Get Ready for Anti-Semitism Smear Campaign 2.0 as Labour Condemns Israeli Invasion of Palestine

This is going to be a real test of Starmer’s leadership. It was not lost on left-wing Labour supporters, bloggers and activists that RLB’s sacking from the Labour shadow cabinet for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’ came just before Israel’s planned annexation of a third of the West Bank this Wednesday. For many of these true Labour people, the message was clear: Starmer had signed up to the Board of Deputies wretched 10 Pledges on Anti-Semitism, which meant that he was committed to suppressing any criticism of Israel and its barbarous and malign treatment of the Palestinians. Because when the British Jewish establishment – the Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbinate, Jewish Leadership Council and their satellites in the Labour Party – Labour Friends of Israel, the Jewish Labour Movement -say anti-Semitism, they really mean anti-Zionism.

The falsely named Campaign Against Anti-Semitism had precious little to say about real anti-Semitism, the vicious anti-Jewish hatred of the right and far right, which accounts for most the real anti-Semitic abuse and attacks in the UK. It was set up after the bombardment of Gaza to combat popular hostility to Israel, and most of its rantings were directed against Corbyn and its socialist critics. Ditto the equally wrongly named Jewish Labour Movement, whose members don’t have to be Jews or members of the Labour Party. This was founded from the moribund ashes of Paole Zion, again to defend Israel following a conversation its founder had with his friends in a cafe in Golders Green in 2012. And all of these organisations could be equally accused of anti-Semitism. They reserve their most bilious spleen for Jewish critics of Israel, whom they vilify as ‘Kapos’, ‘traitors’, ‘self-hating’ and worse. They are quite happy to see Jewish demonstrators against Israeli imperialism punched and beaten by the thugs of the Community Security Trust. And their supporters have a streak of racism a mile wide. After they attacked Jackie Walker for her stance on Israel, among the threatening and abusive messages she received were claims that she couldn’t be Jewish, because she was Black. This should be a new one to the Black Jewish communities in Ethiopia, and the Afro-Jewish peeps in America. An anti-racist friend of mine told me when I was studying Religious Education in college that one of Moses’ wives was a Cushite. Cush was a country in what is now Ethiopia, and Cushitic is a branch of the Afro-Asiatic language family, which includes the Semitic languages as well as Ancient Egyptian and the Berber tongues.

Now apparently the Board and Jewish press are preparing to kick off again. Lisa Nandy, one of the plotters against Corbyn, has dared to condemn the coming Israeli invasion of Palestine. According to a post just put up this morning by Zelo Street, Nandy has said:

“The proposal to unilaterally annex nearly a third of the West Bank is an illegal act which will undermine the prospect of a peaceful two-state solution for Israel and Palestine, and has serious implications for the stability of the Middle East”.

“It is a shameful proposition to which the UK cannot be a silent witness. Across the world concern is growing … So far the UK government has been conspicuously absent from this global response … This is now urgent. The government must be clear with the Israeli coalition government that concrete action will follow, including a ban on goods entering Britain from the illegal settlements in the West Bank”.

“This is a major step, but such a blatant breach of international law must have consequences. It will take a level of courage that so far ministers have not been willing to show”.

Morally and legally, Nandy is quite correct. Zelo Street has made it plain that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory is against international law under a series of United Nations resolutions passed after the 1967 Six Day War. But morality and international law counts for nothing where Israel is concerned. The Jewish Chronicle has published a piece by smear merchant Lee Harpin reporting that Marie van der Zyl has demanded that Starmer reject this proposal. She ranted “The tactic of BDS is divisive and seeks to strike at the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish State”. Apologists for Israeli imperialism recite these tropes that its the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state like its a mantra. As an argument against criticism, they have no validity. Israel’s an apartheid state where the indigenous Arabs are second-class residents, slowly being squeezed out by official Israeli expansionism. Israel cannot be considered genuinely democratic when institutionalized racism is enshrined in its law. Nor is it the Middle East’s only democracy. Lebanon is also democratic, though in a peculiar form which allocates certain roles in government to specific religions and ethnic groups in a system termed ‘consociality’. As for Israel being the world’s only Jewish state, that’s irrelevant. Israel’s actions would still be wrong and illegal regardless of the religion and ethnicity of its perpetrators.

As Zelo Street has pointed out, van der Zyl is really concerned about ‘BDS’ – the campaign to boycott goods produced in the Occupied Territories. The American government, both federal and state, has passed a series of legislation trying to outlaw the BDS movement as anti-Semitic. But a cursory glance should show that it is no such thing. It includes and has the staunch support of many self-respecting Jews, both observant and secular. It does not campaign against goods and services by Jews or even by Israel, just against goods produced in the Occupied Territories. It is against Israeli imperialism, not against Israel or Jews.

Nevertheless, the odious van der Zyl’s statement is a warning. If Starmer doesn’t do as she commands, they’ll start a fresh set of anti-Semitism allegations and smears. But the Street believes that Starmer is strong enough to defy them.

‘The problem that Ms van der Zyl faces, though, is that Keir Starmer does not bend to anyone else’s will. He did not hesitate to act last week, whatever the rights and wrongs of Rebecca Long Bailey’s actions, and he has already made up his mind on Palestine.

This is one game of Call My Bluff where Keir Starmer is not going to yield. End of story.’

I really wish that this is the case. Starmer has signed up to the Board’s wretched 10 Pledges, as they demanded, and got their patronising approval in return. But his sacking of Rebecca Long Bailey was an example of his weakness and willingness to comply with their demands, as Long Bailey was quite correct in her statement that it was the IDF who had trained the American police in the use of the knee-on-neck hold that killed George Floyd. But the truth, if it doesn’t make Israel look good, is always anti-Semitic to these horrors, and so they denounced her.

