I consider the Jewish Labour Movement to be a particularly disgusting anti-Semitic joke. It’s far nastier than the racist bilge Bernard Manning used to tell, and which was acceptable on TV in the 1970s. While crass and offensive, I don’t think Manning really meant any harm by them. He always maintained that he wasn’t racist, and personally did a lot of work for Jewish charities. Which I’m sure is right. He just didn’t recognise that they could be malign or contribute to real, dangerous prejudice. To him they were just jokes.
But the Jewish Labour Movement is malign, and it is causing real harm. It’s a sick, twisted joke, as from what I can see, it’s a complete misnomer. You don’t have to be Jewish to join or even a member of the Labour party. It’s membership is small. It used to have just over a hundred members, and its active membership was probably much lower. Compare this with Jewish Voice for Labour, which was a genuinely Jewish organisation and boasted hundreds of members. But the good peeps in the JVL were sidelined because they were Corbyn-supporting lefties who were critical of Israel. The JLM were feted by the British establishment as the true voice of Labour’s Jews, because they were fervent, panting supporters of Israel and its horrendous policy towards the Palestinians.
The JLM, formerly Paole Zion, were one of the groups throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism, and thus smearing the reputations of decent, anti-racist people. People, who had spent their lives actually standing up to racism and anti-Semitism. People had suffered real racist and anti-Semitic abuse and violence. And that included Jews. And especially Jews, because nothing as awkward as facts can contradict the establishment narrative that Britain’s Jews are a monolithic community four-square behind Israel and everything it does.
The JLM’s twisted nature is revealed in a great piece today by Zelo Street. Two of the attendees at the JLM gathering the other day, at which Angela Rayner announced she was willing to purge thousands and thousands of members for anti-Semitism (read: supporting Corbyn) were Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes. Neither of these clowns are Jews, and neither are presently members of the Labour party. Both have a slight credibility problem in their claims of Labour anti-Semitism. Ryan, a former leader of Labour Friends of Israel, was caught making up an accusation of anti-Semitism. She claimed that a respectable elderly lady, who had dared to speak to her about Israel, had told her that her son had got a job in banking by mentioning his connection to the LFI at the job interview. Jewish domination of the financial sector is an anti-Semitic trope, you see. In fact the lady hadn’t said anything about the financial sector. Her son had got his job in education. But as with these fanatical supporters of Israel, facts don’t matter. Ryan made the accusation, the poor woman was suspended and the cops turned up to inform her there’d been a complaint of racism made against her. But al-Jazeera had secretly filmed it all, and so could refute the charge.
But despite being gentiles and former members of the party, Ryan and Gapes were free to make comments about the Labour party, its leadership and anti-Semitism. And a genuine Jew, Shlomo, who supports Corbyn, wasn’t impressed. Because of the way fake Jewish organisations like the JLM and its gentile members slander, abuse and purge real Jewish Labour members and supporters like himself. Shlomo, whose monicker, I believe, is the Hebrew version of the name ‘Solomon’, tweeted about it response to this observation from Client Journalist Expert
“Not really sure why Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes are appearing at any events held by affiliates of the Labour Party”.
Shlomo replied:
“Welcome to the Labour Party where Non-Jews like Joan Ryan and Mike Gapes now decide what is Anti-Semitism and who are Anti-Semitic – while Left-Wing Jews like me are dismissed, ignored and demonised as self-haters”.
One of the issues of Labour Anti-Semitism is how Jewish Labour Members suffered abuse. But the Labour-Right ignore how Jews who have supported Corbyn have been subject to the most horrific abuse for years”.
Absolutely right. Jackie Walker, whose mother was a Black American civil rights worker and whose father was Russian Jew, has suffered horrendous threats. She’s been told she should be lynched, her bodied cut up and burnt, or put into bin bags. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, one of the leaders of Jewish Voice for Labour, has a video on Double Down News in which she talks about the abuse she and other left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jews have received. She was first called anti-Semitic and self-hating when she was 19 by the Jewish Telegraph. Which isn’t all. She’s been at meetings where she and her fellows have been called ‘Kapos’. They were the collaborators with the Nazis in the death camps, to whom Hitler’s thugs gave the job of choosing who would be sent to the gas ovens. Yeah, the abuse these peeps get is that vile.
“Jews who support Corbyn have been called Self-Hating Jews, the wrong type of Jew, traitors, fake Jews, useful idiots and much much more. But this abuse does not matter to [Keir] Starmer & his allies as they don’t care when those committing the abuse come from their side”.
It doesn’t matter to Starmer, because he’s 100 per cent behind Israel and so is the rest of the British right-wing political and media establishment. Occasionally someone has the guts to make some kind of criticism, but this is never backed up by the threat of real action.
And the Blairites are also anti-Semitic on another count. According to one of them, anti-capitalism is innately anti-Semitic. Which follows Adolf Hitler, the Nazis and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in equating Jews with capitalism and business. Ah, but it’s acceptable because the Blairites are pro-Zionist and supporters of capitalism.
In his article about this, Zelo Street comments on the bizarre standards that allow non-party members like Gapes and Ryan to define party policy. Quite. And the Street and Jewish bloggers have also made it plain that Jews also find it offensive when gentiles try to tell them what’s anti-Semitic and what isn’t. Exactly.
Which is why the JLM is a sick, nasty anti-Semitic joke. But unlike dated, worn-out gags told by Bernard Manning, people actually believe their lies and take them seriously as the true representative of British Judaism.
And like their smears against real Jews and genuinely anti-racist gentiles, that’s not remotely funny.
The election’s on, the Tories are clearly scared of Corbyn, as they’re lying and publishing fake news, and almost inevitably, they’re trying to revive the old anti-Semitism smears. According to Zelo Street, the Scum’s deputy political editor, Matt Dathan, published a piece claiming that ‘life-long Labour supporter’ Maureen Lipman has left the Labour party. Apparently she’s recorded a mock version of her adverts for BT, in which she attacks the Labour leader’s economic plans and accuses him of having an ‘ology’ in extremism. This isn’t news. Lipman left the Labour party way back in 2014 when its leader was Ed Miliband. Who was Jewish. She was furious at his backing for a symbolic vote in the Commons recognising Palestine as a state.
