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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maoist Rebel News Censored by Google for Criticising Israel

Mike and the other peeps in the Labour party, who’ve been grotesquely smeared as anti-Semites because of their opposition to Israel’s brutal, racist maltreatment of the Palestinians, or because they’ve simply defended those who do, aren’t the only victims of the Israel lobby. They’ve also taken down a video that was posted by Maoist Rebel News several years ago.

In this clip from the channel, host Jason Unruhe reports that a video he put up criticising a law being passed in California, that would outlaw criticism of Israel, has been taken down by Google. The reason they give for their decision is that it was ‘offensive’. Unruhe finds the decision peculiar, as the video is years old, and remarks that it’s probably just someone, who’s gone on a massive flagging binge. He remarks that he’s aware of all the conspiracy theories surrounding YouTube – that it’s real name is ‘JewTube’ and that it’s run by the Jews. He finds it quite ironic that the company’s decision, which is aimed at tackling anti-Semitism, instead does the exact opposite, and appears instead to confirm all the anti-Semitic rumours about the company.

This is just another part of the Israel lobby’s campaign to close down any criticism of Israel. As well as smearing decent, non- and anti-racist women and men for criticising Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, including very many Jews and Jewish organisations, a number of American states are trying to criminalise criticism of Israel and the pro-Palestinian movement. There have been a number of moves to ban the BDS movement, which urges consumers and investors to boycott and divest from firms operating in the Occupied Territories, as ‘anti-Semitic’.

There’s nothing unusual in the tactic of smearing their opponents as anti-Semites. They’ve been doing it for a long time. Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish critic of Israel, states that the Israel lobby is a gigantic mechanism for creating anti-Semites – meaning that their standard, default tactic is to accuse anyone criticising Israel of anti-Semitism. Even when it is manifestly untrue. They also grotesquely exaggerate the true extent of anti-Semitism in western society, in order to present themselves falsely as the true defenders of the Jews against anti-Semitism, while spreading fear and distrust of gentiles amongst them. The goal is that by spreading such fear, more Jews will be encouraged to move from the Diaspora to Israel. Thus the other year, the grotesquely misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism claimed that anti-Semitism in Britain was at the same level as Germany in the 1930s, round about the time the Nazis seized power.

There is unfortunately still anti-Semitism in Britain. Several of the Jewish members of the Labour party, who’ve also been smeared as ‘anti-Semites’ for their opposition to Israel’s continued violation of the Palestinians’ rights and dignity, have suffered it, including physical assault. And as their influence has declined, the various sects in the British Far Right have returned to their anti-Semitic roots. The Nazi terror group, National Action, in their private speeches and public demonstrations, have ranted about Jews and the supposed Jewish conspiracy to destroy the White race through racial intermixing, in language that’s almost the same as Hitler’s and the original Nazis. Nevertheless, as Tony Greenstein has pointed out on his site using the appropriate stats, Britain actually has a very low level of anti-Semitism. Only about 5%-7% of Brits consider themselves to be anti-Semites according to polls. The vast majority – over 70% – either have positive views about Jews, or don’t have any strong feelings one way or another. Britain in 2017 very definitely ain’t like Germany in the 1930s.

The fact that the Israel lobby is reduced to such censorship and trying to use legal means to stifle free speech paradoxically shows how weak it actually is. Admittedly, the Israel lobby in America – AIPAC, and the Christian Evangelical Zionist organisations – are very well funded and influential. But as Netanyahu and the other partners with Likud in his right-wing coalition become more extreme and brutal, so more people, Jews and non-Jews, are turning away from Israel. An increasing number of young American Jews are critical, and actively oppose Israel, even those, who have personally suffered from anti-Semitism.

If the Israel lobby genuinely enjoyed popular support, then it wouldn’t need to use the law to clamp down on its detractors. There’d be no need. But the Israel lobby doesn’t enjoy popular support. As Norman Finkelstein has also pointed out, most American Jews had little interest in Israel. They, like other Diaspora Jews, wanted to make their lives in the country they were born in and which they regarded as home. American support for Israel really only dates from the 1970s, when the American patriotic Right turned to Israel after its victories against the Arabs in the Six Day War as psychological compensation for America’s defeat in Vietnam.

The Israel lobby is losing the battle for people’s hearts and minds. More information is coming out daily through the internet and other media about Israel’s true nature as a colonialist, European-American White colonialist settler state, and its massacre, dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arab population. And so Netanyahu’s friends and puppets around the world have to resort to lies, smears and censorship to maintain their power and influence. In doing so, they malign and try to destroy the lives of decent people. But it ultimately they, who are gradually losing the battle. And they know it. Hence the strong whiff of desperation about these measures.

Netanyahu Rejects Liberal American Jews for Christian Zionists

Yesterday, 7th December 2017, Jonathan Cook published a very revealing piece about Netanyahu’s attitude to towards liberal American Jews in Counterpunch. The Israeli butcher is basically turning his back on them. Cook begins his piece by noting that most American Jews are politically liberal domestically. But they support Israel, and have been prepared to overlook or support the atrocities it has committed as they believed they had the right to a strong state themselves following the Holocaust. But he goes on to argue that Netanyahu’s increasing intolerance towards liberal Judaism makes this position increasingly difficult, and that they will have to confront their hypocrisy.

