Last fortnight’s issue of Private Eye, for the 30th November – 13th December, carried a story suggesting that Esther McVey’s resignation from the cabinet may have been for reasons other than a concern over Brexit. Instead, the satirical magazine suggested, Iain Duncan Smith’s collaborator in the murder and starvation of the old, homeless, unemployed and disabled was due to her wishing to avoid having to answer questions about whether her department has tried to cover up the stats on the deaths on disabled people. The piece, in the ‘HP Sauce’ column on page 10 ran:
<strong>Esther McVey’s sudden cabinet resignation over Brexit does have a silver lining for the former work and pensions secretary. It means she avoids having to answer tricky questions about whether her erstwhile department tried to cover up links between its controversial “fitness for work” tests and the deaths of benefit claimants.
Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s shadow minister for disabled people, and Stephen Lloyd, the Lib Dem’s work and pensions spokesman, wants to establish whether inquest rulings linking the so-called work capability assessment to the deaths of at least two mentally ill claimants were passed to the independent expert tasked with annual reviews of the test. They also want to know whether the results of internal investigations into the deaths of other claimants were passed on.
If they were, they certainly did not feature in Dr Paul Litchfield’s reviews in 2013 and 2014 – and he himself is keeping schtum. A recent Freedom of Information request from Disability News Service also failed to elicit an answer, with the Department for Work and Pensions simply saying it did not hold the information – and it clearly wasn’t prepared to find out.
Let’s see if the two crusading MPs fare any better with McVey’s successor at the DWP, the returning Remainer Amber Rudd, who in her early defence of universal credit looks every bit as evasive as McVey.
This is very much in Mike’s particular sphere of interest over at Vox Political. As a carer, Mike is very concerned about the Tories’ attacks on the disabled and the lethal consequences of their sanctions regime and the Fitness for Work tests. Followers of his blog will recall the struggle Mike had to get the DWP under IDS to release the stats on the number of people, who’d died under their reforms of the benefits system.
On Friday, 23rd November 2018, Mike ran this story speculating that the Minister for the Genocide of the Disabled had resigned because she wanted to avoid being questioned about the number of deaths Tory policies have caused:
Remember when Esther McVey quit the government last week, claiming it was because of Brexit, and I suggested she was running to avoid having to answer the criticisms of the Department for Work and Pensions raised by UN inspector Philip Alston?
It turned out that she had already exchanged words with the special rapporteur on poverty – but now it seems I was not wrong after all, as Ms McVey’s departure allowed her to avoid answering questions on a possible link between the hated Work Capability Assessment carried out by private contractors on behalf of the DWP and the deaths of benefit claimants.
This issue is whether the government showed key documents linking the deaths of claimants with the work capability assessment (WCA) to Dr Paul Litchfield, the independent expert hired to review the test in 2013 and 2014.
Dr Litchfield carried out the fourth and fifth reviews of the WCA but has refused to say if he was shown two letters written by coroners and a number of secret DWP “peer reviews”.
In the light of recent revelations, it seems reasonable to ask whether this is because he was asked to sign a ‘gagging order’ – a non-disclosure agreement requiring him not to say anything embarrassing or critical about the Conservative government or its minister.
Dr Litchfield published his two reviews in December 2013 and November 2014, but neither mentioned the documents, which all link the WCA with the deaths of claimants.
Disability News Service raised the issue in July, prompting Opposition spokespeople to send official letters demanding an explanation. Labour shadow minister for disabled people Marsha de Cordova’s was written on July 25, and Liberal Democrat work and pensions spokesman Stephen Lloyd’s followed on August 2.
Neither had received a response by the time Ms McVey walked out, as DNS reported.
I think we can safely conclude that the four-month delay – so far – indicates Ms McVey intended never to respond. The disagreement over Brexit provided a handy excuse to do a runner.
Will Amber Rudd be more forthcoming?
The evidence of her time at the Home Office suggests the opposite.
Mike’s report of the affair covered the same points as that in the Eye, but adds details about Dr Litchfield’s reports and speculates that he may not have given details of the numbers of deaths because he had been forced to sign a gagging order, as very many of the charities and other organisations working with Tweezer’s gang of cutthroats have been forced to do.
One of the problems facing modern print journalism is that by the time they’ve put a story into the paper, everyone’s already read about it on the Net. This is the reason why newspapers have increasingly become similar to magazines with celebrities interviews, media stories and articles on subjects that are of interest, but not necessarily particularly topical.
I went back to reading Private Eye after a hiatus, when I was sick and tired of the magazine’s constant attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. This seems to have calmed down recently, but I’ve no doubt that it’s still bubbling away somewhere underneath. It does carry much excellent information on the shabby deals going on behind the scenes, in politics, local government, business and the press, which isn’t reported in the rest of the media. It’s that which still makes the magazine worth reading.
However, the mainstream media has shown to a rapidly increasing number of people that it is deeply biased and untrustworthy. And it has plenty of competitors from the various left-wing news organisations on the web. Like the Disability News Service, the Canary, the Skwawkbox and very many others. Left-wing bloggers and vloggers are also increasingly turning to them, rather than rely on the viciously biased, mendacious British press. Gordon Dimmack announced on one of his videos a few weeks ago that he wasn’t going to rely on the mainstream media for his stories any longer. This was on a video in which he took apart the lies in a story in the Groaniad about Julian Assange.
The British media, including the Beeb, is feeling threatened. Very threatened. A week or so ago the Radio Times published an article lamenting the polarization in political opinion due to people no longer trusting mainstream news sources, and turning instead to others which conformed to their own views. Thus the political consensus was breaking down. They also ran another article celebrating Question Time and its presenter, Dimbleby. Well, the consensus opinion pushed by the media is largely right-wing, pro-Tory and anti-Corbyn, with the Corporation’s news as massively bias as the Tory papers, from whom some of their journos have come. And Question Time has also angered many people, because of this pro-Tory bias and the way it has packed both panels and audience with Tories and Tory supporters.
It’s entirely right that people are turning away from the lamestream media with its bias and lies to the left-wing blogs, vlogs and other news outlets on the web. They aren’t Tory propaganda outlets, and are increasingly getting the stories before the mainstream papers and broadcasters.
And as this article from Private Eye shows, one of those blogs, which is getting the news to people first, before the mainstream press, is Vox Political.
Last week Mike also put up a series of articles discussing the Beeb’s proposal to host the debate over Brexit between Corbyn and Tweezer, and showed why Corbyn should choose ITV instead. It seems the Corporation had been in negotiations with May to host the debate through Robbie, one of Tweezer’s spin doctors, who used to work at the Corporation. This had been done weeks before May issued her challenge to Corbyn, which suggested that Tweezer was hoping for some help from the ever biased BBC.
The Beeb didn’t just want a straightforward, head-to-head debate between the two party leaders. They also wanted this to be
followed by a discussion between eight panellists, including politicians, with a wide range of views on Brexit, and ending with further head-to-head debate and closing statements.