Tom London, who is Jewish, tweeted back a reply to Dathan putting him right:
“I remember Maureen Lipman very publicly protesting and leaving the Labour Party when it was led by (the Jewish) Ed Miliband, in protest over his policy on Israel/Palestine. This policy reflected Miliband’s absolutely proper concern for Palestinian human rights”.
Socialist Voice also reminded people how she had left the Labour party back then under Miliband, who was also himself the victim of anti-Semitic attacks in the Tory press.
And the tweeter Darius Faruz also pointed Lipman’s double standards in her attacks on Labour, while she was silent about the greater amount of racism rampant in the Tories:
“Maureen Lipman stays SILENT on the greater levels of antisemitism in the Tory party? Silent on the Conservative party of #Windrush, dog whistle racism … Silent on Johnson’s Islamophobia – letterbox / bank robbers, watermelon smiles, picaninnies”.
But she had the support of Mike Gapes, Michael Gove, the mainstream media and the Scum. Almost like the latter three were all connected, as another tweeter pointedly observed.
There was a time when I liked and admired Maureen Lipman. She’s an extremely talented comic actor, and I’ve enjoyed her performances about another great British actor and comedian, Joyce Grenfell. But here she shows real moral squalor. She left the Labour party when Miliband moved slightly further left than the old Blair and Brown regime. Which means she’s quite happy seeing Britain’s public services delivering poor service in order to boost the profits of the private companies that own them. She’s quite happy to see the NHS, schools and colleges privatised, with students lumbered with crippling debt. With increasing numbers becoming homeless and house prices at unaffordable levels to create a ‘generation rent’. With wages so low the majority of people using food banks are actually in work. And a brutal sanctions regime that has seen tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people thrown into despair and poverty, because they’ve been declared ‘fit for work’ when they are anything but, or the Jobcentre decided they were going to cut of their jobseeker’s allowance on some flimsy excuse.
She’s ignored the way Corbyn has stood up for Britain’s Jewish community, and has enjoyed the support of many of its members. Like Jewdas, Jewish Voice for Labour, the Jewish Socialist Group and the Haredi community. No, he – and Ed Miliband before him – are terrible anti-Semites because they recognise the Palestinian people’s right to their own state. Or want to end the decades-long system of apartheid, land seizures and aggressive expropriation and colonisation in Israel itself. An apartheid which viewed the mizrahim – the indigenous Jews of the region – scarcely human.
She’s just another shabby ultra-Zionist, no different than the other fanatics and smear merchants. Zelo Street concluded their article about this sorry episode with
‘Maureen Lipman slagging off Labour is old news. And tediously predictable with it.’
Absolutely. And with her absolute lack of any genuine concern for Britain’s working people, and skewed hypocritical attitude on racism, I doubt many people miss her in the party either.
This is a video I’ve just uploaded to my YouTube channel attacking the suspension of Chris Williamson and the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party by the Blairites, and the political and media establishment.
Here’s the blurb I’ve put up for it:
In this video I attack the campaign of lies and smears against Chris Williamson, Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party. They are not Trotskyites, Communists or anti-Semites, as alleged, but members and supporters who believe in its traditional policies and values before Blair and his Thatcherite ‘modernisation’. Many are also smeared because they believe in Palestinian rights against the brutality of the Israeli state. So there is a campaign by the Israel lobby of smearing them as anti-Semites. Those accused and suspended have been decent, anti-racist non-Jewish people like Williamson and Marc Wadsworth, and self-respecting Torah-observant and secular Jews, like Jackie Walker.
I state that Williamson was right when he said that Labour was the most anti-racist party, and that they had given too much ground to claims of anti-Semitism. Because in many cases they weren’t real claims, but smears. Labour is now the biggest Socialist party with a membership of 500,000, far larger than the Tories. And that frightens Labour’s opponents. These include the Blairites in the Labour party and the Israel lobby. The Blairites fear Corbyn and his supporters because they, the Blairites, stand for Thatcherism – privatisation, including that of the NHS, and the destruction of the welfare state. This has led to mass poverty, a quarter of a million people using food banks, 3.5 million children in poverty, mass starvation and people stealing food from supermarkets because of problems with Universal Credit. And this is also what the people, who split from Labour, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Ann Coffee, Mike Gapes stand for. The Blairites are not ‘Centrists’ nor Social Democrats.
Corbyn’s supporters, on the other hand, have been smeared as Trotksyites and Communists. They are neither. Corbyn’s policies are actually closer to the Social Democratic politics of the 1970s as set down by Anthony Crossland. These were the nationalisation of the utilities, strong trade unions, progressive taxation and social mobility. He believed these would bring the benefits of nationalisation without having to go beyond the nationalisation of the utilities or bring about industrial democracy. The Labour manifesto demands the nationalisation of the rail and water industries, strong trade unions and workers’ rights. It also wants working people and employees on company boards. Which is more radical than historical Social Democracy, but not that much more extreme, as the Labour left were considering it in the 1970s.
The Israel lobby and the Jewish establishment are also keen to attack Corbyn and his supporters because they support the Palestinians. But this does not mean hatred for Israel or the Jewish people. It’s the Israeli state which makes people believe it does. And Corbyn has the support of many Jews – Jewish voice for Labour, for example, and spent the Passover Seder with the Socialist Jews of Jewdas. But these are the wrong type of Jews – Jewish socialists. The type of Jews, who, at the beginning of the last century, the right of the Tory party and groups like the British Brothers’ League were telling people were a threat, because they were going to bring with them Communism, Socialism, Anarchism, and throw millions out of work. And the newspapers now repeating this today, like the Daily Mail, were responsible for these smears then. Lord Rothermere was a fan of Hitler.
