This is very interesting. Al-Jazeera, the Arab news agency that broke the story about Shai Masot and his attempts to influence the selection of the Tory cabinet years ago to benefit Israel, has reported that a group of 100 scholars have written to the UN urging it to reject the definition of anti-Semitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The report begins
‘More than 100 scholars have urged the United Nations not to adopt the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism due to its “divisive and polarising” effect.
In a statement published on Thursday, the 128 scholars, who include leading Jewish academics at Israeli, European, British and American universities, said the definition has been “hijacked” to protect the Israeli government from international criticism.
They also called on the UN to instead rely on universal human rights instruments and different resources, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.
“Let us be clear: We wholeheartedly welcome the commitment of the UN to fight anti-Semitism and commend the UN for its vital efforts in this regard,” the statement said.
“What we object to and strongly warn against is that the UN would jeopardise this essential fight and harm its universal mission to promote human rights by endorsing a politicised definition that is instrumentalised to deter free speech and to shield the Israeli government from accountability for its actions.”’
Precisely. Kenneth Stern, one of the scholars who drew up the definition, and a Zionist himself, has testified that it is being misused to stifle debate and reasonable criticism of Israel. That’s why the self-appointed leaders of the British Jewish establishment, the Jewish Chronicle, the Chief Rabbis and the Board of Deputies of British Jews went absolutely berserk at the Labour party under Corbyn’s leadership a few years ago. Corbyn had committed the unconscionable crime of being pro-Palestinian and the Labour party had not adopted the I.H.R.A. definition, and so they went frantic with the rest of the British media and political establishment painting him as something he most definitely wasn’t: anti-Semitic.
In fact, a range of Jewish academics and legal experts, including a former Scottish appeal court judge, have condemned the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism. A far better definition of anti-Semitism is that used by the League of Anti-Semites, the late 19th century German hate group that coined the term: hatred of Jews as Jews, regardless of religion or any other dimension.
But the article is also interesting because it contains this photo by Reuters’ Henry Nicholls of a Jewish protester outside a meeting of Labour’s NEC. I didn’t see this on the news, and I bet you didn’t either. Corbyn had a great deal of support amongst the Jewish community, brave people who have been especially vilified in the most disgusting terms by the zealous defenders of Zionism.
This is a really encouraging little video from the left-wing YouTube channel, Not The Andrew Marr Show. The Show’s presenters talk to Diana Neslen, who was accused of anti-Semitism by the usual Zionist fanatics. Her horrendous crime was posting the comment on Twitter in 2017 ‘The existence of Israel is a racist endeavour and I’m an anti-racist Jew’. This contravenes the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism that the Israel lobby and what sees itself as the Establishment of the British Jewish community, the Chief Rabbinate and the Board of Deputies, so desperately wished to foist on the Labour party. Neslen was suspended from the Labour party and told she was under investigation.
But when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and Mrs Neslen decided that she was going to stand up to the bullies. So she sent them a message telling them she was going to take the matter to court. Suddenly the Labour party told her that they were going to drop the accusation and investigation. She explains in the video that she thinks that Labour were desperately worried about such a case because it would be a formal test of the definition. Yes, it would. And I don’t doubt that the definition would be found wanting. Three legal experts, including the former Judge Sedley, a former Scottish appeals court judge, who is also Jewish, have come out and criticised the I.H.R.A. as muddled and too complicated. In their opinion the best definition of anti-Semitism is the simplest. This is along the lines of ‘a certain attitude to Jews, which hates them simply as Jews’. Which was the definition and attitude of the wretched League of Anti-Semites, founded by Wilhelm Marr in Germany in the 19th century, and which first coined the word. The I.H.R.A. has been adopted by a range of organisations despite its manifest faults. It has been criticised by one of the people who devised it, Kenneth Starr, a Zionist and Jewish American, because it chills debate on Israel. This is not what it was intended to do. It was intended simply as a guide to allow official agencies to gather judge what may or may not have been an anti-Semitic incident. But it’s been adopted by the Israel lobby because it does chill debate about Israel.
Neslen states that part of the witch hunt against critics of Israel comes from a fact-finding visit to Britain conducted by an Israeli organisation, Rayyut (sp?). This outfit decided that there was a ‘red-green alliance’ to denigrate Israel, and decided to split it up. Left-wingers were to be divided into two groups according to their attitude to Israel. On the one hand there would be those, who supported the two-state solution. These would be permitted to remain active. However, anti-Zionists were to become totally unacceptable and silenced. And the Israel lobby does that by deliberately conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism to smear the critics of the country and its vile ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.
This is what they tried to do with Neslen, and then got the fright of their squalid lives when she refused to back down. This shows that sometimes, just sometimes, the good guys win. Unfortunately, not everyone is able to do this. The immense cost of bring an action is one obstacle. Another is that the Labour is very slippery when it comes to its laws. Mike lost his case against them for breach of contract because, although the smears and leaks against him were a breach of the party rules, the party rules aren’t binding and were in the process of revision. How convenient! That shows you how two-faced and treacherous the party bureaucracy is. And that bureaucracy is massively anti-Semitic. Four out of five of the people accused of anti-Semitism are Jewish. This surely proves that the very accusation is utter nonsense, even if it is couched in specious rhetoric about how these people are ‘self-hating’.
But even with these obstacles, it’s great that Diana Neslenwon, and I hope that there will be many more victories like hers.
The terrible events in Israel last week when Palestinians and Israelis rioted and fought following the state’s attempts to ethnically cleanse Arabs from their homes in east Jerusalem ready for Jewish settlers clearly has had the anti-Semitism witch-hunters in the Labour party rattled. Because far-right Zionist nationalists and their supporters in the British political and lamestream media establishment have decided that even the mildest criticism of Israel and its barbaric policies towards the indigenous Arabs is anti-Semitic. Those who make them are to be ruthlessly smeared as Jew-haters and Nazis. The Labour party’s grotesque party bureaucracy has fully signed up to this attitude with the Jewish Labour Movement as one of the main organisations within the party demanding the automatic trial and purging of Israel’s critics. Even when those critics are entirely decent men and women, like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Mike, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth and so many, many others, who utterly despise and attack all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
As a Labour party member, I got this merry little email in my inbox yesterday from David Evans inviting me to a session of online anti-Semitism training the Monday after next.
