Jewish Chronicle Attacks Katie Hopkin’s Islamophobic, pro-Israel Movie

Here’s a turn-up for the books. Katie Hopkins, the racist motormouth with a particular hatred of Islam, has found herself and her film, Homelands, panned by the Jewish Chronicle. Which was also shocked and disturbed by the growth of Fascism in the Jewish community, as shown by the far right sympathies of the mostly, but not exclusively Jewish audience.

Hopkins has been hawking her film around for a little time now. It’s about how decent Jewish and Christian Brits are being forced out of Britain by Muslims. It celebrates Israel as a sanctuary to which Jews can flee, while lamenting that no similar place exists for Christians. Obviously, it’s an immensely controversial flick. As Zelo Street described in an article a few days ago, she had a bit of difficulty finding a venue that would screen it in Israel: three venues turned her down, and the Board of Deputies of British Jews also severely criticised it. But she and her fellow islamophobe, the former kipper MEP Janice Atkinson, succeeded in getting it shown last night at the Pillar Hotel in Hendon. Hopkins was there, along with Ambrosine Shitrit and Sharon Klaff, two members of the ultra-Zionist Jewish right mentioned very frequently by Tony Greenstein in his articles. Also in attendance were Ros Pine and Anne-Marie Waters. Ros Pine is a member of the Board of Deputies, who was suspended last year for six years for describing Muslims as ‘the vilest of animals’. Anne-Marie Water is the founder of the islamophobic party, For Britain. And the JC’s correspondence, Ben Weich, was also there. And not remotely impressed.

According to Weich, the film opened with sepia-toned footage of wartime Britain, described as the ‘Britain our grandparents used to know’. This had a ‘shared sense of British pride’, to which people from across our colonies ‘flooded to partake’. Then Hopkins was shown visiting Savile Town, a suburb of Dewsbury which is 90 per cent Muslim. The film finally moved to Israel, with the woman nicknamed Hatey Katie expressing her envy for Jews, because ‘Brits don’t have an Israel to flee Europe to.’

Weich stated that the film was laughable propaganda, but the atmosphere during the Q&A session that followed was febrile and no joke. He said that for about an hour, members of the 100-strong audience, which was mostly but not exclusively Jewish, announced in turn that they were ‘devout islamophobes’ and followers of Meir Kahane, an ultra-right wing convicted terrorist, whose Kach organisation was banned by the Israeli authorities. After the film was over, the Jewish attendees denied that the film was islamophobic. All of them insisted that there was a difference between ‘racism and the truth’. But none of them wanted to give their names.

Weich ended his article with the words

“Jewish flirtation with the far right and extreme nationalism – less than a century removed from the Holocaust – is nauseating and ironic in equal measure”.

And the Zelo Street article itself concludes

Katie Hopkins is playing to extremists. wherever she goes. Well called out by the JC.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/07/jewish-chronicle-slams-katie-hopkins.html

While the Jewish Chronicle is to be congratulated for attacking Hopkins, her wretched film, and the islamophobia and Fascism of its mostly Jewish audience, the rag is still responsible for vilely smearing Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, including Mike, simply because they’re critical of Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians, or dare to defend those who do. Stephen Pollard, its editor, is himself an islamophobe, who considers Muslims and socialists to be a threat to western civilisation. And the Board fully supports these smears and vilifications in defence of the apartheid state. The former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs, also shares extreme Israeli nationalist sympathies. He took a party of British Jews to participate in the March of the Flags, in which ultra-nationalist Israelis march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem vandalising property and intimidating the residents. This was despite British Jewish organisations appealing to Sachs not to go. And at all the pro-Israel, anti-Corbyn demonstrations there have been a young couple wearing T-shirts with the Kach symbol, expressing their sympathies for the Israeli Fascist right.

And I also wonder how many of the audience for Hatey Katie’s wretched flick were members of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which itself is viciously islamophobic, as well as smearing decent people as anti-Semites simply because they want the Israeli state to stop persecuting the Palestinians.

Weich is right to be disturbed about islamophobia and Fascism in the Jewish community. But the Jewish Chronicle, Board of Deputies and Chief Rabbis are also responsible for its growth due to their uncritical support for Israel and zealous smearing of its critics.

