Starmer Expels Another Left-Wing Jew

As Starmer and the Labour party under him fall further in the polls, Mike posted the news that veteran Jewish Labour party member Graham Bash has been ‘auto-excluded’ by the bargain basement Stalin and his witch-hunters. He’s been a member of the party and a trade unionist for fifty years, so it seems he’s another one who’s been accused of anti-Semitism. Well! Who knew there were so many self-hating anti-Semitic Jews in the Labour party! No, I don’t believe it either. Especially as so many of the Jewish peeps Evans and Starmer have accused of anti-Semitism are in reality decent, self-respecting people, often strongly involved with their community and genuinely committed to fighting racism and anti-Semitism. Many of them have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and assault, and have lost family members in the Holocaust. Which makes these lies nothing short of monstrous.

Mike says it’s believed by some that Starmer is acting on a list of undesirables handed to him by the Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews. In their 2020 Trustees report, the Board admits that it has ties to the Israeli Embassy, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the IDF. The Ministry of Strategic Affairs, as Mike says, is the department of the Israeli state that campaigns against the Boycott, Sanction and Divestment campaign. It is also the department that runs Israeli hasbara – state propaganda aimed at civilians. This is supported by a tweet from Lowkey showing a picture of the report where it details these links. Mike writes

Starmer is widely believed to be acting under orders from the Board of Deputies of British Jews – a Tory-dominated organisation that campaigned hard (but failed) to depose Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour leadership.

It has now been revealed that the BoD works closely with the Israeli Embassy and has strong links with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (which campaigned against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to pressure Israel into ending its persecution of Palestine) and the Israel Defence Force (the Israeli military who seem to spend much of their time murdering defenceless Palestinians).

In other words, this organisation appears to be an arm of the Israeli government dedicated to influencing UK political advantages to carry out policies supporting that foreign power, rather than helping the people of the UK.

And Starmer is their puppet.

Absolutely. The Board of Deputies doesn’t represent British Jews. It represents the state of Israel against Britain’s diverse Jewish community. I don’t doubt that simply saying this could lead to further accusations of anti-Semitism. The ultra-Zionists trying to defend this persecution would trot out the old argument about the trope of the disloyal Jew. But it isn’t anti-Semitic to say this. We’re not talking about some stupid, murderous conspiracy theory, like the Protocols of Elders of Zion, the Nazi nonsense about the Jews controlling ‘finance capital’ or the great replacement, which says that the Jews are encouraging non-White immigration to destroy the White race. No, we’re talking real links with a foreign government to manipulate domestic British politics and which is acting directly against British Jews. And as Craig Ferguson, David Rosenberg and Jewish Voice for Labour have pointed out, much genuine anti-Semitism was explicitly fear of left-wing Jews. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion also claimed that the Jews were responsible for socialism, while Hitler railed against ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ and ranted about how they were responsible for ‘Marxist socialism’. The Blairites don’t mention this, but their attacks on left-wing Jews are clearly part of this strand of anti-Semitism.

Starmer’s purge is purely political and anti-Semitic. As are the Board of Deputies. They are for Israel and the rich, against Jews and the poor.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2021/09/02/starmer-falls-in-the-polls-again-as-his-blunders-mount-up-against-him/

‘I’ Newspaper Smears Corbyn’s Labour as Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theorists: Part 2

Verber then goes on two deal with two more conspiracy theories, which are ‘Israel Is Undermining British Democracy’ and ‘Twisting or Denying the Facts of the Holocaust’. Throughout the article, Verber appears sweetly reasonable. For example, of the first conspiracy theory he writes

It is healthy in any democracy to question foreign states’ actions. You can question whether Israel’s engagement is good for Britain, just as you might our relationship with the EU or the US. But these questions need to be rational and built on evidence, not an instinctive feeling that something “shady” is going on, just because it is Israel.

Form modern racists, Israel, as the world’s only Jewish state, has become code for “Jews” in general, whether they live there or have any links with it or not. “Israel” and “Jews” are not synonymous.

Which is true enough, but not the whole truth. People believe that Israel is meddling in this country’s affairs not out of anti-Semitism, but because it is. It was revealed doing so in the al-Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’, where Shai Masot of the Israel embassy was recorded conspiring to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet. It was also revealed doing so in Channel 4’s 2009 documentary on the Israel lobby by Peter Oborne, which described how the Israel lobby gave funding to MPs in the two parties’ ‘Friends of Israel’ organisations, how the Board itself had tried to close down impartial reporting of atrocities committed by Israel and its allies with grotesque accusations of anti-Semitism, and how Mossad had tried to have independent Jewish organisations recording anti-Semitic incidents merged with those backed by Israel. If they couldn’t do this, then they tried to shut them down. And then there’s the wealth of evidence about the Israelis directing all this from their Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the various Israeli funded organisations designed to push the pro-Israel view, like BICOM. As for Israel and Jews not being synonymous, here Verber is trying to have it both ways. Now many of the verbal attacks on Jews are sloppily worded criticisms of Israel. But Netanyahu himself has stated that Israel and the Jews are one and the same, and that by attacking Israel you are attacking the Jews. And this was long before he passed his wretched law declaring that Israel was the nation state of the Jews.

Verber gives as an example of this conspiracy theories Ruth George’s accusation that the Independent Group was funded by Israel. After briefly describing George’s comments and her apology, where she said she had invoked a conspiracy theory, Verber writes

It is absolutely legitimate to ask “who is funding The Independent Group”. UK political parties are obliged to to record the donations they receive. (The Independent Group has said that it will do this once it is a registered party). However, it is not legitimate to suggest – with no evidence at all – that “Israel” is secretly funding a new group, simply because some of its members are Jewish, and one of them previously chaired a Friends of Israel Group.

But it is fair to ask if Israel is funding them, because Joan Ryan, one of the chairs of Labour Friends of Israel, was recorded by al-Jazeera in their documentary stating that she talked to conspirator Shai Masot nearly every day and had secured a million pounds worth of funding from the Israeli government. No-one is accusing the Group of being funded by Israel because it contains some Jews. They’re accusing them because many of their members – six of the original eight – were members of Labour Friends of Israel. As for the Independent Group opening up their accounts, the question is – when? Saying they will eventually is simply a promise, and one that may well prove empty.