I hope Starmer stands firm and does not reprimand Nandy nor retract her demands. The organization in the weak position here is van der Zyl and the Board. But I fear he will, as he is also a member of the British establishment, and the British establishment as a whole backs Israel because of its role as a major agent of western influence and foreign policy in the Middle East.

I hope I’m wrong, but I can see this becoming very nasty very quickly. Starmer may well get the same treatment that was meted out to Corbyn. It’ll be very interesting to see if he stands up to them. And how his supporters will react when the weapon they used against Corbyn is now turned on them.

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/06/palestine-labour-and-call-my-bluff.html

Private Eye Sides with the Witch Hunters, Smear Merchants and Plotters in Article about Leaked Labour Document

I should have realised it wouldn’t last. Last fortnight’s Private Eye carried an article about the leaked Labour party document revealing the antics and intrigues of Blairite party bureaucrats to prevent the party winning the 2017 general election. Although the article accepted uncritically the leaked document’s false assumption that Labour was a hotbed of vicious anti-Jewish hatred, it nevertheless seemed to take seriously the document’s allegations that a series of highly placed Labour apparatchiks had been doing everything they could to sabotage its election chances in order to get rid of Corbyn. Now that attitude has been completely reversed.

In this fortnight’s Private Eye, for 8th – 21st May 2020, there’s another article about the document. Titled ‘Party Poopers’, this has returned to the magazine’s old line of pushing the anti-Semitism smears along with the rest of the lamestream media. The article views the leaked document as a series of terrible libels against people, who were genuinely exposing massive anti-Semitism. These people were also being victimised for their participation in the Panorama programme, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’, were suffering vicious personal abuse, including being targeted by an online Nazi group. Fortunately they’re being defended by defamation and privacy specialist (sic) Mark Lewis.

The article runs

Like a retreating army planting booby traps, Labour’s routed Corbynistas have left Keir Starmer some unexploded bombs: most notably the 860-page report on the supposed complicity of anti-Corbyn officials in hindering investigations into anti-Semitism.

They have left the party open to investigations by the information commissioner and Inspector Knacker – and multiple actions for libel and breach of privacy. Not content with electing one lawyer as leader, Labour may soon be enriching more of them.

The report, commissioned by general secretary Jennie Formby, created a stab-in-the-back narrative by alleging that Labour lost the 2017 general election because, in the words of John McDonnell, staff undermined the leader in a “shocking act of treachery”. It implied that anti-Corbyn officials sat on complaints of racism to make him look bad. Criticising “whistleblowers” who appeared in a Panorama film about Labour and anti-Semitism, it said the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) should “question the validity of the personal testimonies”.

Party lawyers advised Formby she couldn’t submit the report to the EHRC, let alone publish it. After an unknown Corbyn supporter leaked it over the Easter weekend, however, online activists were quick to share unredacted copies – including much confidential personal information.

A shower of writs is now about to descend on the party. At least 30 former Labour officials have contacted defamation and privacy specialist Mark Lewis – so many that Lewis has signed up other lawyers who are twiddling their thumbs in lockdown to deal with the backlog. Labour will ahve to deal with the fallout without Formby, who announced on Monday she was stepping down as general secretary.

The leaked report was based on 10,000 emails and private WhatsApp messages in which Labour employees bitched about their bosses, as employees tend to do. The information commissioner, who has the power to set multi-million-pound fines, is said to be taking the data breach seriously – all the more so because Labour has still not met its legal obligation to contact all the victims of the data breach to warn them that information they had the right to expect would remain private was in the public domain.

Equally angry are members of the public who are identified in the report as reporting incidents of anti-Jewish hatred – and whose names are now in the possession of neo-Nazi groups. The far-right website Unz Review used Formby’s dossier to name Labour members who complained and to denounce them as agents of “Jewish control” behind “the conspiracy to undermine and destroy Corbyn”. The group Labour Against Anti-Semitism has asked the police to investigate. Its lawyers have also hired private detectives to find who leaked the report.

One lawyer involved expects about 40 privacy and libel actions, estimating that even if Labour settles them at once, the cost to the party will be £2.5m. But Corbyn supporters on Labour’s national executive committee could try to block retractions and apologies. If so, the costs will explode.

Let’s deal with a few irritating little details Private Eye doesn’t mention. It claims that the plotters’ emails were leaked. They weren’t. The plotters did the intriguing using Labour’s computers, and duly handed them over when they were asked as part of the inquiry. They surrendered that information themselves. If they had wanted to keep it all private, they should have used their own machines.

They also went much, much further than bitching about their bosses. Their anti-Corbyn scams included mocking up fake videos to mislead Corbyn that the anti-Semitism allegations were being effectively handled, when they were allowing those same allegations to pile up. They ran two sets of campaigns in London with the intention of ensuring election victories solely for members of the Blairite right. They also suspended constituency Labour parties that were on the verge of deselecting the sitting MP, like Angela Eagle’s in Liverpool. Leading conspirators also acted as members and moderators on Tory online groups, and openly wished for Conservative and Lib Dem victories. This is against party rules, and the same conspirators had also thrown out other members of the party for doing the same, such as one individual who made the mistake of liking an internet comment by a Green politico.

The Panorama programme ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ was a farrago from start to finish. It’s producers were already biased against Corbyn, and it allowed members of the anti-Corbyn groups to make their allegations of anti-Semitism without revealing their membership of the same groups. Mike, Zelo Street and any number of other left-wing news sites and blogs have torn it to shreds.

Now look at the way it deliberately connects the leaked report with Nazism. The allegations of intrigue and plotting are described as a ‘stab-in-the-back- narrative. This is the same language historians use to describe the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that propelled Hitler to power: that Germany had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by the Jews so that the country lost World War I. Then it brings in the real Nazis, Unz Review.