 

Panorama Investigation into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party

According to next week’s Radio Times, the Beeb will be broadcasting a special documentary, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?, next Wednesday, 10th July 2019, at 9.00 pm on BBC 1. The blurb for it on page 78 of the magazine runs

Interviews with insiders and access to confidential communications and documents tell the story of how the anti-Semitism crisis gripping the Labour party developed. In a Panorama special, John Ware reveals the evasions and contradictions at the heart of the party, which leader Jeremy Corbyn says has anti-racism at its core.

Now, will this be a genuinely unbiased report, or will it once again that the Beeb’s reporting of the Labour party, and particularly this issue, is massively biased? From the blurb’s wording, I’m not optimistic. The phrase ‘evasions and contradictions’ seems to suggest that the party is genuinely anti-Semitic, despite Corbyn’s claim to be anti-racist. I don’t doubt that most of the airtime will be occupied by the witch-hunters, the smear merchants and Conservative and Zionist establishment mouthpieces, including the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbis Sachs and Mirvis, Gideon Falter and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, all screaming that Labour is anti-Semitic, because of their fanatical opposition to even the mildest criticism of Israel.

And how much airtime will be given to those refuting these allegations, groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewdas or the victims and their organisation, Labour Against the Witchhunt. Will we see Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Martin Odoni, Mike Sivier, Cyril Chilson and so many, many others, appear on the programme to present their case, and show how they have been smeared and libelled by the Blairites and Zionists? I doubt it. I doubt it very much. I dare say there might be a token appearance by one or two, but I haven’t heard of Mike being contacted by the programme’s producers, for example. I realise Mike’s only one of those attacked, but he was sufficiently important to the smear merchants that the Sunday Times as well as the Labour party smeared him as an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. And this all happened suspiciously at the same time as Mike was standing for election as a local councillor in his part of Wales.

The Radio Times lists the producer as Leo Telling, and the executive producer as Neil Grant, so these are two of the people responsible for it. It will be very interesting indeed to see what the programme does say, and how it represents the massive injustice inflicted on the anti-racists the witch-hunters have so vilely maligned.

‘I’ Newspaper on Rowling and Riley Planning to Launch Blairite Party

Today’s I for 12th February 2019 also carried the news that J.K. Rowling, Rachel Riley and Tracey-Ann Oberman were in a meeting with former members of Blair’s staff to launch this new, Centrist party that has periodically been mooted for the past year or so.

The article by Jane Clinton, ‘Rowling and Riley ‘plotting Blairite party’, on page 26 of the paper, runs

Countdown’s Rachel Riley and former EastEnders actress Tracy Ann Oberman have joined forces with advisers from Tony Blair’s government and JK Rowling’s agent to create a centrist breakaway Labour party.

Riley and Oberman, who are both Jewish, have been attacked by Labour supporters for criticizing Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed the party. Riley revealed last month that Channel 4 bosses ordered extra protection following her comments.

They met Blair’s former chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, and his former speechwriter, Philip Collins, last Tuesday at the London offices of Ms Rowling’s agent, Neil Blair. There were 50 supporters present.

Details of the event, confirmed by I, include the creation of a pro-European centrist party which would appeal to the left of the Conservative party and the right of Labour.

Observers believe its creation would be the death knell for the Liberal Democrats.

At the meeting, during discussions as to who should be leader of the new party, Rowling’s name was shouted out to applause.

The Harry Potter author has been critical of Mr Corbyn, but leadership is not believed to be her ambition. Instead, it is thought shemay offer financial backing or fund a think-tank.

The good peeps over at Zelo Street have already critiqued this piece of Blairite aspiration, and pronounced the new party DOA. They note that such a party has been mooted several times, the names of various right-wing Labour MPs have been suggested in connection with it. And each time take-off has been aborted or not even attempted.

They point out that people have been proclaiming the death of the Lib Dems since the 1950s, but each time such predictions have been greatly exaggerated. The article goes on to mention the serious matter of Riley’s and Oberman’s conduct, which makes them totally unsuitable as leaders for any new party. Oberman threatened to sue blogger Shaun Lawson because he mentioned her in one of his tweets and in an article. Why? Because Riley, Oberman and their followers had viciously attacked and smeared a 16-year old schoolgirl and her father with false claims of anti-Semitism. The girl, who suffers from anxiety anyway, was threatened and harassed. Zelo Street concludes

Well-documented and cringe-inducing harassment, to boot. If that is the depth of the political talent pool available to the new Centrist party, it’s going to look more like a puddle.