When I first became General Secretary of the Labour Party, I made my priorities clear.
I want to ensure that our Party is a welcoming environment for all our members.
In order to tackle antisemitism, it is vital to understand it.
That’s why I’m inviting you to an awareness raising training session for Labour Party members on understanding antisemitism, covering what antisemitic incidents look like in the UK and the world today, identifying different elements of antisemitism and how members of the Labour Party can create a welcoming environment for Jewish members.
The training will take place online, Monday 14 June from 6:00 – 7:00pm.
Help tackle the issue – sign up for the session today.
…..
The session will be introduced by Mike Katz, National Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, and delivered by Rebecca Filer, National Organiser for the JLM, which has been the Labour Party’s Jewish affiliate for over 100 years.
The Labour Party is built on the values of solidarity, equality and respect. Our movement thrives when it is together. That’s why I am very grateful for all the invaluable work that has gone into this training session, and would like to stress its importance. I have undertaken the training myself and found it thought provoking and useful.
Once more, I would like to urge all members who are able to attend the session to do so.
Best,
David Evans General Secretary
The short answer to this invitation is ‘definitely not’. I know a fair amount about anti-Semitism. I know some great Jewish peeps and studied the rise of Fascism and Nazism as part of my history degree at College. And I’m very aware that what Evans, Katz and Filer want to tell me is anti-Semitism isn’t.
The Jewish Labour Movement is utterly incapable of giving an objective, non-ideological and impartial discussion of anti-Semitism. It used to be Paole Zion, ‘Workers of Zion’, a pro-Zionist Jewish socialist organisation and until very recently it was absolutely moribund. Then it was taken over by somebody, given a massive cash injection and renamed the Jewish Labour Movement. This was after the bombing of Gaza nine years ago, which also prompted the foundation of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism because its ultra-Zionist founders were shocked to find that the British public did not view with pleasure the spectacle of the Israeli military machine killing Arab civilians. Even its name is a lie. It’s affiliated to the Labour party, but you don’t have to be a member of the Labour party or even Jewish to be a member. And in fact, the organisation has been embarrassed several times when one of its gobby mouthpieces has been revealed as such.
This is profoundly different from Jewish Voice for Labour, whose members must be Jewish and members of the Labour party, although gentiles may have associate membership. But then JVL are left-wingers, who supported Corbyn and criticised Israel, so they’re the wrong kind of Jews.
The ideological weapon the witch-hunters have used against Israel’s critics is the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has been criticised by legal experts as dangerous imprecise. It conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, and so, in the view of one of its inventors, Kenneth Stern, has been used to chill criticism of Israel.
In fact, a far better definition of anti-Semitism is the simple one devised by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the German League of Anti-Semites in the 19th century and the man who first coined the term. Anti-Semitism is simply hatred of Jews, as Jews. Now this can take terrible forms, the most notorious being the murderous and absurd conspiracy theories about the Jews controlling capitalism, Communism and the trade unions and encouraging race mixing and non-White immigration to destroy the White race, or that the Jewish people are engaged in a similar conspiracy to destroy Islam.
The anti-Semitism witch-hunters, however, have abused real history and politics through the use of a form of grotesque literary criticism. Israel very definitely has been engaged in plots against other governments, such as when a member of staff at the Israeli embassy was caught by al-Jazeera plotting with a senior British civil servant over who should be a member of Tweezer’s cabinet. But because this was a plot, even though it was real, and allegations of plotting and conspiracies have long been a staple of anti-Semitic attitudes, criticism of such actions are silenced by the accusation that anyone talking about them must somehow be anti-Semitic, even when the plots are perfectly real. If you criticise Israel for doing so, or use the wrong language when describing the country’s actions and policies, you will be attacked and vilified for using ‘anti-Semitic tropes’. Even when you are factually correct, and not remotely anti-Semitic.
Especially if you are factually correct, and not anti-Semitic.
This is the view that Evans, the Jewish Labour Movement and other wretched organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Board of Deputies of British Jews wish to foist on the Labour party and its members. It’s a disgusting distortion what real anti-Semitism is, and has been used to vilify, persecute and purge genuine opponents of anti-Semitism. These have included Jews, and their friends and supporters, who have genuinely suffered anti-Semitic abuse and assault. The Labour party has definitely not been a welcoming place for critics of Israel.
I shall very definitely not be attending if such training is to be given by such odious, deceitful and mendacious organisations.
David Friedlaender is one of the major figures of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. This was a movement of the 18th and 19th centuries in which Jews strove to reconcile their religion and ethnicity with contemporary western culture in order to take their place alongside their gentile fellow countrymen as full and equal citizens. According to the entry on him in John Bowker, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford: OUP 1997) Friedlaender (1750-1834) was
A forerunner of Reform Judaism. Through his marriage he became part of a distinguished Prussian family of Court Jews and he was one of Moses Mendelssohn’s circle. He believed the Jews were ‘destined from time immemorial to guard and teach by example the pure doctrine of unity and sanctity of God, unknown to other people.’ He argued that prayers for friends and country should be substituted for the messianic hope, and that secular law should be studied rather than Talmud. He also was tireless in his efforts for Jewish political and civil rights in Prussia. (p. 359.
Reform Judaism is a particularly radical reformulation of Judaism, which took over some features of Protestant Christian worship. In contrast to more traditional forms of Jewish worship, such as Orthodox Judaism, prayers are held in the vernacular rather than Hebrew and include choirs. The movement originally believed strongly that Jews should work to become full members of the countries in which they lived, and rejected Zionism. Reform Judaism’s essential doctrines in the US were stated in 1885 in Pittsburgh, when the rabbis there declared
We recognise in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect the approach of the realisation of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice and peace among all men … We recognise in Judaism a progressive religion, ever striving to be in accord with the postulates of reason … We accept as binding only the moral laws and maintain only such ceremonies as elevate and sanctify our lives, but reject all such as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilisation.