If innocent people are being target for anti-Semitic abuse and attack by real Nazis, then it is absolutely disgusting.

But the Eye is also hypocritical in not mentioning the abuse and intimidation heaped upon their victims by the anti-Semitism smear merchants. People like Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Mike, who is still accused of being an anti-Semite and a Holocaust denier, even though he won his IPSO complaint against the newspapers who so libelled him. Mike, and other victims of the anti-Semitism smears, also had their private information leaked to the press. Mike has also complained to the Information Commissioner about it, but so far the Commissioner has done nothing. This awkward fact also isn’t mentioned by the Eye, because Hislop’s mighty organ has also done everything it can to push the anti-Semitism smears. And some of the witch-hunters’ victims have suffered far worse than abuse and death threats. One commenter on Mike’s blog posted that he had also been smeared as an anti-Semite by David Collier, part of the GnasherJew troll farm. Not only did Collier smear him, but he also doxed him as well, putting his personal details up on his wretched website and then camping outside his door. Collier has so far not taken the information down.

No mention of any of this from Private Eye!

On then, to Mark Lewis. The Eye’s description of him as specialising in defamation and privacy issues is one way of viewing him. In fact, he’s Rachel Riley’s pet lawyer, and the one she uses whenever someone criticises her for smearing and bullying decent people as anti-Semites and Nazis simply because they support Corbyn.

And finally, there’s the whole issue of ‘Jewish control’ in the Labour party. In fact, a large number of the victims of the anti-Semitism smears are themselves Jewish, because the ultra-Zionists of the Israel lobby cannot tolerate the idea that any Jew does not support Israel and regards its ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians as abhorrent. Yet there are any number who do, from the Haredi who believe Jews must continue to live in galut – exile – until Israel is truly restored by the Messiah, to politically liberal Jews, who believe that Israel’s maltreatment of the Arabs violates the liberal principles they view as being intrinsic to Judaism. As the saying goes, ‘to be a Jew is always to identify with the oppressed, never the oppressor’. It violates the commandment in Deuteronomy that the Jews are not to maltreat the ‘stranger in the land, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt’. These entirely decent, self-respecting people are smeared, insulted and sometimes physically attacked, like the non-Jews the witch-hunters have also targeted. Some of them have even been the victims of real anti-Semitic assault themselves, or, if non-Jewish, they’ve been attacked because they’ve dared to defend Jews or have Jewish friends, partners and relatives.

But no-one from the press, including Private Eye, has ever asked them about their experience.

And the talk about ‘Jewish control’ is designed to stop any objection to the Board of Deputies of British Jews’ demand for the right to interfere in the Labour party. By demanding that the Labour leadership contenders, including Starmer, sign up to their wretched 10 Pledges against anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies of British Jews now exercises a very high level of control over the party. They want the right to decide who should be allowed membership, including seeing confidential personal information. They have also demanded that members should not be allowed to share platforms with those expelled for anti-Semitism.

These demands are unreasonable, dictatorial and one-sided. No such demands have been made of the Tory party, Lib Dems or anyone else. 

By talking about Nazis and their denunciation of the Blairites’ intrigues and plotting as ‘Jewish control’, the article is clearly intended to make any objection to the Board’s demands seem anti-Semitic. But the Board has overstepped the boundaries of reasonable criticism into comprehensive involvement with these demands. And there are party political motives at work here. Not only does the Board uncritically support Israel and its atrocities, but it is also partisan in its political support here. The Board’s president, Marie van der Zyl, has sent messages of support and congratulations to Tweezer when she took office as Prime Minister. It’s possible that individual members of the Board may not be Tories, but to me it looks extremely likely that Zyl and the Board will use the anti-Semitism smears to demand the expulsion of anyone, who either criticises Israel or seems serious about returning the party to its socialist roots.

I’ve said many times that Eye publishes some excellent stuff, but I am exasperated by its complicity in the anti-Semitism smears. I despise the way it, and the rest of the media, has steadfastly refused to cover the people, who have been unfairly defamed and threatened by the witch-hunters simply because they criticise Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. And this article is another example of the same. I notice that the article is also unsigned. It is not credited to ‘Ratbiter’, perhaps because ‘Ratbiter’s’ real identity as Nick Cohen of the Guardian and Absurder is too well-known.

But like Cohen’s articles, this is yet another disgraceful smear and another vile attempt to keep the witch-hunt going and the witch-hunters safe from retribution for their foul activities.

Disgraceful! Starmer Caves in to Board’s Racist Demands over Black Women MPs

Mike put up a piece on Saturday reporting that Labour leader Keir Starmer had caved in to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and reprimanded two leading and highly respected Black women MPs, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

These two ladies offended the Board because they appeared in a conference on Zoom, whose audience included Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, who asked questions. The Board objected, as Jackie and Tony were two of the many people smeared as anti-Semites and expelled from the party. One of the noxious Ten Pledges that the Board persuaded Starmer and the other leadership contenders to sign was that no Labour member would share a platform with someone expelled for anti-Semitism. Hence Marie van der Zyl, the Board’s current president, sent in a complaint about the incident to Starmer calling for him to deal with them.

However, the Board’s complaint is wrong for a series of reasons. Firstly, Jackie and Tony weren’t actually expelled from the party for anti-Semitism. And as Mike says, saying that they’re anti-Semites simply because the Labour party said so has less weight than gossip.

Secondly, the two women weren’t sharing a platform with the two accused. They were merely in the audience. The fact that the van der Zyl and the Board chose to attack the two women anyway not only shows their determination to attack them, but also their failure to understand how Zoom works. Perhaps they’re like the American congressman, who was so ignorant about the internet when it first emerged in the ’90s that he asked if you needed a driver’s licence to go on the information superhighway as it then was.