Right now, it looks as though this new venture is DOA. No surprise there, then.

See: http://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/02/new-centrist-party-looks-doa.html

Mike was also on the receiving end of the wrath of Riley and her army of fanboys for a piece he did reporting Lawson’s article and Riley’s and Oberman’s bullying of the teenager. And yes, they tried smearing him as an anti-Semite. Rowling’s also tried attacking Mike over social media, and got her rear end handed to her as a result. If I remember correctly, Rowling, Riley and Oberman are part of a little circle with Z-list actress Frances Barber, Al Murray and David Baddiel, who believe that they are genuinely tackling racism. They’ve been quoted as joking with each other about whether this is 1936 or not. Of course it isn’t. If this really was anything like 1936 there’d be no question of it. Real anti-Semitic mobs wearing Fascist uniforms, like Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirts would be goose-stepping into Jewish and working class areas trying to provoke fights and intimidate the people there. You would hear speech from bigots and Nazis telling everyone that Jews were an unassimilable threat, and that further Jewish immigration should be curbed. And the same Nazis would also talk openly about Jews being ‘the money power’ behind capitalism and communism and plotting to destroy the White race. And as for Germany, Jews would be progressively banned from getting jobs or entering the universities, their businesses closed, and themselves publicly beaten and humiliated. while trade unionists, socialists, communists, anarchists, recidivist criminals, neurotics, the long-term jobless, sex workers and other dissidents and individuals the Nazi state decided were undesirable and ‘dysgenic’ would be rounded up to be worked to death in the concentration camps. The Alternative Fuer Deutschland are a bunch of Nazi goons, and there is the spectre of read Fascism and Nazism in eastern Europe – in Poland, Hungary, the Baltic States and Ukraine. But here in Britain is very much not like 1936. Not yet.

Tony Greenstein has repeatedly pointed out that while there has been an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, Jews in Britain as a group are very comfortably middle class and most definitely do not suffer the real persecution of other ethnic minorities. For example, they are not being forcibly and unjustly deported, like the Windrush migrants. Other groups, such as Blacks, Asians and Muslims suffer far higher levels of violence and abuse. I haven’t heard any mainstream politician attacking the Jews or demanding that Jewish immigration be stopped. But there have been any number of Conservative and Kipper MPs making racist comments about Muslims and suggesting that they are incompatible with the British way of life.

As Riley’s and Rowling’s friends, Frances Barber also weighed in to accuse Mike and Owen Jones of being anti-Semites, while David Baddiel seems to have swallowed the Integrity Initiative black propaganda about Corbyn. I found a video on YouTube commenting on him declaring that Corbyn was an agent of Putin.

They’re spouting dangerous nonsense. The vast majority of the people accused of anti-Semitism in the Labour party were smeared because they were Corbyn’s supporters, members of the party’s left-wing, or critics of Israel. It was part of the campaign by the Blairites to hang on by attacking ordinary Labour party members. The Jewish establishment and the Zionists in the Labour party got involved because they support the Israeli state’s policy of ethnic cleansing and the construction of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. That was clearly shown in the Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, when Joan Ryan attempted to get an ordinary Labour party member thrown out as an anti-Semite because she had the temerity to ask Ryan a question she couldn’t answer. She wondered what the Jewish Labour Movement was doing to promote the two-state solution, and what would be done about the illegal settlements in Palestine if the solution was successfully put into operation. As for this country’s Jewish establishment, the Board of Deputies declares itself in its constitution to be a Zionist organization, and the other year former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs led a party of British Jews to the March of the Flags. This is an annual event where the Israeli equivalent of skinhead boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter vandalizing homes and property and threatening its people. Liberal Jewish organisations urged Sachs not to go, but he ignored them. They were ‘the wrong kind’ of Jews, you see.

As for the rise of Fascism in eastern Europe, this is being assisted and defended by Israel, whose supporters, like Stephen Pollard, the far right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, declare them to be ‘good friends of Israel’ because they buy Israel arms. And so are the remaining Jews of eastern Europe put in danger through lack of support from Israel. All while Israel proclaims itself to be the protector of Jews worldwide.