This suggests that instead of viewing the Messianic hope as the appearance of a Messiah to redeem Israel, they saw it as the inauguration of the new era of peace and justice throughout humanity. Their views on tradition and mdoern culture were modified at a meeting in Columbus and 1937, and the movement has since discarded its anti-Zionism. In Germany the movement accepted changes in the liturgy while remaining theologically conservative.
The article on them in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions also says
Reform congregations are united in the World Union for Progressive Judaism, and rabbis are trained at the Hebrew Union College in the USA and Leo Baeck College in the UK. Reform Judaism has no official status in Israel (though it has a few congregations and kibbutzim), because only Orthodox rabbis are recognised; and the Orthodox repudiate such Reform organisations as the ordination (semikhah) of women as rabbis. (p. 809.
This hostility undoubtedly explains why the late Jonathan Sacks, when he was Chief Rabbi, declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. This was the language of religious bigotry, the type of statement made by the fanatically intolerant before beginning their persecution and violence against their religious enemies.
As for the ordination of women, one American Jewish community made the news last year through their ground-breaking step of ordaining a Black woman as rabbi. Which should be a riposte to the racists out there who claimed that Jackie Walker, one of the peeps smeared as an anti-Semite by the fanatics in the Israel lobby, couldn’t be a Jew because of her skin colour.
The I.H.R.C. definition of anti-Semitism permits reasonable criticism of Israel, but claims that denying Jews their national right to a homeland is anti-Semitic. This is highly questionable for a number of reasons. There are a number of other nations, who at the moment don’t have their own state despite their aspirations. These include the Basques and Catalans in Spain, and the Scots in Britain. Yet there is no international declaration that states that refusal to recognise their aspirations for a homeland constitutes a form of racism.
There have also been different movements in Judaism, that rejected Zionism. On the one hand there are the ultra-traditional Haredi, who reject Israel on the theological grounds that it can only be founded by divine action through the Messiah. On the other there were Reform Jews and their predecessors, who rejected Zionism because the saw the Jews’ real homelands as the current countries in which the lived. Jewish anti-Zionist bloggers such as David Rosenberg and Tony Greenstein have pointed out that Zionism was very much a minority position amongst European Jewry before the horrors of the Second World War. In America there was little interest in Israel among Jews until the late 1960s and the emergency of Neo-Conservatism. Greenstein and the Israeli historian and critic of his country’s barbarous maltreatment of the Palestinians, Ilan Pappe have shown that rather than being pro-Jewish, Zionism has been itself tinged with anti-Semitism. Many gentile Zionists supported the movement as a way of removing Jews from their countries. It’s why Hitler initially signed the Ha’avara agreement with the Zionist leaders to permit and encourage Jewish emigration to Palestine. Pappe in his book Ten Myths About Israel includes an episode that clearly demonstrates this link between anti-Semitism and Zionism. In the 1920s Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, approached a German nobleman for his support. He noted that the man had taken an interest in it, and asked him why he didn’t support it. The aristo replied that he hadn’t, because he didn’t want people to think he was an anti-Semite.
And many of the opponents of Israel’s persecution and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, both Torah-observant and secular, are self-respecting Jews. But they’re smeared as self-hating and anti-Semitic by the country’s fiercely intolerant defenders.
But the example of David Friedlaender shows that if denial of Jewish nationalism is defined as anti-Semitic, then some of Jewry’s most ardent and tireless workers for emancipation, dignity and equality, who believed passionately in their religion and their people’s destiny and witness to the God of their ancestors, are Jew-haters. Which is ridiculous and absurd, or so it seems to my non-Jewish eyes.
I’m sure that some criticism of Israel is undoubtedly anti-Semitic. That of real Nazis, for example. Their hatred of Israel is part of a general, virulent, genocidal hatred of Jews. But the rejection or just simple criticism of Zionism by self-respecting Jews and their gentile allies, who genuinely despise anti-Semitism along with other forms of racism and Fascism, is clearly very different.
It strikes me that the inclusion of anti-Zionism in the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism is simply sectarian bigotry. Some Jews are supporters of Israel, others, who may be no less Jewish, aren’t. Just as some of the gentile critics and opponents of Zionism may the Jews’ most committed defenders and supporters.
A far better definition of anti-Semitism, and one that needs no examples to clarify it, is the simplest. It’s hatred of Jews as Jews, regardless of religion or ideology. That was definition used by the man who coined the term ‘anti-Semitism’, Wilhelm Marr, founder of the Bund Antisemiten in 19th century Germany.
The Board of Deputies, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Chief Rabbinate and other Zionist organisations have no business trying to foist such a partisan and highly discriminatory definition on the Labour Party or anyone, whether Jew or gentile.
Could the media support for Rachel Riley be waning just a little? This last fortnight’s edition of Private Eye for 14th – 27th August 2020 carried a piece calling her out for hypocrisy. She’d published a link to a petition against the persecution of the Uyghurs by the Chinese government, urging people to sign it. However, a few months ago Riley had also declared that she’d made a deal with the Chinese-owned company, Tiktok, to help it produce maths tips. The Eye’s article runs
Countdown mathematical whizz Rachel Riley recently tweeted a link to a petition drawing attention to the plight of the Uyghur Muslims. It called on the UK government to impose sanctions on China for its human rights violations. “We’re listening, we’re with you… Thanks to everyone who signed this,” she wrote.
Is this the same Rachel Riley who tweeted “This should be fun” in response to an announcement in June that she’d signed up to help TikTok’s move into the UK education market, producing mathematics tips for the platform?
The Chinese-owned video sharing app has long attracted privacy concerns and has been banned by the Indian government after claims that it was using data illegally and secretly collecting information from phones when the app was downloaded. Meanwhile, TikTok’s domestic Chinese version, Douyin, is heavily censored under Chinese government rules.