This was in contrast to ITV’s offer, which was just for a straight head-to-head debate between May and Corbyn. As Mike points out on his blog, the Beeb had no right to change the format of the debate, and suggested that their doing so may have been part of their negotiations with Tweezer. The inclusion of a panel, with members that included other politicians, also gave the Corporation too much freedom to pack the show with pro-Tory viewpoints. Like the Corporation has been doing every Thursday evening on Question Time, and on just about every news programme. If they can get in an attack against Corbyn, they will.
On Tuesday Mike put up a piece reporting that the Beeb had withdrawn their offer, and published their official reply. Which he also critiqued. Apart from the above comments about possible bias in the format, and its origins with Tweezer, Mike also commented that the Beeb’s disappointment at being unable to bring the British people this programme and its wide variety of views, shows why the Corporation still deserves its nickname of ‘Auntie’. It’s still trying to tell the British public what to think.
The Corporation did, however, say that it would have a Brexit edition of the One Show, which was apparently broadcast yesterday, and would show a programme completely devoted to Brexit on Monday, 10th December.
Mike concluded his article on this by saying that the Beeb’s withdrawal puts May into a quandary. He writes
It seems clear she has been trying to manoeuvre Mr Corbyn into a position where she can accuse him – of not understanding her Brexit plan; of trying to sabotage Brexit; or even of running away from a TV debate.
But now, with her BBC set-up scotched and all the smart money saying she won’t agree to the ITV plan, it seems that – once again – Mrs May will be the one accused of “running away”.
In fact many people said on Twitter that Corbyn would be far better off going to ITV, Channel 4 or Sky for the debate, rather than the Beeb. Because the Beeb simply can’t be trusted. Lord Adonis, one of Blair’s former cabinet ministers said it. And Tom Pride gave four good reasons in one of his tweets. These were about Andrew Neil, the host of the Daily Politics, Nick ‘Macclesfield Goebbels’ Robinson, Sarah Sands, a Beeb politics editor, and Lynn Hayter, the fake vicar.
Neil before he joined the Beeb was a former chair of the Confederation of Conservative Students, Robinson was also a chair of the Young Tories, Sands was a former editor at the Mail and Torygraph, while Hayter is an actor the Beeb dragged on claiming she was a proper, accredited member of the clergy. Instead of a self-appointed pastor of an internet church flogging the Prosperity Gospel heresy.
He also commented on how May threw a strop at the Philip Schofield for asking her an awkward question over on ITV’s This Morning. Schofield’s a good professional interviewer, but This Morning is very definitely not the Spanish Inquisition. Which May definitely didn’t expect, and couldn’t handle the torment of the comfy chair (gratuitous Monty Python reference). So Mike went on to argue that, from past evidence of May running away from a debate with Corbyn at the last election, if anyone’s going to do a runner, it’s her.
As for the Neil and Robinson, they’re only two of a newsroom packed with Tories. Mike and the other left-wing bloggers have discussed many other Tory spin doctors, who used to work at the Corporation before deciding that even trying to put up a pretence of being impartial was too much for them, and went off to join Cameron and Tweezer. Neil was also the editor of the Neoliberal The Economist, and then the Sunday Times, where, according to Lobster, he ran fake stories and disinformation for MI5. And Robinson showed how massively biased he was in his editing of an exchange between him and former SNP leader Alex Salmond during the Scots Referendum debate the other year. Goebbels Nick asked Salmond whether he was afraid that the big financial houses in Edinburgh would flee south if the Scots gained independence. Salmond gave him a full answer, denying that this would happen. Confronted by awkward facts, Robinson and his team went off and edited the exchange. First of all they made it appear as if Salmond hadn’t really answered the question, then they removed his response completely and claimed that he ignored the question.
It was one of the most blatant falsification of news that I’ve seen.
And the Beeb has a long history of this, which they’re desperately trying to deny. They’ve launched a campaign against ‘fake news’, which is risible, considering they and the lamestream media are responsible for a fair number of fake and spurious news stories. And in next week’s Radio Times, there’s a feature praising Question Time to the roof, complete with a piccie of Dimblebore with a quizzical smile on his mug.
But older readers remember how the Beeb faked footage of the police attacking the miners at the Orgreave colliery during the 1980s miners’ strike, to make it look like the miners were attacking the rozzers. And too many people have now woken up to how Question Time is consistently biased against the Left. Quite apart from the systemic bias against Corbyn on nearly every Beeb news show.
The Beeb’s withdrawal of their offer to host the Brexit debate seems to confirm just how deeply the British public are suspicious about the Beeb and its Tory bias. They don’t trust it, and will continue turning away from it until it does something to correct its bias. But this may be far too much for a state broadcaster, that automatically follows the Tory, establishment line.
Yesterday Mike put up another article showing why the Beeb can’t be trusted to host the proposed debate between Tweezer and Jeremy Corbyn. When May first announced that she wanted to debate the Labour leader over Brexit, Corbyn replied that he would relish it, and that it should be on ITV. That’s his prerogative as the person challenged. He preferred the ITV format, which would simply be the two politicos going head to head.
But this hasn’t suited the Tories nor the Beeb, which would also love to host the debate. May’s director of communications, Robbie Gibb, was a member of the Beeb’s newsroom before joining her team. And he’s definitely been angling for his former colleagues at the Corporation to get the debate. And so the Beeb, and much of the rest of the corporate media, has been claiming that May’s proposal is a challenge to Corbyn, despite the fact that he’s already accepted. According to the Canary, Corbyn’s distrusts the Beeb’s proposal because it gives Beeb editors too much power to frame the questions and rig the debate. Matt Zarb-Cousin and others on Twitter have remarked that the Beeb seems to have been trying to get this debate for several weeks. On the 6th November there was mention of an interview with Dimbleby, and on the Torygraph this last Monday, 26th November 2018, the Beeb said they’d hold a ‘Question Time’ style session if Corbyn refused. Others followed, casting scorn on the idea that the Beeb’s debate would be impartial.
They’re right. As Mike has pointed out, the Beeb has form regarding deceptive political reporting. It was also this Monday, on Newsnight, that the Beeb included Lynn Hayter, a Beeb actress and fake Pastor of a miniscule internet church, in a debate about Brexit, trying to pass her off as a real vicar.
And this is far from the only piece of such deception the Beeb has made. Others have included packing the audience and panel at Question Time with members of the Tory party, and very biased reporting against Corbyn and the Labour regarding the anti-Semitism smears. Quite apart from the fact that one after another of the Beeb’s news teams has been shown to be a member of the party, and has left to join the Tories PR department. Furthermore, Ray Tallis’ book, NHS SOS, also has a chapter on how the BBC’s reporting of the privatization of the NHS actually supported it, instead of challenging it.
Tony Greenstein, I think, in one of his articles mentioned how, when the government passed legislation allowing the CCG commissioning groups in the NHS to purchase private medical services, the Beeb declared that it gave GPs more freedom, rather than describe it for what it was. It was, he states, pure state propaganda. It’s one example of a very long line. I can remember how, in the 1980s when Thatcher was cutting public services and the welfare state, the Beeb declared after the announcement of yet another round of such cuts that it was ‘more self-help’. Which was how the Tories wanted us to view it, rather than realise that it was simply yet more denial of needed state aid to the poor and vulnerable.