As for this supposed Centrist party, I can remember it being touted last year, when it was supposed to have millions of pounds in funding ready for, along with legions of corporate donors. At one point Blair’s son, Euan, was discussed as a founding member and possible leader. Then it all collapsed again. It had no members, no policies, and one of the founders walked out after a disagreement with the others.

All this Centrist party represents is continuity Blairism. Which means more privatization, more NHS privatization, more attacks on the welfare state, meaning more homelessness and starvation, and more corporatism. Which means that in exchange for funding, private industry can have their chairmen and senior management appointed to positions in government and the civil service.

Rowling, Riley, Oberman and Barber are a disgrace. The Centrist party Rowling and her friends Riley and Oberman are expected to lead represents nothing but further corporate exploitation and misery. It has collapsed several times before, and will do so again. No matter how much it is puffed by the papers.

Labour’s Kangaroo Courts Are A Credibility Liability

Yesterday, Mike put up a piece discussing how he had finally got written notification from the Labour party, informing him he had been thrown out as an anti-Semite. He can, apparently, reapply for admission in something like 18 months time. The letter also informed Mike on what grounds they had decided he was anti-Semitic. As Mike points out, these were quite different grounds than the charges that were originally made against him.

The letter declared that he had been found guilty because

“Upon the balance of probabilities the charge was proved for reasons including:
◾It was not disputed that you were responsible for the posting the content that the NEC claimed breached Labour Party rules;
◾A reasonable person would find the posted content, that is the basis of the NEC’s charge, to have the propensity to cause offence, be regarded as abusive and make some feel discriminated against;
◾In posting the content you breached the Labour Party’s Antisemitism and other forms of racism code of conduct, Social Media Policy and Member’s Pledge in appendix 9 of the Rule Book.”

But the original charges were

“Mr Sivier has repeatedly posted content propogating the conspiracy that secretive networks of Jews control and have undue influence over government and other societal institutions. He uses language that is dismissive of antisemitism and that denies Jews the right to self-identify as they wish. This falls fairly and squarely within the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which the Labour Party has adopted.”

Mike states clearly that at his hearing he completely blew these charges out of the water, which is why the NCC was reduced to finding him guilty on the trumped-up twaddle in the letter. But he points out that all the letter proves is that there was someone who felt abused, offended and discriminated against.

He also makes the point that there is a huge difference between saying something and meaning it, and that the complaint was deliberately made to interfere with his attempt to run for election as a member of Powys council.

He also wondered how the reasonable people, who read his blog, and don’t believe that he’s an anti-Semite feel about how the NCC has described them. Their ruling is a clear statement that they don’t regard people like them as reasonable.

Actually, the unreasonable person(s) in the whole affair are whoever made the complaint, and Labour’s NCC, and the Vishinsky in charge of this Stalinist show trial, Maggie Cousins. The allegations that Mike’s an anti-Semite was made originally by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, and apparently supported by the Israel lobby within the Labour party, like the Jewish Labour Movement. Or Paole Zion, as it used to be called. These people aren’t remotely reasonable. They’re bug-eyed fanatics, who demand unquestioning support for Israeli policies, even when these are clearly Fascistic, such as the system of apartheid designed to contain and isolate the Palestinians, and their slow ethnic cleansing through land seizures, house demolitions, the poisoning of their water supplies and the arrest, torture and casual shooting by the armed forces, including women and children.

The Israel lobby in Britain is violently islamophobic and, like its Israeli masters, makes alliances with real Nazis and anti-Semites to further its ends. Israel has invited Richard Spencer, the head of the Alt-Right, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Bannon from America, and Tommy Robinson, the former head of the English Defence League, onto its television and high-level political and military gatherings. The Israeli state has also allied itself with the Far Right governments of Poland and Hungary, and sold arms to the Nazis now running amok in the Ukraine.

In the UK, we’ve had Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, tell Groaniad readers that Michal Kaminski, an MEP for the current ruling party in Poland, isn’t an anti-Semite. This is despite Kaminski’s party trying to cover up Polish complicity in the Holocaust and denying that the villagers of Jedwabne were responsible for the massacre of the Jews there. Zionists like Jonathan Hoffman turn up at anti-Palestine demonstrations in the company of members of Britain First and have links to the EDL. Which had a Jewish division, quite apart from the Jewish Defence League. Some of the members of the British Zionist movement are Likudniks, members of the Likud party’s British organization, Herut. And there are a couple, who even brazenly turn up wearing the insignia of Kach, a Fascistic Israeli organization banned in Israel for terrorism.