I point out how false these claims are with the example of Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth. Walker’s a proud lady of colour, whose mother was a Black American civil rights worker with some Jewish blood, and her father was a Russian Jew. And Russian Jews know about anti-Semitism – Russia is the only country where you can buy the vile Protocols of the Elders of Zion on street kiosks. But she’s been smeared as an anti-Semite. As have so many other secular and Torah-observant Jews, some of who are the children of Holocaust survivors, or lost family in the Holocaust.
Then there’s Marc Wadsworth, who was smeared because he embarrassed Ruth Smeeth. They tried to smear him as an anti-Semite, because that’s how the press told it. But he wasn’t. Wadsworth’s a Black anti-racism campaigner, who worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in the 1990s to frame stronger legislation against anti-Semitism when the BNP were beating Jews up around the Isle of Dogs. When the anti-Semitism accusation wouldn’t stick, they changed it to ‘bringing the Labour party into disrepute’. But he hadn’t. It was Smeeth, who had brought the Labour party into disrepute with her false accusations.
As you can see, this is quite an angry, impassioned piece. But this is a glaring injustice that infuriates me. I want this witchhunt, which I compare to that of 17th century Salem or McCarthyism, as Jackie Walker has said, to end.
In this 20 minute long video from Novara Media, presenter Aaron Bastani utterly demolishes the new ‘Independent’ grouping of MPs. He shows that rather than being any kind of new politics, they are simply the old, Blairite and Tory politics neoliberal politics. They are radically out of tune with what people really want, especially millennials, who have left much worse off than the preceding generation by the same politics the Blairites and Tories were pushing. And they’re being promoted by the media because they represent the old style of politics the media like: austerity with a smiley face.
Labour MPs All Going Before They’re Pushed
Bastani begins the video by describing how the departure of the seven Labour MPs – Gavin Shuker, Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Ann Coffee, Luciana Berger, Mike Gapes, Angela Smith, who left to form the Independents – wasn’t actually a surprise. They were all loud critics of Corbyn, and almost all of them had been subject to motions of ‘no confidence’ or were facing deselection. They were then joined the next day by Joan Ryan, another critic of Corbyn, who had also lost a ‘no confidence’ motion. They were then joined the day after that by Anna Soubry, Heidi Allen and Sarah Wollaston from the Tories, who complained about the old, ‘broken’ politics of Labour versus Tories.
Independents Not Democratic, and Not a Political Party
The Independents, however, aren’t a political party as such. Which means that they don’t get the Short Money given to opposition parties. This could add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds. They also don’t have to conform to the same standards as proper political parties, although they claim that they will try to do so as best they can. They also don’t have a membership. You can give them your name and contact details, and make a donation, but there is no mechanism for creating a mass organisation where the membership can determine policy. It’s a private organisation more than a political party. But what concerns Bastani the most is that they don’t want to hold bye-elections, because this would ‘crush democracy’. It’s doublespeak, and the truth is that they don’t want bye-elections because they’d lose.
Angela Smith’s Racism
He then goes on to describe how the seven founding ex-Labour members claim that they were driven out of the party by its racism, only for Angela Smith to say within hours the most racist thing he’s ever heard a politician say on television. To show how badly their launch went, Bastani produces some viewing figures. On the Monday the video of their launch had 75,000 views on Twitter. The video of Angela Smith’s apology got 700,000 views. But the video of Smith making her racist comments got even more – 1.5 million views. And while the Mirror and the Guardian wanted to splash on a video by Tom Watson, which got 500 shares on Facebook, Novara’s video of their own Ash Sarkar showing the corruption at the heart of the group – she challenged smith on her chairmanship of a parliamentary group supporting water privatisation, funded largely by the water companies – got 200,000 views. Chris Leslie then appeared later on the Beeb to sort this out. Where once again he talked about their love of democracy. A love so strong, that they don’t want to hold bye-elections, thus disenfranchising the hundreds of thousands of people, who voted for these 11 MPs. They claimed to be anti-racist, but set a new record by being racist ‘pretty much by lunchtime’.
People More Politically Engaged, Not Less
But their fundamental principle is that people don’t want Labour or Tory, but what Labour used to be 15 years ago. But at the 2017 election, 82 per cent of the population voted for either of the two main parties – Tories or Labour. That was the highest percentage the parties had since 1979. In 2010 only 65 per cent of the public voted Labour or Tory. The idea that people are turning away from the two main parties when there is a clear choice, socialism or neoliberalism, isn’t true. And the claim that people are disengaged from politics doesn’t stand up either. Voter turn-out was higher in the 2017 election, just as it was higher during the Scottish reference in 2014, and the Brexit referendum in 2016. Which was the biggest democratic exercise in British history. More people voted in that than in any previous general election or referendum. And Labour now has more than 500,000 members – more than it has had in a generation. The same is true for the SNP. More people are members of political parties now than at any point in Bastani’s lifetime. And if people genuinely do want centrist politics, how is it that the Lib Dems, who got only 8 per cent of the vote in 2015, got even less in 2017? This was despite the ‘media Einsteins’ telling us all that they would do well against the two main parties in a Brexit election. It’s almost as if, says Bastani, that the media don’t know what they’re talking about when they claim to know what the public wants.
Labour Policies Massively Popular
And then there are the policy issues. Labour’s policies are very popular. They’re right at the top of the list of why people voted Labour. But they don’t want to imitate these popular policies. Chris Leslie in an interview with New Scientist said he didn’t want a top tax rate of 50 per cent. That’s not a Corbynite policy, it’s one of Gordon Brown’s. He was also against stopping tuition fees and rejects the renationalisation of the railways, both extremely popular policies. These aren’t just popular with Labour voters, but also with Tories and Lib Dems. And polls conducted by IPPR And Sky News did polls at the end of last year which showed clear majorities of the British public wanting the Bank of England to keep house prices down and a minimal presence, at least, of workers on company boards. People don’t want centrist policies. They’re moving left, as shown on poll after poll.