Once again, Verber uses fine words to twist the facts subtly and try to make a reasonable question look terribly anti-Semitic.

Another of My Videos Against Blair, the Israel Lobby and the Anti-Semitism Smears

This is another video I’ve just put against the continuing anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. The smears are driven by the Blairites determination to hang on to power, and their close connection to the Israeli state and the Israel lobby, which uses allegations of anti-Semitism to silence its critics. Here’s the blurb for it:

The anti-Semitism allegations against Corbyn and the Labour party are part of a campaign by the Israel state to defend itself against attacks for it maltreatment of Palestinians by accusing its critics of anti-Semitism. The Israel Lobby also buys influence through the sponsorship of politicians in Britain and America. Tony Blair was one of those. The treatment of those tried by Labour’s Compliance Unit is blatantly unjust. And the accusation that a statement is anti-Semitic, even when it is true, because it conforms to anti-Semitic tropes, is the skewed and twisted logic that has seen SF films like Aliens described as metaphors for racism.

I describe how the Israeli state is afraid of Jeremy Corbyn because he defends the Palestinians and opposes their maltreatment and oppression by the Israelis. The Labour leader is not an anti-Semite, and has consistently opposed all racism and stood up for Jews. I urge people to look at his parliamentary record. The Israeli state has a government department to supervise the smearing of its political opponents, the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, run by Gilad Erdan, a cabinet minister. It runs hasbara, the Hebrew word for civilian propaganda, similar to military propaganda and psy-ops.

The Israeli state also obtains political support through funding politicians. One of those was Tony Blair, who was given money by pro-Israel businessmen after he met Lord Levy at the Israeli embassy. This allowed him to be independent of the trade unions. Other politicians have also been given donations through businessmen connected with the Israeli embassy. One of the politicos talking about the Israel lobby in Peter Oborne’s Despatches documentary  describes how he was given money by two businessmen he had never met after he attended a gathering at the embassy. In America one of the main fundraising groups for Israel is AIPAC, whose members are mainly Jewish. The largest Zionist group in the US is the Christian Right organisation, Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. These two groups raise funds to sponsor pro-Israel politicos.

I also tackle Tom Watson’s demands that complaints of anti-Semitism should be sent to him, rather than Jenny Formby, because the complaints process is too opaque and not quick enough. Which means he’s upset because the people responsible for these accusations are seeing the people they’ve accused being thrown out of the party quickly enough. But the people who have been smeared as anti-Semites have also complained about the Compliance Unit and its unjust procedures. The process takes a long time, and as the videos I’ve put up from Labour Against the Witchhunt with Jackie Walker, Moshe Machover and Marc Wadsworth show, those accused are frequently suspended for a long time without hearing anything about when they will have a hearing. They are frequently refused the information about them and the charges held by the Labour party, to which they are entitled. Some manage to obtain it, but others don’t. They may also not be told what the charge or evidence used against them is. Which makes it seem to be a case of the Compliance Unit simply trying to find anything they can make stick.

Then there is the peculiar nature of the allegations. These are often based on the notion of literary tropes. An action or statement may be declared to be anti-Semitic, even if it is factually correct, if it corresponds to an anti-Semitic trope. Thus, Mike, my brother, was accused of anti-Semitism because he described Shai Masot’s plot to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet as a conspiracy. This was supposed to be a comparison with the really anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Jews plotting behind the scenes, the murderous fictions that saw six million innocents die in the Holocaust. But Mike was correct. Shai Masot’s plot was a conspiracy in the entirely correct sense that it was a secret political plot. And it was not anti-Semitic, because he made no global claim about Jews. Masot’s plot was not Jewish in the sense that it was by the Jewish people as a whole; it was simply a plot by the Israeli embassy. And this conspiracy, unlike the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and others, was real.

In fact, the use of literary tropes to accuse innocent people of anti-Semitism is very much like some of the dafter pieces of literary criticism, which claimed to find racism in SF. For example, in the 1980s the film Aliens, in which Ripley lands on an alien planet with a squad of space marines to tackle the creatures there, was seen by one critic as a metaphor for White America’s fears of Black welfare queens, unemployed Black women who were producing children on welfare. Because one of the Aliens is a queen, which lays eggs. No, Aliens isn’t about White America fearing Black women. It’s about Ripley and space marines fighting space aliens. It’s that simple, although beyond the aliens of the title is the villainous company, that has allowed the planet to be colonised without telling the settlers the aliens are there. It is also like another piece of criticism I came across, which said that SF aliens were anti-Semitic, because in the 19th and early 20th centuries the word ‘alien’ was often used to describe Jews. No, in all the SF I’ve read, the word ‘alien’ means ‘space alien’. It does not mean ‘Jew’.

The anti-Semitism smears and Labour’s Compliance Unit are unjust, and smear decent, anti-racist people, who have stood up against racism including anti-Semitism. It needs to stop, now, as does the use of literary tropes that are used to claim that descriptions of real events are anti-Semitic.

 

My Video on the Israel Lobby and the Labour Anti-Semitism Smears

This is the video I’ve just put up this evening discussing the Israel lobby and the anti-Semitism smears. I begin by saying that this follows on from the video I made about Chris Williamson’s suspension from the Labour party and the smears against him. I also make it clear that I have very harsh words to say about the Israel lobby and the Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies of British Jews. I am not an anti-Semite, and condemn categorically all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. And I absolutely despise the vile conspiracy theories about the Jews running the world, that resulted in 6 million innocents being murdered in the Holocaust death camps.

But some conspiracies do exist. And this is one of them. Conspiracies are covert, secret political plots, which this is. I explain that the anti-Semitism smears are Israel’s defence against criticisms of its oppression of the Palestinians. Ten years ago the journalist Peter Oborne made a documentary for Channel 4 about this, and the way the Israel lobby exerts influence in parliament with the groups Conservative Friends of Israel and Labour Friends of Israel. It has also tried to silence reporting of Israel’s atrocities by the press and media. One of the speakers in Oborne’s documentary is Alan Rusbridger, the former editor of the Guardian. He says that whenever they reported Israel’s crimes, someone would come along from the Board of Deputies with a lawyer and accused them of anti-Semitism. And the same was done to the BBC. When they reported the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps by the Christian Phalange, Israel’s allies, the Israel lobby accused them of anti-Semitism. This included reporting by respected journalists like Jeremy Bowen or Orla Guerin, who should be above reproach. The Beeb referred the case to an independent watchdog, who stated that their reporting was objective. Avi Shlaim, a respected Israeli professor of Middle Eastern studies at Oxford University also appears in the documentary to confirm that the reporting was correct.