And Barry and Saville Kushner in the book, Who Needs the Cuts, have shown that the Beeb gives unequal airtime to those, who have swallowed the pernicious lie that austerity is necessary, and scream down dissenting voices from activists and trade unions. That is when the latter are even allowed on air. And academic media monitoring bodies at Cardiff and Glasgow University have shown how the Beeb gives far more space to employers, Conservatives and bankers over Labour members and trade unionists.
The Beeb is massively biased and should not be allowed to host the debate between Tweezer and Corbyn.
And more and more people are realizing this. A few days ago, the left-wing Vlogger Gordon Dimmack attacked the Beeb for its bias in its reporting of Julian Assange. He has also similarly criticized the Guardian for its bias, partly over Israel. At the end of that video, he announced that the mainstream media was so biased and untrustworthy, that he was going to use instead news from the New Media sources on the internet. This means sites and blogs like the Canary, whose very capable editor, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, so frightened and outraged the hacks at the Guardian a few weeks ago that they tried to ban her from being the speaker at an event to honour Black journalism.
And the new media is also rattling the Beeb. The Radio Times this week carries yet another self-serving article promoting Question Time, and lamenting the fact that politics in Britain is becoming increasingly polarized because fewer people are watching it, preferring instead to get their news from sources that match their own opinions.
I have zero sympathy. If people are switching off Question Time, it’s no-one’s fault but the Beeb’s.
They have been biased towards the Tories for a very long time, and people have always known and realized this. But with other sources of information instantly available on the Net, which can tell you what the Beeb isn’t, the Corporation’s lies and omissions have become glaringly obvious to more and more people. If the Beeb wants to get more people to follow its news coverage, then all it needs to do is become genuinely impartial.
But I fear that this is too much for the Corporation, which responds to any criticism about its pro-Tory bias by sending its critics pompous letters about how its journalists are trained to be scrupulously impartial. Even though a casual glance at the Six O’clock News reveals that the Beeb is anything but.
Corbyn definitely should not bow to pressure to debate May on the Beeb, and viewers are definitely advised to get their news from the other, great news organisations on the Net to correct the bias of the state broadcaster.
The I’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is one of the few Fleet Street columnists, who I respect. She writes about racism, but acknowledges that it is not confined to Whites hating Blacks, but affects people of all races and colours. She’s also a genuinely moderate Muslim, fiercely critical of the bigots and preachers of hate in her religion, and condemns the White, non-Muslim politicians who pander to them in the hope of garnering votes.
Tweezer’s Denial of Asylum to Asia Bibi, Pakistani Persecuted Christian
A few weeks ago, she attacked Tweezer for refusing sanctuary to Asia Bibi, the Christian Pakistani woman acquitted of blasphemy in Pakistan. Other companies have offered to take Bibi in, but not May, who feared that it would upset this country’s Muslims. Alibhai-Brown then described the case, showing how dubious the accusation was, and the prejudice and hatred Pakistani Christians face. She also stated that the country was also unsafe for Shi’a Muslims like herself. Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had intended it to be a secular state with separation between state and mosque. But this had swiftly been overturned, most notoriously by the military dictator General Zia ul-Haqq, who ruled the place in the 1970s. Everything she said was correct. The Beeb has also screened documentaries about the arrests of people in Pakistan for blasphemy. It’s a crime that carries the death penalty, and Bibi has spent over a decade on death row. Most of those accused, however, are Muslims, and it looks very much like the majority of accusations are false, being used as a weapon in family and clan disputes. In the case of Bibi, she was accused of blasphemy by a group of women with whom she was working. They sent her to fetch water for them to drink. She stopped to take a drink herself, so they accused her of ‘polluting’ it before going to accuse her of blasphemy. Everything about it says to me that this is all about caste. Islam in Pakistan has a caste system like India, though not as severe. Many of Pakistan’s Christians are sheikhs, one of the lowest castes, working as bonded labourers in the brick kilns. It looks like Bibi was one of these low caste workers, and the Muslims for whom she fetched the water were outraged at her taking a drink from it because they believed that the touch of a low caste person polluted it. Just like high caste Indians at one time would throw away their food if even the shadow of one of the Dalits, the Untouchables, fell on it.
There’s more to be said about the case, but Alibhai-Brown was right to attack the vicious, murderous bigotry behind the accusation and Tweezer’s own cowardice in refusing to give Bibi asylum. I’d go further, and say that while there is a danger that the preachers of hate in British Islam would try to capitalize on Bibi being given asylum, that’s no evidence for not admitting her to Britain. And it also shows Tweezer’s low view of British Islam, if she thought the intolerance of bigoted minority was worth capitulating to. Not all Muslims are fanatics and bigots by any means, but Tweezer’s refusal to take in Asia Bibi suggests that she feels that nevertheless, enough of them are. It’s a decision which would delight the Islamophobes, who believe that all Muslims are a threat to traditional British religious freedom, and that liberal governments are too afraid to confront them.
Alibhai-Brown on Israel’s Persecution of the Palestinians
In yesterday’s I for the 27th November 2018, Alibhai-Brown tackled the plight of the Palestinians and their oppression under the Israelis in an article entitled ‘The Holy Land needs some goodwill: Plight of the Palestinians should be remembered by all’, on page 15. She began the article by stating that Christmas is the time when devout Christians turn their minds to the places where Christ lived, preached and died, and that there is a massive tourist industry in the Holy Land. It is a country which contains sites sacred to all three of the Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and that for centuries the religions coexisted in peace.
This is true no longer, as Israel increases its dominance. She states that Bethlehem has been turned into an open air prison, and that last year Palestinian Muslims were denied entrance to the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam. Netanyahu’s oppression of the Palestinians is supported by Donald Trump and American Christian fanatics, whose decision to move the American embassy to Jerusalem shows that Muslim Arabs mean nothing to him and his government.
Shalhoub-Kavorkian and Dimbleby on Oppressed Palestine
She then goes on to quote Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kavorkian of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on the routine brutality and second class status of the Palestinians. The prof. wrote
Violence is central to the political logic of the Israeli state and its occupation of Jerusalem. Enacted in the hundreds of daily acts of harassment perpetuated by heavily armed soldiers, police, settlers, and undercover security personnel belonging to the state of Israel, much of the violence occurs routinely and it goes largely unnoticed by the rest of the world.
Palestinians, native to and residing in Jerusalem, are categorized by Israeli law as ‘permanent residents’ or as foreign residents who hate to prove to the Ministry of Interior that their ‘centre of life’ – where they live, go to school, get medical care and pay for utilities are all taking place in Jerusalem.
She then moves on to discuss a ‘poignant’ book on Palestine, published by Jonathan Dimbleby, now the presenter of Question Time in 1980. This was when he was the maker of foreign documentaries, and the book was accompanied with photographs by Sir Donald McCullin. The book apparently shows the great diversity of Palestinian life and culture as well as moving tales of dispossession and pain. Re-reading it now, she realized how much worse their plight had become. She quotes the book as saying
The struggle is still presented in a woefully lopsided fashion: a small embattled, occasionally obstinate but usually admirable democratic state (Israel) under challenge from a despicable, occasionally pathetic, but usually brutal gang of desperadoes (the PLO).
