right at the opposite pole to political fragmentation. This is when it becomes discredited when MPs from an opposition party join the government without a mandate from their own party or constituency. For example, last week Tom Watson, the conniving deputy leader of the Labour party and other right-wing Labour MPs announced that they would be willing to join Tweezer and the Tories in a government of national unity. Watson has spent his time as deputy leader intriguing against the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has the overwhelming support of party members. A sizable section of the parliamentary Labour party has also plotted to undermine and overthrow Corbyn, against the wishes of their own constituency parties and the members of the Party as a whole. The result has been a series of ‘no confidence’ votes against right-wing, Thatcherite MPs like Joan Ryan and Luciana Berger. Who responded by smearing their opponents as Communists, misogynists and anti-Semites, and then split to help form Change UK, thus betraying the Labour supporters and activists that got them elected. It’s been pointed out that Watson and co. do form a coalition with Tweezer, it would effectively be an anti-democratic coup, carried out by parliament against the wishes of the wider electorate.
Parallels have also been drawn between this and the coalition government of 1929, when Ramsay McDonald, then leader of the Labour party, joined forces with the Tories to introduce a series of cuts that hit the working class. This split the Labour party, and McDonald was thrown out. He has been reviled ever since as a traitor to the party. This may well be what Watson wants, as he and other Labour right-wingers were talking of coups and forming splinter groups long before The Independent Group finally took the plunge. It’s part of their plot to marginalise genuine socialism, and retain power under the name of the Labour party for Thatcherite entryists like themselves. But if they do take this step, it will discredit parliament, and the result could a further turn to radical solutions demanding the removal of parliamentary democracy or its radical curtailment.
It’s also similar to the plans for a coup in the mid-’70s to overthrow Harold Wilson’s minority government. The Times then was demanding a government of national unity, to include moderate Labour MPs like Shirley Williams alongside the Tories. This was to be achieved by a military coup and everyone else further left was to be rounded up and interned.
If the Hansard Society is correct, and people are becoming radically dissatisfied with parliamentary government, then the solution isn’t the greater centralisation of power in the Prime Minister. Tweezer is the cause of this problem. She has put her own personal interest in remaining premier, and her vile party’s determination to cling on to power at whatever the cost to the British people ahead of her duty to the country. Just as the Labour right has put its own privileges and Thatcherite agenda before the wishes of their constituents and the needs of the British people. The solution to these problems should be more democracy, so that Tweezer has no choice but to obey the wishes of parliament, and cannot pass the buck by blaming them for her own failures. At the same time, Watson and the rest of the Thatcherites should be brought to heel and made to represent their constituents, not their own selfish interests.
But this is too much for the British establishment and media, who will continue to support Tweezer against parliament, until people really are completely fed up with the whole charade. And then will come the real danger of demands for proper authoritarian government. But if it’s against the Left, this will certainly be backed by the Times and the rest of the press. All in the interests of national unity, of course.
This video was put on YouTube two years ago, in March 2017, by Brighton BDS, the local branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and oppression of the Palestinians. It’s one of two videos from that meeting, in which Greenstein and Jackie Walker respectively tell of how accusations of anti-Semitism are used to stifle justified criticism of Israel. Both Greenstein and Walker are Jewish critics of Israel, and despite their being firm anti-racists and anti-Fascists, have thus been smeared as anti-Semites.
Greenstein begins his speech by welcoming his audience, and congratulating them in that they are going to see two anti-Semites for the price of one. He explains that the accusations of anti-Semitism have nothing to do with real anti-Semitism. They’re the method used to silence critics of the unjustifiable, like Israel’s destruction of a Bedouin village in the Negeb desert to make way for a Jewish village. And Administrative Detention, where the only people detained without trial are Palestinians. It is also difficult to justify a law which retroactively legalises the theft of Palestinian land, and the existence of two different legal system in the West Bank, one for Palestinians and the other for Jews. He states that in most people’s understanding of the word, that’s apartheid. It’s certainly racist. And it’s easier to attack critics as anti-Semitic, than deal with the issues concerned.