I say that if the Chief Rabbi and Board of Deputies confined themselves to spiritual matters and defending Jews against genuine anti-Semitism, I would support them. Any decent person would. But they don’t. They are part of this smear campaign. And the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, is in my view a horrendous bigot. When he was Chief Rabbi he caused outrage by calling Reform Jews ‘enemies of the faith’. This is the language of persecution. It is the language used by the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages against heretics, Jews and Muslims. And it is the language radical Protestants also used against others. Sacks was also responsible for leading a contingent of British Jews on the March of the Flags in Israel. This is a day when the Israeli equivalent of boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, vandalising their homes. It is done to keep them in their place, like the EDL and other Fascists in Britain marching into Muslim areas, the BNP marching into Black and other areas, where the people are ethnic minorities, and Oswald Mosley and the BUF marching into Cable Street to terrorise the Jews there.

I state that not every Jew is a supporter of Israel, and until recently Zionism was a minority position amongst Jews. The Yiddish-speaking masses of the Bund in eastern Europe, the Jews of Poland, Ukraine, Russia and Romania, wanted to remain in the countries in which they were born. The same in America, where American Jews had a comfortable life. There is also a strand of Orthodox Judaism that rejects Zionism. This believes that the restoration of Israel can only come by the hand of the Almighty through the Messiah, when it will be aided by the nations of the world. Its restoration as a secular state or by secular power is a blasphemy.

I also state that Jews, who speak out about Israel and its crimes suffer appalling abuse. They are called ‘self-hating’, accused of anti-Semites. I mention how Tony Greenstein was told by an opponent that they wished his family had died in the Holocaust. In the Labour party, the smears began a few years ago when Ed Miliband – who was Jewish! – was leader of the Labour party. He was accused of being anti-Semitic, or the Labour party was accused of being institutionally anti-Semitic. This was the first time Maureen Lipman resigned from the Labour Party. It has got worse under Jeremy Corbyn, because Corbyn is a supporter of the Palestinians. He is not an anti-Semite and is a fervent anti-racist.

This is all being done by the Israelis through the Ministry of Strategic Affairs by cabinet Minister Gilad Erdan.

Here’s my blurb for the video:

The current anti-Semitism smears in the Labour Party are a response by Israel to criticisms of its oppression of the Palestinians. They have been used to try and silence newspapers and broadcasters like the Guardian and BBC. Nearly a decade ago Peter Oborne made a documentary for Channel 4 describing this and the methods they use to obtain parliamentary support. Britain’s Chief Rabbi and the Board of Deputies of British Jews are part of this smear campaign, although many Jews do not support Israel. And those who also voice criticisms are smeared as ‘self-hating’ and anti-Semitic. The smears started when Ed Miliband was leader of the Labour party, despite the fact that he was himself Jewish, and have increased under Corbyn, who is a supporter of the Palestinians but not a racist or anti-Semite. I am fervently opposed to racism and anti-Semitism, and absolutely condemn the vile conspiracy theories about world Jewish power that led to the murder of six million innocents in the Nazi death camps.

Oborne’s documentary is on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lby-B…

Here’s my video:

Moshe Machover, Israeli Anti-Zionist, Speaking at Labour Against the Witchhunt Meeting

This is another excellent video from the public meeting of Labour Against the Witchhunt on the 29th January last year, 2019. LAW was founded to stand up for people, who had been unfairly targeted by the right in the Labour party for expulsion, chiefly, but not exclusively, on bogus charges of anti-Semitism. Although one young woman was suspended or expelled because – gasp! Shock! Horror! – She was a fan of the Foo Fighters! LAW’s chair is Jackie Walker, a Black, Jewish anti-racist activist, who was falsely accused of anti-Semitism. Here she introduces Professor Moshe Machover, a very well respected Israeli mathematician and a staunch critic of Zionism. Here he tells the story of how he was also smeared, expelled and re-admitted for ‘supporting another party/not supporting another party’.

Walker states that many people were uplifted when the NEC were forced to go back on their knee-jerk response and reinstate him. This happened because they were at the Labour party conference and the offending article that many have spoken about that Moshe wrote, which touched on some of the issues that Ken [Loach?] spoke about, was in a paper on the side. And Jeremy Newmark, the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, came out, took a photo of them, smiled, and said something like ‘Well, we’ll have you now.’ Within hours Machover had been fingered. What is extraordinary is that in two years, 18 months, more people have been suspended and still do not know what the allegations against them are. It is extraordinary that at times, given that, Labour’s disciplinary unit can respond so quickly. She then hands over the Mike to Prof Machover.

Machover’s rather elderly, so he apologises for speaking from a sitting position. He states he wants to make a few technical points. It is not only about false allegations of anti-Semitism. There are two things that are combined, and in his case they were combined. The allegations of anti-Semitism are the most despicable, they are a form of character assassination. But they can only suspend you for it. They did not use that allegation to expel him. There is a more draconian rule that was used him against him and many other people, which has zilch to do with allegations of anti-Semitism. It is the infamous Rule 2.14.4b in the Labour party rule book. This allows the bureaucrats not to suspend, but to expel automatically. The procedure shares with the allegation of anti-Semitism the absence of natural justice. There is no due process. This is about who the accuser, the prosecution and the judge are. They are the same people: the committee that is expelling you or adjudicating in your suspension. They are the judges and the prosecution. You cannot cross-examine the witnesses. You cannot know who is accusing you. This applies to both cases. The draconian rule that allows automatic expulsion, or prevent you joining the party. Some of this would be just, if it was accompanied by due procedure, natural justice. For example, if you demand people vote for a rival candidate to a Labour candidate in an election. That would be a just case for expulsion. If someone is caught with a bloody knife over a corpse, they still have a trial. They’re not sent to prison automatically. Unlike this rule.