Millennials Left-Wing because of Neoliberalism
And there’s a clear generational difference. At the last Labour split in 1981 when the SDP was formed, there was a clear movement to the right and post-war socialist policies had become unpopular. And yet when this split happened, the Economist carried an article decrying the popularity of socialism amongst millennials both in America and Britain. This meant ‘Generation Z’ young people, who want the government to address climate change as a fundamental part of 21st century politics. And these millennials despised the Tories, as shown by footage of an anti-Tory march. These are going to be the voters of the 2020s. And they’re not going to be bought off. They’re not left-wing because of something the read in a book, or because they want to be countercultural. They’re left-wing because their living standards and expectations are lower than their parents, they have a less expansive welfare state, they’re going to have higher levels of debt and earn less, and they will have to deal with systemic crises like demographic aging and climate change. They rightly feel that they’re screwed over. And the idea that these same people are going to agree with Chris Leslie’s idea of politics is probably the stupidest thing you’ll hear this year. And this is only February.
The Failure of Centrist Parties in France, America, Italy, Spain and Canada
But since 2015 centrist politicians have been hammered in election like Hillary Clinton in 2016. Emmanuel Macron in France was hailed as the saviour of French centrism, despite only taking 24 per cent of the vote in the first round. Now he’s the most unpopular president in French history after months of protests by the gilets jaunes, which have been met with tear gas attacks by the gendarmes, which have left people losing their eyes and their lives. Then there’s Matteo Renzi of the Partito Democratico, the Democratic Party, the Italian sister party to Britain’s Labour. In 2014 they took 42 per cent of the vote. But he was out within two years, having lost a referendum by 20 points. And in the last election the party lost half of their senators, leaving Italy governed by the Five Star Movement and the far-right Liga. Then there’s the example of the PSOE’s Pedro Sanchez. The PSOE is the Spanish equivalent of the Labour party. He’s also suffered mass protests and this week Spain called new general elections, which his party are certain to lose. Centrism is not popular in Europe or America, so the Independents have to turn to Canada’s Justin Trudeau. But Trudeau is now less popular in his country than Donald Trump in the US. Not that the media pushing ‘centrism’ will tell you this.
The Centrist Real Policy: More Austerity
The unpopularity of centrist politics is due to the fact that they still haven’t solved the problems of global capitalism created by the 2008 crash. They believed that financialisation would create the economic growth that would support public services. But financialisation hasn’t created growth since 2008. And as they can’t create prosperity and tackle income inequality, all they’ve have to give us is austerity ‘with a nice smiley face’.
Labour Splitters against Iraq Inquiry, For Welfare Cuts
And not only do the eight former Labour MPs have Brexit in common, they also voted against an independent inquiry into Iraq. A million people have been affected by the war, along with those, who suffered under ISIS, and Iranian influence has expanded across the Middle East. The idea that Iraq is irrelevant is not only absurd, it is a disgrace. People have died, and it has made an already volatile region even more so. And Britain is directly responsible. The former Labour MPs also abstained on the vote of welfare reform before Corbyn came to power. They do not stand for a moral foreign policy, or for a more just social system at home.
Their politics are a mixture of careerism and opportunism, and their opposition to Brexit actually makes a new deal more likely. They are driven by fundamental democratic principles, but won’t stand for a bye-election. No members, no policies, no party democracy, no vision. Bastani states that this isn’t the future of politics, it’s the past, and the worst aspects at that. He looks forward to sensible people joining them, because they’re going to be found out sooner or later. And if we want to establish the primacy of socialist ideas, he says, then bring it on.
With the departure of the Maleficent Seven, as they’ve been dubbed by left-wing vlogger Gordon Dimmack, the witch-hunters for anti-Semitism in the Labour party have been in full cry. Not only have they, and their most recent addition, Joan Ryan, been lying about there being a culture of bullying and anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but Margaret Hodge took it upon herself to accuse another Labour MP, Ruth George, of anti-Semitism.
Why?
Because George suggested that Umunna, Berger, Gapes, and co. could be funded by Israel.
George had posted this on Facebook:
Support from the State of Israel, which supports both Conservative and Labour ‘Friends of Israel’, of which Luciana [Berger] was chair, is possible and I would not condemn those who suggest it, especially when the group’s financial backers are not being revealed.
It’s important for democracy to know the financial backers for any political group or policy.
She later apologized, saying that she had not meant to invoke a conspiracy theory.
The incompetent, foul-mouthed and mendacious Margaret Hodge had appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme to denounce it as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This was at the prompting the interviewer, Evan Davies, who said, ‘Raising questions about finance and Jews is the no-no here?’. Furthermore, Hodge also claimed that criticizing America was also anti-Semitic, because of the power of the Israel lobby there. Which caused one of Mike’s fine commenters’ Jaws to gape open in absolutely astonishment.
But as Mike pointed out in his article on it, there was no anti-Semitism in George’s statement. She did not repeat the classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Jews, or a cabal of Jews, being the secret power behind world politics, or controlling the press, Hollywood, international finance or communism. She spoke simply about Israel. And Mike quotes the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, which says that accusations of anti-Semitism can only be made about Jews, not the state of Israel.
He also makes the point that the Independent Group have formed themselves as a company, so they can avoid the electoral laws which demand they identify their backers. So Mike concludes that it is perfectly reasonable question whether the state of Israel is funding them. And we won’t know, and won’t be able to trust them, no matter who is funding them, until the Independent group actually open their books to show who their donors are.
But it’s also a good question for another reason. Gordon Dimmack, a left-wing broadcaster on YouTube, has pointed out in one of his videos that Luciana Borgia, sorry, Berger, was head of the Labour Friends of Israel. And the other six were all members. And the Israel lobby has form in interfering in British politics. Al-Jazeera filmed Shai Masot of the Israeli Embassy in their documentary, The Lobby, plotting with a Tory functionary about deciding who should be a member of the Tory cabinet. They wanted Alan Duncan out, because he’s a critic of the Israeli state’s brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians. Instead, he wanted him replaced by Boris Johnson, who was an absolute disaster as Foreign Secretary.