And Israel doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It receives more aid from the United States than every other country in the world combined. Israel is defended because it’s a very important partner of the West in the Middle East. It’s critics do single out Israel, because it’s the only apartheid state in the world, the only state that says one section of the population – Jews – will have privileges, while the other section won’t. He states that there are many repressive states in the world, but there is only one apartheid state. The Zionists then reply that there’s only one Jewish state. Greenstein responds to that by pointing to 1789 and the liberation of the Jews in France during the French Revolution, the first people to be granted such emancipation. The French Revolution established the principle that the state and religion should be separate. This is also a cardinal principle of the American Constitution, but it doesn’t exist in Israel. Greenstein states that he has the right to go to Israel, claiming citizenship, and get privileges like access to land because he’s Jewish, while Yasser – a member of the audience – has no such rights, despite being born their and having a family there, because he’s not Jewish. You can’t say it’s not racist and unjust, and so they accuse people, who criticise it, of anti-Semitism.
He makes the point that it’s like the British in India. They didn’t claim they were going there to exploit the natural wealth of India, and pillage and rape it. No, they justified it by saying they were going there to civilise it by getting rid of Suttee, the burning of a man’s widow on his funeral pyre. He cites Kipling’s metaphor as the Empire as a burden on the White man’s back. It was the Empire on which the sun never set, which was because, as some people said, God didn’t trust the British. It wasn’t just the Conservatives, but also the Labour party, who justified British imperial rule in these terms. The Labour Party justified it as trusteeship. Britain held the lands in Africa and Asia in trust for their peoples until they came up to our standard of civilisation.
It’s the same with Israel today. When Britain and America support Israel, they don’t do it because it’s colonisation, or because Jewish mobs go round Jerusalem every Jerusalem Day chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’, utter anti-Muslim blasphemies and their other actions, which mean Arabs have to stay in their homes to avoid being attacked by thousands of settler youths. It’s because of anti-Semitism and some vague connection with the Holocaust. But opposing Israel is in no way anti-Semitic. He states that the definition of anti-Semitism is simple. It is ‘hostility to Jews, as Jews’. He states that a friend of his, the Oxford academic Brian Klug, worked that out years ago. He then talks about how the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism was devised in 2004 to connect anti-Semitism with Israel by the European Monitoring Commission. It met much resistance, and was opposed by the University College Union, the National Union of Students opposed it along with other civil society groups. In 2013 the EUMC’s successor took it down from its website and it fell into disuse. It was then revived as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. This then emerged a few months previous to the meeting, when a Home Affairs Select Committee report, apart from attacking Jeremy Corbyn and Shami Chakrabarti for tolerating anti-Semitism in the Labour party, came up with this new definition. This takes 500 words to say what could be said in 50.
One of these is accusing Jews of being more loyal to each other than their own nation. He shows that definition is nonsense by stating that if he received a pound for every time he was called a traitor because he was an anti-Zionist, he’d be quite rich. The essence of Zionism is that Jews owe a dual loyalty, and their main loyalty is to Israel. Israel defines itself as the Jewish state, not just for its own citizens, but for Jews everywhere. This is unique, as most countries have a citizenship based on that country, to which everyone belongs, and a nationality. Britain has a British nationality. That nationality applies to everyone who lives in a particular place. If Scotland became independent, as the SNP made clear, then everyone living in Scotland would have Scots nationality. The same with France and Germany. But in Israel there is no Israeli nationality, although it says so on the Israeli passport. But the Hebrew translates as ‘citizen’ not ‘nation’, but the Israelis assume most people are too stupid to notice the difference. There are hundreds of nationalities in Israel, primarily Jewish, but also Arab, Islamic, Christian and those of other religions. But the only nationality that counts is Jewish, and it applies not only to Jewish citizens and residents, but also Jews wherever they live. He states that this is the foundation stone of Israeli racism, that some people – Jews- are returning, because their ancestors were there 2,000 years ago. This is one of the many racist myths that abound.
He then goes on to another definition, ‘Denying the Jews the right to self-determination’. He states that he asked Joan Ryan, the Labour MP and chair of Labour Friends of Israel, when she was wittering on about how anti-Semitic to oppose the Jewish right to self-determination about it. He wrote her a letter, to which she never replied, which asked her when precisely Zionism talked about the Jewish right to self-determination. It’s only very recent. If you look back at Zionist documents, like The Jewish State, by the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, it talks about colonisation. The first Zionist congress, held in 1897, was a result of the publication of Herzl’s pamphlet. The Zionists never talked about Jewish self-determination, they talked about colonisation and did so for most of their history. But with the change in zeitgeist they changed it to Jewish national self-determination. But this means that Jews are not citizens of the country where they live. He compares Jews to Roman Catholics, as the idea that all Roman Catholics form the same nation is clearly a retrogressive step. In many ways it’s an anti-Semitic step, as it says that Jews do not belong in the countries in which they live, as they’re all one and the same.