Thirdly, while Starmer and the others are free to sign anything they wish, decisions affecting the party as a whole have to be ratified by conference. And the Ten Pledges weren’t. Starmer’s disciplining of the two women is therefore constitutional.

The Board’s complaint also looks more than a little racist itself. Zionism has a long history of collaborating with real anti-Semites and Fascists so long as its purposes are served. And these are frequently against the safety and wellbeing of the Jewish people as a whole. The Zionists in Nazi Germany supported the Nuremberg Laws, which defined Jews as racially distinct and incompatible with gentile Germans and signed the infamous Ha’avara Agreement in which the Nazis sent Jewish emigrants to Israel. During the War, the head of the Zionists in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, also made a pact with the Nazis to send tens of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz just so that a few could be sent to Israel. Israel has also supplied weapons and expertise to a string of Latin American dictatorships, including Guatemala when that nation’s government was exterminating the Mayans. When a neo-Nazi government took power in Argentina in the mid-70s and began persecuting Jews there, the Israeli government did not scruple to supply them with arms. Arms that were used against us during the Falklands War.

The Board defines itself as a Zionist organisation. It’s also politically right-wing, although perhaps not all its members are members and supporters of the Tories. And the Tories have hated Diane Abbott ever since she entered parliament in the 1980s. She was a left-wing firebrand, one of the first Black women MPs, who was determined to attack anti-Black racism. Over half of all the abusive messages sent to MPs go to her. She was one of those racially bullied by the Blairite plotters, according to the leaked anti-Semitism report. Not only did the scumbags reduce her to tears, but they told journalists where she was crying. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth, who was accused of anti-Semitism and reducing a Jewish woman to tears after he caught her passing information on to a Telegraph journo at a meeting at which he was speaking. Yet instead of suspending the plotters, Starmer instead has disciplined Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy.

The Board’s record when it comes to defending Britain’s Jews against Fascism is blotchy. In the 1930s when Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was marching through the East End of London in order to intimidate the Jewish inhabitants, instead of standing up to them the Board advised Jews to stay indoors out of the way. Fortunately many courageous people ignored it, and joined Irish people, trade unionists and Communists in blocking Mosley’s march and giving his storm troops a well-deserved hiding.

The Board also showed the same twisted mentality forty years later in the 1970s when the National Front was on the rise and trying the same tactics. Instead of attacking them, the Board turned its fire on their opponents, the Anti-Nazi League. Jews were forbidden to join the organisation or allow it to hold meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because its founder was an anti-Zionist, and they were afraid of Jews hearing anti-Zionist propaganda. But others suspect that it was because the Board itself had White supremacist views.

Tony Greenstein has written a piece on his blog taking the Board and Starmer to task for their treatment of Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He discusses the shameful behaviour of the Board towards British Fascism, and quotes Maurice Ludmer, the Jewish founder of the anti-Nazi magazine, Searchlight.  Ludmer wrote in issue 41 of the magazine

“In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots… It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930’s, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. “

The-then secretary of the Anti-Nazi League, Paul Holborrow, also wrote that they were under attack from the Board. Tony is annoyed that genuine anti-racists like himself are smeared as anti-Semites for opposing and criticising Israel, while genuine racists, like Katie Hopkins, were given an invitation by the Zionist Federation to attend their gala dinner and meet the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev. As for the Board, its previous head, Jonathan Arkush, welcomed the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s a racist, and his cabinet included real anti-Semites. However, he got a pass because he supports Israel.

Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy issued an apology for their actions. They had no call to do so, being blameless and actually the real injured parties in this sordid case. Greenstein in his piece advises them to stand firm and act like two of the heroes of the civil rights struggle in America, Paul Robeson and Angela Davies.

Robeson was a member of the Communist Party, and was thus hauled before the House Inquiry on Un-American Activities. When McCarthy asked him if he was a Communist, Robeson refused to answer, challenging the senator instead to stand behind him the next time he voted and fish his voting paper out of the ballot box to see. Greenstein also doesn’t mention it, but it is a significant fact here that Robeson was also an opponent of anti-Semitism. He gave a concert in Moscow after the War at the end of which he sang a Yiddish song by the Jewish resistance fighters against Nazism. This was not just to celebrate the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis, but also the millions of Soviet citizens murdered by Stalin.

Angela Davies is a Black American civil rights activist, who last year, 2019, was given the Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights Institute of Birmingham, Alabama. However, the Alabama equivalent of the Board got mightily offended and complained, because Davies is a critic of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians, which she compares to the police’s maltreatment of Black Americans. The Alabama Board complained, and then issued an embarrassed retraction and apology for their own racism when Davies stood her ground and called them out instead.

And the British Board deserves to be called out on its racism. It includes as deputies individuals like Robert Festenstein, an islamophobe who appeared in a Rebel Media video with Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. Arkush and van der Zyl have also appeared at meetings in which members of the audience sported Jewish Defence League T-shirts. The JDL is a Judaeo-Nazi organisation, whose predecessor, Kach, is banned as a terrorist group in Israel. Unlike the majority of modern Jews, who strongly reject any idea that their religion makes them superior to anyone else, Kach was founded by Meir Kahane, an extreme right-wing rabbi. He really did believe that Jews are superior to gentiles, and urged Jews to arm themselves. He also absolutely believed that the Holy Land belonged solely to the Jews, and demanded the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people.

There’s a connection here to the militia movement that emerged in America during the ’90s. These were the successors to the Survivalists of the 1980s. They were arming themselves against the American government, which they believed had been corrupted by liberalism and was about to establish a murderous totalitarian dictatorship. According to their critics, such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the militias were White Supremacists with close connections to American Nazism and the Klan. However, according to Adam Palfrey’s Cult Rapture, an examination of American fringe culture in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, there was also Jewish militia. This group also based their ideology on that of Kahane’s. Palfrey sees them, as well as the fact that the leader of one of the other militias was Black, that the movement as a whole wasn’t White Supremacist. I think he’s wrong, and it’s just that some parts of the movement were less strict in their racism than others, and were prepared to include Jews as fellow White Supremacists.