As for former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, who was one of the leading members of the Jewish community baying for Corbyn’s removal, Sachs has absolutely no business calling anyone racist. A few years ago, Sachs took it upon himself to lead a party of Jewish Brits to join the Israel Day march in Jerusalem. This is when the Israeli equivalent of skinhead thugs march through the Muslim quarter to threaten and intimidate the indigenous residents, vandalizing their property, scrawling racist graffiti on the walls and Lord knows what else. One Israeli scientist, religious scholar and philosopher described such thugs as ‘Judeonazis’. And he’s right. They are the Jewish equivalent of the Nazis. There is no other word which properly describes them, no matter how much the Israel lobby may scream and howl with rage at the comparison.

Of the letter itself, Mike says it proves two things, that

I am not an anti-Semite (the letter makes no suggestion of any hatred towards Jews, simply because they are Jewish) – and Labour’s National Constitutional Committee is a laughing-stock.

However, the affair has also created problems for the Labour party. Labour has just launched a recruitment campaign. But they may find that a problem, as many people will not want to join a party that is so prejudiced against its own grassroots members, and which cannot correct and root out the systemic corruption in its bureaucracy. This gives the party a credibility problem with its treatment of Mike and others like him, especially as there is no appeal procedure.

He states that this also puts them in an actionable position, so perhaps the mess can be sorted out in court. He also makes the point that while he is putting a brave face on it, it is nevertheless distressing to be accused of anti-Semitism.

Labour is now particularly in a difficult position, as they wish to close the gap with the Conservatives in the polls. But that’s the party’s fault, not Mike’s.

He concludes

If Labour really wanted to gain credibility now, the party’s leaders should have thought very carefully before inflicting this particular injustice on this particular man.

They’d better do something about it quickly – don’t you agree?

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/11/18/labours-kangaroo-court-issues-details-of-its-finding-against-me-and-they-dont-even-match-the-charge/

Now I very much do agree, but I don’t think the Blairites and Zionists in Labour, who have engineered this crisis are remotely bothered about it. They have shown themselves absolutely determined to destroy Corbyn’s leadership by any means, including organizing coup after coup, smearing him and his supporters in the press, trying to pack the party with Lib Dems and Tories in order to stop themselves being deselected, or prevent grassroots Labour members getting elected to important posts. And finally they’ve threatened to split from the party and form their own, like the SDP in the 1980s.

They have, in short, shown that they are determined to destroy the party, if they can’t control it. And if it does badly in the polls, then they’re highly delighted if they can blame it on Corbyn. And in order to prevent a Corbyn Labour government, they will betray the country and their members and vote with the government to prop up Theresa May.

In short, they are the credibility. And Corbyn is assisting them, as he has shown time and again that he won’t back up his supporters against these false charges of anti-Semitism, because he thinks that if he sacrifices them to the Israel lobby, it’ll placate them. It won’t. They have made it very clear that their overriding concern is to remove him. Attacking his supporters is merely part of this overall strategy.

The Blairites and the Israel lobby are a liability, and have created a credibility gap. And the only way it can be solved is if these people are cleaned out, and Corbyn grows a backbone and stands up to them.

Vox Political and Jonathan Rosenhead on the Politicised Nature of the Anti-Semitism Smears

Today the Home Affairs Select Committee has endorsed the anti-Semitism smears, repeating the accusation, based on a very selective reading of the evidence, that anti-Semitism is rife in the Labour party has been for years. This accusation has been refuted time and again, but the establishment is determined to repeat due to their fears of Jeremy Corbyn and a properly socialist Labour party getting into power and actually doing something for the working class and reversing the wholesale looting of this country by the elite under Thatcherite neoliberal economics. Mike’s already put up an article this morning attacking the Committee and refuting their allegations.

But before this latest repetition of these baseless accusations, Mike had already put up an excellent piece on Saturday, commenting on and reblogging an extract of a piece on the Open Democracy site by Jonathan Rosenhead demolishing the anti-Semitism allegations and pointing the finger at exactly who is really responsible for them, and why. As has been pointed out countless times before, this is the Israel lobby, comprising Jeremy Newmark, now the chief prosecutor in this inquisition, the Jewish Labour Movement, the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, and Ella Rose, who gave up her job as the Israeli embassy’s public affairs officer to become the Director of the JLM. Mr Rosenhead notes that organisation the JLM is at least in an informal partnership with the Labour Friends of Israel and the Blairites in a coalition to remove Tony Blair.