Defending Palestine and Anti-Semitism Smears
She is very aware that simply discussing the plight of the Palestinians is met by accusations of anti-Semitism. She writes
Now the reporting of Israeli injustices brings on instant accusations of anti-Semitism.
Unfortunately, she also swallows the line that Israel was created in response to the horrors of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. It wasn’t. Jewish colonization began long before, after the Balfour Declaration during the First World War. She states that Israel exists and must exist as a safe homeland, before going to make the point that the horrors of the Nazis’ persecution don’t give Israel the right to break international laws and violate the human rights ‘of those whose land was taken to create their homeland’.
Pro-Palestinian Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
The article then goes on to discuss the book, Walking to Jerusalem, by Justin Butcher, a playwright and activist, whose launch she attended. This is the record of a pilgrimage made by hundreds of ordinary people, who went on foot to Jerusalem, funded by a small charity, the Amos Trust. The pilgrims arrived just before the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, in order to ‘change the record of a hundred years of injustice to the Palestinian people.’ She states that the marchers included Jews, which should surprise no-one, who knows how very many Jews are critical of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and the crimes committed in their name by Netanyahu’s thugs.
She also notes that over 200 Gazans were killed by Israeli forces, some of whom were medical workers and journalists. Settlers were stealing more land and homes. Although some Israelis were also wounded and killed, and too many live in fear, this was an unequal clash.
Alibhai-Brown’s Call for the Public to Contact their MPs
She concludes the article
Maybe one thing we can all do this Christmas is to ask our MPs to be more openly critical of Israel and do what the walkers did – support peaceful Palestinian men, women and children who have for so long been denied rights, livelihoods and dignity. Sometimes goodwill is the best present.
Alibhai-Brown and the Anti-Semitism Smears against the Labour Party
It’s a good article, but marred by Alibhai-Brown’s own behaviour towards Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. When the Israel lobby and Conservative media and Jewish establishment once again attacked Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour for not signing up to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, Alibhai-Brown was one of the hacks denouncing the Labour party as full of anti-Semites. But this article suggests she know how false at least some of those allegations must have been. But there is no retraction. The Fleet Street Groupthink about the Labour party, and the bias of the I’s editor and proprietor apparently appear to be too strong.
She also must realise that with the Israel lobby holding power in both the Tories and the Labour party through their ‘Friends of Israel’ groups, and the Jewish Labour Movement in the Labour party, any chance of MPs stepping out of line to risk their careers defending the Palestinians is remote. Not while there’s a chance that someone at the Israeli embassy will pick up where Shai Masot left off and start deciding that they’re a person, who shouldn’t be in the next cabinet. And although the media may claim that the affair’s all over, their haste to do so shows that the conspiracy – and the accusations of anti-Semitism against people like Mike who correctly called it that – has had the desired effect. MPs aren’t going to risk being sidelined or thrown out as anti-Semites if they dare confront the lobby.
The Israel Lobby and the Suppression of Pro-Palestinian Reporting
As for Dimbleby and his book, I very much doubt there’s much chance of anyone at the Beeb now being so courageous in criticizing Israel. Ten years ago Peter Oborne made his documentary on the Israel lobby for Channel 4’s Despatches. This showed not just the extent of the lobby in the parliamentary parties, but also how they bullied and intimidated journalists with accusations of anti-Semitism. This included Graoniad editor Alan Rusbridger, and several very well respected Beeb journos, who dared to describe the atrocities committed by Israel and the massacres by its allies, the Lebanese Christian phalange, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. These accusations were found by the broadcasting regulatory bodies to be without foundation. But that tactic is still being used by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the other thugs and bully-boys in the Israel lobby.
And this tactics will continue to be made, unless more people stand up to it. Corbyn and his supporters aren’t anti-Semites, but they were smeared as such simply because they defended the Palestinians. The Israelis are afraid that there just might be a foreign prime minister, who doesn’t defer to them, and won’t tolerate their persecution of the indigenous Arabs. Alibhai-Brown must surely realise this, but she joined their attacks on Corbyn and Labour anyway.
And those attacks on Corbyn and politicians like him will continue, unless journos like Alibhai-Brown practice what they preach and actively support and defend him and other Israel-critical politicos in their columns against such mendacious and false accusation of anti-Semitism.
On Sunday, the deliberately misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism held a rally outside the Labour Party’s HQ, protesting against the party’s anti-Semitism and demanding the removal of Jeremy Corbyn. The CAA’s leader, Gideon Falter, declared that Corbyn had made the party a haven for anti-Semites and Holocaust Deniers.
As Falter knows, or should know, this is a flat-out lie. Corbyn has always campaigned against all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. And the stats from his own wretched organisation show that under Corbyn’s leadership, anti-Semitism in the Labour party has actually fallen. It’s now lower than in other parties, such as the Tories, and wider British society, where it has actually risen.
But the CAA aren’t worried about such inconvenient things as facts. They’re true-blue Tories to a man and woman, and the organisation’s real purpose has absolutely nothing to do with combating anti-Semitism. They’re a pro-Israel outfit, who use the standard Zionist tactic of smearing the country’s critics as anti-Semites when they make awkward criticisms of it and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. This treatment includes apartheid, massacre and ethnic cleansing. But any mention of this, even by respected journalists, is rigorously policed and suppressed by the Israel lobby, who accuse those reporting it or commenting on it as anti-Semites. In the past, those reporters, who have been so attacked have included the Beeb’s Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin. And also Jonathan Dimbleby, when he made a comment objecting to the smears against his colleagues.
This alone shows how the anti-Semitism smears are a real, political witch-hunt, of the type Arthur Miller described in his classic play, The Crucible. This used the 17th century Salem witch hunt as a metaphor for the McCarthy witch hunts against suspected Communists in ’50s America. Which is also appropriate, given the way various speakers at the CAA rally seemed to be convinced that he was another Marxist.
In fact, the numbers who turned up for the CAA’s rally were small. There were no more than 250 of them, which is about the entire membership of the CAA plus a few of their mates. So, hardly a mass movement showing widespread discontent against the Labour leader.
And Falter also crossed the line when he demanded Corbyn’s removal. The CAA is registered as a charity. Under the rules of the Charity Commission, registered organisations have to be non-political. But the CAA has clearly broken this regulation by demanding the Labour leader’s removal. As a result, Tony Greenstein, a long-time critic of Israel, who has also been smeared as an anti-Semite by the Israel lobby, posted up on his website yesterday a new post about the internet petition requesting the Charity Commission to remove it as a registered charity. 5,000 people had signed it so far. Mr Greenstein was hoping this would double by the end of this week.
The CAA’s pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian agenda was inadvertently demonstrated by comic actress Maureen Lipman, who spread her own lies and falsehoods at the rally. Lipman turned up with a placard saying ‘Corbyn Made Me a Tory’, and made a speech in which she claimed that she had left the Labour party because of Jeremy Corbyn. Whoops! No, she didn’t!. She left the Labour party in 2014 after the election of Ed Miliband as leader. This was because ‘Red’ Ed had also proposed some pro-Palestinian policies. She was complaining then about how his election showed that Labour was anti-Semitic. Hardly. Most people would probably argue otherwise, as Miliband is of Jewish heritage. For some people, some of the attacks on him and his father, Ralph, such as those of the Daily Mail, also had very nasty anti-Semitic overtones. As Mike’s article on this shows, the internet has been having immense fun with Lipman’s selective memory. Jokes about her include the suggestion that she has a time machine to go back to Ed Miliband’s election, so she could resign then in protest against Corbyn’s election.