Now Arkush and Zyl did not meet the American Kahanists. But by speaking at meetings attended by their British cousins they have shown a culpable willingness to tolerate real Islamophobes with paramilitary sympathies. They deserve to be called out on this, as should the Zionist Federation for its endorsement of Hatey Katie.

Starmer should not be kowtowing to the Board and punishing real anti-racists like Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He should be backing them instead and holding the Board to account for their racism. As Angela Davies’ case shows, it can be done.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/02/keir-starmer-has-turned-labour-into-the-party-of-hypocrisy-and-racism/

https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-new-mccarthyism-zionist-board-of.html

 

Unrepresentative Jewish Group Makes Racist Demand to Labour to Expel Black Women MPs

This is absolutely atrocious behaviour from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for which they should be roundly condemned by every genuinely anti-racist person in the country. Mike today has reported that the Board, led by its odious president, Marie van der Zyl, should expel two of its highly esteemed Black women MPs. The women they’re targeting are the Labour veteran, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Why? Because they attended a conference on Zoom in which they took questions from the audience, which included two former Labour members, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker, whom the Israel lobby and Conservative – including Blairite – establishment had smeared as anti-Semites. And because Keir Starmer had stupidly tried to win their approval by signing their wretched ‘Ten Pledges’. One of these was that Labour Party members would not share a platform with those expelled from the party for anti-Semitism.

The Board is an unrepresentative body. Despite it claims to speak for all of Britain’s Jews, it really speaks for a tiny minority, the United Synagogue. It does not represent the Haredi Jews nor the Orthodox, who have their own bodies. Furthermore, it explicitly defines itself in its constitution as a Zionist organisation, which means that it does not represent non-Zionist Jews, of which there are many. The Board is, like the rest of the British establishment, by and large very Tory, though I would not care to say that all of its members are. Starmer, and the rest of the Labour leadership candidates, has given them, an organisation outside the Labour Party and hostile to it, dictatorial powers over whom it may accept as members, how they are to behave and with whom they may associate. Many of their demands, as Mike and others have pointed out to me, would not stand up if challenged in a court of law. Indeed, I have heard that they run directly counter to it. To many people, van der Zyl’s and the Board’s obnoxious demands look like both a domineering attempt to dictate to the Labour party and its members, and also a racist attack on two distinguished Black female MPs.

And not only is the Board morally wrong to demand their expulsion, it is also technically wrong according to the terms of its own wretched pledges. Jackie and Tony weren’t on the platform. They were members of the audience. And neither of them were expelled for anti-Semitism.

Mike reproduces a number of tweets from Labour members and supporters, who are very much aware of the gross injustice and sheer arrogance of the Board’s latest demand, and strongly condemn. They include Jackie Walker, the Alternative Daily News, ‘Saboteur Aesop’, ‘Stevewhiteraven’, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, Clare Curran, the Rt Rev’d Mojito and Simon Maginn.

Mike considers that this has put Starmer in quite a quandary, as if he gives into the Board there will be such a mass walkout that by Christmas it will only consist of him and Rayner.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/01/this-minority-interest-group-is-dictating-racist-membership-rules-to-the-labour-party-why/

As well as being racist, it also looks very politically motivated. The right has hated Abbott since she was a radical young firebrand in the 1980s. She was one of the first of the wave of Black and ethnic minority MPs that were then entering parliament, along with the late Bernie Grant. She was among the Labour MPs smeared by the Scum in the 1987 election. They claimed that she had said that all White people are racist. They hate her because she is very loud and outspoken in her attacks on anti-Black, anti-Asian racism. But she is also a close friend, and, so I have heard, a former lover of Jeremy Corbyn. This looks very much like the Conservative Board using this as an opportunity to attack a Labour MP they have always loathed.

Despite their claims, the Board and the Israel lobby have a very poor record when it comes to combating racism when it does not involve Jews. David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, a veteran anti-racist campaigner, states in one of the pieces on his blog that when he was in the Anti-Nazi League, the Board forbade Jews from joining or holding their meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because the founder of the Anti-Nazi League was an anti-Zionist, and they wished to stop impressionable Jews hearing criticism of Israel. But other Jewish left-wingers suspected there was also another agenda, to stop Jews supporting Blacks and Asians.

The Board’s demands for the two women’s expulsion also resembles the racist undertones behind the Blairites’ and Israel lobby’s demand for the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth. Wadsworth is a genuine anti-racist activist. He worked for the parents of Stephen Lawrence to meet Nelson Mandela, and with the Board in the 1980s to stop anti-Semitic assaults by the BNP around the Isle of Thanet. But he was the man, who supposedly made a Jewish Blairite MP cry when he caught her passing information on to the Telegraph at a meeting, and called her out for it. An angry squad of Blairites, including, I believe, Luciana Berger, descended on his hearing to demand his expulsion. All of them were White, and critics said it looked very much like a White lynching party about to attack a Black.

