Last week my local Labour party held its monthly meeting, online because of the continuing Covid lockdown. There was a monthly report from our local MP, Karin Smyth,along with reports from the two conference delegates. This was followed by a speech from the Unison liaison – I’m afraid I’ve mistakenly said that she’s Unite in the letter, for which I apologise to Unite – and that’s when I got sick and tired of it all and quietly left.
Smyth’s talk was highly informative and chilling in her description of the government’s continuing campaign to privatise the NHS and replace it with a system financed by private health insurance as in America. She supports Starmer, but is very committed to protecting the NHS for which I respect her.
I was less impressed with the two delegates, who supported Starmer and David Evans’ measures destroying party democracy and purging the left. It’s blatant factionalism and the reasons they gave were spurious. They claimed that as Starmer only had 200 MPs, he needed to shore up his support so that he has 40 to form a cabinet. But he has no shortage of supporters in the parliamentary party, and so the rationale makes no sense. They did, however, vote for the Green New Deal, but didn’t vote for the measure supporting the Palestinians. They claimed they didn’t understand it. I think it’s far more likely they shared Starmer’s aggressive Zionism and support for the current far-right Israeli government’s colonisation of Palestine through the construction of illegal settlements and the consequent suffocating restrictions on those of the indigenous Palestinians.
But I was most annoyed by the Unison liaison’s speech talking about how she’d been indifferent to the problem of Labour anti-Semitism, but had just attended a ‘powerful’ presentation about the terrible abuse our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Labour party were suffering from the Left. What was this abuse? Why, it was all tropes, as you’d expect. This is just Zionist propaganda. Tropes are invoked to smear reasonable criticisms of Israel by decent people through contrived parallels to real anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and myths. As I have said ad nauseam, the people targeted for these smears are mostly genuine anti-racists and opponents of anti-Semitism, many of whom – indeed the majority – are self-respecting Jews. These are people, who frequently lost relatives in the Holocaust and have suffered genuine abuse and violence from real anti-Semites and Nazis.
I have therefore sent off this email of complaint. It criticises the delegates’ Starmerite factionalism, and the leadership itself for calling for a return to Blairism. I attack Blair’s further privatisation of the Health Service, the introduction of the Work Capability Tests and the bullying tactics used by the DWP on claimants. I also attack Blair for his illegal invasion of Iraq and Libya, and the consequent destabilisation of the Middle East. A destabilisation that prepared the way for the rise of ISIS. I also make it plain that I oppose Blair’s corporatism and his grant of government positions to the captains of industry and his support for big business over the wishes of communities and their small businessmen and women. I make it very clear that I feel Blair and his policies are not to be supported or revived, and that Starmer has shown that he is completely treacherous and untrustworthy. He will, I feel, turn on his own supporters the moment it suits him, and his support for the NHS at this moment is merely tactical.
I also attack the Unison lady’s talk, pointing out that this has probably been given by JLM, a Zionist organisation, who aren’t interested in Jews but protecting Israel and its barbarous treatment of the Palestinians. I denounce the mass purges from the party of Starmer’s critics and critics of Israel, and briefly describe my own experience of being so accused. I end by asking to present my case at a future meeting of the party.
I may well have set myself up for expulsion as another evil lefty troublemaker, but I can’t let these evil policies and falsehoods go unchallenged. Here is my email below:
“Dear Sir/ Madam,
Thank you for sending me this month’s reports. However, I must express here my very strong disapproval and dismay of some of the views expressed by the speakers at this month’s meeting and particularly the actions of the conference delegates. This does not extend to the great work of our local MP, Karin Smyth. I very much appreciate all the very hard work she does for her constituents and defending the NHS against Tory privatisation.
Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of the Labour leadership. Keir Starmer’s return to Blairism is a source of severe concern. Tony Blair in office continued and extended further the Thatcherite policies of the previous Tory governments. Indeed, they have complained that he went further in his privatisation of the NHS than they would have dared if Labour had stuck to its traditional defence of the Health Service. For example, when the Community Care Groups were set up they were given powers not only to purchase services from private medical companies, but also to raise funds privately. The polyclinics were supposed to be privately run, and he continued handing over doctor’s surgeries to private health companies as well as the management of hospitals to private healthcare chains.. Please see books like Raymond Tallis’ and Jacky Davis’ NHS – SOS for further details.
I am also disgusted by the bullying attitude towards welfare claimants and the Work Capability Tests that Blair also introduced. This has seen genuinely poor and disabled people thrown off benefits for the most trivial reasons, leading to great hardship, deprivation and death. This should be ended now. The unemployed and disabled should not be supported by food banks but by a properly funded and functioning welfare state, and damn whatever Rupert Murdoch and Geordie Greig say in their wretched propaganda sheets. But I see precious little evidence of this from Starmer. Indeed, he seems to favour extreme right-wing members, who believe that conditions should be made even harsher for the unemployed!
We also suffered from massive corporate corruption by Blair giving places in government to the private companies that the same departments were supposed to be regulating. The result was a colossal increase in the expense of public works and the favouring of these companies over the wishes of local communities and their businesses. See Bremner, Bird and Fortunes’ You Are Here and George Monbiot’s Captive State, for example. Blair also showed his absolute contempt for international law and the British people with his illegal invasion of Iraq. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a monster, but the invasion of Iraq left the country in chaos and destroyed what had been one of the most secular societies in the middle east with something like a welfare state where women could pursue careers outside the home. This is all gone. 200,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced, contributing to the refugee crisis we see now. Moreover it gave a space for the emergence of the monstrous ISIS. It has also, in my opinion, further contributed to the alienation of Muslims in Britain and abroad, as has Blair’s similar participation in the overthrow of another tyrant, Colonel Gadaffy.
I am utterly disgusted that Kier Starmer should believe Tony Blair is a leader worth emulating and to whom the Labour party should return and refer for its policies. I do not trust him to continue defending the NHS once is power, and I am afraid MPs like Karin will be faced with the difficult choice of supporting the leader or supporting the NHS. The purges and long list of broken promises to members show that Starmer is, in my opinion, utterly without principle and treacherous and I am afraid that valued MPs like Karin will also be purged if they dare to show any independence against him.