Many have people have pointed out that the campaign to smear the critics of Israel in the Labour party looks very much like hasbara, the Israeli term for their civilian propaganda. One of those was Cyril Chilson, a British citizen, who was formerly an Israeli. Chilson is Jewish, his mother was a Holocaust survivor, and his father a member of the Red Army, who participated in the Soviet liberation of the death camps. Mr Chilson served in the IDF, including part of their propaganda department. This man, who in no way should be regarded as an anti-Semite, recognized the accusations for what they were: Israeli psy-ops. And because he called it precisely what it was, the anti-Semitism smear machine swung into action, and called this son of heroic Jewish parents an anti-Semite.
Dimmack also goes further in one of his videos, and accuses the media people claiming that George’s question was anti-Semitic, of anti-Semitism in their turn. This includes Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Murthy was one of those, who replied to George’s post claiming, or suggesting that she was an anti-Semite. But Dimmack points out that it is anti-Semitic to claim that all Jews share the same qualities or opinions. Murthy’s comment suggested that all British Jews were supporters of Israel, if he genuinely believes that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. But all British Jews very definitely don’t. The Jewish long-term critic of Israeli racism and general avowed foe of Fascism, Tony Greenstein, and other Jewish bloggers have made the point, over and again, that many Jews don’t support Israel. Many Orthodox Jews don’t, because they believe that Israel can only be refounded by the Lord through the Messiah, and until then they, as the Lord’s servant nation, are commanded to remain in exile. The Yiddish-speaking Jewish masses of eastern Europe, who backed the Bund, the Jewish Socialist party, followed its slogan of ‘Wherever We Are, There’s Our Homeland’. They wanted to remain in Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere as equal citizens with their gentile fellow-countrymen.
And the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has also joined in with the hysterical accusations of anti-Semitism, also doesn’t represent all Jewish Brits. It doesn’t represent Orthodox Jews, or the third of the Jewish community in Britain which is secular. It only represents the United Synagogue. And even there, it’s questionable who it represents. Its members are elected by their synagogues. But some of them don’t hold regular elections, as they have sitting members, while others don’t allow women to vote. And the Board explicitly defines itself as a Zionist organization in its constitution, so anti-Zionist Jews can’t become members.
George asked a perfectly reasonable question, and one to which she, and the rests of us are entitled to an answer. She wasn’t being anti-Semitic. But the real anti-Semitism comes from claiming that all Jews are supporters of Israel, with its accompanying accusation that those Jews, who don’t, are also self-hating anti-Semites. Repulsive!
Yesterday, a group of seven MPs formally split from the Labour party. Now going independent, this glittering array of third raters, has-beens and deadbeats were supposed to form the nucleus of this new, shiny Blairite ‘centrist’ party that has been mooted for the past year or so. The group included such luminaries as Gavin Shuker, Luciana Berger, Chris Leslie, Chuka Umunna, Angela Smith, Mike Gapes and Ann Coffey. They were all Blairites, who had been trying to overthrow Corbyn or undermine his leadership since he was elected head of the party. Or else had been threatening to quit.
Comparisons have been made to the Labour split in the 1980s which saw the notorious ‘gang of four’, including Roy Jenkins and Shirley Williams form the short-lived Social Democratic Party. They ended up shortly forming an alliance with the Liberals before finally merging with them to form the Liberal Democrats. At the time there much verbiage in the press about the SDP ‘breaking the mould’ of British politics. It didn’t happen, despite the TV critic Clive James in his Observer column sneering at Tony Benn, who said that support for the SDP had peaked. But, as Zelo Street has pointed out, the comparison also doesn’t do the Quitters any favours in another way. Some of the MPs, who formed the SDP were actually first rate politicos. As Home Secretary in the 1960s, Roy Jenkins oversaw some profound changes in the liberalization of British society. Like the partial decriminalization of homosexuality, for which, among other things, he’s still bitterly resented by the Tory right today. Reading Shirley William’s 1979 book, Politics Is For People, it’s clear that she did have a powerful mind with strong, distinct views on how socialism should improve British society and industry.
This bunch, by contrast, don’t seem to have any distinct views or anything more to offer than rehashed, warmed up Blairism. Before their website crashed yesterday, Zelo Street was able to get on it and read what they had to say. Which seemed to be a lot of flannel. More fine-sounding words about democracy which didn’t actually come down to meaning very much. The website said
Our primary duty as Members of Parliament is to put the best interests of our constituents and our country first. Our free media, the rule of law, and our open, tolerant and respectful democratic society should be cherished and renewed. We believe that our Parliamentary democracy in which our elected representatives deliberate, decide and provide leadership, held accountable by their whole electorate is the best system of representing the views of the British people. Zelo Street remarked that the first part of this statement, about cherishing and renewing free media, rule of law and democratic society doesn’t actually mean anything, while the second – about parliamentary democracy being the best method of representing the views of the British people – is just what every MP in the House believes.
But what the group really stands for is best shown by the group’s legal organization and its members’ very cosy relationship with private enterprise. The group’s website was set up in 2015 in a tax haven. The new party actually isn’t a party. It’s been registered as a private corporation, Gemini A, which means that it doesn’t have to identify its backers. This also, apparently, makes it exempt from the spending restrictions on campaigning which apply to genuine political parties.
And then there’s Angela ‘People of funny tin…’ Smith’s connection with private water companies. Smith is chairman of the all-party water group, which is mainly funded by private water companies like Wessex Water and Affinity Water. Talking to Smith on This Morning Yesterday, Ash Sarkar pointed out that her group were some of the very few people left, who still believe in water privatization. She predicted that people would like at Smith’s leadership of the group and say, ‘You know what, that stinks of corruption’.
Sarkar isn’t going to be wrong either. The Canary in their article on this pointed out that 83 per cent of the population want the water companies to be renationalized. And Blair’s very strong links to private industry were very heavily criticized when he was power. Blair was a corporatist, who gave business leaders and senior management key positions in government in exchange for donations. This whole, nasty web of corporate links was exposed by the Groaniad’s George Monbiot in his book, Captive State, which lists various businessmen and the government positions Blair gave them. Even at the time Blair’s government was notorious for doing political favours in return for donations, as Blair did for Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One magnate, in return for something like a million pounds of corporate dosh.