Lipman also let the cat out of the bag about the real, underlying reason for the protests against Corbyn. She attacked him for always criticising Israel, and sticking up for the Palestinians. This is exactly the reason behind these allegations, and the pressure on the Labour party to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that defines as including criticism of Israel. This is despite the fact that Wilhelm Marr, the noxious German politico, who founded modern anti-Semitism in the 19th century and who coined the term, defined it solely as hatred of Jews as Jews.
I’m not surprised Lipman turned up at the rally. She has appeared in the press making noises about how Corbyn is a supporter of ‘terrorism’. She said it a month or so ago in an interview in the pages of the Radio Times. At the rally, she also claimed that Corbyn was a Marxist, who was trying to bring it back because it had worked so well in the rest of the world.
As so many people have pointed out, including Mike over at Vox Political and this blog, Corbyn isn’t a Marxist. He’s actually centre left, closer to the social democratic consensus which advocated a mixed economy, strong trade unions and social mobility. George Galloway despatched the accusation that Corbyn was a Marxist a year or so ago. The Scots political maverick stated that he’d known Corbyn for a very long time, and he wasn’t. But why let inconvenient facts get in the way of a good, Tory and Blairites smear?
The accusation that Corbyn’s a Marxist says nothing about him, but it says plenty about Lipman and her supporters. Rather than being a ‘disenfranchised socialist’ as she claimed, she comes across as another Blairite, worried that Blair’s policy of handing large sections of the state over to private industry is now going to be stopped by Corbyn. Communism didn’t work, although the capitalism that succeeded it in Russia hasn’t made things any better for ordinary people over there either. And neoliberal capitalism is failing here. It has brought ordinary working people in Britain and across the world nothing but poverty, starvation and hardship, all for the profit of big business and the immensely rich. Corbyn’s right to end it.
The CAA’s rally on Sunday was a pathetic affair, at which they just spewed the usual accusations against the Labour leader, all in support of the real reason for wanting his removal: to continue the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians without criticism, and keep the Blairite neoliberals in control of the Labour party. It’s depressing to see Maureen Lipman supporting them, as normally I have a lot of respect for her. But all too often you find that people you respect have monstrous or repulsive views in some area or another, and Lipman is no different.
The papers and TV news were naturally full of the anti-Corbyn rally organised by the Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies of British Jews. They claim Corbyn is an anti-Semite and sides with anti-Semites in the Labour party. As I’ve blogged about countless times before, this is vile rubbish. Corbyn and his supporters aren’t. The real reason they were protesting is that he wants a just settlement with Palestinians which will stop the ethnic cleansing and the theft of their land. But this is too much for the racial nationalists of the Israel lobby, who are driven into a sanctimonious, self-righteous fury if anyone dares to mention how racist Israel is, or reports the brutality it metes out to the Palestinians and other Arabs.
Amongst the piccies of the pro-Israel racists and hypocrites all decrying Corbyn in the I newspaper was this little photo below.
It’s of a group from Labour Against the Witch Hunt. The I never commented on them, which seems to me to indicate that they either didn’t know who they were, and thought they were another group of anti-Corbyn protesters. Or the I knew full well who they were, but were afraid to point them out in case they too were smeared as anti-Semites simply for reporting them.
Labour Against the Witch Hunt very definitely aren’t connected to the Israel lobby, and the British mouthpieces like the Jewish Leadership Council. They directly opposed to them. They’re for all the Labour members, that have been wrongly expelled, suspended or smeared as anti-Semites. As I’ve stated repeatedly, these people include self-respecting, secular and Torah observant Jews and genuinely anti-racist gentiles. Many of these people, Jews and gentiles, have been attacked by real Nazis for trying to combat racism and anti-Semitism. And the Jews smeared are often people, who have suffered anti-Semitic abuse and assault. And I have no doubt that many of them did have family members butchered in the obscenity of the Holocaust.
But they are not going to get coverage from the press, the Beeb and the other TV channels. Because these are all biased towards the Tories, or else back the Blairites, who are deeply enmeshed in the Israel lobby. And the power of the Israel lobby is too strong for many editors. These bigots are so arrogant, that they even claimed respected BBC jouros like Jeremy Bowen and Orla Guerin were anti-Semitic, simply because they dared to report Israeli atrocities during the invasion of Lebanon. And when Jonathan Dimbleby criticised these smears, he too was investigated for anti-Semitism.
Corbyn isn’t an anti-Semite, and this isn’t about anti-Semitism. This is about the Israel lobby using it as a weapon to get rid of a Labour leader they hate and fear, backed by a craven, mendacious and deeply compromised press. It’s long past the time it was stopped.
This morning, Mike put up a piece taking a part the letter written by Jonathans Arkush and Goldstein attacking Jeremy Corbyn for being too soft on the supposed rampant anti-Semitism in the Labour party. The story’s also covered in the I newspaper, which doesn’t name the two. It just describes the letter as written by ‘Jewish community leaders’. In fact, one of them is from the Jewish Leadership Council and the other is from the Board of Deputies of British Jews. They accuse Corbyn of ignoring the issues that are important to mainstream British Jews. Their real concern, however, is revealed in their comments about how Cobyn and the Labour party under him are motivated by the Far Left’s hatred of Zionism, Israel, and the Israel lobby. As Mike has shown, Corbyn is not far left. He’s centre-left. He only appears far left compared to the Blairites and the Tories, who want everything privatised, including the NHS, following the ideological dictates of Margaret Thatcher. But then, factual accuracy is not these guys’ concern. Smearing the left and the opponents of Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians is.
Mike’s put up a couple of videos showing that Corbyn has always been an opponent of racism and anti-Semitism, so Arkush and Goldstein’s smear of him and his followers as anti-Semites is the purest nonsense. Nor is he an opponent of the state Israel. I was told this by a commenter on one of my posts about Israel and the Israel lobby, who objected to my using the term ‘Zionism’. He felt it played into the hands of those smearing the Labour leader. I am happy to be corrected. But what Corbyn does oppose is Israeli apartheid, its oppression of the indigenous Palestinians, and its seven decades long campaign to purge them from Israel. It is this, which Arkush and Goldstein are defending when the smear the Labour leader, and the other critics of Israel. They cannot defend Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, as it’s indefensible. So indefensible that they object to anyone even mentioning it or describing Israel as an apartheid state, or comparing it to Nazi Germany, even though the comparison is apt in so far as Nazi policy went as far as 1942 and the launch of the Final Solution. And unable to describe the brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis, all the Israel lobby can do is try to silence its critics by accusing them of anti-Semitism. Any mention of Israeli atrocities in the press will get the journalists responsible for the article smeared as anti-Semites. I put up a documentary from Channel 4’s Despatches, broadcast in 2009 and present by Peter Oborne, which described just how nasty, bullying and mendacious the Israel lobby is. Among those they threatened and accused of anti-Semitism were Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, and respected BBC journos Jeremy Bowen. When one of the Dimblebores attacked them for their smears, they also had the BBC investigate him for anti-Semitism.