I am deeply disgusted by the conference delegates’ support for the leadership’s motions affecting party democracy. These are entirely partisan, and go against both the democratic traditions of the party and the views of many of the ordinary members. Starmer seems determined to purge the party of the left and make Labour into another, perhaps not even paler, version of the Conservatives. At the same time, he seems to have done precious little to oppose them in parliament, to the point that he has been easily ridiculed and mocked by Johnson, to the applause of the media.
I was also disappointed by the delegates’ refusal to support the motion in favour of the Palestinians. The motion is not difficult to understand. The Israeli state is colonising Palestinian territory with the construction of illegal settlements in defiance of international law. At the same time there is a system of apartheid in Israel that persecutes Palestinians as second class systems. This has to stop if Labour really believes in peace and equality in the Middle East. I fear the delegates’ refusal to support the motion has less to do with a failure to understand the situation than Keir Starmer’s support for the hard-right government in Israel.
This brings me on to the comments by the Unite liaison officer and her praise for the ‘powerful’ training she had received showing the ‘terrible abuse’ Jewish members of the party had received from the left through tropes. She comes across as a thoroughly decent woman, though naive and uninformed, and I fear that she has been terribly mislead by people I can only describe as liars, propagandists and smear merchants. People who, in my certain experience, have smeared thoroughly decent, genuinely anti-racist people, including staunch opponents of anti-Semitism, as Jew-haters. Starmer handed over anti-Semitic training to the Jewish Labour Movement, an extremely partisan and biased organisation. According to the organisation’s Jewish critics, they used to be Paole Zion, ‘Workers of Zion’, a Zionist organisation which describes itself as the sister party to the Israeli Labor Party. This organisation was moribund until it suddenly received an injection of funds from persons or persons unknown a few years ago.Its Jewish critics have pointed out that its members do not have to be either Jewish or members of the Labour party, as is the case with their ideological opponents in Labour, Jewish Voice for Labour. Yet the Jewish Labour Movement is somehow privileged as speaking for Labour’s Jewish members and Jewish Voice for Labour demonised as anti-Semitic ‘commies’ by right-wing Labour MPs like Neil Coyle.
In my experience organisations like the JLM are not interested in tackling anti-Semitism. They are there to counter criticism of Israel and Zionism, and the use of literary tropes is the only method they can use to do so. And their targets have been overwhelmingly Jews. Jewish Voice for Labour have complained that Jews are 300 times more likely to be accused of anti-Semitism than non-Jews. Those accused have included self-respecting men and women, who frequently lost relatives and friends in the Shoah, and who, along with their gentile friends and supporters, have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse, harassment and assault from genuine Nazis and anti-Semites. I cannot express sufficiently my absolute disgust at this deplorable persecution. Miri Hillel, a Jewish journalist, has said that many Jews are afraid of speaking out against this campaign of official harassment because of the effect it has on their families. Those accused of anti-Semitism are subjected to horrendous, foul abuse because of these lies and smears. .
As for terrible anti-Semitic tropes, this is being done to silence criticism of Israel by finding spurious literary and historical parallels with real anti-Semitism. Thus, any mention of Israeli embassy official Shai Masot’s covert negotiations with British civil servants to exclude Alan Duncan, a critic of Israel, from the cabinet, as a plot or conspiracy is loudly denounced as an example of the old myth of Jewish conspiracies like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. But Masot was plotting and engaged in a conspiracy in the true sense of the word. Describing it as such does not connect it to real, poisonous anti-Semitic myths like the infamous Protocols or the more recent myth of the Great Replacement. Such literary criticism, and that’s all it is, is done not to protect Jews, but as a cynical campaign to deflect criticism from Israel by misrepresenting its critics as anti-Semites.
I myself haver personal experience of the witch hunt against critics of Israel. A few weeks ago I was told I was under investigation following complaints of anti-Semitism about an article on my blog. What the complainants objected to was almost wholly statements I had made criticising Zionism. They objected to my statement that all states and ideologies, including Zionism and Israel, should be open to examination and criticism, even though the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism says that criticism of Israel is perfectly acceptable provided the country is not held to a higher standard than others. They also didn’t like my statement that many gentiles initially did not support Zionism because it was too closely linked to real anti-Semitism, even though this is historically documented fact. They also considered that I was being anti-Semitic simply for stating another historical fact, which is that Zionism was, up to the Second World War, a minority position among European Jews. Most of them wished to remain in their homes, fighting for equality and to be accepted as fellow Brits, Frenchmen, Germans, Poles and so on rather than move to a country to which they felt no connection. Again, documented historical fact. I am further disgusted by the deplorable way Starmer is trying to silence reasonable opposition to Israeli’s barbarous treatment of the Palestinians through mass expulsions and the proscription of organisations defending those unfairly purged, such as Labour Against the Witch Hunt and the Labour In Exile Network.
I was so outraged at the Unite lady’s speech defending the JLM training that I left the meeting. I feel that the meeting has been very one-sided in the views presented. I would therefore very much like to talk about my experiences of what I can only describe as a factionalist with hunt the demonises and expels decent people and exposing them to real anti-Semitic abuse and violence at a forthcoming meeting.
This has been bugging me for the past week. Wales’ inspirational and triumphant Labour leader, Mark Drakeford, got the Blairites and ultra-Zionists in a tizzy this weekend. He committed the grave crime of speaking at The World Transformed, a fringe, left-Labour event, where he urged the adoption of Universal Basic Income. And plan that threatens to lift the poor in our society out of their starvation and misery is solidly verboten to the Thatcherite true believers. And so came the sneers. One ignorant far-right Labour councillor called the event ‘a Trots jamboree’, despite the fact that no Trotskyite organisations were there. No matter, I doubt the good councillor has any real idea what Trotskyism is anyway. It’s just a term of abuse intended to scare people, full of emotional content – Trots and Commies are everything evil – but I doubt if any of them really know what it is beyond Trotsky himself.