‘Bevan Boy’ described what other Blairite policies this crew probably also stand for in this tweet, quoting by Mike in his article on them:
What will this new “Centrist” party stand for?
More Austerity?
Rampant marketisation & uncontrolled capitalism?
Neoconservative Thatcherism?
I suspect all of the above under a pro EU banner. The policies are being rejected & thank Christ they are.
We need a socialist LAB govt!
And what the splitters really think of democracy is shown by the fact that none of them actually want to hold a bye-election and give their constituents a say in whether they want them to represent them in parliament. It’s been pointed out that only one per cent of voters say that they actually vote for the individual MP, rather than the party. But these avowed democrats really don’t want to give their constituents the opportunity to decide whether they want to keep them as their MP or whether they want to elect someone else.
Which is what you could expect from a group that includes Luciana Berger. Berger, or should that be Lucrezia Borgia?, was facing a vote of no confidence from her local constituency. She then declared that they were bullying her, and demanded Jenny Formby expel the constituency party from Labour. Formby told her that she had no cause to do this and refused.
But Borgia, sorry, Berger, has carried on whining about bullying and intimidation nonetheless. Just as all the Quitters have moaned about anti-Semitism. The truth is, anti-Semitism is not the reason they’re splitting. It never has been. It has only been a convenient stick with which to beat Corbyn and his supporters. In fact anti-Semitism in the party has fallen under the Labour leader. It is lower in the Labour party than in the others and in the general British population. And the anti-Semitism accusations against him and the majority of those accused are nothing but contrived smears.
The real truth is that Berger, Umunna, Shuker, Leslie, Smith, Coffee and Gapes are corporatist anti-democrats. They wish to hang on to power against the wishes of their constituents, in order to promote the power of private corporations. Just as Mussolini and Hitler promoted private industry and gave it a seat in government and the management of the economy in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.
I’ve also found this short video from Kevin Logan saying exactly what the majority of real Labour supporters are saying: ‘Good Riddance to the Red Tories’. Logan’s a male feminist and anti-racist vlogger, who’s put up a series of videos attacking the misogynists and Fascists of the ‘men’s rights movement’ and the Alt Right. I’ve reposted many of his videos on this blog.
The video begins with the statement
On 18th February 2019, seven ‘Labour’ MPs resigned from the Labour Party, betraying their electors, the party and the British people.
The rest of the video is photographs of the ugly mugs of the quitters, each marked ‘Traitor’, while a folk rendition of the ‘The Red Flag’ plays over it all.
Listening hard to the lyrics, I’m struck very much by how the lines ‘cowards flinch and traitors sneer’ as well as about other traitors to the movement seek ‘pelf and place’ wealth and positions of power – describe this gang.
I’ve blogged a number of articles last week pointing out that the accusations of anti-Semitism in the Labour have precious little to do with any genuine anti-Semitism, but are simply part of a strategy by the Blairites to hang on to power within Labour, and the Israel lobby to deflect criticism of the state’s appalling treatment of the Palestinians.
I’ve posted up a number of pieces from the parapolitics magazine, Lobster, about the connections between the Zionist lobby and New Labour. And in the case of Blair his circle of MPs and activists, the connection was very close indeed. For example, in the article ‘Yo, Blair!’, in Lobster 52 for Winter 2006/7, editor Robin Ramsay noted that Lord Levy’s fundraising activities amongst the Jewish community was aided by a member of the Israeli embassy.
Even when the police investigation into Lord Levy’s fundraising activities for the Labour Party overlapped with the Israeli assault on Lebanon, to my knowledge none of the major British media, looking at Blair’s support for the Israelis, thought it relevant to mention that his successful capture of the Labour Party owed much to the money provided by Lord Levy, money which came, we are told, from British Jews, and that this arrangement, which enabled Blair to be financially independent of the Labour Party’s resources – and thus to all intents and purposes beyond their control – was facilitated by Gideon Meir, then with the Israeli embassy in London. (P. 16).
Ramsay also ran another piece on ‘New Labour and Israel’ in ‘New Labour Notes’ in Lobster 44, Winter 2002, 16-17. He wrote
In Lobster 43, p. 9, I referred to Tony Blair’s membership of the Labour Friends of Israel. That body was the subject of ‘Byers plots a comeback with pro-Israel pressure group’ by the Times’ political editor, David Cracknell, which included the following:
‘Stephen Byers is bidding to make an early political comeback just two months after quitting the government. The former transport secretary is the front runner to take over the chairmanship of the influential Labour Friends of Israel pressure group. the body is one of the most prestigious groupings in the party and is seen as a stepping stone to ministerial ranks for Labour MPs. Several recent incumbents have been backbenchers who have gone on to be appointed to government….Tony Blair consults members of the Friends of Israel over Middle East policy and Byers would have the opportunity to regain access to Downing Street on a vital area of policy without attracting unwelcome headlines.’
In ‘Tony Blair, New Labour Trumpet Boy!’, Diane Langford of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI.
* The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mencer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI.
*The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour Friends of Israel include Ivor Caplin, Paul Clark, Oona King, Ashok Kumar, Ivan Lewis, Anne McGuir, Rosemary McKenna, Margaret Moran, former LFI Chair Jim Murphy, Sandra Osborne, Gareth Thomas, Frank Roy, Joan Ryan, Angela Smith, Graham Stringer, Rudi Vis, David Watts, Gillian Merron, Peter Pike, Lorna Fitzsimons, Louise Ellman, Caroline Flint, Linda Perham, Douglas Alexander, Fabian Hamilton, Anthony Colman, LFI former Chair Stephen Twigg, LFI Vice Chair Mike Gapes, and Dan Norris.
Ivan Lewis, in the list above, was PPS to secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Stephen Byers MP.
* Since 1997 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with the Labour Friends of Israel.