Jackie Walker, a very respectable anti-racism educator and activist, has also been subject to viciously racist abuse since the Israel lobby smeared her as an anti-Semite. Apart from the grotesque hate messages she’s received demanding that she should be hanged, or burnt and her body dumped in bin bags, she’s also been racially abused by Jews. She’s Black, and so, according to their limited ideas, can’t be Jewish. I got news for them. There have been communities of Black Jews in Ethiopia for a very long time. There are also Black Jews in the West. There’s a professor of Afro-Jewish Studies at one of the American universities, an American synagogue has even made a Black woman its rabbi. And some of the older readers of this blog will remember a certain Sammy Davis jnr, a very popular singer, dancer and film star, who was a member of the famous ‘Rat Pack’ which included Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

But the Israel lobby also includes some individuals, who can certainly be fairly described as being Far Right. One of the ultra-Zionists, who turns up to protest pro-Palestinian meetings, was formerly a resident of apartheid South Africa and, it seems, very comfortable with its official racism. Others have links to the EDL and other islamophobic groups. Jonathan Hoffman, the former head of the Zionist Federation, has appeared at protests alongside Paul Besser of the extreme right-wing group, Britain First. There is also a couple who turn up to such protests, including those organised against Corbyn by the Campaign For Anti-Semitism and the Board of Deputies, wearing Kach T-shirts. Kach are an extreme right-wing Israeli terrorist group. There have also been Jews, who are extremely sympathetic to the British Nazi right. One Tory MP in Barnet, according to one anti-Zionist Jewish website I read, who used to complain that it was a pity the Conservatives and BNP were separate parties, as it divided the Nationalist vote. The great historian of the British Jewish community, Geoffrey Alderman, was also under pressure from the Board to remove the finding in one of his books in the 1970s that two per cent of the Jewish community support the National Front against Blacks and Asians. There were also some Fascists, who had no hatred of the Jews. Matthew Collins of the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism groups, Hope Not Hate, formerly a member of the BNP and other Nazi groups, recalls being told by another by another Fascist that he really couldn’t understand hatred of the Jews. This interesting snippet is in his book, Hate.

It is therefore completely possible and sensible to talk of Jewish White supremacism and anti-Black, anti-Asian racism.

Marie van der Zyl’s attacks on Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy is not only another partisan, Conservative, Zionist attempt to dictate to Labour under the spurious pretext of combating anti-Semitism, it also looks very much like anti-Black racism.

As one of the Tweeters quote by Mike says, get the Board out of the Labour party.

 

 

Evening Standard Publishes Anti-Semitic Cartoon – Board of Deputies and Official Jews Silent

Wednesday’s edition of the I also carried the news that the various organs of the Jewish establishment, which took it upon themselves to smear Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites, issued a joint statement celebrating their meeting with the new leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer. They were Marie van der Zyl of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan Goldstein of the Jewish Leadership Council, Gerald Ronson, the chairman of the Community Security Trust, and Mike Katz, the head of the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion. They declared that Starmer had done more to tackle anti-Semitism in Labour that Corbyn did in four years of leadership.

This is a flat-out lie. Corbyn and his supporters were never anti-Semitic. Quite the opposite. Corbyn did much for the Jewish community, as various other Jewish groups recognised. Real anti-Semitism was at the lowest it had been for years during his leadership. But he was a critic of Israel, and so the official Jews declared that he had to be an anti-Semite. It’s the only way they can defend Israel against criticism of its indefensible ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Starmer’s meeting with these knaves and clowns was a capitulation. He, along with the rest of the leadership hopefuls, had signed up to the Board’s 10 pledges for dealing with anti-Semitism. These can be summarised as the immediately expulsion without defence of anyone they decide is an anti-Semite. And that definition is very elastic, and applies only to pro-Palestinian activists, critics of Israel, and those, who try to defend them. The Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council, Community Security Trust and the Jewish Labour Movement are all Zionist organisations, though you may be accused of anti-Semitism for pointing this out. Fact means nothing to these scoundrels. They are also Conservative to the core, which is why they also had a very party political motive for wanting Corbyn removed. It was very noticeable that Starmer’s meeting with them didn’t include left-wing Jewish groups, like Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group. Because they were the wrong kind of Jews.

And this contemptible lack of interest in defending the Jewish community as a whole, and in particular left-wing Jews, was shown very clearly in the Jewish establishment’s culpable silence on Tuesday over the publication of a cartoon in the London Evening Standard. Drawn by their cartoonist, Christian Adams, this portrayed Keir Starmer welcoming Ed Miliband back into the party. It was supposed to be a comment on Starmer’s own leadership that he was welcoming a former leader, who had been a failure. But it was a comment on George Osborne’s editorship of the Standard, that Adams showed Miliband with a hooked nose, buck teeth and clutching a bacon sandwich. Dripping a reddish substance. Miliband is Jewish, and the attacks on him when he was Labour leader definitely had an anti-Semitic tinge. Miliband’s father was the Marxist intellectual, Ralph Miliband. Miliband pere was a refugee from Belgium. He was a fierce critic of this country’s class system and the public schools that maintain it. But there is no question of his loyalty. He fought bravely for Britain in World War II to overthrow Nazism. But the Heil decided to run a feature calling him ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’ as an attack on his son. Yes, we’re back to the British establishment’s fears and vilification of Jewish intellectual, ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ and the idea that Jews have no loyalty to the country in which they reside.

But Miliband’s true patriotism and bravery during the War contrasts strongly with the Mail’s. This was the newspaper that hailed Oswald Mosley’s vile BUF with the headline ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’. Even when it dropped him, it still carried on supporting Hitler and publishing anti-Semitic headlines about Jewish refugees and so on. And the father of former editor, Paul Dacre, rather than serving in the army to defend our great nation, was instead far behind the lines covering the glamorous world of showbiz and celebrities.

As for the physical depiction of Miliband, who doesn’t have a hooked nose or buck teeth, they’re common to the racist depiction of a number of different ethnicities. But that does include the Jews. As does the bacon sandwich. The right-wing press ridiculed Miliband for eating a bacon sandwich ‘weirdly’. But many on the left also saw there another anti-Semitic trope. It was too similar to the medieval forms of ritual humiliation, in which Jews were forced to eat pork. As for the red substance, that was probably tomato sauce. But it also looked a bit like blood, which brings back the blood libel – that Jews ritually murder Christians in order to use their blood to make the matzo bread eaten at Passover. This vile smear has been at the centre of horrific pogroms and massacres down the centuries.