Most concerning to Riley, however, might have been the news in November that TikTok had suspended the account of 17-year-old Feroza Aziz after she highlighted human rights abuses against … the Uyghur Muslims. As Riley puts it, this should indeed be fun.
I’ve got absolutely no problem with Riley supporting a petition against the vicious genocide being waged against the Uyghurs. She’s quite right to point it out and demand government action. And I don’t find her support for TikTok particularly hypocritical either, even if it does conflict with her new attitude towards the state persecution of the Muslim people by the Chinese authorities. What I do find hypocritical is her own vicious bullying and smearing of decent, anti-racists and genuine opponents of anti-Semitism, simply because they support Jeremy Corbyn or are critical of the Israeli state’s 70 year long campaign of ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Palestinians. Riley certainly isn’t alone in this. The smears were made and repeated by just about the entire right-wing British political and media establishment, including Private Eye. Which makes the Eye’s article, now criticising Riley for hypocrisy, somewhat ironic. Riley and her best buddy Tracy Ann Oberman were given extensive support for their accusations and smears by the media, who have promoted her as some kind of doughty campaigner against anti-Semitism. Except, when it comes to critics of Israel, in my opinion she isn’t. She’s confusing it with anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism, as defined by Wilhelm Marr, who founded the League of Anti-Semites in 19th century Germany and coined the term, is hatred of Jews simply for being Jews. Zionism is a political ideology, which has historically been adopted by both Jews and non-Jews. In the early 20th century Zionism was itself so closely associated with real anti-Semitism, that one sympathetic German nobleman refused to support Theodor Herzl’s movement because he was afraid that people would think he was a Jew-hater. And Israel, of course, is a country. It is not synonymous with the Jewish people as a religion or people, no matter how much legislation Netanyahu passes declaring that it is. And it is definitely not anti-Semitic to criticise it for its barbarous maltreatment of the indigenous Arabs.
But Rachel Riley and Oberman appear to believe that it is. As an example of how twisted their views are, one of the two even compared the Durham Miners’ Gala last year to the Nazis because the band played ‘Hava Nagila’. Which they do every year. And their response to personal criticism appears to be to threaten their critics with a libel action. Mike is currently fighting Riley, because he reblogged and commented on her calling a 16 year old schoolgirl with anxiety an anti-Semite on social media. This led to the girl being attacked online by a crowd of Riley’s supporters, all because the girl had declared her support for the former Labour leader. And a few days ago, Oberman threatened Gary Spedding with a libel action for stating that she had her faults. These included, according to Spedding, not standing with Jewish people of colour. Oberman decided that Spedding was accusing her of racism, and so threatened him with a writ. See https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/08/tracy-ann-oberman-meltdown.html
In my view, Oberman and Riley are legalistic bullies, seeking to close down legitimate political and personal criticism through malicious accusations of anti-Semitism and suits for libel. I don’t quite know what has caused the Eye to publish an article critical of Riley, but it might be that some in the media might just have realised that just as Riley and Oberman can threaten and sue ordinary members of the public, so they can also turn on them. Of course, it may also be that the Eye is entirely disinterested in this matter, and is just calling out what they view as double-standards by another celeb.
Whatever the reality, Riley and Oberman’s malicious behaviour, as I see it, needs to be stopped. Which is why it’s important that Mike wins the case they have brought against him. Perhaps if Riley and Oberman meet with enough failure, the rest of the media may also stop giving the two their uncritical support.
I wonder about the sanity of some of the witch-hunters accusing people of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. Or at least their sense of proportion. Margaret Hodge, who claimed that Ruth George’s perfectly reasonable inquiry into whether the Labour Splitters were funded by Israel, is a case in point. She caused outrage and disgust a few months ago when she screamed at Corbyn in the House of Commons, and reviled him as ‘a f***ing anti-Semite’. For which she was duly suspended under Labour party rules that apply to everyone.
This was too much for her sensitive soul, and she compared the stress this had caused her with the fear Jews in the Third Reich felt, waiting for the knock on the door from the Gestapo ready to send them to the death camps. People, who really had had family imprisoned in the concentration camps were rightly outraged. Hodge was attacked for her grossly insensitive comments by Jews, whose family had been sent to these murder factories, and also by non-Jews, who had also had family members incarcerated for their opposition to Hitler’s Reich. Like a young man, whose Sudeten German grandfather was sent there because he was a Communist.
The witch-hunters were also outraged a week or so ago when Jenny Formby dared to reveal the truth about anti-Semitism in the Labour party: there actually wasn’t a lot of it, and only a very few people had actually been expelled. This was too much for them, who can’t stand the thought that anyone they’ve denounced could possibly be innocent. Hodge herself whined that this couldn’t possibly be true, as she’d denounced 200 people.
200? What party did she think she was in? The BNP, the Klan or something? The Labour party is now, thanks to Corbyn, the largest Socialist party in Europe, and as a mass party it obviously is going to include some anti-Semites. But real research shows that anti-Semitism in the Labour party has actually fallen under Corbyn, and is lower than in wider British society. Also, other Jews and Jewish groups have come forward, like Jewish Voice for Labour, and a group of Orthodox rabbis. The good rabbis said that they had absolute confidence in Corbyn, while the peeps at Jewish Voice for Labour said that although there was anti-Semitism in the party, they had never personally, or only very rarely, ever personally experienced it. These were Labour members of long standing, who had been active in their local constituency parties.
But the accusations of anti-Semitism aren’t really about anti-Semitism. Not as it is defined by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the German Bund Anti-Semiten, who coined the term. He said that it was hatred of Jews, simply as Jews. This is the standard dictionary definition. What Hodge and co see as anti-Semitism is actually criticism of Israel. And long term Jewish critics of the Israeli state and its brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians, like Norman Finkelstein, have made the point Israel defends itself by accusing its critics of being anti-Semites. And this is what has been going on here.