And some of the ground for automatic expulsion are absolutely absurd, a bureaucrat’s dream. This is membership or support for a political organisation not affiliated to the Labour party. But they do not define what a political organisation is. It could be Refuge. It could be Momentum [which was not at the time affiliated to the Labour party]. it could be anything. And what does ‘support’ mean? In Machover’s case, it was comical. Membership is a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ thing. But what does ‘support’ mean? They accused him of supporting a rival organisation. Why did they pick on this organisation? They did not call for voting against Labour. On the contrary, they encouraged people to vote for Labour candidates. What does support me? It’s not a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ issue. He supports some things, but not others. He says he did not respond to that part of the question when the bureaucrats wrote to him about it, because he didn’t really give him any definition of what support meant. When he was expelled, the evidence against him was the article he had published in the weekly journal of the CPGB [Communist Party of Great Britain]. This is something a lot of people do. Jeremy Corbyn has published many articles in the Morning Star, a lot of Labour leaders have published articles in journals inimical to the Labour Party. When they grudgingly reinstated him they said that they construed his reply as evidence that he did not support this organisation. He did not admit or deny support, but they arbitrarily decided that first he did, then he didn’t. That shows the arbitrariness of the whole procedure.

Coming to the accusations of anti-Semitism, it is true, as Walker said, that the accusations started when Corbyn became a candidate. That was a shift of gear in a campaign that started a few years previously, which had little to do with the Labour party, Britain, or specifically Jeremy Corbyn. It is a campaign orchestrated by the Israeli government, specifically by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs led by the cabinet minister Gilad Erdan. This was a response to Israeli’s declining reputation and falling support internationally,  among the left but also among liberal opinion, and particularly among the young, including young Jewish people. And so they decided to fight against it by accusing people who were against Israel and its crimes, and against the Zionist project of colonisation, branding them as anti-Semites. And the bastards fight dirty. You don’t need to go further than look at the al-Jazeera expose. He recommends that if you haven’t watched the four part series, you should, as he found it personally entertaining in a macabre way, but also import to see how the whole thing works.  He then goes to make the following points:

The campaign against Corbyn by the right, including the Labour right, which still holds very important bureaucratic positions, latched onto it and used it as a cudgel against Corbyn. This was a confluence of those who believed in Israel almost like a religion, who were prepared to eat alive anyone who dared to make even the most justified criticism of Israel. This coincided with the people on the right, both inside and outside the Labour party, who care zilch about Israel, Palestinians and anti-Semitism. They just want to use anti-Semitism as a weapon against Jeremy Corbyn personally. This is combined with a characteristic of the elite, not just in this country, but generally in the international community, in what used to be called ‘the free world’. This is led by the United States, which is led by, you know who. And Israel is playing a very important role for the US, not only as their regional watchdog, but as their supplier globally of the hardware and software of mass repression, such as the drones used not just for reconaissance but also assassination. Israel is the United State’s rottweiler, which is at the head of the international community. And so if that rottweiler pisses on your shoe, you don’t kick it, but say ‘Good dog! Good dog!’

He then ends his talk with a remark about Momentum. Many branches of Momentum mobilised to pass resolutions in his defence and in the defence of other victims. But where are Momentum’s national leaders? John Lansman, Momentum’s leader, is on record as saying ‘You mustn’t mention Zionism.’ But you can’t open an Israeli paper without Zionism being discussed – ‘Is it consonant with Zionism, is it not consonant with Zionism?’ Zionism is the ideology of Israel. It is not possible to mention Israel without mentioning Zionism, like Communism was the ideology of the old Soviet Union. What stops the central leadership of Momentum from saying a word about this. He thinks they should raise this question.

Trailer for ‘Witchhunt’ Movie about the Persecution of Jackie Walker

This is the video for Jon Pullman’s movie, Witchhunt, about the persecution of former Momentum vice-chair, Jackie Walker, on the completely risible and mendacious charge of anti-Semitism. As I’ve said many times before, Walker is a Jewish lady of colour. Her mother was a Black civil rights activist and her father a Russian Jew. They met on a civil rights demo. She is also a Jew by faith, her partner is also Jewish, and she sends her daughter to a Jewish school. All her life she has campaigned against racism, including anti-Semitism. But she does not agree with the I.H.R.A.’s definition of anti-Semitism or the Jewish Labour Movement’s handling of Holocaust Memorial Day. And so a trumped up charge of anti-Semitism was brought against her on the basis of a sloppily worded statement about Jewish involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, a trade that was initiated and very largely in the hands of Christians. As she has pointed out.

The video begins with the overwhelming election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. It then moves to Evan Davies and Rabbi Julia Neuberger claiming that there is an anti-Semitism problem in the Labour party. A man, speaking outside the Department of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London stating that the establishment will do anything they can to rubbish Corbyn and anyone close to him. It then goes on to show the various news presenters stating that Walker had been suspended. Then Walker appears to state that what was happening to the Palestinians was unspeakable, and you couldn’t ignore it. Followed by footage the Israelis sending planes to bomb and strafe Gaza, and an injured Arab child being taken out of an ambulance. Walker states that, for her, Gaza was the last straw. Corbyn is shown speaking at a pro-Gaza demonstration. Erdan, an Israeli apparatchik, speaks of economic and political warfare.

The great Israeli mathematician and supporter of Palestinian rights, Moshe Machover, who was also thrown out of the Labour party for anti-Semitism, before being readmitted because of public outcry, appears to describe the appoint of Erdan as the ‘head of this ministry’, which appears to be the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy. There’s a headline from the Electronic Intifada talking about the Anti-Semitism smear campaign. Walker quotes her mother, who said, ‘You can make anyone look a devil if you want to.’ There is then a map showing the links between the various anti-Zionist organisation from what appears to be pro-Israeli propaganda. Machover appears again to state that the goal of the Zionists is to make anyone who is non-Zionist or anti-Zionist appear anti-Semitic. This is followed by footage of a baying mob of Zionists all claiming to be demonstrating against anti-Semitism.