* The have been 14 official trade missions to Israel from the UK since 1997. The BRITECH agreement signed by Trade Secretary Stephen Byers means there is now a £15.5 million joint fund to encourage co-operation between British and Israeli hi-tech industries in research and development for their own benefit.
In the even the puff for Byers in the Times came to naught. the new chair of Labour Friends of Israel is the MP James Purple.
Further information on the Labour Friends of Israel appeared in the article ‘Terrorism, Anti-Semitism and Dissent’ by Tom Easton in Lobster 47 for Summer 2005, pp. 3-8.
Gwyneth Dunwoody’s researcher and election agent for some time was David Mencer, a former member of the Israel armed forces, and now secretary of the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Stephen Byers, one of the few remaining defenders of the New labour Project, is a senior figure in LFI whose parliamentary chairman is now James Purnell. the latter was elected to Parliament in 2001 after working at No. 10.
Purnell, Stephen Twigg, Lorna Fitzsimmons, Jim Murphy and Sion Simon (a columnist for Conrad Black’s Daily Telegraph before becoming an MP in 2001) were all members of the New Labour ‘Praetorian guard’. Before becoming MPs they all cut their teeth in student politics with the help of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS). Numerically small – its website said it had 5,000 members in 2001 – it can afford 10 full-time workers. It played an important role in the 1990s in working with the National Association of Labour Students (later Labour Students) in keeping Israel off the campaigning agenda of the National Union of Students (NUS).
Of an older generation of student politicians is Mike Gapes, who came to work for the Labour Party after the NUS as a foreign policy researcher. He was part of the small team around Neil Kinnock who shifted the party away from its critical stance of the US and unilateralism. Elected to Parliament in 1992 he is now vice-chairman of Labour Friends of Israel. He wears another hat, that of chairman of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a tax-funded operation similar to the NED in the States. Earlier this year Gapes chaired a WFD gathering at which Neocon NED chief Carl Gershman was a speaker.
This is just scratching the surface of the old Atlanticist networks with a newer Israel dimension, but it is sufficient to suggest that much of it in Britain centres around New Labour. And just as Avnery describes the pride the Israel lobby takes in its power over the US political process, so we have a parallel here around Tony Blair.
We not only can piece together the evidence; we can hear the words of one of Blair’s main links to the business community John Mendelsohn. this is what Mendelsohn told Jews Week (www.jewsweek.com) on September 8, 2002.
‘Blair has attacked the anti-Israelism that had existed in the Labour Party. Old Labour was cowboys-and-Indians politics, picking underdogs. The milieu has changed. Zionism is pervasive in New Labour. It is automatic that Blair will come to Friends of Israel meetings.
In a signed 2001 election advertisement in The Jewish Chronicle, Blair said:
‘Since 1997 a record 57 Labour MPs have visited Israel, mostly with Labour Friends of Israel, swelling the numbers of MPs willing to ensure balance on the Middle East in the House of Commons. More labour MPs have visited Israel than from any other party.’
How many of those Labour MPs voted against the invasion of Iraq? This is now important to the future of British politics. (p.8)
Elsewhere in the article Easton notes that the journos promoting the Iraq war worked for Murdoch, Black and Richard Desmond, who were all very strong supporters of Israel. (p. 6)
I found this piece in Private Eye for the 15th-28th November 2013 reporting the questioning of representatives of the arms trade by a parliamentary committee in that issue’s ‘Called to Ordure’ column. It’s still relevant now, after nearly three years, because of the way we are still selling arms to brutal, anti-democratic regimes like Saudi Arabia.
Please don’t call them “missiles” or “landmines”, and certainly not “tools of military repression”. They are, according to the arms trade, “goods”, and the foreign regimes that buy them are “the ultimate end users of the goods”.
So heard MPs more than once when Westminster’s arms export controls select committee took evidence from four “defence exporters” (to use another euphemism). Unofficial leader of this genteel quartet was middle-aged Brummie called David Hayes from the Export Group for Aerospace and Defence, a trade lobbying group which uses the acronym Egad. Egad, indeed.
Alongside Hayes: arms-trade consultant Michael Bell; Susan Griffiths from weapons manufacturer MBDA; and Bernadette Peers, from the Strategic Shipping Company, a company name so bland you might believe it was exporting nothing more dangerous than cauliflowers to the Canaries.
MPs noted that government reporting on arms dealers has been reduced, Whitehall’s Export Control Organisation (ECO) now doing only an annual report of statistics instead of the quarterly updates it used to offer. The people from Egad were breezily unconcerned by this, insisting it made no difference. Hayes said there was a “very, very low risk” that less frequent reporting of special arms-sale licences wold be detrimental to transparency.
Three critics of the arms trade also gave evidence. Roy Isbister, from conflict-reduction group Saferworld, said that the reduction in ECO’s reports had come as “a bombshell”. You can say that again, Roy. Several bombshells, really, packed and ready for shipping. Oxfam had sent along one Martin Butcher. With that surname, shouldn’t he have been on the other side of the argument?
Committee chairman Sir John Stanley (Con, Tonbridge & Malling) wondered if the arms dealers were concerned about “extra-territorial” prosecutions, under which a British arms trader may be guilty of wrongdoing if he or she breaks British law while abroad. Bell was most aggrieved by this. “We have reservations of principle!” he declared, this peddler of munitions with a highly-tuned sense of ethics.
Extra-territorial prosecutions meant that a business executive would be “subject to two jurisdictions for the same actions” and that offended Bell’s strong sense of morality. Bell also had “reservations of practice” because “the only people who suffer are the compliant”.
Richard Burden (Lab, Birmingham Northfield) noted that the United States had recently relaxed its arms-trade licence requirements, meaning US weapons manufacturers can now export pretty much willy-nilly to 36 countries where they would previously have faced greater government checks. Hayes argued that with one of these countries being Turkey, “American exporters are at a clear advantage over UK exporters”. Western government might want to beware, because it was hard to know who would be “the ultimate end user of the goods” in an arms deal. Interesting to hear an arms trader make this argument; it is usually heard from the peaceniks.