He goes on to talk about Herzl himself, and encourages his audience to Google him, if they haven’t already. Herzl was a Viennese journalist, who operated in Paris. His diaries are particularly interesting, as if you read all four volumes of them, you find he talks about anti-Semitism as having the divine will to good about it. In other words, there would be no Zionism without anti-Semitism, which provides the propulsion for Jews separating out of their own nations and going on for what he hoped would be a Jewish nation. Herzl traveled around Europe trying to create an alliance between Zionism and one of the imperial powers of the time. Eventually in 1917 they reached an agreement with the British imperialists, Lloyd George’s war cabinet, the Balfour Declaration, in which Britain granted them the land of Palestine over the heads of the Palestinians, who were not asked for their opinion.
When Herzl was going around the European princes, he met the Kaiser’s uncle, the Grand Duke of Baden, who told Herzl that he agreed with him and supported him. This was because Herzl told him that Zionism would take the revolutionary Jews away from the socialist movement and move them to a pure national ideal. The Grand Duke said he had no problems supporting Zionism except one. If he supported Zionism, which was at that time very small, only a handful of Jews supported Zionism up to 1945, then people would accuse him of being anti-Semitic. Most Jews at the time considered Zionism to be a form of anti-Semitism. Greenstein asks how many people know that on Lloyd George’s war cabinet, the one member who opposed the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montague, who later became the Secretary of State for India. He accused all his fellows of anti-Semitism, because they didn’t want Jews in Britain, but wanted them to go to Palestine. And he states that is what they’re opposing today. The opposite is true when they accuse Israel’s opponents of being anti-Semitic. It is the Zionist movement that has always held that Jews do not belong in these countries and should go to Israel. We see it today in the election of Donald Trump. There has been an outbreak of anti-Semitism, and the Zionist movement has no problem with it, because Trump is a good supporter of Israel. And the appointment of Steve Bannon was welcomed by the Zionist Organisation of America, who invited him to speak at their annual gala in New York. He didn’t attend because there was a large demonstration of leftists and anti-Zionists. He concludes that if someone today tells him he doesn’t belong in this country, they’re either a Zionist or an anti-Semite.
Greenstein thus exposes the real agenda behind the anti-Semitism accusations and the utter hypocrisy of those making them, as well as the real anti-Semitism that lies at the heart of Zionism itself. It’s to silence critics like Greenstein and Walker that they, and so many other decent anti-racists, have been accused of anti-Semitism while the real anti-Semites, like Bannon and Sebastian Gorka, have been given enthusiastic welcomes by the Israeli state.
However, the decision by many Democrat politicos not to attend the AIPAC conference this weekend may indicate that there’s a sea change coming in the American people’s tolerance for this nonsense. Hopefully it won’t be too long before Israel’s critics like Greenstein and Walker are properly recognised as the real opponents of racism and anti-Semitism, and the people who smeared them held in contempt for their lies and vilification.
Asa Winstanley, a journalist with the pro-Palestinian website, The Electronic Intifada, has become yet another casualty in the Labour right’s attempts to silence critics of Israel. He was suspended from the party because of a Tweet he posted, which said
Israeli embassy proxy the JLM confirms it was responsible for the referencing of Labour to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for supposed “institutional antisemitism”.
Like other members of the party, who have similarly been suspended and smeared as anti-Semites, Winstanley only knew of this after it was published by the Jewish Chronicle, which also chose to reveal Winstanley’s private details. A hack from the Chronicle, Rosa Donerty, posted
It is understood that Asa Winstanley is suspended from Labour party pending investigation.
to which Winstanley commented that
The fact that a Jewish Chronicle journalist is claiming to be the first to know information, which would, if true, be confidential indicates attempts to politicise and compromise Labour’s disciplinary process.
And, as you might expect, the abuse started. Someone calling himself ‘Dr. Gonzo’ responded in classy fashion with
F**k off you anti-Semitic piece of s**t. Go play with the traffic you insufferable racist c**t.
Ali Abunimah’s article about this mentions that two years ago in 2017, lawyers from the Jewish Labour Movement, which has close ties with the Israeli embassy, tried to shut him down by threatening legal action.