Mike states that this letter has been written to stop Labour winning the coming council elections. He’s undoubtedly right. This would terrify the Blairites and the Israel lobby, quite apart from the Tories. But the right of both of these organisations to speak on behalf of the wider Jewish community is questionable. The Jewish Leadership Council is very closely connected to explicitly Zionist groups. But it’s under something of a cloud, as its former chief, Jeremy ‘No Morals’ Newmark was embezzling money from Jewish charities. They sacked him, but decided not to call in the rozzers in order to avoid a scandal. As for the Board of Deputies of British Jews, its members are nominated by their synagogues, so it doesn’t speak for secular Jews. Nor are they democratically elected. They are also true-blue Tory establishment. They are determined to maintain themselves as the top Jewish organisation in the UK by exerting a monopoly of control over all other Jewish organisations. One of the reasons the Board hated Ken Livingstone was because Leninspart gave a small grant when he was head of the GLC to a Jewish Socialist group that wasn’t affiliated to them, and which was beyond their control. Temper tantrums and accusations of anti-Semitism followed.
Their letter is also rather desperate. An increasing number of Jewish Americans are turning against Israel because of its maltreatment of the Palestinians. This includes many, who have suffered anti-Semitic abuse and assault themselves. Over here there are Jewish, pro-Palestinian organisations, that very definitely do not accept anti-Semites. But you won’t hear about them from liars and smearers like Arkush and Goldstein. Very many of the people in the Labour party, who have been smeared as anti-Semites, are decent, self-respecting Jews. And many of them have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and attack by Fascists and racists. But because they have criticised Israel, the Israel lobby has smeared them as anti-Semitic and ‘self-hating’. A grotesque, monstrous libel. As for speaking for the wider Jewish community on the issue of Israel, at the moment something like 77 per cent of British Jews say that Israel is very important to their sense of identity. But how long this will last, if Jewish young people over here follow the lead of Jewish Americans, is a very good point. It looks like the Israel lobby is well aware of this possibility, and are starting to panic.
This is simply another instance of the arch-Tory Jewish establishment smearing anyone, who stands up for the Palestinians, as an anti-Semite. Especially those on the Left. As others have shown, the Tories have a very long history of anti-Semitism and connections to real Fascist organisations. But there’s hardly a mention of this from the Israel lobby and the likes of Goldstein and Arkush.
The Israel lobby’s promiscuous use of accusations of anti-Semitism reminds me of Pemberton Billing and his ‘little black book’. Pemberton Billing was an extreme right-wing Tory MP around the time of the First World War with a particular paranoid hatred of gays. He maintained he had a book with the names of 50,000 ‘devotees of Sodom and Lesbia’, who were aiding the Germans. Of course, British society back then was very homophobic. Homosexuality was illegal, and homosexuals generally bitterly hated. But Billing went far beyond the usual levels of hate and prejudice. He went off and smeared a number of people as supposed gays. And when one sued for libel, the case collapsed because Billing then accused the judge of being one of those in his book.
I am not accusing Arkush and Goldstein of being homophobic. I am accusing them of trying to start another witch hunt against the Labour party using fake accusations of anti-Semitism in the same way that Pemberton Billing libelled many good people with his accusations of homosexuality and treason.
This latest letter is a grotesque, politically motivated attempt to smear Jeremy Corbyn and prevent the Labour party getting into power. It shames the people the two, who wrote it, and the mendacious, biased press, who uncritically repeat its lies.
On Sunday night, Lobster put up my review for them of Philip M. Coupland’s Farming, Fascism and Ecology: A Life of Jorian Jenks (Abingdon: Routledge 2017). Jenks was the son of a Liberal lawyer, but from childhood he always wanted to be a farmer. After studying at agricultural college in Britain, he then went to New Zealand to seek his fortune there. He couldn’t acquire a farm, and so worked as an agricultural official for the New Zealand government. He returned to Britain to begin an agricultural career over here, becoming one of the pioneers of the nascent Green and organic movements.
Jenks was convinced that laissez faire economics was creating massive soil erosion and infertility. If this was not checked, mass starvation and famine would result. He believed that Britain should concentrate on developing its own agriculture to the fullest extent possible, and not live ‘parasitically’ from the produce of its colonies. This was disastrous for them, and forced the peoples of those colonies into poverty as they were forced to subsidise the production of the goods they exported to the motherland. Jenks wished to see a return to an organic, agricultural society to replace the passive proletariat into which working people had been depressed. He was bitterly critical of the influence of finance capitalism, which he believed manipulated politics from behind the scenes. Due to its covert influence, democracy was a sham.
Jenks was sincere in his desire to improve conditions for farmers and farm workers, and was part of a series of non-party political organisations which worked to accomplish this, whose members also included socialists. He joined the BUF and wrote several articles for their magazine, and drafted their agricultural policy, because he found that Mosley’s ideas for the regeneration of British agriculture were very much in line with his own. Mosley’s went much further, however, and demanded the establishment of an agricultural corporation which would include representatives of the farmers, farm workers’ union, and consumers, as part of a Fascist corporative state.
Jenks was a founder member of the Soil Association, but because of his Fascist politics, he’s obviously an extremely controversial figure. Coupland’s book notes how Jenks has been used by figures on both the Left and Right to discredit the Green movement, and how he was denounced by the present head of the Soil Association, Jonathan Dimbleby.
Jenks is therefore interesting as the subject of a biography, not just in himself, but also in the wider context of British politics, Fascism and the emergence of the British and global Green movement. He was in contact with the leaders of similar movements around the world, including America and New Zealand, where the heads of these organisations were Jewish, as well as Germany. There much of the early Green movement disgustingly appears to have been founded by Nazis like Walter Darre, the head of Hitler’s agricultural department and ‘Reich Peasant Leader’.
Jenks was also a vicious anti-Semite. He actually didn’t write or say much about the Jews. However, some of the passages where he does talk about them are chilling, as the language used is very close to genocidal, if not actually well into it. Coupland writes
Several times Jenks also paralleled the issue of agricultural vermin to the ‘Jewish problem’. On one occasion, he compared these two issues, writing that: ‘There can be no truce with Brer Rabbit any more than there can be with the undesirable alien. If he is tolerated, he takes possession. He gives no quarter and should be given none. Of the rabbit, Jenks wrote:
[s]o long as you don’t have to foot the bill it’s easy to be sentimental about him as it is to be sentimental about the Jews. But the result in each case is that the poor defenceless creature ultimately takes possession. Any sensible person will agree that the best way to stop cruelty to rabbits is to abolish them, and if modern methods could be systematically applied, abolition is by no means impossible.
A year or so later, Jenks commended Colonel Leonard Ropner, MP for his denunciation in the House of Commons of rabbits as ‘a plague’ and for his statement that ‘If virtual extermination cannot be obtained, the next best thing is to provide effective control.’ In a scarcely veiled reference to the Jews, he continued that [t]he attitude of British Union towards the rabbits is similar to its attitude towards the two-legged plague – Britons First.