Jewish Voice for Labour’s Naomi Winborne-Idrissi appears, stating that this is all taking place during a shift to the right, in this country as well as others, and that Jeremy Corbyn is a threat. A young man says that what we find is an overwhelming emphasis on sources mobilising against Corbyn with a particular agenda. There is a shot of page from the Media Reform Coalition on the anti-Semitism smear against Corbyn, which they state is a disinformation campaign. A Black man says that people want moral slurs. They don’t want balanced stories. They want black and white stories. Walker says that what they are seeing with anti-Semitism, they have seen with McCarthyism. She is followed by Machover again saying that Walker was selected as a test case. Walker herself says that someone in the Compliance Unit said that the case against her was ‘pretty weak’. But this pretty weak case has smashed her reputation. A white-haired man says the pressure and attacks on Walker, with her lifetime of fighting racism, is to send a message ‘we can get you’.

The video ends with the film’s title fading out against a black background.

This is the trailer for a movie, that frightened Luciana Berger so much that she complained to the Labour party about its screening, and had it cancelled. And I don’t doubt that she was also one of the snitches claiming that Chris Williamson, the MP who booked the room for it, is a terrible anti-Semite who should be suspended.

And no wonder. It looks like cinematic dynamite that could well blow more than ‘the bloody doors off’ the whole revolting anti-Semitsm smear charade. It seems very clear from this that Corbyn, his associates and in this instance, Walker herself, are very much the targets of a very coordinated and orchestrated Israeli and establishment smear campaign. And it obviously is going to get both very worried. To use a turn of phrase from the SF movie Aliens, it’s going to make them stop their grinning and drop their linen’.

The film is due to be released March 17th, and will tour various British cities with its director, including Brighton and Derry in NI. I will be delighted if it comes to Bristol or anywhere nearby where I can catch it.

My very best wishes to Jackie, and to all involved in this movie. May you prevail, and the hatemongers, smear-artists and spineless moral cowards, who support them be swept away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘The Lobby’: Labour Friends of Israel’s Lies and Smears at Labour Conference

This is the third part of the Al-Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’, on the Israel lobby in the UK. In this section, the Arab news agency’s undercover reporter went with Shai Masot and Mark Regev of the Israeli embassy to the Labour conference in Liverpool. There they met and advised Joan Ryan, the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, and her parliamentary assistant, Alex Richardson, and Michael Rubin, the Parliamentary Assistant for Labour Friends of Israel, on how to deal with supporters of the Palestinians. They also recorded Ryan smearing Jean Fitzpatrick as an anti-Semite, accusing her of saying something which she definitely did not. Ryan did so because Fitzpatrick had the temerity to ask her a question she could not answer about what the LFI was doing to advance a two-state solution to the conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Israel’s Attack on the BDS Movement

The segment includes a clip of one of the Labour party’s Israel lobby saying that she could ‘take’ Jackie Walker. It then moves on to the challenge to Israel posed by the BDS movement, and Israel’s response to it. Netanyahu is shown saying to the camera that Israelis have to fight the BDS movement because it is morally wrong. Israel’s attack on the BDS movement is run by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which recruits mainly former Israeli secret agents. London is a major battleground in the conflict over the BDS movement. There’s a shot of Ilan Pappe, the Israeli historian and critic of Israel, stating that in many ways the BDS movement started in Britain. There’s another clip of someone from the Labour Friends of Israeli ominously declaring that they work closely with the Israeli embassy, ‘doing a lot behind the scenes’. The documentary’s director, Clayton Swisher, states that one of the main targets is the Labour party, as for the first time they have a leader, who is a champion of Palestinian rights. There is also a shot of Peter Oborne, the Telegraph journo, who himself made a Channel 4 documentary investigating and criticizing the Israel lobby, saying that Israel interference is an outrage, an affront to democracy and shouldn’t be allowed.

Mark Regev on What to Tell Supporters of the Palestinians

The video shows the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev, telling a group of sympathetic Labour activists that people on the left today are likely to be pro-Palestinian and hostile to Israel, if not anti-Semitic. He tells them that to combat Progressives, they are to ask them why they are supporting reactionaries like Hamas and Hezbollah, and to say in the language of Social Democracy that they are misogynist, homophobic, racist anti-Semitic and reactionary. The chair of the Labour Friends of Israel, Jeremy Newmark, then talks to the crowd about how he used the argument to win over Clive Lewis, one of Corbyn’s close allies.

Jackie Walker: The Anti-Semitism Crisis Is Constructed to Unseat Corbyn

There is another clip of Jackie Walker stating that the anti-Semitism crisis is constructed and manipulated by parts of the Labour party, other parties and the media to discredit Corbyn and a number of his supporters. She makes it clear that she wants an argument between Zionism and anti-Zionism, instead of the fake conflict there is now. She also states that at a debate she had with Newmark, he turned his back on the audience and whispered to her that she was a ‘court Jew’, the Jewish equivalent of calling a Black person a ‘house n*gger’. A note at the end of the programme states that when they contacted Newmark, he denied he said any such thing and feels that it is not a fair description of Walker. When asked if she had told anyone, she replies that it’s hard to use the compliance system, because it’s so discredited.

Masot is also filmed boasting that the Israeli embassy had attended 50 events that year at universities, and that more than 100 events were organized by the Israel societies on campuses, eight receptions for young people at the embassy, and three receptions for more than 300 people from Parliament.

Jean Fitpatrick and Joan Ryan of Labour Friends of Israel

The video also interviews Jean Fitzpatrick about her encounter with Ryan and the Labour Friends of Israel. Fitzpatrick says that is was her first Labour conference, and that she wanted to use the opportunity to have a genuine dialogue with a group she felt had a lot of influence. She is shown asking Ryan and the others what they were doing about the Israeli settlements in Palestine. Ryan replies that they aren’t friends of Israel and enemies of Palestine, and that they believe in a two-state solution. Fitzpatrick asks how this will come about. Ryan simply comes out with more flannel about coexistence and self-determination for both peoples. Fitzpatrick states that she had no idea, who was on the stall, and what she wanted was straight answers not slogans. Fitzpatrick asked Ryan what they were doing about Israeli occupation. In reply Ryan restates that they’re in favour of a two-state solution, and Israeli security.