Mike states in his piece about this latest vile attack on a critic of Israel that it resembles his own experience. He only heard that he had been suspended when someone phoned him up about it from the Welsh paper The Western Mail. Mike also agrees with Winstanley that the disclosure of the information to a third party may be a breach of the Data Protection Act. Mike’s currently taking the Party to court, and this is very definitely going to be a part of his case. And yes, Mike has also suffered vile abuse following the Labour party’s actions. Mike also makes the point that although the party describes its investigations procedure as quasi-judicial, it has no legal validity. This means that the party can be sued by members or former members, who have suffered harm to their reputations after their treatment by the party.
The Electronic Intifada’s article states that the complaints procedure was expected to become fairer with the appointment of Jenny Formby. It hasn’t. Mike concludes
But then, it seems the attitude of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee and complaint-handling “compliance unit” really hasn’t changed in the nearly two years since my case began.
They still treat the people who pay their wages with nothing but contempt.
I’m not surprised that the Labour party has accused Winstanley of anti-Semitism. As the Electronic Intifada’s article on him says, he’s been with them since 2015, and has appeared frequently on the various alternative news media discussing and commenting on Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, and the Israel lobby’s attempts to silence opposition and dissent, with other journalists and activists. In a way, I’m just surprised that it took this long to get round to him.
I suspect the tweet about the Jewish Labour Movement being a front for the Israeli embassy got him into trouble because, as last Friday’s piece in the I by the United Synagogue’s Richard Verber shows, the Israel lobby is claiming that accusations that Jewish or other organisations are funded by Israel is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In some cases, it may well be. But the Jewish Labour Movement was founded in 2015, as its leader, Jeremy Newmark admitted in 2016, in order to fight opposition to Israel. It has strong ties to the Israeli embassy, as does Labour Friends of Israel, whose chair, Joan Ryan, hobnobbed nearly every day with disgraced conspirator Shai Masot. And six of the original eight founders of The Independent Group were members of the LFI, and they included that organisation’s chair. Which means that Ruth George was quite right when she tweeted that she wouldn’t blame anyone for suspecting that they were funded by the Israelis.
The accusation also shows how fake and contrived these accusations of anti-Semitism are. I’ve read many articles by Winstanley and the other journos at the Electronic Intifada, and absolutely none of them have been genuinely anti-Semitic in the real, legal sense of of expressing or trying to provoke hatred of Jews as Jews. Indeed, I believe from the tenor of the articles that the opposite is true. The articles have always been very well informed and precisely worded, so that the object of criticism has been the Israeli state and right-wing politicians, activists and Israeli racism in general. But never Jews or the Israelis as a people.
Which is why I’ve no doubt that the JLM is trying to silence him now. He’s too well-informed, accurate and reliable, and definitely not an anti-Semite. I wish Mr Winstanley every success in dealing with this vile calumny and give him my full and staunch support, as I do with everyone like him – Mike, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone. May they get re-instated soon, their names cleared, and those who besmirch them exposed and thrown out instead.
This is a very interesting video of just under five minutes long, posted by the Last American Vagabond yesterday, 4th March 2019. It’s an excerpt from a much longer piece, but it reports that Jeremy Corbyn has called for Britain to condemn and stop arms sales to Israel after the publication a few days ago of a UN Report describing Israeli war crimes against Palestinian civilians.
The Vagabond was obviously talking in his longer broadcast about American intervention in Syria, as he begins this segment by saying that America is in Syria to protect Israel. And the double-standards in this is shown by a story in Anti-Media reporting that Corbyn called for the UK to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians. The Vagabond states that they all know the stories of Corbyn being called an anti-Semite because he calls out Israel’s crimes. This is breaking through, but he’ll still be called an anti-Semite. That’s their plan to diminish the efforts of people, who point out the crimes they’re committing. You’re and anti-Semite if you point out the crimes of Israel, just as if you call out America in Syria, you’re anti-Christian. This doesn’t work.
But this is important. This has been growing. And he’s using the recent UN report to say that we all can see what’s happening, they need to be condemned for their actions. Corbyn is calling for the British government to condemn Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and freeze arms sales to the occupation state. Nothing about Jewish people, nothing about anti-Semitism, just saying that the Israeli government is killing these people, which is very easy to see. The UN report said the Israelis are intentionally killing children and journalists. And because of this we need to freeze arms sales. But people don’t want this to be the case, as Israel is very powerful and has influence in all of these government.