Inevitably the ultra-Zionists raised their heads and made started throwing around accusations of anti-Semitism. This was done by Elured Anderson, whose a member or representative of a Holocaust commemoration organisation. She was incensed that Drakeford was there alongside people who had been thrown out for anti-Semitism, Ken Loach and Jeremy Corbyn. Except neither of these two gents are remotely anti-Semitic. The accusations were contrived because both are long-term critics of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Corbyn has a proud record of standing up for Britain’s diverse, pluralistic Jewish community, while Loach was warmly welcomed by the very Jewish members of Jewish Voice for Labour.
But I find her attitude towards Zionism and the Holocaust deeply repugnant. The various pro-Israel organisations seem to be trying to spread the message that Israel and Zionism have the exclusive ownership of the Shoah and its commemoration. It’s demonstrated by the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion, running Holocaust commemoration events. As they did when they secretly recorded Jackie Walker in order to leak it and get her thrown out. But ownership of the Holocaust doesn’t belong to Israel, Zionism or any single strand of the Jewish community. In my gentile view, and I apologise if I’m ‘Jewsplaining’, it belongs primarily to the victims and their families, and then to the Jewish community as a whole. And the Jewish community includes individuals and organisations that are critical of Israel.
The militant pro-Israel appropriation of the Holocaust is also hypocritical. In the immediate aftermath of the Holocaust after the War the Zionist organisations played it down. Instead of discussing the specific persecution of the Jews, the Zionists concentrated instead in talking about them as merely one group of a number of political prisoners imprisoned and murdered by the Nazis. This was because they were afraid that talking about the particular genocide of the Jewish people would give the impression that Jews were too weak to have their own country. It’s only since then that pro-Israel groups have embraced the Holocaust and presented themselves as the only worthy organisations capable of its proper commemoration.
And there have been Jewish critics of the way Israel has harnessed the Holocaust to militant Israeli nationalism. One Israeli critic described the way an Israeli jet flew over Auschwitz one year, presumably to show that Israel would protect Jews from any repeat of the horror. The critic stated that Israeli visitors to the murder factory weren’t told anything about the historical reasons for the Holocaust, the rise of anti-Semitism and Nazi persecution. It seemed to them to be just used for Israeli nationalist propaganda. Other Israeli critics of the persecution of the Palestinians have controversially said that it would be better for the Holocaust to be forgotten than for it to be used to justify the Israeli’s states continued attacks on their indigenous Arabs.
Now the Holocaust is being used to smear decent people as anti-Semites in order to get them purged from the Labour party. This includes Jews, who I’m sure have lost people in the Holocaust. Mike put up a meme earlier this week which ran:
Anti-Semitism is a real threat to Jews everywhere. It Is not an excuse to purge left-wingers from the Labour party.
I completely agree, and find it absolutely abhorrent that the Holocaust is being used as part of this smear campaign.
I’ve sent a string of email to the Labour party requesting the identities of my accusers, raising questions of their own bias, and criticising the complaints and investigation procedure. So far all I’ve succeeded in doing is getting some sniffy answers and demands that I hurry up and produce my defence. But natural justice demands that I know who my accusers are, what they stand for, and have the right to question them. I also have the right to raise questions about institutional bias and to complain and demand changes to the investigatory procedure. I’ve already published some of this correspondence. Here’s the rest.
From me:
“Thank you for your reply to my inquiries about the complaints against me and the identity of my accusers. I very much regret that it is not part of the complaints process to reveal this information. This casts severe doubt on the justice of the proceedings and the ability of the investigative process to establish the truth. For many people, this invalidates any possible claim the party may make that these investigations have been fair.
There is also the question of the personal or institutional bias of the accusers. Some of the organisations that have led the mass denunciations of innocent members of the Labour party have been Zionist, rather than just simply Jewish. I particularly note the role played by the Jewish Labour Movement within the Labour party. This is a rebranding of Paole Zion, a Jewish Labour organisation whose name means ‘Workers of Zion’. It is, I understand, an explicitly Zionist organisation. The involvement of such groups in these accusations raises the questions of their own motives. For example, do such groups or individuals understand and appreciate the distinction between Judaism and Zionism? Do they also understand that one may justly criticise Israel, or indeed any other state and political ideology without wishing to harm to its people or siding with terrorist groups who do? These are questions I feel should be answered. I understand that the party wishes to protect their identities, but I would like the following questions answered regarding the political and organisational affiliation of my accusers. If I am not allowed to challenge them directly, then I would like to be able to challenge them through you.
Yours sincerely,
Dave Sivier”
Labour Party:
“I am sorry to say that our investigation does not allow us to mediate between the complainant and the accused. I would greatly appreciate your response to the Notice of Investigation so we can get this resolved in a timely manner. Thanks again for your cooperation,
Governance & Legal The Labour Party”
Beast Rabban:
“Thank you, Laura, for your prompt reply. I am more than willing to cooperate in this investigation and to clear up these baseless accusations. But, as I understand it, in English law for there to be accusations there must be an accuser. It is unfortunate that the complaints process does not recognise this, as it clearly means that there is a sharp contrast between it and the practice of the courts which casts doubt on the validity of these proceedings. It is also unfortunate that the process does not allow Complaints Team to mediate between accuser and accused. I therefore find the whole procedure extremely inadequate, and would be very grateful if you would inform me to whom I may complain about these gross procedural flaws.