I realise these are just tropes, but that is how the official Jews of the Israel lobby judge whether something is anti-Semitic. It is, if it can be shown to conform to a literary trope or historical parallel. Even if what is being reported, such as the Israeli massacre of Palestinian civilians, is true.

By their own standards, Adams’ cartoon is anti-Semitic.

But the London Evening Standard is edited by former Tory chancellor George Osborne. and as the Jewish establishment is Tory to a core, Miliband is ‘the wrong kind of Jew’. The Board and the rest of them were culpably silent.

Both Mike and Zelo Street put up articles attacking the cartoon, the Standard and the hypocrisy of the Jewish establishment. As did Martin Odoni, another Jewish victim of the anti-Semitism witch hunt in the Labour Party. Martin commented

“Come on, BoD, come on, David Collier, come on, Jonathan Hoffman, and all you other self-righteous Zionist squealers cheaply using Jewish identity as a cover story for Israeli political gain. We know that the Evening Standard is a Tory newspaper, and therefore an ally of yours. But if you ever want to retain the slightest remnant of credibility, you need to protest this more loudly than any deed by anyone you have attacked in the Labour Party over the last five years.

“Because unlike almost all of the deeds you have attacked, this is absolutely explicit. It is an outrageous racial caricature, by the very standards you have insisted on imposing. You cannot apply them selectively.”

And both Mike and Zelo Street show Tweets from a variety of people showing that Martin’s definitely not alone. The silence of the Board and its fellows has been noted by very many people, who are disgusted.

Mike concludes his article with the comment

‘We’ll be waiting a long time for the Bod, JLC, JLM, CST and all the named champions of the fight against (Labour)(alleged) anti-Semitism to say anything, I reckon!

But what do you think?’

Well, it’s Friday as I write this, and all those august bodies have said not a dicky-bird.

Which shows you they aren’t interested in tackling real anti-Semitism, but only criticism of Israel and the socialist left.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/04/07/while-starmer-bends-backwards-for-right-wing-jewish-groups-the-tories-are-making-anti-semitic-jokes/

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/04/tory-ex-chancellor-promotes-anti.html

https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/george-osborne-publishes-and-promotes-anti-semitic-cartoon-deathly-silence-from-bod-and-the-media/

Anti-Semitic Attack on Israeli Rabbi – Corbyn and Abbott First to Offer Sympathies

Oh, how embarrassing for those accusing Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party of anti-Semitism! Yesterday the Sage of Crewe put up a piece about a report in the Guardian about a vicious, genuine anti-Semitic attack on a rabbi visiting from Israel. The rabbi was in London for a family wedding, when he was attacked on Friday night by two men, who shouted ‘fucking Jew, dirty Jew’ and ‘kill the Jews’, and punched him to the ground, leaving the poor fellow dazed and bleeding. The Groan was told about the attack by Shomrim, a neighbourhood watch group, who were understandably angry about the assault and what they believed was the Met police’s failure to respond appropriately to it. The paper also reported that Corbyn and shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, both condemned the attack. Corbyn tweeted that he had spoke to Rabbi Gluck, the chairman of Shomrim, to express his concerns. R. Gluck confirmed that Corbyn had indeed phoned inquiring what had happened and to express his shock and sympathy with the Jewish community. The rabbi added We deeply appreciate his concern. He sounded extremely genuine. He was the only party leader who called’”. I think the emphasis may be Zelo Street’s own.

How embarrassing for the anti-Semitism smear merchants!

In fact, it’s so embarrassing that you didn’t read that Corbyn was the only one in the rest of the media. The Mail Online reported that Boris also phoned, along with Corbyn and Abbott. But he only did that after the Labour leader. The Jewish Chronicle didn’t mention Corbyn at all in their report about it. But then Rabbi Gluck stated, according to the Hackney Gazette, that he didn’t think the attacks had anything at all to do with issues in the Labour party or Jeremy Corbyn. He believed that they were part of a pattern that started long before Brexit, but had increased exponentially under the present government. The good rabbi also said that he believed that minorities in Stamford Hill, including Haredi Jews, were being regularly attacked due to police funding cuts. There simply weren’t enough coppers around to protect them. Zelo Street adds that it’s no wonder that the press kept schtum.

Zelo Street concludes

‘Thus we see that selective reporting is alive and well: airbrushing the Labour leader out of this story shows that, when it comes to allegations of anti-Semitism, it is not only what the press chooses to publish, but also what it chooses not to publish.

Jeremy Corbyn alone of party leaders cared enough to call. I’ll just leave that one there.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/12/rabbi-assaulted-corbyn-alone-calls.html

But it does seem to have rattled Marie van der Zyl and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. There’s a report in today’s I that Corbyn has finally apologised for anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and offered to meet with Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis. But van der Zyl is still complaining about anti-Semitism in Labour and how Corbyn hasn’t done enough, and stated that she and the Board would not be distracted on this issue by questions about it in other parties.

Which amply demonstrates her and her organisation’s political bias. She’s only concerned about it in the Labour party. Just like, I believe, some of the other celebs, like Tracy Ann Oberman, who have said that they’re not interested in it in the Tories, only in Labour.

Anti-Semitism is and always has been far more prevalent on the right and far-right. This has proved again and again by history and social science research. And racism and anti-Semitism has to be fought everywhere.

But Marie van der Zyl gives the Tories a free pass on it.

This not only shows how selective her own opposition to anti-Semitism is, it also reveals what the true point of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt is:

To get Corbyn out, purely for political reasons.