Much of this centres around the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, the remains of Solomon’s Temple. At the moment it’s controlled by Orthodox rabbis, who do not want Reform Jews and women praying there. There was an attempt to set up a special space for them, but the Orthodox was resolutely against it and Netanyahu caved in. As a result there has been outrage amongst Jewish Americans. Avraham Infield, a liaison to the American Jewish community, told Haaretz that many Jewish Americans now believe that Israel doesn’t give a dam’ about them.

Matters have been made worse by Tzipi Hotovely, the deputy foreign minister. She criticised American Jews for not fighting in either the US or Israeli militaries. They were leading ‘convenient lives’. Cook notes that this echoes the views of Orthodox rabbis, who argue that Reform Jews aren’t real Jews, and may even be enemies of Judaism.

This has been accompanied by an increased intolerance of Israeli critics of the regime. Netanyahu’s government has for a long time denounced the Palestinian human rights group B’Tsalem and the veterans’ organisation Breaking the Silence as traitors. But now they have targeted the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which is the Israeli equivalent of the American Civil Liberties Union. According to Netanyahu, the group supports ‘terrorists’. Recent decisions by the government allow pupils to give racist answers in exams, and expand gender segregation at the universities. The government is also trying criminalise boycotting the Israeli state. There are two bills to make advocating this illegal, punishable with seven years in jail or $150,000 fine. The Defence Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, wants stronger power to clamp down on protesters and critics, including the ability to detain without charge.

And Cook notes that for the first time, Jews are being asked at their airports what their political views are.

He also cites an article in the far-right Israeli newspaper, Makor Rishon, owned by the American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. This apparently gave Netanyahu’s reasons for turning his back on liberal American Jews. Netanyahu is convinced that the low birth rate and high rate of intermarriage amongst American Reform Jews mean that they will die out within a couple of generations. So he’s abandoned them in favour of cultivating closer ties to Orthodox Jews and Christian evangelicals.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/12/07/netanyahu-ditches-us-jews-for-alliance-with-christian-evangelicals-and-the-alt-right/

I am not surprised at Netanyahu’s attitude towards Reform Jews. Orthodox Judaism very much is the religion of the Israeli state. And the pronouncements of leading Jews in this country have shown their intolerance towards Reform Jews. A few years ago, the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, caused outrage when he declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. There is indeed a very high rate of intermarriage amongst male secular and Reform Jews in the Diaspora. I think it’s about 80 per cent, though against that the rate of intermarriage for women is much lower. As a result, many Jews are worried that they’re people are disappearing. As for Christian Zionists, as Richard Coughlan pointed out in his video on this issue, they’re the largest Zionist group in America.

It is thus all too credible that Netanyahu is turning his back liberal, American Jews.

I don’t know whether it will force them to reconsider their support for Israel. It may well do so, as an increasing number of young Jewish Americans are coming to despise the country and the way it treats the Palestinians, even when they have been on the heritage tours organised by the Israeli authorities. This includes Jews, who have been victims of anti-Semitism. Other critics of Israel, like Norman Finkelstein, have pointed out that Israel was traditionally very peripheral to mainstream Judaism, and that by far the majority of American Jews wanted to live as equal citizens in America. They definitely did not want to go to Israel, and did not see Israel as having any potential to revive interest in their religion or community.

This all changed in the late 1960s, when Israel defeated the Arabs in the Six Day War. The American Right also seized on these victories as psychological compensation for American defeats in Vietnam. And the Neocon movement was launched by American Jewish Zionists as part of a campaign to drum up support for Israel. American support for Israel is therefore a relatively recent phenomenon.

Whatever happens, I think we can expect more screaming and shouts of anti-Semitism at Israel’s critics, including Jews, as Netanyahu’s government becomes increasingly intolerant. And this may, in turn, cause more people to turn away from supporting Israel, as they find themselves tarred as anti-Semites and supporters of terrorism simply for not being quite so enthusiastic in their support as Netanyahu demands.

Priti Patel and the Shady World of Right-Wing Lobbyists and Thinktanks

Hat tip to Michelle, one of the great commenters on this blog, for letting me know about this article.

Priti Patel has finally done the decent thing, and resigned following the revelation of her highly secretive visit to Israel, where she met met leading politicians, while telling everyone she was just on a holiday. Part of the reason behind Patel’s little trip seems to have been to get the British government to divert some of the money it gives for international aid to Israel, so it can spend it on the IDF’s continuing occupation of the Golan Heights. This is territory which Israel nicked from the Syrians during the Six Day War.

