Ian McCulloch – Ready to Continue the Witch Hunt?

This is another piece about the deputy leadership hustings in Bristol, and about one of the contentious issues that was inevitably raised there – anti-Semitism. All the candidates made it clear that they were determined to stamp out racism and Jew-hatred in the party, but it was the comments by Ian McCulloch and, to a lesser extent, Rosena Allin-Khan, that gave me concern. McCulloch seemed absolutely ruthless about it, stating that he would do anything to crush it in the party.

These are dangerous words, as the amount of real anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has been massively exaggerated. It exists, but it’s vanishingly small. Less than one per cent of Labour Party members have been found to be anti-Semitic. It’s far smaller than the amount of racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism that’s very often openly displayed in the Tory party and among its supporters. The extent of anti-Semitism in Labour was played up purely for political reasons. The Tories, their media lackeys and the Blairites in Labour simply wanted to use it as a stick to beat and oust Corbyn. The Israel lobby, including the Jewish establishment – the Jewish papers, Board of Deputies, Chief Rabbis, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Jewish Labour Movement and so on, also wanted to overthrow Corbyn and purge the party of his supporters because they were afraid of the election of a national leader, who would genuinely defend the Palestinians. These organisations aren’t interested in defending Jews from real racial hatred. In their view, anti-Semitism is nearly synonymous with opposition to Israel. It was made very clear by Stephen Pollard, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, who wrote a piece declaring that Michal Kaminski, a far-right Polish MEP, wasn’t anti-Semitic because he was a ‘good friend to Israel’. It’s shown in the way the Israeli state greets and welcomes genuine far right leaders and heads of states so long as they trade with Israel and buy their arms.

As a result of these political intrigues, many hundreds of entirely innocent individuals, including self-respecting Jews, have been purged from the party simply for voicing opinions on Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. Opinions that the Thatcherite establishment and Israel lobby wish to suppress. Either that, or they’ve been thrown out simply for defending those, who’ve been libelled, suspended and expelled. The victims include Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Marc Wadsworth, Cyril Chilson, Mike Sivier, Martin Odoni, Ken Livingstone and many others. As you can see from this brief list, many of them are Jewish, and all are absolutely convinced anti-racists. But because they are genuinely anti-racist and are not prepared to exclude Israel from criticism and are concerned with historical truth, they’ve been victimised and expelled.

As the leadership elections commenced, the Board of Deputies sent the candidates a list of pledges they demanded them to commit to. These pledges, as Mike has made clear on his blog, give the Board and its subsidiary organisations total control over who is to be judged an anti-Semite, and the processes by which they are judged and punished or expelled. This is unacceptable for several reasons. The Board has been one of the parties pushing the anti-Semitism smears, and so is hardly a disinterested, objective party. It is also an outside organisation, not a part of nor responsible to the members of the party. Its interference in the party’s affairs is unacceptable purely on that account. All of the leadership candidates signed their wretched piece of paper, which means that instead of drawing a line under the anti-Semitism controversy, it will almost certainly result in further interference, smears and fake accusations by the Board.

It’s a pity that the candidates weren’t taking questions directly from the audience about their answers. I would have liked to have challenged McCulloch about this, made the point that majority of accusations were false, and asked him what he was going to do to make sure any accusation and trial were just. But this was not permitted by the format. Instead, McCulloch got thunderous applause from those present.

I was also rather concerned by Rosena Allin-Khan’s statement about anti-Semitism. She wanted it cleaned out because she had Jewish friends, who were considering joining and standing for the party. But they had been put off, and wondered if there was a place for Jews in it. Now I don’t doubt that this is true. There are many Jews within and outside the Labour party, who do realise what is going on and that the accusations are false. But nevertheless, the Jewish establishment have done an excellent job of scaring Britain’s Jews into believing that Corbyn and the Labour Party really are anti-Semitic and an ‘existential threat to Jewish life in Britain’. I wanted to ask Allin-Khan what she had done to calm their fears. Had she tried to refute them, to show that the vast majority of accusations were false, that nearly all of them were purely political in motivation? And was she concerned about the vast numbers of Jews inside and outside the party, who were being smeared as ‘the wrong kind of Jews’ by the Zionist Jewish establishment? Did she know, had she told them, that the Jewish Labour Movement was at the time tiny, and that most of its members were gentiles and that many of them weren’t even members of Party, against Jewish Voice for Labour, which was much bigger and the majority of whose members were, through its constitution, very definitely Jewish? Didn’t she point out and defend the Jews, who had been falsely accused, smeared and then expelled or bullied into leaving, who very definitely weren’t self-hating, or anti-Semitic? Quite the opposite, in fact. Many Jews despise Israel and its treatment of the Paletinians because they are Jewish. They include Torah-observant Jews, such as the Haredi, who object to it because the Torah and Talmud state that Israel can only be restored by the Messiah and the hand of the Almighty. Or they see liberal values as the moral core of Judaism, and object to Israel because it’s the same kind of ethnic state that persecuted them. And one Jewish journalist has said that British Jews are afraid to speak out against the Israel lobby. This is really persecution, but as it’s done by the self-professed British Jewish establishment, it’s totally ignored. It’s victims really are the ‘wrong kind of Jews’, you see.