And what the witch-hunters decide is a basis for an accusation of anti-Semitism is very, very wide. One young man was accused of anti-Semitism and expelled, or suspended, because he posted a picture of a Jobcentre sign carrying the slogan ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’, the infamous inscription above the gates of Auschwitz. His accusers maintained that he was somehow denigrating Jewish suffering in the Holocaust. But he wasn’t. He was denigrating the suffering of the jobless inflicted by the DWP under Ian Duncan Smith. Who had begun an article actually quoting this infamous slogan, and saying that it should be rehabilitated because of its usefulness in getting people back into work. It was, he wrote, part of his ethos. Not surprisingly, his editors weren’t impressed, and this part of his article was removed a few hours later. But the Gentleman Ranker had said, nonetheless. And Tony Greenstein and others also pointed out that the inscription was on all the concentration camps, whose members also included the long-term unemployed, people declared arbeitscheu, or ‘workshy’, by the Nazis.
In fact Hodge’s denunciation of 200 hundred people doesn’t remind me of serious accusations, so much as the hysterical persecutions that have occurred in very repressive societies in the past. Like the witch craze in 16th and 17th century Europe, in which people could be accused of witchcraft for the flimsiest of reasons. Or the horrific purges of Stalin’s Russia, where voicing even the slightest comment, which could be considered disrespectful of the tyrant could see you arrested by the NKVD and sent to the gulags. One man was arrested simply for remarked that Stalin didn’t seem quite well when the dictator coughed or something similar during a speech. It also reminded me of all the nutters that wrote into the FBI denouncing anyone and everyone as a Communist agent during the Red scare of the Cold War. Or indeed of the quarter of the East German population that were spying on their friends and neighbours to the Stasi.
It also reminds me of a very dark joke I heard once by an American comedian years ago on one of Bob Monkhouse’s shows on the Beeb in the 1980s. This was a series in which Monkhouse interviewed other comedians, including Pamela Stephenson before she returned to psychiatry. One of his guests was an American comedian, whose act included a parody of the stereotypical, racist southern sheriff. Putting on the accent and persona, the comedian told the following joke.
‘You know, I can tell if someone’s a murderer simply by the look in their eye. And if they got that look in their eye, I hang them. Well, one day I saw this black man, and he had that look in his eye. So I hung him.’
If you know the history of lynching in the Deep South, then it’s probably not a joke. Blacks – and other minorities – were lynched for almost no reason at all, simply for being ‘disrespectful’ to Whites. And the local community would celebrate their deaths, holding a mass party and even breaking pieces off the victims bodies to take home as souvenirs. Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks has described this in one of their videos. British anti-racist YouTuber Kevin Logan has also mentioned it in one of his, complete with a photograph taken as one such lynching, showing the crowds gathering and rejoicing around two lynched Blacks. Some idea of the pressure and fear of that environment came across very clearly in the Dr. Who story at the beginning of the season about Rosa Parks.
I’m not accusing Hodge of being racist. But I am accusing her of having the same paranoia that has motivated witch-hunters and persecutors, like those in Stalin’s Russia and the anti-Communist fanatics of the ’50s.
So what did those 200 people do, that made her accuse them of anti-Semitism. Does she think she has the ability to see if someone’s an anti-Semite, just by looking in their eye? And did she accuse those 200 simply because they looked at her funny? It might not have been quite because of that, but I very much doubt that the reason she gave was much stronger.
Last Saturday, 21st October 2017, there was a meeting in London for the victims of the campaign of smearing and suspensions by the Blairites and the Zionist lobby in the Labour party. These two factions have tried to hold on to their flimsy power base in the Labour party and defend Israel and it’s continued persecution and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians by falsely accusing decent, anti-racist people, both gentiles and Jews, of anti-Semitism when they have rightly criticised Israel for this. The victims of this witch-hunt include, and some would go so far as to say, specifically target, Torah-observant and self-regarding secular Jews. Many of these Jews condemn Israel and its brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians because of their liberal Jewish beliefs, which they feel command them always to side with the oppressed, never with the oppressor. They object to the massacres, home seizures and ethnic cleansing of Israel’s indigenous Arabs precisely because it is how Jews have been historically persecuted.
Thousands have had their names besmirched, and been suspended and excluded from the Labour party. They include Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein himself.
Now the victims are fighting back, and demanding an end to the witch-hunt. Mr Greenstein has put up an article about the meeting today on his website. He describes recent events which saw the Jewish groups at the Labour party demand the expulsion of the Jewish Labour Movement, the Zionist group in the Labour party that has been responsible for many of these smears. Greenstein has also pointed out that while the organisation claims to be Jewish, the majority, or at least a sizable minority of its members are actually gentiles. He also discusses personal embarrassments to the Blairites’ and Zionists’ leaders. The two factions have overreached themselves in the expulsion of the very respected Israeli academic and socialist, Moshe Machover. Machover is a distinguished academic and mathematician, and his Matzpen organisation in Israel includes both Jews and Arabs. The Blairites summarily expelled him, and now have found themselves inundated by calls by his supporters to have him reinstated.
Greenstein lays out the new organisations few, simple policies in the first paragraphs. They are
The time has come to fight back. The Left simply cannot allow the Right to continue with expelling those they don’t like. The Momentum leadership under Lansman, which should have taken on the fight against the witch hunt has, instead, got into bed with the witch hunters. It was Lansman and his friends who laid the basis for Jackie Walker’s suspension from the Labour Party by removing Jackie from her position as Vice Chair of Momentum. If people really want to see a radical and socialist government under Jeremy Corbyn we have to stop the witch hunt in its tracks. Indeed we need to be rooting out the Blairite bureaucracy.
•1. No auto exclusions Everyone has the right to a hearing. The Chakrabarti Report found that Labour’s disciplinary and complaints procedures “… lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.
•2. It is unacceptable that there are differing definitions of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism isn’t a difficult thing to define. It is hostility or hatred of Jews. You don’t need a 450 word definition unless your purpose is to conflate opposition to Zionism, the ideology that led to the foundation of the Israeli state and genuine anti-Semitism.