Bell pointed out that one of the countries covered by the US’s new, looser rules is Argentina. Uh oh. The MPs went a rather greeny-grey tinge. The tension was relieved only when Ann Clwyd’s mobile trilled into life at high volume with a Gangnam-style ringtone. Clwyd (Lab, Cynon Valley) didn’t know how to turn the device off and had to leave the room to take the call. Good to see the arms trade being scrutinised by such tech-savvy legislators.
The meeting was not just about multi-million pound weapon systems. The committee heard about the enthusiastic exporting of machetes, police whips, handcuffs and sjambok-style truncheons to troubled countries, where, presumably, democracy-hungry protestors can draw comfort from being gored, whacked and manacled by “goods” made in Blighty.
Surprise, surprise, the kingdom of GCHQ (and, er, the late News of the World) is also a world-leader in producing “anti-privacy equipment” as Stanley put it. Isbister flourished statistics about how arms licences to the Middle East recently have, er, rocketed and now form half our arms exports. Perhaps it is no wonder the government was so keen to life the arms embargo on Syria and why it has given “priority market” status to Libya, despite that country’s alarming political instability.
Mike Gapes (Lab, Ilford South) had unearthed statistics on gun exports. These included 24,000 assault rifles, 9,000 rifles, 1,000 “super rifles” and 3,000 “sporting guns” to places such as Sri Lanka, the Seychelles and the Maldives. I say, Jeeves: how is the grouse shooting in the Maldives this season?
These guns were exported without much paperwork because they were listed as being required for “anti-piracy” purposes. Gapes suggested that “some of these weapons might be diverted to othe5r purposes than anti-piracy”. Surely not! Sir Malcolm Bruce (Lib Dem, Gordon) said that some 40,000 firearms had been shipped from Britain under the anti-piracy label and wondered if “there is a danger a perfectly genuine concern about piracy could be a cover for getting more weapons” sold to foreign governments.
Oliver Sprague from Amnesty International was worried that such weapons were often sold to countries where there was not much “human rights training”. Human rights training? Perhaps that can become the next growth area for British exports.
With the Middle East now forming over half the market for British arms exports, this explains why David Cameron was so keen to boast about having sold ‘wonderful things’ to Saudi Arabia and places like it in his visit to the BAE plant in Wharton, Lancashire.
Hope Not Hate have this story, UKIP Would Be MP Calls For The Kidnapping Of President Obama, reporting the comments made by the Jeremy Zaid, UKIP’s parliamentary candidate for Hendon, on his Facebook page. Zaid was outraged at the release of secret government papers on the Israeli nuclear programme by Obama’s government. He said
” Once Obama is out of office, the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or “do an Eichmann” on him, and lock him up for leaking state secrets. After all what’s sauce for the Pollard goose is sauce for the Obama gander, don’t you think? ”
He then added ” nah, just kidnap the bugger, like they did to Eichman, who suddenly found that he’d woken up in Israel. The problem is that Israeli jails are far more humane and adherent to human rights than American ones.”
The article also mentions that Zaid is no stranger to controversy. He claimed on Twitter last year that parts of London are being ethnically cleansed of Whites, and that the local MP, Mike Gapes, was either ‘blind to or complicit in’ the ethnic cleansing of Ilford.
Now it seems to me that someone with such an unusual surname as ‘Zaid’, should be very careful about stirring up racial prejudice. For many of the knuckledraggers looking for a reason to attack Blacks and Asians, Mr Zaid’s monicker would mark him out as some kind of foreigner, who deserves the same treatment. The mob mentality whipped up by preachers of hate isn’t terribly pernickety when it comes to ethnic differences. I’ve reblogged Tom Pride’s piece this morning about a Sikh chap, Pritpal Singh, who was racially abused as a ‘Bin Laden ****’, despite the fact that he belongs to a completely different religion and ethnicity from the notorious terrorist.
As for Israel’s nuclear programme, that’s been known about for a very long time, despite the fact that it breaks international treaties. Way back in 1990 or thereabouts, Mordechai Vanunu was thrown in the slammer by the Israeli authorities because he leaked details of it to Robert Maxwell’s Mirror.
As for the reason why Obama’s government leaked their secret documents on it, it looks to me like it was partly in revenge for Netanyahu’s government leaking information on his administration’s talks about nuclear power with Iran. The Iranians claim they wish to develop nuclear power simply as a supply of domestic power. The Americans wish to bind them with an international agreement, which will prevent them from using it to develop weapons.
The Republicans don’t trust the Iran, and don’t want them to have nuclear power, full stop. The talks between Obama and the Iranians are supposed to be secret, but they were spied on by the Israeli. Who then went on to pass the information to the Republicans in Congress in order to derail them.
And how does Obama’s government know this? Because they were spying on the Israelis.
Now as The Young Turks themselves point out, nobody comes out of this looking good. Neither the Israelis nor America should have been spying on each other. From what I understand, you’re not supposed to spy on your allies. When Thatcher caught the Israelis doing this in Britain back in the early 1990s, she threatened to close the Mossad base down and have them thrown out of the country. That stopped promptly stopped that. And the Americans – and us- have hardly endeared themselves and ourselves to our continental partners and allies with Snowden’s revelations that the US with British complicity was spying on them.
And The Young Turks also point out how undemocratic it is, that the American government should be keeping secrets from members of the government – that is, the other lawmakers in Congress.
This spying and duplicity by Netanyahu’s government seems to me to be the explanation for Obama’s leaking of documents on the Israeli nuclear programme, and Zaid’s subsequent anger and demands for Obama’s kidnapping and trial.
The Republicans seem to want some kind of pre-emptive strike on Iran, rather than using a kind diplomacy to settle the question. It looks from Zaid’s comments and actions here that this is his attitude too. If so, it’s grossly irresponsible. The last thing the Middle East needs is another Western invasion and further warfare with Iran itself. If Zaid does support pre-emptive war against Iran, then this should automatically disqualify him from government.
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