Swisher then follows, explaining that a two-state solution is impossible due to the way Israeli colonization has atomized the existing Palestinian villages and towns, separating them from each other. Fitzpatrick also states that she wanted reassurance that a two-state solution was still possible. Back to the video of Fitzpatrick and Ryan talking, where Ryan states that they have to be careful not to let their feelings morph into anti-Semitism. Fitzpatrick in reply says she’s not anti-Zionist.

Ben White, a journalist with the Middle East Monitor, appears on camera to state that it is clear that, whatever party is in power in Israel, the country has no desire to relinquish the territories seized after 1967. This throws up questions no-one wants to ask. Or don’t want to answer.

Ilan Pappe states that there are only two solutions to the problem. Either you support Israel, which is an ethnic apartheid state, or you support a change of regime in Israel, which means that the country would go through a process of genuine democratization like apartheid South Africa. There is no third option.

Back to the conversation between Fitzpatrick and Ryan, Ryan tries to end the conversation. Pappe observes that Fitzpatrick didn’t ask anything about Judaism or the existence of Israel. She just asked about the settlements, and how anyone who supported Israel justified them.

Ryan Calls Fitzpatrick Anti-Semitic

Fitzpatrick states she was interested to know how they would use whatever funds and influence they had to bring about a two-state solution. Fitzpatrick is shown saying to Ryan that they have a lot of money and prestige in the world. Ryan asks her where she got that from. Fitzpatrick replies that that is what she has heard. the Labour Friends of Israel is a stepping-stone to good jobs, and that the son of a friend of hers got a good job at Oxford university on the basis of working for the Labour Friends of Israel. Ryan then responds that this is anti-Semitic, which Fitzpatrick denies, stating that it’s a fact. Ryan then goes on about how it’s an ‘anti-Semitic trope’ and talks about ‘conspiracy theories’. Ryan then declares she’s ending the conversation, because she doesn’t want to talk further about getting jobs in university or the City through this, which is anti-Semitic.

Swisher then explains that Ryan falsely claimed that Fitzpatrick had spoken about getting jobs in the City, London’s financial centre. Pappe comments that Fitzpatrick wasn’t anti-Semitic, and Ryan and her friends knew it. She was simply an ordinary pro-Palestinian person concerned about Israel’s violation of their civil rights. Ryan continued talking about how Fitzpatrick had spoken about banking as she left the conference hall, even though Fitzpatrick had never mentioned it.

That evening, at a rally for the Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan described her day, claiming that there were three anti-Semitic incidents that day at the stand to the people staffing it. Which she believed showed the reality of anti-Semitism in the party.

Ryan, Angela Eagle, Jennifer Gerber and Chuka Umunna

Swisher states that by the following day the news had got out about the exchange on the stall. The video shows internet messages from LBC and the Labour Friends of Israel. Various MPs came by to express their views on the subject, including Angela Eagle, who is told by Ryan’s assistant, Michael Rubin, the Parliamentary Officer for Labour Friends of Israel, that they had someone talk to them, who said the anti-Semitism accusations were made up to attack Jeremy Corbyn. Chuka Umunna also turns up to hug Jennifer Gerber, the director of the LFI, and asks for an update on the anti-Semitic incidents. They tell him that a ‘nutter’ turned up to tell him that the coup was run by Jews, Jewish MPs and Jewish millionaires. They also say that Angela Eagle’s husband was Jewish to show how unpleasant this comment was. Ryan also tells Umunna that she reported ‘that woman’ and that Fitzpatrick had videoed her not answering the question. This has clearly upset Ryan. Ryan then goes on to say that she didn’t film her telling Fitzpatrick that she’s anti-Semitic, and that she’s made a formal complaint.

Fitzpatrick states that she’s angry about how Ryan misquoted her, and anxious about how she totally misinterpreted her words. Fitzpatrick says she has no idea how Ryan got from what she really said to getting good jobs in banking. ‘Maybe she believes her own trope’.

The video goes back to Gerber stating that she met someone who said that the anti-Semitism isn’t real, they haven’t seen it, their Jewish friends haven’t seen it and it’s really being used to crush Corbyn.

Pappe then says that it’s pathetic and worrying that such evidence is used every day to attack Corbyn, and get him to deny that he is anti-Semitic.

Alex Richardson: I Don’t Know If It’s Anti-Semitic Or Not, But It Made Me Uncomfortable, So It Is

And then were back Gerber telling the LFI that it’s upsetting to her as a Jew to hear about how anti-Semitism is being used to undermine Corbyn. But Gerber then goes on about how this person worries her more than the blatant anti-Semites, who talk about how Jews have big noses and control the world, because she doesn’t know whether she’s an anti-Semite. The conversation then moves on to a debate over which of these incidents was worse, with Rubin claiming it was Fitzpatrick’s conversation with Ryan. And Rubin himself is shown saying that he doesn’t know where the line is about anti-Semitism anymore. Alex Richardson, Ryan’s parliamentary assistant, then gives his opinion, that it’s anything that makes you uncomfortable. And so he reported Fitzpatrick’s comments as anti-Semitic, even though nothing anti-Semitic was said – but he’s sure there were undertones – simply because it made him feel uncomfortable.

Fitzpatrick observes that she tried to talk to them because she thought they were willing to talk about Palestine. Now it appears they are not, and if you try to talk about it, they will bring a charge of anti-Semitism against you.

Pappe observes that the LFI is really scraping the bottom of the barrel to find 2 1/2 cases of anti-Semitism, and that even they aren’t sure if 2 of their 3 cases are actually anti-Semitic.

Fitzpatrick Investigated

Fitzpatrick was unaware that a complaint of anti-Semitism had been lodged, and that the story had made the news. This part of the video shows the headline in Jewish News. Shortly afterwards, Ryan’s parliamentary assistant emailed Rubin asking him to be a witness to the supposed anti-Semitic incident. But Richardson says that Fitzpatrick’s comment was ‘on the line’, but he felt it was anti-Semitic, even though she didn’t mention Jews, but Israel instead, and was all about Jews controlling money and power. Richardson then speculates about how ‘that woman’ might be banned because she said something anti-Semitic.

Shortly after she left the conference, Fitzpatrick was contacted by someone from the Labour party, who only told her it was about ‘a serious incident’. She was left racking her brains wondering if she had seen a fire or an assault of some kind. She was then told that it was her conduct, that was being investigated, ‘which was a real bombshell’.