Corbyn’s remarks came in the wake of the UN Report, the funny thing of which was, and they did this more than once, says that Israel might have committed war crimes, while presenting the evidence of all the children, women and doctors they’ve killed. Which shows the absurd nature of the United Nations and its ruling factions. But it’s another opportunity to get this out to people, who’ve never seen it before, who don’t realise that the Israelis are killing children and journalists. Corbyn is now jumping on this to make what should happen, happen, that the international community should have the courage to say ‘You guys are a criminal organisation, your government organisation, not the entirety of Israel but what this government is doing, is very bad.’ And when you realise that they are allowed to get away with this stuff to a certain degree, it gives smaller nations, that really do want to carry this out, not necessarily the power, the drive to do so. Because Israel can get away with it, and shows them the line they can use to get away with it, say Iran’s there, say they’re all terrorists, same with what the US is doing.
He then quotes a tweet from Corbyn, which said
Israel’s killing of demonstrators in Gaza, including children, paramedics and journalists, may constitute war crimes against humanity. The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killing and freeze arms sales to Israel.
The UN report published earlier this week said
The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an eminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot. Nor were they directly participating in hostilities. And the protest had been predominantly civilian in nature.
He says it’s on record that thousands and thousands of people have been shot in the nine months, unarmed, verified – that’s a crime. And it’s time they paid for it and were held accountable.
This is why the Blairites, the Israel lobby and the British establishment are so determined to destroy Corbyn and have him and his supporters purged from the Labour party. Why they smear decent, anti-racist people like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Mike, Martin Odoni and so many, many others as anti-Semites. It’s because Corbyn stands up for the Palestinians against Israeli racism and colonialism. Because Corbyn’s supporters call out the neo-Conservative lies, distortions and the selective editing of history to try to justify the Israeli state’s crimes against humanity. Just like they call out racism and injustice at home, like the Tories’ targeting of immigrants and folk of colour for vilification and deportation.
Now the departure of the eight quitters from the Labour party last week, and the manufactured outrage against Chris Williamson for daring to book a room to show the film Witchhunt, about the anti-Semitism smear campaign in the Labour party, makes me wonder if the Israelis knew the report was coming out, and so mobilised their puppets in readiness. Because of the eight splitters, six were members of Labour Friends of Israel. Joan Ryan was its chair, and as she was filmed saying by al-Jazeera, she obtained a million pounds worth of funding from the Israelis and most days met Shai Masot, the Israeli embassy official, who conspired to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet. And the Independent group is a private corporation, precisely so they don’t have to disclose their funding. Which seems to me will almost certainly include money from the Israelis.
The Independent Group’s Joan Ryan is also in the pages of the I today, making the claim that there was no anti-Semitism in the Labour party until Jeremy Corbyn took over. This, as you would expect from Ryan, is simply a flat-out lie. Not only is Corbyn not an anti-Semite and the Labour party actually less anti-Semitic than the Tories, but the complaints and allegations of anti-Semitism began long before Corbyn took over. The whining started when Ed Miliband, who’s Jewish, was leader of the party, as CremantCommunarde has shown with his timeline of these lies and smears. And what provoked all these allegations against Miliband? He dared not to give his automatic backing to Israel. And cautious or qualified support is intolerable to the fanatics and totalitarians of Likud and the Israel lobby, who, like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and every other wretched dictator and despot, demand absolute and unquestioning support and obedience.
There’s also another, personal dimension here as well. Ryan herself has shown that she can’t be trusted. She was shown manufacturing a fake allegation of anti-Semitism against another member of the Labour party, Jean Fitzpatrick, in the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby. But she’s completely unrepentant about the incident. Moreover, this is the woman, who was chair of Labour Friends of Israel, got hold of £1 million of funding from the Israelis, and who claimed to meet and talk to Shai Masot at the embassy most days. Masot was the Israeli official, who was sent home in disgrace after plotting to have Alan Duncan removed from the Tory cabinet.
Well, Ryan’s no longer a member of the Labour party, but her new group is also thoroughly democrapic. They talk a lot about democracy and but really absolutely despise it. They don’t want to hold bye-election, and are an incorporated company so they don’t have to reveal who their donors are.
Ryan is therefore a liar, whose word cannot be trusted, and there are questions to be asked about who is paying her to repeat these lies. Is she still receiving money from the Israelis? Does she still meet and talk with somebody from the Israeli embassy ‘most days’, as she did with Masot? These are reasonable questions, and we have a right to see them asked and answered. No matter what she might squeal about anti-Semitism, or how she and her equally duplicitous friends might try to hide their funding.
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