Corbyn has adopted the short, two sentence International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
This definition is itself too imprecise, open ended and uncertain. What makes it unacceptable is that it introduces and lays the basis for 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism, 7 of which relate to Israel. In other words the whole purpose of the definition is to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Whilst Corbyn has not adopted these 11 examples the Labour bureaucracy has. We have therefore adopted the definition first espoused by Professor Brian Klug of Oxford University in his lecture ‘Echoes of Shattering Glass’ delivered in his 2014 lecture in Berlin’s Jewish Museum on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’
3. Thirdly our demand is that the Compliance Unit is abolished. It is completely undemocratic and unaccountable. Instead all disciplinary action is to be taken by elected bodies in future.
It is important that LAW builds itself quickly in the coming months and engages in a series of activities, such as a picket of the NEC to demand the reinstatement of Moshe Machover to holding meetings and a conference.
He also states that a four-person Executive Committee was elected, consisting of himself and Jackie Walker, Stan Keable, and Pete Firmin.
Greenstein is exactly correct in his definition of anti-Semitism. This goes back to the League of Anti-Semites in Wilhelmine Germany and its founder, Wilhelm Marr. Marr defined it as a hatred of Jews as a race or ethnic group, without regard to Judaism as a religion or any other beliefs or ideologies. They had a revolting little rhyme about how the ‘swinishness’ was ‘in the blood’.
He, and other critics of Israel and Zionism, have shown time and again that historically Zionism was peripheral to Judaism; that many Jews opposed it as a blasphemous secularisation of their religion; and that, horrifically, Zionists have had contempt for diaspora Jews, and have been willing to collaborate with genuine anti-Semites, including the Nazis for a brief period, in order to further their goals of creating a Jewish state in Palestine.
And they have used the accusation of anti-Semitism to smear and silence their opponents. Despite the danger that they are crying ‘Wolf’, and that one day, because of their abuse of the term, nobody will be bothered by the emergence of the real wolves.
Mr. Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Stan Keable and Peter Firmin have my very best wishes for their organisation and its aims. I hope that at long last, justice will prevail and decent people may at last be able to speak about Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians without fear of being expelled or slandered.
Yesterday I got a phone call from Mike, my brother, from Vox Political. Mike’s standing in the local council elections as a Labour candidate in Powys. He told me that he had been contacted by the local newspaper, the Powys County Times, who told him that they had been contacted by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who are calling for Mike to be deselected because he’s an anti-Semite, as well as a conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier.
Saaaaay whaaaaat?
Mike’s none of those things, obviously. He really doesn’t distinguish or discriminate against people according to the race or religion, or, come to that, their sexual orientation.
I can remember Mike telling me very proudly when he was at College, how one of his female friends had asked him to be a reader in an event she was putting on to commemorate the victims of the Shoah. Mike was one of those reading some of the names of those who had been murdered by the Nazis simply because they were Jews.
Also during his time at College, Mike and some of the other students went on trip to Berlin. One of the history courses I took for my undergraduate degree was on the rise of Communist and Fascist regimes in Europe. Mike brought back for me a book the-then West German government had published to accompany an exhibition on part of the SS headquarters that was being redeveloped. The book was on the SS, Gestapo and the Reichssicherheitsdienst, and their role as the Nazi state’s murderous organs of repression and genocide. The book and the exhibition not only described their place and function in the mechanism as terror, it also gave proper place to the Jews and others, who were murdered by the regime. It gave the precise figures, and even photographs and brief biographies of some of those, both Jewish and gentile, who had been killed by these thugs.
The very accusation that Mike is in anyway an anti-Semite is ridiculous. The accusation has been levelled at Mike because he’s defended Ken Livingstone, and several of the other members of the Labour party, who were unfairly accused of anti-Semitism last year as part of the machinations of the Blairites and their associates in the Israel Lobby to hold on to power. Apart from anti-Semitism, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism has also moaned that Mike called Blair and his coterie ‘neoliberals’. As Tony Blair was a fan of Thatcher’s, and believed in privatisation and deregulation and the cutting of the welfare state, that’s exactly what Tory Tony was.
Mike’s now posted up a piece about this vile slur on his blog, followed by a point for point rebuttal of their smears. He writes
Today I received a telephone call from a newspaper reporter, saying the paper had been contacted by an organisation calling itself the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which had claimed that I (Mike Sivier) should be deselected as a council candidate because I’m an anti-Semite and hate Jews.
For the record, I’m not, and I don’t. Obviously.
Admittedly, the story seems likely to run only in a local(ish) newspaper, the Powys County Times, but the timing is significant as, if a negative story about me goes to press in this weekend’s edition (the paper is a weekly), there will be no time for corrections before people go to the polls on May 4. I believe this is intentional on the part of these Campaign Against Anti-Semitism people.
The organisation seems to be more concerned with defending the reputation of the state of Israel than anything else – according to Powerbase, the “online guide to networks of power, lobbying… deceptive … public relations and the communications activities of governments and other interests”, member (or former member, it’s hard to tell) Joseph Cohen founded the Israel Advocacy Movement – which concerns itself with countering “the increasing hostility Israel suffers at the hands of the British public, caused by huge volumes disinformation circulated by Israel’s enemies”.
For the record, I’m not one of Israel’s enemies. I have no objection to there being a state of Israel. I do, however, object to hostile activities authorised and enacted by its government, where Israel is the aggressor. I would object to those activities if they were carried out by any country or government, and I would hope that you would feel the same.
For information, the Israel Advocacy Movement has “campaigns” against the UK charity War on Want, singling out its support for the boycott movement against Israel, and the pro-Palestinian Palestine Return Centre. And a local newspaper in Kent reported that Kent Anti-Racism Network accused the IAM of having a hand in the controversial suspension by the Labour Party of longstanding anti-racist activist Jackie Walker, for allegedly anti-Semitic comments.
According to the Charity Commission, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is a “volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law.” This seems to mean that it is an organisation dedicated to bringing private prosecutions against individuals it accuses of anti-Semitic activity, claiming that the Crown Prosecution Service “has failed to take action, so now we must act instead”.