Yours sincerely,
Dave Sivier”
That got me this response:
“Dear Mr Sivier, Thank you for your email. Our job is to investigate complaints about the behaviour or conduct of Labour Party members to see whether they have breached any of the Rules or Codes of Conduct. This is not an adversarial process and not aligned to the Courts. We look forward to receiving your response to the questions that have been asked previously but if not received, we will progress without. Yours sincerely, Complaints TeamGovernance & Legal Unit
The Labour Party”
Now I didn’t say it was aligned to the courts. But clearly, serious charges that affect a person’s character, like accusations of anti-Semitism, can have legal implications in that some people may choose to pursue their accusers in the courts. I have also cited the English law courts as a model for correct judicial and investigatory procedure in serious matters like this. We have seen the reputations of decent people ruined through false accusations of anti-Semitism, and their private and professional lives seriously disrupted. For example, the awesome Jackie Walker, who is a Jew by faith and birth, and whose partner and daughters are also Jewish, has said that the accusation against her has caused problems between her and her partner’s family. Quite apart from the vile abuse she has received including threats of lynching, having her body cut up and thrown in bin bags and so on. It is clearly grossly unjust that the innocent should be so victimised and vilified, while their accusers remain anonymous and beyond questioning or mediation.
I also note that the party have not, so far, informed me to whom I may complain about the investigations procedure. This is important. I am not blaming or complaining about them personally, just the procedure. So I sent them this email.
“Thank you for your reply and the clarification of the nature of this investigation. You will appreciate, I am sure, the concern that, even if this is not an adversarial process and not allied to the courts, the investigation should still be fair according to the principles of natural justice, especially after so many reports of bias.
I have said that I am perfectly willing to send you my defence. This is no lie. But I would like to be informed how the accusations that have been levelled against me actually apply. You have not done so. It is not up to me to anticipate what my accusers may think or believe about what I have written. Rather it is for them, and you, to make that point clearly. I would therefore greatly appreciate if you would tell me just how these accusations apply to me and to what I have written. Until you do, I can do nothing.
I note you also haven’t answered my last query. I asked to whom I may complain about this procedural process. I am serious. I would like this information, as well as to be informed who is responsible for devising it.
I look forward to your response to these questions.
Yours sincerely,
David Sivier”
I’m pretty sure I won’t get anywhere with these questions, but I’ll let you know what answers, if any, I receive.
In the meantime, this affair clearly shows what I travesty the anti-Semitism smear campaign is and how their complaints procedure is unfit for any purpose except finding perfectly decent, innocent people guilty.
I received a reply today from the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit replying to my emails calling for them to disclose just who is accusing me of anti-Semitism and bringing the party into disrepute, as would be required in a court of law. Their short reply confirms what I knew already: that they weren’t going to tell me.
“Hello, Thank you for your response. I can confirm the complaint has not yet been considered by the NEC as we are in the process of gathering information, part of which is getting your response to the issues raised. Whilst we have shared copies of the evidence with you, it is not part of our process to share who raised the complaint.
Thank you for your cooperation and understanding, Governance & Legal UnitThe Labour Party”
This is unsatisfactory, and I have therefore sent them the following reply laying out my criticisms of their refusal.
“Thank you for your reply to my inquiries about the complaints against me and the identity of my accusers. I very much regret that it is not part of the complaints process to reveal this information. This casts severe doubt on the justice of the proceedings and the ability of the investigative process to establish the truth. For many people, this invalidates any possible claim the party may make that these investigations have been fair.
There is also the question of the personal or institutional bias of the accusers. Some of the organisations that have led the mass denunciations of innocent members of the Labour party have been Zionist, rather than just simply Jewish. I particularly note the role played by the Jewish Labour Movement within the Labour party. This is a rebranding of Paole Zion, a Jewish Labour organisation whose name means ‘Workers of Zion’. It is, I understand, an explicitly Zionist organisation. The involvement of such groups in these accusations raises the questions of their own motives. For example, do such groups or individuals understand and appreciate the distinction between Judaism and Zionism? Do they also understand that one may justly criticise Israel, or indeed any other state and political ideology without wishing to harm to its people or siding with terrorist groups who do? These are questions I feel should be answered. I understand that the party wishes to protect their identities, but I would like the following questions answered regarding the political and organisational affiliation of my accusers. If I am not allowed to challenge them directly, then I would like to be able to challenge them through you.
Yours sincerely,”
I doubt very much I shall get anywhere with this, but the criticism and complaints should be made and publicised to expose how sham and fraudulentthis whole process is.
Last month the noxious Blairite MP Neil Coyle put up a tweet calling for the expulsion of Jewish Voice for Labour, an organisation of left-wing Jews, which supported Jeremy Corbyn and his socialist policies. Unlike the Jewish Labour Movement, the right-wing ultra-Zionist outfit, formerly called Paole Zion, JVL members had to be both Jewish and members of the Labour party, although non-Jews could be associate members. JLM members don’t have to be either, and at one point it seems that 60 per cent of their members weren’t actually Jewish. But Jewish Voice for Labour have terrified the Labour leadership and the Conservative political and media establishment by supporting a return to the Labour policies that would have empowered this country’s great working people and criticising Israel and its murderous persecution of the Palestinians. As a result, the woefully misnamed Jewish Labour Movement is somehow hailed as the true voice of the party’s Jews and given the responsibility for providing anti-Semitism training to prospective party workers and politicians. Jewish Voice for Labour, on the other hand, are continually being denounced by the Blairite witch-hunters like Coyle as ‘Communists’ and anti-Semites. This is despite the fact that they are decent, self-respecting Jews, many of whom have suffered real anti-Semitic abuse and assault.
In response to Coyle’s tweet, JVL have put up a couple of pieces on their website by David Rosenberg and Rob Ferguson respectively, noting that anti-Semitism has historically taken the form of a specific fear of left-wing Jews. In his piece, Ferguson notes that even the British publisher of the infamous Tsarist forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, distinguished between good, loyal British Jews and the Jewish Communist, anarchist and socialist radicals he was convinced were working to destroy Britain. It was a view also shared by Winston Churchill. Ferguson’s piece is well-worth reading, and so I’m including it here, as edited by JVL for publication on their site.
“The Labour Party and Jews: the return of antisemitic animosity
A couple of days ago, David Rosenberg posted a comment on the call by Neil Coyle MP that Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) be added to the list of proscribed organisations (just agreed by the NEC as I write). David observed that Coyle was effectively calling for the expulsion of hundreds of Jews from the party and called out Coyle’s antisemitism.