I couldn’t ask these question, but they do need to be asked. I realise the candidates have to be very careful in the answers they give, because any sign that they don’t back Israel 100 per cent or that they believe the anti-Semitism accusations to be grossly inflated will result in further smears and accusations against them. I want a Labour government back in power. But I also want a party genuinely committed to justice, and not dominated on this or any other issue by an outside party acting primarily in the interests of another nation. I believe this can be done, if the party is prepared to stand together to rebut the lies and libels.

And I definitely don’t want to elect a leader, who will continue the witch hunt and wreck decent peoples’ lives, Jewish and gentile, by seeing them smeared as anti-Semites when they are absolutely not.

No, Hoffman, Pro-Palestine Activists Do Not March with the Far Right

The great Tony Greenstein has this morning put up a post responding to a series of allegations by Jonathan Hoffman, a former chair of the Zionist Alliance and venomously bitter opponent of anything resembling criticism of Israel. Hoffman is incensed at an article written by Shaun Lawson comprehensively attacking and refuting the weaponisation of anti-Semitism by the right, and particularly the far right. Lawson also takes very good aim at noxious Z-list celeb, Rachel Riley, and her contributions to the smears and hysterical polemics. Hoffman believes himself to have been smeared by Lawson, and offers some proof that he isn’t the raging pro-Israel racial fanatic he appears to be. Like the accusation that he marches with the EDL. Tony Greenstein has weighed in with his article, and refuted Hoffman’s forlorn attempts to show that he is a decent human being.

One of the arguments Hoffman tries to make against Lawson and his accusers is that in one demonstration, anti-Zionists were mixing and marching with the EDL and Fascist right. By Greenstein refutes this too, stating very clearly that anti-Zionists are not anti-Semites, and would not tolerate the presence of genuine racists. If such Fascists did try to mix with them, ‘there would be blood on the ground’. Greenstein writes

But in any case this is completely irrelevant. Anti-Zionists have never demonstrated alongside fascists and anti-Semites. We simply would not have tolerated them and on the few occasions when, in the 1980’s members of the National Front attempted to join Palestinian demonstrations we physically stopped them.

If the EDL had attempted to join our picket there would have been blood on the pavement. The Police would have had to separate us yet Hoffman was perfectly happy to demonstrate alongside fascists and anti-Semites because to him the most important thing is supporting Israel. We would never have demonstrated with fascists. The thought never occurred to the Zionists and Hoffman.

He then goes on to describe how Hoffman, and other leading Zionists like the Jewsplaining editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, have made common cause with anti-Semites and Fascists like the EDL and Poland’s Michal Kaminski. Incidentally, Greenstein notes early in his piece that due to his aggressive behaviour at a demonstration last year, Hoffman is due to be charged by the beak at Westminster Magistrates Court with common assault. The matter is sub judice, so Greenstein rightly declines to comment further on the matter.

The whole of Greenstein’s article can be read at:

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2019/03/in-defence-of-jonathan-hoffman-because.html

 

Labour’s Kangaroo Courts Are A Credibility Liability

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

The letter declared that he had been found guilty because

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

But the original charges were

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He concludes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BNP to Hold Holocaust Denial Conference in Blackpool

Also according to Hope Not Hate, the remains of the BNP were also going to hold a conference at the Talbot Social Club, Blackpool, on the 22nd September 2018. The advertised topic was ‘White victims of Multiculturalism’, but Hope Not Hate suggested instead that, given the people attending, the conference was going to be about Jews and the Holocaust. The anti-racist, anti-religious extremism organization’s article, written by Matthew Collins, gives a graphic description of the very poor levels of hygiene in some of the establishments in which the BNP held their conferences, as well as the very sordid antics those attending got up to. Orgies and drug-taking are only part of it, and it makes for grim reading. It also gives a list and very brief biographical notes of those speaking at the event.

See: https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/2018/09/20/blackpool-host-holocaust-haters/

One of those speaking is Andrew Brons, a long-time Nazi. In the 1980s Brons was a member of the ‘Strasserite’ wing of the National Front. These took their inspiration from Otto and Gregor Strasser, the two members of the Nazi party, who took the ‘socialist’ section of the party’s ideology seriously. Hitler had them purged during the Night of the Long Knives. One of the brothers was killed, and the other fled the country.

Like many others in the NF, Brons liked to dress up in Nazi uniform in the 1970s. He got into the pages of Private Eye for one such incident, which the Eye republished again in the 1990s or early part of this century, when he poked his head out of whatever stone he’d been hiding under once again.

Brons and another Nazi had been and about in Birmingham in Nazi dress, shouting, and, in the Eye’s words, frightening old ladies. A member of Birmingham’s finest arrived to give Brons and the other storm trooper the advice to desist. The officer, incidentally, was Asian. Brons didn’t take the advice, and instead gave the officer a lecture on how there was freedom of speech in this country. But he didn’t expect someone from an inferior race, like the good constable, to understand this.