An alternative interpretation, of course, as used by one blogger currently being prosecuted by this organisation, is that the CAA attempts “to use the law to silence dissenters”.
No trustees are listed on the Charity Commission’s website. Why not? What reason do they have for secrecy?
The organisation’s website is registered at 167-169 Great Portland Street, London W1W 5PF. It must be pretty cramped as apparently Companies House has 1,109 firms registered there, all on the 2nd floor.
Is anything about this starting to seem a little suspicious to you?
This is, unfortunately, par for the course for anyone, who criticises Israel for its barbarous history of terrorism, murder and expulsion against the indigenous Palestinians, or defends those who have. The Zionist lobby has tried to stop justified criticism of Israel by extending the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of the state of Israel. As Mike has pointed out time and again, this is a highly contentious and discredited definition of anti-Semitism. It is not how Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the Bund der Antisemiten – League of Anti-Semites – in 19th century Germany defined ‘anti-Semitism’, which he himself coined. The League defined anti-Semitism as hatred of Jews simply as Jews, as regardless of Judaism as a religion. Or as they put it
“Was er glaubt, ist einerlei
in der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei”.
Which roughly translates as ‘What he believes is beside the point, the swinishness lies in the race’. (See the extract ‘Der Politische Antisemitismus’ in the book Das Deutsche Kaiserreich 1871-1914: Ein historisches Lesebuch, edited and with an introduction by Gerhard A. Ritter (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 1981) 131. In case you’re worried, it’s a entirely respectable, mainstream German history textbook, and certainly not the product of some diseased far right publishing house.
In some ways, it’s almost a badge of honour for Mike to be smeared by these people, as he joins a long line of decent people, who have been so libelled. These include not only gentiles, but also proud Jews, who are active members of their community. Those Mike has defended are people, who are genuinely anti-racist and have campaigned against anti-Semitism. Many of them are Jews, who have personally suffered real anti-Semitic attacks and abuse from the Nazi right. Mike also makes the point that he has no animus towards Israel. He is simply acting to defend those, who have been unfairly and maliciously smeared.
Critics of Israel’s brutalisation of the Palestinians, like Professor Finkelstein in America, and Ilan Pappe over here, have pointed out that the Israel lobby exists to manufacture anti-Semites, by which they mean it operates by smearing the country’s critics as such. The American radical magazine, Counterpunch, has published a series of articles about the way the Zionist lobby in America has done this. And one of the complaints about the Israel lobby is that it is itself viciously anti-Semitic. It particularly seems to single out Jewish critics for the worst vilification.
What makes this accusation particularly offensive, is that these libels against Mike and many others like him in the Labour party have been made when real anti-Semitism is on the rise around the world. Yesterday, Counterpunch’s Robert K. Tan published a piece commenting on the rise of militarism in Japan, following the Japanese government allowing the Japanese Fascist-era Imperial Rescript on Education to be read again in schools and the approval of Hitler’s Mein Kampf as teaching material. Although the legislation for the latter states that it may not be used to teach theories of racial supremacy. See: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/25/abe-is-taking-japan-back-to-the-bad-old-fascism/
The British anti-racism/ anti-religious extremism organisation, Hope Not Hate, has also noted the rise in real, blatant anti-Semitism amongst the Fascist far right over here. The banned Nazi youth gang, National Action made very explicit anti-Semitic speeches repeating the old conspiracist libels that the Jews were trying to undermine and destroy the White race. The real anti-Semites deserve nothing but contempt and continual opposition and resistance. It is disgusting that Mike, and other decent people like him, are smeared as Jew-hating bigots by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its shadowy paymasters in the Israel Advocacy Movement.
The decision against Ken Livingstone yesterday, sentencing him to suspension for another year because of his entirely accurate statement about the initial collaboration between the Nazis and the Zionists was declared to be anti-Semitic, brought fresh denunciations and anger from Jewish leaders. Members of the Jewish establishment from Rabbi Mirvis, the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, downwards, ranted about how Labour was riddled with anti-Semitism, the sentence was insufficient, and Red Ken should be expelled.
It’s all nonsense. As the five Jewish Labour party members, whose statements Mike put up on his blog yesterday pointed out, the Leninist newt-fancier had said absolutely nothing anti-Semitic. Indeed, at least one pointed out that in her experience she had encountered no anti-Semitism in the party. Florence in her comments about this shabby affair states that Labour has far fewer racists and anti-Semites in its ranks than the Tories. What really infuriated Mirvis and his fellows wasn’t that Ken was an anti-Semite, but that he and Naz Shah – who actually had a very good relationship with her local synagogue – had dared to criticise Israel for its brutal and barbarous treatment of its indigenous population. The Zionists have worked long and hard to try to forge a spurious equivalence between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. It’s rubbish, because not all Jews are Zionists by any means, and that the real definition of Anti-Semitism, as used by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the League of Anti-Semites, was hatred of Jews simply for being Jews. The League of Anti-Semites were one of the odious precursors to the Nazi party, so this definition of anti-Semitism comes from ‘the horse’s mouth’.
Furthermore, two of the people giving their statements about this issue came from homes, which were staunchly Zionist. One lady stated that her mother had lived in Palestine after being forced to leave Ukraine due to the anti-Semitist outrages there. Her paternal grandmother had also been an active supporter of Zionism in Britain. In a letter sent to the NCC, and signed by 30 Jewish Labour party members in support of the man Private Eye calls ‘Leninspart’, the signatories point out that not only aren’t all Jews Zionists, but many Zionists believe that Zionism itself has to be open to criticism, and hence the outrage to Ken’s entirely accurate statement is unwarranted.