David incurred responses on Facebook and Twitter from some on the left, insisting he was mistaken – that JVL was only being targeted because they were left wing, not because they were Jews. They are wrong. In demanding the expulsion of specifically left-wing Jews, Coyle is manifesting a form of antisemitism with a long pedigree, including within the Labour Party itself.
The half-decade long weaponisation of the charge of antisemitism against the left in particular and the promotion of the “new antisemitism” narrative in general, has dangerously degraded how antisemitism is understood. (And I do mean dangerously).
David’s critics misunderstand, or choose to ignore, a core dynamic of historic and contemporary antisemitism. Hatred of left-wing Jews has always acted as a key driver of antisemitic ideology. This is not simply one other element of antisemitic prejudice. Working-class movements constitute the primary foe of fascists, and far right reactionary movements. This bestows an instrumental significance to the hatred and demonisation of the left-wing Jew.
This prejudice does not arise in isolation. It is not, as is commonly conveyed, simply a bizarre manifestation of Nazi ideology. [Paul Hanebrink has written usefully on this]. The Nazis and others built on a commonly held prejudice against Jewish revolutionaries and socialists that encompassed wide layers of Europe’s ruling classes, including in Britain.
It is true that Nazi ideology explicitly cast “Judeo-Bolshevism” as in essence a racial characteristic; the dominant antisemitism of the western European establishment however tended to make an important distinction between “loyal”, “patriotic”, “national” Jews and socialists, anarchists and revolutionaries. David points to the example of Churchill’s vicious antisemitic tract of 1921 Zionism versus Bolshevism which precisely draws this distinction.
However, Churchill was expressing a very common view. Even the virulent antisemite, HA Gwynne, editor of the “Morning Post” and publisher of the Tsarist forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, made this distinction, writing: “A certain section of the Jews in the world are engaged in a mighty attempt to destroy the established rule in many countries and, to bring this world into communistic brotherhood”. Gwynne then continued, “But it would be downright wicked to ascribe to Jewry as a whole this mad and dangerous policy” arguing this would be “hideous antisemitism” and that fault lay not with “honest, patriotic Jews” but with “the revolutionaries of their race.”
These prejudices were reflected in some sections of the Labour movement including on the right of the Labour Party and even some elements of the trade unions, particularly during the first world war. This resurfaced on the Labour right in east London in the wake of Communist Phil Piratin’s victory in 1945 in Mile End; Stepney’s Labour leader, JC Lawder, declared that the Communists had won “in that part of the borough where people of alien origin predominate and where regard for the hoary institutions of British traditionalism is weak”.
A vile undercurrent of animosity towards left-wing, internationalist Jews is now re-emerging on the Labour right. Coyle’s call to expel Jewish members who criticise or oppose Israel is simply an explicit reflection of a deeper phenomenon. The right’s support for Jews is not unconditional. It rests on “loyalty” to the British state and imperialist interests. It is not a defence of Jews as Jews. Behind it stirs an old antisemitic animosity to left-wing Jews.
It is an animosity facilitated by the witch hunt, the conflation of Jewish identity with Zionism, and an IHRA definition that has hollowed out the meaning of antisemitism. It is in this context that Labour right-wingers like Coyle, are left free to express their vehement loathing of the Jewish left. I for one have been shocked at the virulence with which this has been expressed, not just by right wing “commentators” outside Labour, but inside the party.
In the early decades of the twentieth century liberal Jewry across Europe insisted that “Bolshevik” Jews were not real Jews. Right-wing Zionists have today picked up the baton.
Then as now, far from shielding Jews from antisemitism, this can only fuel it. It offers the far right antisemite legitimacy … and a sheild; if the Labour Party casts radical, left-wing Jews as antisemites … who are they to argue? And contempt for left-wing Jews never ends there…”
A few days ago Mike published an extract from the Morning Star reporting that, according to Jewish Voice for Labour, Starmer’s purge of alleged anti-Semites has resulted in the expulsion of hundreds of left-wing Jews from the party. Jews are being disproportionately affected, demonstrating that this is in itself an anti-Semitic attack on left-wing Jews in the party. As David Rosenberg has argued, and Rob Ferguson’s article shows particularly clearly, this is absolutely correct.
Jewish Voice for Labour and left-wing Jews in the party, people like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Martin Odoni and so many others, are decent people. They are not anti-Semites. The real anti-Semites are those on the right, using the age-old fear of Communist Jews to terrify the public with stupid, vicious conspiracy theories to justify their own anti-Jewish persecution.
First off, I’m sorry I haven’t posted anything for a few days. I’ve been busy with other things down here, but normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Yesterday, our Tory government announced that they were going to put a new memorial up commemorating the Holocaust. And Sargon of Gasbag, the man who broke UKIP, and his mate Callum over at the Lotuseaters Youtube channel have asked the obvious question: why? The proposed memorial has received widespread approval, especially from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who were highly delighted. They claimed it was needed because Holocaust denial was growing in the UK and we needed to be reminded of our part in the Shoah, the great crime against the Jews, and also against the disabled, gays and the Roma. But as the commenters on the Lotuseaters video have pointed out, they said nothing about the Slav peoples of eastern Europe, who were also massacred. This is true. Hitler hated the Slavs, and in his Tabletalk he makes it clear he was looking forward to the extermination of the Czech. After the Jews, the Poles formed the largest number of the victims of Nazi massacre and extermination, particular Polish Roman Catholic clergy. Slavs were considered subhuman under the Nuremberg race laws. Their lands were targeted for German colonisation, and those Poles, Russians and Ukrainians lucky enough to survive were to serve as an uneducated peasant class producing agricultural goods for their German masters.