Given the shadow cast over history by the German programme to exterminate the Jews during the Second World War, it is difficult to read these lines without imputing to Jenks a desire that Jews and rabbits should share the same fate. However, even in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, this was not the objective of policy, no matter how cruel and unjust the treatment of the Jewish people there, systematic murder only replaced the policy of forced emigration in the particular conjunction of circumstances from 1941 onwards. Jenks was clear about what was required for the Jews:
There is then but one solution; to remove anti-Semitism by removing the Semite, to relieve irritation by removing the irritant,, to end the circumstances which have made the Jew a parasite by bringing about the re-integration of the Jewish nation.
He suggested this might be achieved in one of the ‘sparsely-populated but fertile areas in Africa, in South America, in Asiatic Russia, in which a re-united Jewish race could create anew its nationality and establish a new home.’ This echoed BUF policy, as detailed in Mosley’s Tomorrow We Live, which demanded the compulsory resettlement of Jews in Britain to a territory other than Palestine. Jenks’ prescription for the Jewish future was additionally connected to his central assumption that a healthy national society was one rooted in the soil:
In regaining contact with the soil, it would set the Jewish character on a broader basis; in regaining national dignity, it would triumphantly fulfil its racial destiny. In withdrawing its disturbing influence from other nations, it would obtain peace and goodwill in place of strife and animosity. (Pp. 103-4).
I’m writing about his vile views of the Jews, and recommendations that they be expelled and given a homeland elsewhere, in order to criticise and attack one of the other arguments used to smear Mike and very many other, decent people as anti-Semites because they had the temerity to mention the Ha’avara Agreement. This was the brief pact Hitler made with the Zionists to send Jews to Palestine, then under the British Mandate, before the Nazis decided on their vile ‘Final Solution’ in 1942. But according to the Blairites and the Israel lobby, if you mention this, as Ken Livingstone did, you’re an anti-Semite. Mike did, as part of his defence of Livingstone in his ‘The Livingstone Presumption’, and like Red Ken, he was duly smeared.
It is an historical fact, however, that many of the people, who demanded a separate homeland for the Jews were anti-Semites and Fascists. They wanted them to be given a homeland elsewhere as a way of removing them from their real homelands in Europe. And the last paragraph, in which Jenks describes how the Jewish people would benefit from having a homeland of their own, is actually very close indeed, if not identical, to the aspirations of the Zionists themselves. They too hoped that anti-Semitism would cease if Jews became like other peoples and had a homeland of their own. And Mike, Red Ken and the others, who discussed this, were not anti-Semites for doing so. The smears against them were a vicious attempt by the Israel lobby to suppress and rewrite history in order to deal with their opponents in the Labour party.
It’s time Mike and the other decent people, who’ve been libelled and smeared, had justice and were reinstated. And for those, who libelled them instead to be investigated and brought to account for their libels.
My review is at Lobster 76. Go over to the Lobster site, click on ’76’, and then click on article when it appears on the contents.
Presented by the Conservative journo Peter Oborne, this is a very hard-hitting and extensive investigation into the malign influence and tactics of the Israel lobby. It covers not just the soft corruption of political lobbying – the various donations in money and paid trips to Israel given to Tory and Labour politicos, but also the co-ordinated smear campaign against anyone who dares to speak out in favour of the Israeli state’s victims. It’s a smear campaign that has seen very respected members of the Jewish community, including senior rabbis, and BBC journos like the late Orla Guerin, Jeremy Bowen and even Jonathan Dimbleby accused of anti-Semitism. The result has been that the Beeb was pressured not to put out an appeal for the victims of Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and there was complaints about its coverage of those murdered by Israel’s allies in the Christian Fascists of the Lebanese Phalange in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. And there has been constant pressure by these same bullying thugs on the Groaniad under its former editor, Alan Rusbridger. Who really does look like Harry Potter. Much of this pressure and screaming abuse seems to have come from America. The organisations are carefully structured, so that they keep the total number of donations secret, and their donors hide behind anonymity. When investigated they repeat the same, smooth words about just trying to keep the argument open by presenting Israel’s case, or mutter platitudes about supporting a two-state solution. All the while doing their level best to make sure that their voice is the only the British public hear, and rabidly pursuing business deals on stolen Palestinian land.
I’m afraid I may have misheard some of the names in the programme, and so misspelled them, but they should be roughly accurate.
The documentary begins with the Israeli invasion of Gaza and the Conservative Friends of Israel. Despite the horrendous carnage and destruction wrought, David Cameron in a speech made no mention of this, but instead praised the Israelis and his pledged his lasting support to them if he became Prime Minister. It was this that prompted Oborne to launch his own investigation into the Israel lobby. He makes the point that they have influence on both sides of Parliament, as shown by an exchange between a Conservative MP, who was a member of Conservative Friends of Israel, who asked a question about Israel’s continuing safety. This was answered by a Labour MP, who was a member of the Labour Friends of Israel. Oborne then interviews Michael Ancram, former Tory Shadow Foreign Secretary from 2003-5, about the Israel Lobby’s influence. as well as Sir Richard Dalton, the former British ambassador to Iran from 2003-6. Dalton states clearly that the Israel Lobby does exist, and is important in defining the debate about Israel and the Palestinians. The Conservative Friends of Israel is highly influential, and boasts that it includes 80 per cent of all Tory MPs. Its chair, Richard Huntingdon, received £20,000 last year (2008) in donations, and gave £34,000 to the Conservatives. And the director of the No. 10 club, that exclusive Tory fundraising outfit in which, for a mere £50,000, you can meet David Cameron or have lunch with William Hague, is also included. The Tory Friends of Israel also arrange paid trips to Israel for MPs. So far there have been more of these than equivalent trips to America and Europe combined. Oborne states that in fairness, he has to say that he went on one of these, and there was no pressure to report favourably about Israel. But two MPs, who went on one of these trips, then received afterwards £25,000 in donations. This prompts Oborne to ask Ancram if this explains the soft line taken by the Tories about Israeli influence, and why the Tories don’t like to talk about it.
The documentary then moves on to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during which 1,000 Lebanese civilians were killed, and $3.6 billion’s worth of damage inflicted. Michael Howard gave William Hague £25,000 in donations. Hague then made the mistake of making a speech criticising the Israeli response to Lebanese attacks as disproportionate. As a result, Lord Kalms, a CFI donor and head of the Dixons electronics chain, was outraged, and threatened to withhold further funding. Which he did, and Hague never received a penny more. The Israel lobby attacks even the mildest criticism of Israel. The director of the CFI, Stuart Pollak, had a meeting with David Cameron after the speech. Then, at his lunch with the CFI, Cameron didn’t mention the Lebanese invasion at all.
The programme then moves on to the organisation’s income, as revealed by the Parliamentary Accounts Register. For comparison, the pro-Arab lobby revealed that they had been given £43,000 in donations. How many had the CFI been given? No-one knows. They didn’t register any. They’re structured as a group of individuals, and are not incorporated, so they don’t have declare any under the rules. In 2008 the CFI gave the Tories £2 million, but this is not the whole story. One Tory MP said that after a chance meeting with Stuart Pollak, he received two donations from businessmen he had never met, and who did not live in his constituency. The CFI gave £30,000 to Cameron’s team. And in 2005 Cameron met Plocha Zabludowicz, who gave the future Tory PM £15,000 and a further £35,000 to Tory Central Office. The total figure for the donations given by the CFI is £10 million, more than the other lobbies.