Mr Rosenhead is a member of a group, Free Speech on Israel, which coalesced out of a gathering of Jewish Labour party supporters. At their inaugural meeting, the group found that, although they had over 1000 years of experience as Labour members, they could not think of a single instance where they had experienced anti-Semitism within the Labour party, and only a handful of times they had experienced it in their lives.

He also attacks the whole notion that there has been a spike in anti-Semitism in Britain. He notes that while the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain increased by 15% in the first months of this year over those in 2015, they are still below the number recorded in 2014 during the Gaza Crisis. So, he concludes, no upsurge.

He also observes that the explanations for this non-existent massive culture of anti-Semitism in the Labour party is either explained by it being endemic on the Left, or that it is somehow due to the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, are mutually contradictory. He states that in a previous discussion of this topic in another Open Democracy article, it had been shown that the comments and tweets that were treated as anti-Semitic and the basis for suspension were not about Jews, but about Israel and Zionism. He makes it clear that this is an invented crisis, and is about criminalising innocent behaviour. This is deliberately redefining criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, in order to justify the territorial expansion of Israel and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians on one side and to leave the party securely in the hands of the Blairites on the other.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/10/15/how-allegations-of-left-anti-semitism-have-been-weaponised-against-jeremy-corbyn/

Jonathan Rosenhead himself is Emeritus Professor of Operational Research at the LSE, and Chair of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine. As with Tony Greenstein and the signatories of the letter to the Guardian protesting against Jackie Walker’s suspension, Prof Rosenhead is clearly extremely well-informed about these issues, and his original article contains much more highly relevant information.

He notes that while Holocaust Memorial Day is supposed to mark all the genocides that have occurred from the Shoah onwards, in practice it concentrates very much on the Jewish experience. It does not commemorate the 500,000 Roma (Gypsies) and the 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, who were also murdered by the Nazis. And in his words, it only pays lip-service to the genocide in Rwanda.
He also notes how convenient the cut-off date for the commemoration of genocides is for Britain and America. The Americans might be sensitive about their role in the slave trade and the ethnic cleansing of the Amerindians in the 18th and 19th centuries, just as Britain was also responsible for its role in the slave trade and the genocide of Aboriginal Australians. He states:

The absence from Holocaust Memorial Day of the millions of slaves who died on the Atlantic crossing and then through the brutal conditions of slave labour is no accident, no act of God. And it is no sacrilege for Jackie Walker to point up this glaring omission.

He also points out that Jackie Walker was, contra the impression you’re given by the mainstream media, quite correct in questioning the definition of anti-Semitism used by Mike Katz and the JLM, who were organising the training day at which Mrs Walker made the comments that have been used to suspend her as vice-chair of Momentum. Katz declared that the definition used was that of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, which had been taken over by the European Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Committee, which were both Zionist organisations. The main author of the EUMC definition was Kenneth Stern, an attorney, who was the American Jewish Committee’s expert on anti-Semitism and extremism. And his definition of anti-Semitism included anti-Zionism, because of Israel’s nature as a Jewish state. The result was a lengthy document of 500 words intended to criminalise criticism of Israel, produced not by the EU, but by an American Zionist organisation. Brian Klug, an Oxford academic specialising in the study of anti-Semitism, just sums it up in 21. This simply defines it as a hatred of Jews as Jews, in which they are seen as something they are not.

In fact, the EUMC definition of anti-Semitism has never been officially endorsed by the EU. The EU itself closed the EUMC down in 2007 and transferred its power to the Fundamental Rights Agency, which refused to endorse the definition and took it off its website.

The definition was taken up in 2006 by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Semitism under its chair, Denis MacShane. But nine years later in 2015, the Group brought out another report under its new chair, John Mann, which did not use the definition. It commission another, sub-report, from Prof David Feldman, which used that of Brian Klug. Prof. Rosenhead also states that his own union, the UCU, resolved not to use the EUMC definition in 2011, and that in 2013 the BBC Trust declared that the EUMC definition had no standing.