The Lotuseaters are men of the right, and the extreme right at that. I find their videos difficult to watch because of the idiot sneering at the Labour party, idiot ‘woke’ lefties and similar comments that also come out of the mouth of the mad right-winger, Alex Belfield. Particularly annoying in this video was all their jokes about Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism, and how he especially wouldn’t like the memorial and agrees with Holocaust denial. It’s just right-wing libel. Corbyn, like George Galloway, has never denied the Holocaust and has a proud record of standing up for the Jews in this country, as he has done for Blacks and other ethnic minorities. His crime wasn’t anti-Semitism, but standing up for the Palestinians. The Israeli state and the ultra-Zionists, like the Board of Deputies, can’t justify it, so they smear those criticising their ethnic cleansing of Israel’s indigenous population as anti-Semites. This include proud, self-respecting Jews, who are tarnished and demonised as ‘self-hating’.
But the Lotuseaters are right to ask why we need such a memorial. They say we entered the War to stop the persecution of the Jews, when the Nazis and USSR had signed a non-aggression pact to divide Poland between. Callum even claimed that when the Soviets took over their part of Poland, they handed over its Jewish inhabitants to the Nazis to massacre. Well, I haven’t heard that before and neither did Sargon, but it doesn’t surprise me. Stalin was a vicious anti-Semite, and during the Weimar period western Communists were ordered to collaborate with Nazis despite the Nazis hatred of Marxist socialism and their persecution of the KPD under the Third Reich. It’s wrong to say we entered the War to save the Jews. We didn’t. We declared war on Nazi Germany because of our defensive alliance with France and Poland. Although there was little outright anti-Semitic persecution in Britain, low-level anti-Jewish sentiment was widespread and acceptable. There was considerable sympathy for Nazism amongst the British aristocracy, with various high-ranking individuals joining pro-Nazi organisations like the Anglo-German Fellowship. The father of Geordie Grieg, editor of the Heil, was a member of one such group. On the other hand, the Fascist parties and groups remained generally small. Britain passed laws banning the stirring up of racial hatred, and once war was declared Oswald Mosley, the head of the BUF, was sent to the Tower of London and his stormtroopers interned on the Isle of Man along with other enemy aliens. And our troops did liberate some of the concentration and death camps, along with the Russians and our other allies, and we did save the survivors from starvation, or as many as we could. There were Nazi sympathisers who served as auxiliaries in the Waffen SS, the British division of which served as the basis for neo-Nazi organisation the League of St. George. But as far as I know, there was absolutely no British state involvement with the Holocaust and I haven’t heard of any British commercial involvement with it, either. I’m therefore puzzled when the Board says it was needed to remind us of our role in it.
As for anti-Semitism in Britain, only 7 per cent of Brits have negative view about Jews. The majority have positive views of them, and a smaller number consider them no better or worse than anyone else. The Lotuseaters state that the Holocaust is taught as part of the British history curriculum. There are Holocaust deniers knocking around, but there are very few of them, at least among the vast majority of severely normal Brits, who despise them. I wondered if behind the cloaked language which didn’t name anybody in particular, the real fear was about the possible growth in anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial amongst Muslims. It’s rife in the Middle East because of the Israeli colonisation and ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the humiliation inflicted on the Arab nations during the Six Day War. I have the impression that the majority of British Muslims despise Israel for its maltreatment of the Palestinians. However, Tony Greenstein has pointed out that the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism offer no supporting statistics or information on their website for their statement that the majority of anti-Semites are Muslim.
David Cameron apparently approved the monument five years ago in 2016, but Boris has only just given it the go-ahead. My impression is that this has precious little about commemorating the Holocaust for itself, and everything to do with generating support for Israel. Peter Oborne in his documentary for Channel 4’s dispatches 11 years ago described how the Israel lobby had effectively captured Britain’s political parties, and especially the Tories, through parliamentary friendship groups, sponsored trips to Israel and donations from pro-Israel Jewish businessmen. Any British paper or broadcaster, including the Beeb, that dared to cover atrocities by the Israelis and their allies, like the Lebanese Christian Phalange, were attacked and smeared by the Board as anti-Semites. Hence the attacks on the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn, and the capture of the party of Keir Starmer, who has declared himself to be ‘100 per cent Zionist’. Hence also the foundation of front organisations claiming to represent Jews and combat anti-Semitism, but which are really concerned with persecuting and smearing critics of Israel, like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement, previously Paole Zion, Workers of Zion. These two organisations were founded to combat the rise in anti-Israel sentiment following Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. My guess is that Israel and it’s satellite organisations and mouthpieces in the UK have been rattled by British support for the Palestinians following the riots around the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian districts in east Jerusalem ready for Israeli settlement. This all looks to me very much like the Israel state exploiting the Holocaust to garner support on the one hand, and the Tories using it to signal their compliance with Israel and its genocidal attitude to the Arabs on the other.
The Holocaust was a monstrous crime against humanity and it is entirely right that British schoolchildren are taught about it. But this new memorial looks like it has nothing to do with remembering the victims of the Shoah, but is simply a PR exercise to shame Brits into supporting Israel and its ethnic cleansingof the Palestinians.
The terrible events in Israel last week when Palestinians and Israelis rioted and fought following the state’s attempts to ethnically cleanse Arabs from their homes in east Jerusalem ready for Jewish settlers clearly has had the anti-Semitism witch-hunters in the Labour party rattled. Because far-right Zionist nationalists and their supporters in the British political and lamestream media establishment have decided that even the mildest criticism of Israel and its barbaric policies towards the indigenous Arabs is anti-Semitic. Those who make them are to be ruthlessly smeared as Jew-haters and Nazis. The Labour party’s grotesque party bureaucracy has fully signed up to this attitude with the Jewish Labour Movement as one of the main organisations within the party demanding the automatic trial and purging of Israel’s critics. Even when those critics are entirely decent men and women, like Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Mike, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth and so many, many others, who utterly despise and attack all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism.
As a Labour party member, I got this merry little email in my inbox yesterday from David Evans inviting me to a session of online anti-Semitism training the Monday after next.
When I first became General Secretary of the Labour Party, I made my priorities clear.
I want to ensure that our Party is a welcoming environment for all our members.