Which clearly shows what a racist idiot Brons is, and how he was stupidly doing his level best to get himself arrested and spent some time down in the cells.

And from the descriptions of the rest of the stormtroopers planning to attend, they’re no better.

I don’t doubt that some Antifa were there to protest the event. But somehow I doubt very much that there will be anyone from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism or the Jewish establishment there to demonstrate against these very real racists and anti-Semites. Because they’re far more interested in concocting fake accusations against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party in order to preserve Israel from criticism over its vile treatment of the Palestinians. Besides, Israel itself welcomes members of the Far Right, like Trump’s former aide, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, the founder and leader of the Alt Right, and Sebastian Gorka, so long as they support the country. As does Stephen Pollard, the gentile editor of the Jewish Chronicle, who wrote a piece in the Groaniad declaring that Michal Kaminski of the far-right Law and Justice Party in Poland wasn’t an anti-Semite, because he was a good friend of Israel.

You can therefore expect no-one, or hardly anyone, from the Jewish establishment to turn up there to protest against people who are, unlike Corbyn, very definitely an existential threat to British Jews.

Tony Greenstein on Simon Kelner, Ian Birrell and the ‘I’s’ Anti-Semitism Smears of Corbyn

Last month, on the 27th August 2018, Tony Greenstein posted a piece on his blog criticizing the I newspaper for its anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party. The newspaper had published articles by two of its columnists, Simon Kelner and Ian Birrell. In one of them, Kelner attacked Labour for being anti-Semitic because it hadn’t then adopted the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism in its entirety. The other article, written by Birrell, declared that Corbyn was ‘unfit for office’ because of his presence at the anti-Zionist meeting where Hajo Meyer made his speech comparing Israel to the Nazis. Which in actual fact, wasn’t anti-Semitic.

Birrell, apart from writing for the Groaniad, Independent and the Heil, used to be a speechwriter for ‘Dodgy’ David Cameron. Greenstein describes his article as just one long ad hominem. As for Kelner, he tried to justify his recommendation of the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism by claiming that the Jewish community supported it, it was the commonly held definition, and that it seemed to him, a Jew, to be an uncontroversial document.

Greenstein points out in his article that the Jewish community has never spoken with a single, monolithic voice, that it has also been accepted by genuine anti-Semites like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Michal Kaminski and the anti-Semitic Law and Justice Party of Poland.

He also points out that the definition has also been attacked by the Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism, Professor David Feldman, Hugh Tomlinson, QC, and the retired appeals court judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is himself Jewish.

Greenstein was so outraged by these articles, that he wrote several messages of protest to the I’s editor, Oliver Duff. But surprise, surprise!, he didn’t get an answer.

See: http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/08/duff-by-name-and-duff-by-nature-editor.html

Greenstein states that he has always found Kelner a superficial writer. I seem to remember that way back in the 1990s he regularly used to appear in Private Eye’s ‘Street of Shame’ column under the monicker, Simon ‘Pussy’ Kelner. No explanation was given for this soubriquet, but I do wonder whether it was because of a misogynist remark he may have made. Or perhaps it’s simply because he liked cats.

Regardless of this, his argument for demanding Labour adopts the I.H.R.A. definition simply boiled down to ‘All Jews demand it, and I’m Jewish, so I know what’s anti-Semitic’. It’s an easy argument to refute as not all Jews by any means demanded, being a member of a particular ethnic group does not necessarily give someone a privileged insight into what is or isn’t a racist slur or action against them.

It’s also extremely hypocritical for the Tories to use that argument. I can remember when the McPherson rules were first proposed, that a crime should be categorized as racist if the victim, a member of an ethnic minority, said it, the Tory papers went berserk. The Mail published articles attacking the very notion, fearing that White Brits would be smeared as racists simply on the say-so of Blacks and Asians.

In fact, as Mike has repeatedly pointed out in his article, the McPherson rules actually say no such thing. They state that if the victim believes they were racially abused or assaulted, then that is how it should be registered by the police. But the crime still has to be investigated the usual way, and it still needs to be shown that the crime was racially motivated.

In the case of the Tories’, Blairites’ and lamestream media’s attacks on Corbyn and the Labour party for anti-Semitism, absolutely none of this appears to have been done. And indeed, their is active resistance to it being done. You’re angrily smeared as an anti-Semite by the baying Zionist mob if you even dare ask for proof, as Pete Willetts did.

Although Greenstein published his article about three weeks ago, it’s still very relevant because Kelner was riding the same hobby horse again in his column this week. It’s headline proclaimed that he didn’t know he was a Jew, and was accompanied by a picture of an angry crowd all bearing placards accusing Corbyn of anti-Semitism. I didn’t bother reading on. I don’t think I needed to. The headline and photo said it all. And no doubt Kelner will continue going on saying the same smears and spurious arguments for as long as the Tories believe Labour’s a threat.

Which I hope will be a very long time indeed. I look forward to Corbyn, the most anti-racist politico, getting into No. 10 to the squawking fury of Kelner, Birrell, Duff and their readers. Assuming that they still have any by then.