Prof Rosenhead then goes on to discuss the history of the Jewish Labour Movement. This was formerly Poale Zion, which originated in the early 20th century amongst Jewish/Zionist and Marxist workers, and has been affiliated to the Labour party since 1920. After the colonisation of Israel, it suffered a series of splits and mergers in that country to produce two of that nation’s main parties, MAPAI and MAPAM. In the 1930s and 1940s Poale Zion in the UK had members and supporters such as Harold Laski, Ian Mikardo and Sidney Silverman. In 1946 it had 2000 members. However, over the last 50 years the organisation has shrunk immensely as Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians alienated many on the Left and, indeed, the Centre of British politics. In 2004 the organisation rebranded itself as the Jewish Labour Movement, and is also affiliated to the Israeli Labour party and the World Zionist Organisation. Its website remained inactive up to 2015, though it may have had an active email list. That year its chair, Louise Ellman, stepped down, as was replaced by Jeremy Newmark, who began a new, more aggressive phase of the organisation. There is no evidence from whence the JLM gets its funding, which is obviously very generous. As well as a member of his local Labour party, Newmark is executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, and has been Communications Director for the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sachs.

Prof Rosenhead also describes how Newmark presented evidence against the University and College Union before an Employment Tribunal in 2013, in which he accused it of anti-Semitic behaviour. The Tribunal utterly dismissed the claim, declaring

“We greatly regret that the case was ever brought. At heart, it represents an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means.”

The panel also described one of his claims as ‘preposterous’ and found that one of his other statements, that ‘the union was no longer a fit arena for free speech’ was one “which we found not only extraordinarily arrogant but also disturbing.”

Prof. Rosenhead final section, Making Unbelieve, concludes

The whole operation has been breath-takingly successful for the last 8 months. And it is not over. JLM, for example, is pressing for a change in the Labour Party’s constitution that would make it (even) easier to exclude people on suspicion of harbouring antisemitic tendencies. It has influence at the highest levels in the Labour Party. The very training session run by JLM that led to Jackie Walker’s second suspension was set up by the Labour Party bureaucracy in direct contradiction of the Chakrabarti inquiry. Their report recommended against such targeted training, and in favour of broader anti-racist education. But, hey, who’s counting? Not the Labour Party apparatus.

Free Speech on Israel aims to expose this soufflé of a Ponzi scheme. It rests on the shifting sands of unreliable evidence, and on assertions that contradict our (Jewish and non-Jewish) everyday experience. Not least, the claims about a Jewish community united in its alignment behind Israel is yet more make believe. The best survey evidence we have is that 31% of UK Jews describe themselves as ‘No, not Zionist’; and many of the remainder are deeply concerned over Israel’s policies.

We should suspend our belief.

This not just confirms and shows in greater detail the highly political nature of the allegations, but also the extremely tenuous existence of one of the organisation behind them. The Jewish Labour Movement was virtually moribund until it was taken over by Newmark. Like the Blairite group, ‘Labour Future’, it is well-funded, but the origins of its money is shrouded in mystery. It also appears to have very few members. It’s clearly an example of a numerically insignificant organisation trying to throw its weight around as if it were a mass-movement with undisputed authority, rather than the opposite.

This follows the pattern that Prof Finkelstein and others in the anti-Zionist movement in the US have observed about the Zionist movement in their country: that support for Israel amongst American Jews is waning. As the years pass, Israel may soon become completely irrelevant to young American Jews’ construction of their identities. Prof Rosenhead in this article points out that 31% of Jewish Brits say that they’re not Zionists, and many others are ambivalent or opposed to aspects of the regime and its policy towards the Palestinians. The British press, by contrast, has maintained that 75 per cent of British Jews state that Israel is ‘very important’ to their sense of identity. That was the claim repeated in the I, but as this paper is consistently anti-Corbyn, I take its claim here with more than a pinch of salt.

The Blairites and the Israel Lobby are both in a severe crisis, and are trying to hang on to power through the libelling of decent people, like Jackie Walker, who make perfectly reasonable comments. It is people like Newmark, who are trying to stifle democratic debate. We should not let them. The smearing should stop immediately. Those who have been vilified should be directly reinstated, including Jackie Walker as Momentum’s Vice-Chair.

And where it can be shown that those making the accusations have libelled their victims, they should be prosecuted and forced to pay for their malicious crimes.