In order to tackle antisemitism, it is vital to understand it.
That’s why I’m inviting you to an awareness raising training session for Labour Party members on understanding antisemitism, covering what antisemitic incidents look like in the UK and the world today, identifying different elements of antisemitism and how members of the Labour Party can create a welcoming environment for Jewish members.
The training will take place online, Monday 14 June from 6:00 – 7:00pm.
Help tackle the issue – sign up for the session today.
…..
The session will be introduced by Mike Katz, National Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, and delivered by Rebecca Filer, National Organiser for the JLM, which has been the Labour Party’s Jewish affiliate for over 100 years.
The Labour Party is built on the values of solidarity, equality and respect. Our movement thrives when it is together. That’s why I am very grateful for all the invaluable work that has gone into this training session, and would like to stress its importance. I have undertaken the training myself and found it thought provoking and useful.
Once more, I would like to urge all members who are able to attend the session to do so.
Best,
David Evans General Secretary
The short answer to this invitation is ‘definitely not’. I know a fair amount about anti-Semitism. I know some great Jewish peeps and studied the rise of Fascism and Nazism as part of my history degree at College. And I’m very aware that what Evans, Katz and Filer want to tell me is anti-Semitism isn’t.
The Jewish Labour Movement is utterly incapable of giving an objective, non-ideological and impartial discussion of anti-Semitism. It used to be Paole Zion, ‘Workers of Zion’, a pro-Zionist Jewish socialist organisation and until very recently it was absolutely moribund. Then it was taken over by somebody, given a massive cash injection and renamed the Jewish Labour Movement. This was after the bombing of Gaza nine years ago, which also prompted the foundation of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism because its ultra-Zionist founders were shocked to find that the British public did not view with pleasure the spectacle of the Israeli military machine killing Arab civilians. Even its name is a lie. It’s affiliated to the Labour party, but you don’t have to be a member of the Labour party or even Jewish to be a member. And in fact, the organisation has been embarrassed several times when one of its gobby mouthpieces has been revealed as such.
This is profoundly different from Jewish Voice for Labour, whose members must be Jewish and members of the Labour party, although gentiles may have associate membership. But then JVL are left-wingers, who supported Corbyn and criticised Israel, so they’re the wrong kind of Jews.
The ideological weapon the witch-hunters have used against Israel’s critics is the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, which has been criticised by legal experts as dangerous imprecise. It conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, and so, in the view of one of its inventors, Kenneth Stern, has been used to chill criticism of Israel.
In fact, a far better definition of anti-Semitism is the simple one devised by Wilhelm Marr, the founder of the German League of Anti-Semites in the 19th century and the man who first coined the term. Anti-Semitism is simply hatred of Jews, as Jews. Now this can take terrible forms, the most notorious being the murderous and absurd conspiracy theories about the Jews controlling capitalism, Communism and the trade unions and encouraging race mixing and non-White immigration to destroy the White race, or that the Jewish people are engaged in a similar conspiracy to destroy Islam.
The anti-Semitism witch-hunters, however, have abused real history and politics through the use of a form of grotesque literary criticism. Israel very definitely has been engaged in plots against other governments, such as when a member of staff at the Israeli embassy was caught by al-Jazeera plotting with a senior British civil servant over who should be a member of Tweezer’s cabinet. But because this was a plot, even though it was real, and allegations of plotting and conspiracies have long been a staple of anti-Semitic attitudes, criticism of such actions are silenced by the accusation that anyone talking about them must somehow be anti-Semitic, even when the plots are perfectly real. If you criticise Israel for doing so, or use the wrong language when describing the country’s actions and policies, you will be attacked and vilified for using ‘anti-Semitic tropes’. Even when you are factually correct, and not remotely anti-Semitic.
Especially if you are factually correct, and not anti-Semitic.
This is the view that Evans, the Jewish Labour Movement and other wretched organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Board of Deputies of British Jews wish to foist on the Labour party and its members. It’s a disgusting distortion what real anti-Semitism is, and has been used to vilify, persecute and purge genuine opponents of anti-Semitism. These have included Jews, and their friends and supporters, who have genuinely suffered anti-Semitic abuse and assault. The Labour party has definitely not been a welcoming place for critics of Israel.
I shall very definitely not be attending if such training is to be given by such odious, deceitful and mendacious organisations.
This comes from a piece on The Electronic Intifada from 20th November 2020, by their main man, Asa Winstanley. Winstanley’s another decent, committed anti-racist, who was purged due to accusations of anti-Semitism. The reality is that he’s no such thing. But he is a pro-Palestinian activist, as you can tell from the title of the online magazine he contributes to. The article reports the finding by another pro-Palestinian activist, Becky Massey, that she and ten other members of the Labour party were expelled on the demands of the Board of Deputies of British Jews in a hit list the Board submitted to Starmer on 11th May 2020. Massey discovered she was on the Board’s list of people they wanted expelled and on a Labour party email chain discussing her after making a subject access request for the information the party hold on her. Massey was sent the letter of expulsion on the evening of the day of the email chain. Coincidentally, Starmer had also paid a visit that day to the Jewish Labour Movement. A Labour party spokesperson at the time categorically denied that the meeting had in any way been connected to Massey’s or anybody’s expulsion. That can be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Jewish Labour Movement, previously Paole Zion, has been demanding the expulsion and suspension of left-wing members and pro-Palestinian activists for years. And there is hints that the two are connected. The Board later wrote that they had sent the Labour Party a list of eleven people they wanted expelled, and were heartened that Starmer had met the JLM.
Labour party apparatchiks in the email chain discussed suspending Massey with a view to her ‘autoexclusion’. Like all authoritarian movements, the party deliberately uses language to imply that they’re not at fault, but the victim. The term ‘autoexclusion’ means to state that somehow, those expelled did it all themselves. Andre Breton, the ‘pope of Surrealism’, used to say the same thing whenever anyone queried him for expelling people from his movement. The letter sent to Massey herself simply said that she had been suspended subject to the approval of the NEC’s next meeting. Another line in the email chain, which somehow escaped redaction, indicates that Starmer was actively involved in the expulsion, or at least knew full well about it. It reads “Subject: RE: For LOTO: Rebecca Massey.” LOTO’s an acronym for ‘Leader Of The Opposition’. In other words, Starmer appeared to have interfered politically in the case, which is one of the accusations levelled at Jeremy Corbyn.