Then there’s the incident of the UN vote over a motion censuring both Hamas and Israel for the carnage in Gaza. The CFI rang Hague up to condemn the resolution and demand that he criticise it. Which he duly did.
But the Israel Lobby only became really powerful in Britain under Maggie’s favourite Labour pet, Tony Blair. Jon Mandelsohn, a prominent pro-Israel lobbyist, stated that ‘Zionism is pervasive in New Labour’ and ‘It is axiomatic that Blair will come to Labour Friends of Israel meetings’. There are more Labour MPs in Labour Friends of Israel than their opponents across the benches in the Tory Friends of Israel. The documentary describes how Blair met the rock entrepreneur, Lord Levy, at the Israeli embassy, who then raised £15 million for the Labour party before the row over ‘cash for questions’. When Blair became PM in 1997, he gave Levy a life peerage. Levy, however, was unpaid and never a formal servant of the British state, so that the deals he made as Blair’s special envoy to the Middle East between Israel and the Arab nations could be kept secret. The programme interviews Prof. Avi Shlaim of Oxford University’s Middle East department, who states that he considers Levy has damaged Britain’s reputation in the Middle East.
The documentary then moves back to CFI lobbyists at the Tory party conference. Their purpose there is to make sure Cameron’s policies are in line with Israel’s This means that Michael Kaminski, the Polish leader, who heads a small, far right nationalist party, is lionised by the Tories, despite his record of making anti-Semitic remarks and his refusal to apologise for the suffering of Jewish Poles during the Second World War. Stuart Pollak was most keen not to have Cameron’s speech to the CFI at the Tory conference covered. He is shown waving the camera crew away. The CFI totally support Kaminski. They also plead that they’re totally transparent through the distinction between their donations as a group, and those of individual businesspeople.
Honest Reporting claims to have 175,000 subscribers, and organises letter writing campaigns against the Beeb. The BBC Trust censured Jeremy Bowen for comments he made about the history of the conflict. His piece was withdrawn. But Bowen had published an article the week before in the Jewish Chronicle, using the same phrases that Honest Reporting found so objectionable, and which was still up at that rag’s website. CAMERA and the other parts of the Israel lobby complained, forcing the Beeb to investigate Bowen. This had a chilling effect on the other staff in the newsroom, who felt that they too were under attack. Jonathan Dimbleby thought the BBC had caved in under pressure from them. Which meant that he too came under investigation for anti-Semitism for making the above comments. The BBC Trust went to Oxford to interview Avi Shlaim about Bowen. Shlaim said that he couldn’t fault Bowen’s comments, concludes that some people in the Jewish community are too quick to criticise reporting. As for Honest Reporting, their office is not in Britain but Jerusalem. Their managing Director Simon Flosker is British, but worked for BICOM and the Israeli Army Press Office. Flosker declined to be interviewed, but issued a statement claiming that the BBC and the Guardian were biased against Israel, more so than other countries such as America.
And then there is the noxious incident, where these scum stopped the BBC raising an appeal for the victims of the Gaza invasion. The BBC has a long history of raising appeals for the victims of disasters. During Israel’s invasion 1,000 civilians in Gaza were killed. There was a move for the BBC to broadcast an appeal, but this was turned down by the Beeb’s Director-General, Mark Thompson. Ben Bradshaw, the Labour Minister for Media, was outraged. He stated that the Israel lobby was showing all the qualities of a bully. A BBC spokeswoman then explains to Oborne that the issue was too much trouble, and that it would cause people to lose confidence in the Corporation’s impartiality. She claims that the corporation took the advice of an independent committee. But Niam Alam, who was a member of the Committee, resigned over it. He said that the Committee never met to discuss the issue, and was never consulted. The appeal was eventually broadcast on Channel 4, where there were absolutely no complaints about its impartiality. Oborne’s documentary includes the appeal to show that it is, indeed, apolitical and impartial. The other members of the Committee refused to speak in public. When he tried to get them, and other charities and aid agencies, to talk about general humanitarian issues, they too declined. They included Oxfam, Christian Aid, Catholic Aid, and Cathod.
The Beeb’s decision not to broadcast the appeal is unusual, and breaks with the Corporation’s long tradition of making such broadcasts. In 1982 the Corporation broadcast an appeal for the victims of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, during which Palestinian men were butchered in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Christian Phalange, who were Israel’s allies during the invasion. Oborne states that the BBC is in danger of losing its reputation for impartiality around the world. The Israel Lobby has good access to politicos, and their loyalty is not to Britain, but to a mixture of interests, which may include Britain, but also the interests of another country. Oborne states that in making the documentary they have found nothing like a conspiracy, but a lack of transparency and the influence of the Israel lobby continues to be felt.
Of course, Oborne was accused of anti-Semitism for this piece, which he was successfully able to defend himself against. Looking at his denial of finding a conspiracy, you can see how he is attempting to fend off one of the accusations that has been levelled at Mike. He was accused of promoting Nazi-style conspiracy theories because he called the meeting between Shai Masot and the Tory Israel Lobby about arranging, who they wanted in the cabinet a conspiracy. This is what it is. It had nothing to do with stupid theories about international bankers financing communism to destroy the White race. it was a real conspiracy, just as there have always been real conspiracies of secretive groups meeting to pursue distinct political goals. Like the various CIA and British Secret Service intelligence operations run against Communism during the Cold War, and the various other lobbying groups now infesting parliament.
The picture that emerges of the Israel lobby is that it is a collection of very wealthy, very well-funded groups determined to suppress even mild criticism of Israel through ruthless bullying and intimidation. And it seems clear to me that Mike, and the others libelled as anti-Semites by the Sunday Times, the Mail, Express, Scum and Jerusalem Post, were the subjects of an organised campaign by the Tory Friends of Israel, possibly with the collusion of the Israeli embassy.
It also raises profound questions about Mike’s suspension from the Labour party. He was given no formal charges, and the identity of his accuser was never disclosed. How convenient. So who were they? Jonathan Mendelsohn, perhaps? One of the other high-ranking Blairites, scared that Mike was giving their former beloved leader a dam’ good, and very well deserved bashing? And behind them is their another pro-Israel donor, someone like Lord Levy, who will get into a ‘fearful bate’, as Molesworth would sa, and take his money elsewhere if the Labour party didn’t dance to his tune.
These groups are vicious, nasty, bullies, who libel and smear with impunity. It’s high time they were stopped in their tracks. Too many decent people, including self-respecting Jews, have been smeared as anti-Semites by these scoundrels. But from the comments of one of the Israel lobby’s leaders, Schanzer, it appears that they may be overreaching themselves. The claims of anti-Semitism have been overused. They’re not having the same effect. Well, soon I hope these accusations in this context will have no effect at all. And the time can’t come soon enough when that will happen, and when those who make those smears will have to face justice for their lies.
Here’s the video:
There’s a full transcript of it at Open Democracy Net.
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