At the end of the programme, it is states that they contacted everyone involved for their opinion. Ryan stated that she believes that it is duty of all party members to report language that is racist or anti-Semitic, and that she believes that her actions were entirely appropriate.

She added that comments like those about certain groups having lots of money and prestige and helped to advance people’s careers appeared to evoke classic anti-Semitic tropes.

The documentary also states that neither Shai Masot nor the Israeli embassy responded to their findings.

Conclusion

This shows just how nasty and desperate the Israel lobby is, and I admit, it has changed my opinion about the Israel lobby. I’d previously assumed that the accusations were a cynical ruse to smear Corbyn and his supporters. But it seems from this that the people who make them, Labour Friends of Israel, the Jewish Labour Movement and others are so fanatical and blinkered, that they really do think that any who questions their views and Israel’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians is an anti-Semite.

Of course, they can’t clearly tell you what is anti-Semitic about particular comments. As Ryan showed with her own faulty recollection of what she was asked by Fitzpatrick, if it’s not explicitly anti-Semitic, they won’t remember it properly and make it fit their existing prejudices. Anti-Semites think Jews are behind the banking system, so when Fitzpatrick talked about the prestige surrounding the LFI that got her friend’s son a job, Ryan altered it in her recollection of the event to be about banks. Even though banks weren’t mentioned.

Nor did Fitzpatrick say anything about Jews. And it may very well be that the board interviewing the young man for the job at Oxford University were impressed that he had worked for Labour Friends of Israel. But just because Fitzpatrick believed, or her friend’s son believed, that he had got the job because of this doesn’t make it anti-Semitic. Fitzpatrick did not say that Jews controlled education, only that working for the LFI got him a job. People are impressed by different things, and it is not remotely impossible that someone at the university, who was personally impressed by the LFI, would offer a job to someone, who had worked for them.

As for Regev telling the Labour Friends of Israel to ask supporters of the Palestinians why they are supporting reactionaries, it’s true that Hamas and Hizbollah are unpleasant organisations. But there are deeply reactionary, racist and misogynist organisations in Israel. Not every Palestinian supports Hamas, and the nature of that political organization does not justify Israel’s dispossession and persecution of the Palestinians, which started long before it arose.

It’s clear from this segment that the Israel lobby can’t justify it’s treatment of the Palestinians. Ryan couldn’t in her conversation with Fitzpatrick, and this embarrassed and angered her. Hence the smear. And with no arguments, Rubin and Richardson act like precious snowflakes demanding ‘safe spaces’ from being made uncomfortable.

And the use of anti-Semitic tropes to accuse decent people of anti-Semitism is contrived and deliberately constructed so that those making the accusation do not need to take any account of the reality of what they are being told. It’s a particularly nasty way of sticking their fingers in their ears, and saying ‘la-la-la, I’m not listening to you, and you’re an anti-Semite anyway for telling me things I don’t want to hear, can’t answer, and don’t want you to know.’

Clip from ‘The Lobby’ Showing Shai Masot Conspiring to Remove UK Politicians

This is the promotional trailer for the shocking Al-Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’.

I’ve no doubt you’ve seen this before. Mike’s put it up on some of the articles attacking the Israel lobby and their smears against the opponents and critics of Israel. But I’m putting it up now just to remind everyone what the anti-Semitism smears against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour party are all about. Those making the smears know very well that well Corbyn is not at all anti-Semitic and is one of the most committed anti-racists in parliament. However, he is pro-Palestinian, and thus is a threat to the racist structure and identity of the Israeli state. And so the Israel lobby both within and outside the Labour party are trying to destroy him, just as this notorious clip showed Shai Masot conspiring with a British civil servant and pro-Israel activists to bring down various British politicians and prevent them getting into the cabinet.

The clip begins with the civil servant Maria Strizzoli, a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel, and long term confidante of Conservative Minister Robert Halfont. At dinner with Shai Masot of the Israeli embassy in London, he talks about how he’s applied to be head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Israeli Intelligence Department. The meeting also included one of Al-Jazeera’s undercover reporters, who filmed Masot asking Strizzoli if he could give her a list of MPs he’d like her to ‘take down’. She replied that if you looked hard enough, there was sure to be something they were trying to hide. The first politician mentioned was the Deputy Foreign Minister, Sir Alan Duncan, who was opposed to the construction of further Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

The clip then goes into a comment by the former Telegraph journo and critic of the Israeli lobby, Peter Oborne, stating that this conversation about taking down Alan Duncan is shocking.

The video then returns to Strizzoli and Masot discussing whether or not they had Duncan neutralized. They then comment that ‘Boris is good’. Johnson was Duncan’s boss, the Foreign Minister. Strizzoli likes him because he is ‘solid on Israel’. Masot says that he is an idiot but so far he’s without any responsibilities as Foreign Minister, so that if ‘something real happens’, it wouldn’t be his fault.

The video then states that Masot features prominently in the programme ‘The Lobby’, and ends with the director, Clayton Swisher, stating that the removal of a minister like Alan Duncan would be a line few foreign embassies would cross. It’s a scandal that Netanyahu’s government must now answer for, as well as the British civil servant.

The Israel lobby and Blairites in the Labour party attempted to support their smear against Mike, that he was an anti-Semite, partly by seizing on his description of Masot’s plotting with Strizzoli as a conspiracy. This, they arrogantly declared, was anti-Semitic, because it used the trope of Jews being evil conspirators going back to notorious anti-Semitic myths and forgeries like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is complete rubbish, as the clip shows that Masot and Strizzoli were indeed conspiring, and even called what they were doing by that term.

Despite the Israeli government’s embarrassment over the documentary, the Israel lobby and the Israeli authorities continue to interfere covertly in the affairs of foreign countries – the UK and America. And the campaign against critics of Israel, including Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, is run by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

This is the Israeli department ultimately behind the smears against Corbyn and the Labour party by the Blairites and the Zionist organisations in the Labour party, and the Tory Jewish establishment – the Board of Deputies and Chief Rabbis Jonathan Sacks and Ephraim Mirvis. Who have shown the same lack of morals as their Israeli co-conspirators. Just as the Board’s President, Marie van der Zyle, Mirvis and the Blairite MPs Lucy Powell, Beverley Hughes and Louise Ellman graced a demonstration organized by friends of the intensely islamophobic EDL in Manchester last Sunday, so the Israeli state has welcomed White supremacists and Nazis like Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, the current fuhrer of the Alt Right, and even Tommy Robinson himself, the former founder of the EDL.