The Board’s Hit List
Strangely, neither the Board nor the Labour party offered any comment when they were contacted about this The Electronic Intifada. The article states that although the Board claims to represent the Jewish community, much of its activity is protecting Israel’s crimes and that in 2013 its president wrote ‘We lobby unashamedly for Israel’.
The article descibes Massey as ‘a leading activist in one of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s most visible branches, in Brighton on the south coast.’
I don’t know her, but Tony Greenstein appears to be a member of the same branch. He’s also been expelled and smeared as an anti-Semite, despite being Jewish. From what I’ve read of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on Tony’s and other websites – many of which are also by Jewish supporters of the PSC – the organisation most definitely does not accept real anti-Semites. They’ve also been highly successful in boycotting local shops selling goods made in the occupied West Bank or which are owned by businesses based there. They’ve also embarrassed the local, Sussex Friends of Israel outfit, or however they describe themselves. There are videos up on the net showing the pro-Israel activists threatening and abusing the pro-Palestine demonstrators, despite claiming in their literature that they stand for peaceful and respectful debate. The Sussex pro-Israel bunch also seem to have some very bizarre members. One is a balding, clean-shaven bloke, who claimed on his website to be an Orthodox Jew, despite his appearance to the contrary. Massey is almost certainly no kind of anti-Semite, but another victim of the Blairite’s and the Israel lobby’s campaign to purge the party of left-wingers and pro-Palestinian activists.
This also seems to show that Starmer himself is deeply implicated in these expulsions. Which should come as no surprise considering the revelation by The Canary that two organisations devoted to attacking left-wing sites and blogs as ‘fake news’, the Center for Countering Digital Hate and Stop Funding Fake News, were set up and run by Blairites with links to him.
As for the Board of Deputies, they are an unrepresentative organisation that smears and persecutes left-wing, pro-Palestinian Jews and gentiles. They are not a part of the Labour party, but through the smears and lies of the political and media establishment, have been allowed dictatorial control over it.
This needs to end now. It should be Starmer who is on trial for his crimes against Labour, not these decent people. And the control of the Board should be resisted and them shown up for their malign interference, smears and libels.
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.
Mike also reported yesterday that Angela Rayner made a speech to the faux Jewish group, the Jewish Labour Movement, that she would suspend ‘thousands and thousands’ to get rid of anti-Semitism in the Labour party. This looks like a threat to purge all the awkward Labour party members, who insisted on discussing and passing motions against the suspension and denial of the party whip to Jeremy Corbyn. A string of local Labour parties and affiliated organisations and trade unions have passed motions of solidarity with the former Labour leader and condemning the leadership’s attempts to prevent discussion of this issue, and their other attacks on party democracy. These local parties include Pudsey, Harrow East, the Westminster branch of Momentum, New Cross, Dulwich and West Norwood, Milton Keynes North, Milton Keynes South, Hall Green Birmingham, Bristol East, Bristol South and Leeds North East. Momentum held an online rally in support of Corbyn on Saturday, and Hackney South and Sheffield Hallam have passed motions of ‘no confidence’ in David Evans. Hackney South have also passed a similar motion on Keir Starmer. As the peeps on Twitter have observed, this is a revolt of the Labour rank and file against the leadership.
Hence Rayner’s threat to purge the party. This comes after she declared a little while ago that she wouldn’t be in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet if she believed he was an anti-Semite. She has also written an article stating that the EHRC’s findings on anti-Semitism in the Labour party are not up for discussion and that the Labour party was going to implement them. As Mike points out, this is precisely what Starmer and Ange aren’t doing. The EHRC report condemns the political interference in the conduct of cases. But this is what Ange and Starmer are doing. The gruesome twosome are also very conveniently neglecting to mention that in 60 per cent of cases, the EHRC found that the conduct of cases was biased against the accused. Mike’s trial following smears in the press of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial was a kangaroo court, and so have been the cases of very, very many others. Marc Wadsworth’s was notoriously biased. He’s Black, and a long-standing campaigner against real racism and Fascism, including genuine anti-Semitic attacks. But he too was accused on anti-Semitism with a squad of White Blairite women MPs demanding his expulsion. Some commenters compared it to a Klan lynching. They have a point.
And so Rayner has been threatening a mass purge of all those awkward people, who dare to defy the leadership’s lies and its rightward movement back to Blairism.
And it’s significant that she made this threat at a meeting with the Jewish Labour Movement. I’ve called it a faux Jewish group, and it is. It’s the old Zionist Labour party organisation, Paole Zion, rebranded. This was moribund, effectively dead, until a few years ago when it was revived, given a change of monicker and had masses of money pumped into it from someone, somewhere. It claims to represent the party’s Jews, but in fact you don’t have to be Jewish or even a member of the Labour party to be a member. It was also until Corbyn’s ouster numerically small. It had just over a hundred members, and its active core was probably much, much less. The pro-Corbyn Jewish organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour, was much larger and much more Jewish. Only Jews could be full members, though gentiles could become associate members. But they were sidelined and ignored by the establishment and the media because they’re left-wing Jews, who opposed the Israeli state’s abuse of the Palestinians. The Jewish Labour Movement is much smaller and far less representative, but as they are a right-wing, fanatically Zionist organisation, they are presented as the true representatives of Labour’s Jewish members.
Starmer and Rayner thought there would be little opposition to their expulsion of Corbyn and his supporters and their attempts to reassert Blairite dominance. And now that the party has shown that it will defy them on this, they’re reduced to making threats of purges on a truly Stalinist level.
Which shows their factionalism, authoritarianism and contempt for Labour democracy and the party’s ordinary members.
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