Richard Seymour, in the chapter on how Project Fear failed to stop Corbyn in his book Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, also discusses some of the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour leader. He writes
One of the most insidious attacks from the Right was organised by the Jewish Chronicle, edited since 2008 by the Tony-Blair worshipping neoconservative pundit Stephen Pollard. In an article published a month before the outcome, the Chronicle posed a series of ‘key questions Jeremy Corbyn must answer’. Most of these were insinuation, guilt-by-association tactics. So, for example, it queried his links to Carlos Latuff, whom it characterised as ‘the notorious anti-Semitic cartoonist.’ Latuff is notoriously pro-Palestinian, but support for Palestine is a far cry from anti-Semitism. Even the Jewish daily Forward considers it a ‘stretch’ to call his cartoons ‘anti-Semitic’. Far more insidious was the attack on Corbyn for supporting Raed Salah, whom the Chronicle depicted as ‘a man convicted of the blood libel’. This was particularly obnoxious, because Salah had been the subject of a deportation struggle, in which these claims of anti-Semitism were used by the government to support his expulsion from the UK. What the Chronicle failed to mention was that Salah won that court case precisely because these claims were shown to be false and based on mistranslations. The fact that Salah was being slandered by the government is the reason why Corbyn, quite ethically, stood by him. Nonetheless, the Chronicle’s article provided material for reams and reams of similarly insinuating media attacks, such as Dan Hodge’s claim that Corbyn’s victory would be ‘cheered by terrorists and racists; and it served as ammunition for Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan to attack Corbyn in the Daily Mail for ‘encouraging terrorism’. (pp. 35-6).
The Zionists have had very strong links to Blair and New Labour ever since Blair bumped into the future Lord Levy at a gathering at the Israeli embassy in the 1990s. It was Levy, who got Blair funding from Jewish businessmen, funding that allowed him to be independent of the unions, whom he despised. The Blairite coterie have benefited from trips to Israel, paid for by the Israeli state, and have given their wholehearted support to Israel.
This has absolutely nothing to do with real anti-Semitism, about which, as one of those giving their statements yesterday pointed out, the Board of Deputies of British Jews will say nothing if it also serves their purposes. The Board kept their mouths firmly shut when the Mail used dog-whistle tactics to make a series of anti-Semitic smears against Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader. This is all about a Blairite political establishment, which was always a minority, trying to cling on to power, hysterically supported by a Zionist establishment desperate to criminalise support for the Palestinians against Israel’s massacre and deportation of them.
Mike has put up several articles today about the suspension of Ken Livingstone from the Labour party for bringing the party into disrepute with his remarks stating that Hitler initially collaborated with the Zionists in order to send Jews out of Germany and into Palestine. This has been viciously denounced as anti-Semitic by the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire and a range of other Jewish leaders.
It is rubbish. As I have said on this blog time and again, Livingstone for all his faults is not remotely anti-Semitic. He has always stood up for persecuted minorities against racism and Fascism, whether those picked on are Blacks, Asians, Jews or Irish. His book, Livingstone’s Labour, published in 1987 makes this very clear, and he devotes several chapters to revealing Britain’s shameful actions in recruiting Nazi thugs and collaborators to assist the British intelligence services in the war against Communism.
A letter criticising the old Leninist newt-fancier’s suspension, signed by 30 Jewish members of the Labour party has been sent to the NCC in advance of Livingstone’s hearing. Mike has also posted up on his blog not only the collective statement of the Jewish Labour members against this injustice. He has also put up statements from five Jewish Labour members, who personally appeared to present their views. They are Walter Wolfgang, Jonathan Rosenhead, Noami Wimborne-Idrissi, Diana Neslen and Jenny Manson. Several of these have personal and family experiences of real, genuine anti-Semitism. Mr Wolfgang, 93, was one of those, who found sanctuary in this country from persecution from the Nazis. Jenny Manson’s mother was forced to leave Ukraine in 1919 because of the pogroms there. (You can find a description of the outbreak of violent anti-Semitic persecution and the lynching of Jews simply for being Jews during the Russian Civil War, in Bulgakov’s novel The White Guard.) Jonathan Rosenhead and Jenny Manson also come from very Zionist backgrounds. Manson’s mother lived for ten years in Palestine, and her father’s mother was also active in Zionism in Britain. One other lady, Diana Neslen, is a Labour councillor and an active anti-racism campaigner. She has been chair of the Redbridge Race Equality and Community Council. Her family has also suffered anti-Semitic abuse, but in this country. Her son was beaten up by one of the British Nazi groups. After this vile individual was jailed, her family suffered a torrent of anti-Semitic phone calls.
The five have been members of the party for a very long time. They are not complacent about anti-Semitism. Indeed, it is because they take it so seriously, that they make it very clear that accusations of it should not be devalued simply to make a political point. They state very clearly that Livingstone was historically correct about the Transfer Agreement between the Nazis and the Zionists in Palestine. They point out that the definition of anti-Semitism that has been used against Livingstone is one that specifically equates includes criticism of Israel. This definition is discredited. The real definition of anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews for simply being Jews. This is the definition Marr, the founder of the League of Anti-Semites used for his organisation in the 19th century. They make the point that Ken Livingstone’s defence of Naz Shah was not anti-Semitic, nor were his historically accurate comments about the Transfer Agreement. They also state very clearly that these accusations come from Zionist organisations. However, not all Jews are Zionists, and those that are include many, who believe that the movement should be open to historical criticism.
Diana Neslen also points out that when, four years ago, the Daily Mail used dog whistle anti-Semitic insinuations against Ed Miliband – stating that his father ‘hated Britain’ and was a ‘Marxist’ – standard accusations from the Nazi playbook, the Board of Deputies of British Jews kept their mouths firmly shut. She also asks the Labour party to pay no heed to organisations that have been openly hostile to the Labour party, pointing out that the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews called on the Jewish community to vote Tory in the 2015 election.
Go there, and follow the links to more material from the people at their own websites.
Incidentally, I think Walter Wolfgang may have been the elderly gentleman, who was forcibly bundled out of a Labour conference by two goons simply for making a statement from the floor that embarrassed Blair. Mr Wolfgang was entirely correct, and it shows the authoritarianism and bullying contempt for grassroots democracy at the heart of the New Labour project. Just as this shabby pronouncement against Ken Livingstone does.
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