The Israel lobby is a threat to proper democracy and open government in Britain and America, and, in its alliance with the Far Right, an existential threat to Jews in these nations.

Jimmy Dore and Secular Talk Tear Apart anti-Corbyn Smears about Bankers

Mike on Pollard’s Smears

On Monday, Mike put up a piece attacking the latest anti-Semitism smear against Jeremy Corbyn by the hard-right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard. Corbyn had made a video describing how the banks were propping up the Tory government, because they protected and supported them at the expense of ordinary working people. Ten years ago the banks caused the massive crash, which led to the Tories pushing their austerity programme, which is cutting services and pushing ordinary folks into poverty. But while millions of people, including nurses and other vital workers and employees are finding it difficult to make ends meet, the chief of Morgan Stanley last year gave himself a 21.5 million pound bonus, and the banks together have given themselves 15 billion pounds in bonuses. Corbyn concluded his piece by saying that when these people called Labour a danger and a threat, they were right: Labour is a threat to a rigged system. The party now has well over half a million members, and will work for the many, not the few, and Socialist Voice. They pointed out that it was Pollard, rather than Corbyn, who was the anti-Semite. Corbyn said nothing about bankers being Jewish. Pollard did. Therefore, it’s Pollard who believes the anti-Semitic lie that all bankers are Jewish.

Pollard and a number of other gullible bigots immediately blew their tops and decided that when Corbyn talked about ‘bankers’, he was really using dogwhistles to express his hatred of the Jews.

Pollard’s comment was immediately ripped apart on Twitter by David Rosenberg, Another Angry Voice, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, Chelley Ryan, Curious Chak, Martin Frowd, Revolution Breeze, and The MANY versus the Few.

After being torn to shreds, Pollard issued a non-apology. He sort-of admitted that his comments may have been way off beam, but that was what happened when anti-Semitism was allowed to flourish: you saw everything through its prism.

Mike pointed out that this changed nothing, that Pollard still held anti-Semitic views in that he considered bankers to be synonymous with Jews, and that he had claimed that Corbyn was an anti-Semite, even though he stated that he had no evidence to support it.

So the left-wing twitterati returned to the job of tearing bloody chunks out of him, metaphorically speaking. Vote Labour to save the NHS, Audrey, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, and Hajo Meyer’s Violin. They pointed out that Pollard hadn’t apologized and was still showing his own anti-Semitic prejudices. Another Angry Voice tweeted a speech by Marie van de Zyle at a ‘Say No to Anti-Semitism’ event in Manchester, which was a pack of lies from one end to the other. Kerry-Ann Mendoza also tweeted about how she had been accused of anti-Semitism at an event. She described how IDF soldiers kidnap and torture Palestinian children. So she was accused of using the anti-Semitic trope that Jews eat babies. Sara tweeted that she wished to send a message of solidarity to Corbyn, and Tom London said that the schism between the two sides of the Jewish community could be mended if they were prepared to meet in good faith.

Mike concluded his article by stating it was worth a try.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/09/17/accidental-anti-semitism-of-jewish-chronicle-editor-shows-the-lie-at-the-heart-of-recent-accusations/

Secular Talk and The Jimmy Dore Show

The accusations have crossed the Atlantic. They were repeated in the American Jewish newspapers, the Forward. And the American progressive news shows Secular Talk and the Jimmy Dore Show weighed in to rip Pollard and the other fanatics claiming Corbyn was an anti-Semite apart.

Both Secular Talk, fronted by Kyle Kulinski, and Jimmy Dore and his guests, Ron Placone and Steffi Zamorano, play Corbyn’s speech. Kulinski hows some of the twitter comments from ordinary Jews smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite. He states that this is what happens to Progressives. Like they tried smearing Bernie Sanders as a sexist and racist, but they couldn’t smear him as an anti-Semite, because he was Jewish. But this didn’t apply in Corbyn’s case. He points out that they’re doing it to the BDS movement. And they’re only using the anti-Semitism smear because they have no real arguments against what he says.

Jimmy Dore and his friends say the same thing, though they take square aim at Stephen Pollard. One of the tweets they show asks how it is that the Jewish Chronicle in London and the Forward in New York say exactly the same thing, on the same day. It’s a good question. The answer is probably that both newspapers are running the same stories because they’re collaborating with the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs, which has been exposed as organizing the campaign of anti-Semitic smearing against pro-Palestinian and anti-Zionist activists. Dore makes the same point as Kulinski, that these tweets don’t show that Corbyn is an anti-Semite because he never mentioned the Jews. All he mentioned was Morgan Stanley. Which doesn’t have a Jewish name. But it does show how Pollard and the other tweeters do believe the anti-Semitic lie that all bankers are Jewish.

Dore also makes the point that this attempts to stop any criticism of the banks, or income inequality or indeed any left-wing issues, because if you do so, you’re an anti-Semite. It’s crying wolf.

And worse, it reduces the value of real accusations of anti-Semitism. Because if you accuse Jeremy Corbyn of anti-Semitism, who stands up for working people, then obviously anti-Semitism can’t be a bad thing. Just like the attacks on Bernie Sanders undermine real accusations of sexism, because if he’s sexist and works for ordinary people, then similarly sexism can’t be all bad.

Here are the videos.

The Jimmy Dore Show.

Secular Talk

I am not at all surprised that they tried attacking Corbyn on the grounds that talking about bankers must be left-wing code for Jews. I’ve seen it done before on Kathy Shaidle’s extreme right-wing blog, Five Feet of Fury. Shaidle’s from the other side of the Atlantic, but her blog is aimed at Conservatives in America, Canada and Britain. She used the accusation to attack American and Canadian critics of the banksters, who cause the crash. I suppose it was only a matter of time before Conservatives and the Israel lobby over here used the same smear.