Van der Zyl’s personal politics, and that of the rest of the Board, appear to be pure, true-blue Tory. They are also staunch ultra-Zionists, are afraid of allowing any criticism of Israel’s monstrous policies towards the Palestinians. That’s the reason they smear Corbyn and Labour of being anti-Semitic.

But the Labour leader’s response to the attack on the rabbi shows not only that he isn’t, but that he isn’t even anti-Israeli. One can want a just peace that respects the Palestinians without wishing to see the Israeli people murdered. But that’s not something that van der Zyl and ultra-Zionists like her understands.

 

The Three Photographs That Reveal the Real Reason for the Anti-Semitism Smears Against Labour

Mike and the great Jewish anti-racist, anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein have both extensively covered and refuted the anti-Semitism smears and witch-hunts against the Labour party. And as Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis published his latest attempt to revive them, they have both put on their blogs a series of posts which very effectively demolish the smears and the Chief Rabbi’s pretence that he’s motivated by a genuine fear for the safety of Britain’s Jews.

Here’s a photo Mike put up on his blog, from a tweet by Mirvis congratulating him on gaining 10 Downing Street.

 

And this image, of Mirvis gurning next to Netanyahu, or, as I’ve heard him described by one Jewish academic, ‘that bastard Netanyahu’, was tweeted by Zoe Zeero.

Her caption reads

With predictable timing, the same week that Labour announces they would no longer continue to sell weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia, out pops the Tory-donating, Netanyahu-supporting Rabbi to denounce Labour.

In 2015, not that long after the bombardment of Gaza which led to the loss of 2000 Palestinian lives including 500 children, Rabbi Mirvis wrote that ‘Israel would not survive without its weapons.

The rabbi, who used to live in Israel and is personal friend of both Boris Johnson as well as Netanyahu, has frequently defended Israel’s right to bomb Palestinians.

It is then followed by a series of internet addresses supporting her statement.

Here’s the real reason Chief Rabbi Mirvis attacked Jeremy Corbyn and Labour: he’s a TORY (and a racist, it seems)

And Tony Greenstein put up this photo of Marie van der Zyl, the current president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, personally protesting against Chris Williamson speaking in Brighton.

See: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-hypocrisy-of-ephraim-mirviss.html

Hold on! Wasn’t she down there protesting because the former Labour MP is a vicious anti-Semite? Well, ostensibly yes. Even though he isn’t a Jew-hater, as Greenstein, Mike, and Williamson’s many supporters, gentile and Jewish, have pointed out. Zyl, and the rest of the Board of Deputies, are Tories to a man and woman. They’re also arch-Zionists. It’s written into the Board’s constitution, so that anti-Zionist or simply Israel-critical Jews aren’t represented.

Mirvis and his predecessor as Chief Rabbi, R. Jonathan Sacks, and the Board and rest of the anti-Semitism smear merchants are Conservatives and ultra-Zionists. They hate and fear Corbyn and his supporters, left-wing, traditional Labour members and supporters like Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Mike, Martin Odoni and all the others, because they want to overturn four decades of Thatcherism. Four decades of our state industries, including the NHS, being sold off. Four decades of the unions being smashed, the poor, the unemployed and the disabled being demonised and denied proper state support. Four decades of racism against Blacks, Asians and now, most particularly, Muslims. Four decades of workers’ rights being eroded, and exploitative contracts introduced, all in the name of creating a fluid labour market. Four decades of poverty, misery, starvation, despair and death.

All for the profit of the very rich, the corporate giants donors giving money to Tory and New Labour coffers.

And let’s make it very clear: they certainly do not represent all of Britain’s Jews by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve blogged before about how unrepresentative the Chief Rabbinate and the Board are. They only represent the United Synagogue. They don’t represent secular Jews, who don’t attend worship, nor the Orthodox. And they really don’t represent the Haredi Jewish community, who have repeated written letters in support of Corbyn because Corbyn has always been a friend to Jews and defended their interests. In the case of the Haredi community, this was particularly demonstrated when he prevented a historic burial ground from being redeveloped.

David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has particularly pointed out that they don’t represent the Jewish poor, Jewish single mothers and other Jewish peeps facing the same issues of poverty, marginalisation and disenfranchisement as the wider British public. They don’t represent the Jews, who work in and support our NHS and public services, or who depend on them for their healthcare and supplies of electricity and water. The ordinary people, who use buses and trains to get to and from work, the shops or school.

Mirvis, van der Zyl and the rest only represent their community’s rich elite. As Tony Greenstein has pointed out, they risk encouraging the very anti-Semitism they claim to condemn by appearing to show that the Jewish community is composed of nothing but rich capitalists determined to stamp out any movement that wishes to empower working people.

Their actions and attitudes conform to the anti-Semitic stereotype the real Jew-haters and Fascists have used to stir up resentment and hatred against the Jewish people.

And as ultra-Zionists, Chief Rabbis Sacks and Mirvis, and van der Zyl and the Board, have followed Israel’s lead in using spurious claims of anti-Semitism as a weapon against legitimate criticism of Israel for its barbarous maltreatment of the Palestinians. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement were explicitly set up to counter criticism of Israel following its bombardment of Gaza. Corbyn has been attacked and vilified, not because he is a genuine anti-Semite, but because he wants a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

As do many Jews and Israelis, who have also been viciously smeared as anti-Semitic and self-hating, by people like Sacks, Mirvis and van der Zyl. 

Don’t be taken in by the Tory lies and ultra-Zionist propaganda. These three pictures show the real motivations behind the anti-Semitism accusations. They also show that the Tories have nothing really left to use against Corbyn and Labour except these fake accusations.

Vote them out, and Corbyn and Labour in! Because Corbyn, unlike the Tories, will make a better Britain and, as the Labour pledges on race and faith shows, he is serious about tackling racism.

And that has always included defending Jews, fighting anti-Semitism and fighting for all the British people’s poor.