Israel is already massively supported by Britain, the US and the EU, where it is treated almost as a member, despite not having formal membership. The IDF is one of the main instruments of the country’s brutal repression and ethnic cleansing of its indigenous Arab people, the Palestinians. During its independence campaign in 1948, the Israeli armed forces were responsible for a series of massacres, rapes and beatings against the Palestinians. The most notorious of these was Deir Yassin. But that was only one massacre out of many. Very many. Israeli soldiers killed people sheltering in a mosque, shot and threw handgrenades at women and children, and in one horrendous incident killed a group of Palestinians, who were coming towards them to offer them rice in the hope of getting some mercy. The IDF today enforces the brutal apartheid regime against the Palestinians, including the fouling of cisterns and wells to make the water undrinkable, and the demolition of houses and seizure of property by Israeli colonists.

I have no desire whatsoever to see my government give aid money to the IDF. And I very much doubt I’m alone.

This isn’t about anti-Semitism. I am very much aware that there is and always has been a very strong Jewish opposition to the ethnic cleansing and terror, which not only includes American and European Jews, but also Israelis such Ilan Pappe and human rights organisations such as BT’salem. Anyone, who dares to criticise Israel, is smeared and abused as an anti-Semite. But many anti-Zionist Jews, or simply Jews critical of the occupation of the West Bank and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, feel that they are particularly singled out for abuse and vilification. Tony Greenstein, a veteran anti-Zionist and anti-Fascist campaigner, has quoted in his blog the left-wing comedian, Alexei Sayle. Sayle, the son of Jewish Communists, has said that it seems to him that the majority of people smeared as anti-Semites in the Labour Party were Jews.

Returning to Patel, an article by Adam Ramsay on the Open Democracy site, reveals that she has very extensive links to some very shady right-wing lobbying groups and thinktanks.

Before she was elected MP in 2010, Patel worked for the PR form Weber Shandwick, whose clients included British American Tobacco. Not only does the company produce a highly addictive and lethal drug, it also has links to the dictatorship in Myanmar and child labour. The article notes that some of the PR company’s employees were uncomfortable dealing with BAT. Not so Patel. She was perfectly relaxed.

BAT in their turn fund the right-wing think tanks the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute for Economic Affairs. In 2002, while Patel was working there, Weber Shandwick merged with the Israeli lobbyists Rimon Cohen, whose clients include the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, the illegal Migron settlement on the West Bank, and Benjamin Netanyahu. Whom Patel coincidentally met on her jaunt.

Weber Shandwick’s clients also included Bahrein, and just months after her election, the Bahreini’s flew her there to meet some of their ministers. This is a Gulf kingdom widely criticised for human rights abuses. In 2012 she went on another trip, this time to the United Arab Emirates, as part of the All Party Group, which went there. She made two return trips in 2013 and 2014. The first time she went with the World Consulting and Research Corporation, based in New Delhi. This outfit describe themselves as a brand equity and management organisation. The second trip was courtesy of Sun Mark Ltd., who are regular donors to her office. Weber Shandwick also added the Dubai firm Promoseven to its list of clients about the same time it merged with Rimon Cohen.

In 2014 she also attended a meeting in Washington, courtesy of the right-wing, and highly secretive British think tank, the Henry Jackson Society. The meeting was organised by AIPAC, the very powerful Israeli lobbying organisation in the US, about security in the Middle East. As for the Henry Jackson Society, they are so secretive about the source of their funds that they withdrew it from two parliamentary groups, rather than reveal where it comes from. Earlier this year the Charity Commission announced they were investigating it following allegations that it was being paid by the Japanese government to spread anti-Chinese propaganda.

Patel’s holiday to Israel also seems to have been sponsored by Stuart Polak, the former head and honorary president of the Conservative Friends of Israel. In 2009 Peter Oborne wrote a piece about the extensive influence the CFI has in the Tory party. Ramsay also notes that trips to Israel funded by the CFI and similar groups are the most consistent entry in the MPs’ and MSPs’ register of foreign interests.

The article concludes

Much has been written about the weakness of the current Conservative government, as exhibited by this scandal, Boris Johnson’s blunders, and last week’s resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon amid allegations of inappropriate sexual behaviour. But here is the problem. When governments are falling apart, special interest groups run riot. Flagrant abuses usually happen at times when minor abuses are normalised. What other powerful lobby groups are pushing ministers around? How did it get to the point that Patel thought she’d get away with this?

https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/brexitinc/adam-ramsay/we-cant-ignore-patels-background-in-britains-lobbying-industry

It’s a good question, though you’d have to work extremely hard to find out. The Labour MP Colin Challen wrote a piece years ago in Lobster reporting that half of Tory funding remains mysterious. As for the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, they’re extreme right-wing think tanks that provided much of the ideology of the New Right during Thatcher’s grotty rise to power and period in office. They want to privatise everything, including the NHS and schools, as well as social security. I know. I’ve got the IEA’s pamphlets about the last two. The IEA also produced another pamphlet addressing a question vital to today’s women: Liberating Women – From Feminism. Which has been the line the Daily Mail’s taken almost since it was founded.

Mike yesterday put up a piece commenting on the strange verbiage of Patel’s resignation letter, and the reply from Theresa May. Both contained passages stressing that Patel was usually open and transparent about her business. Mike commented that neither of these letters actually looked like they’d been written by the two.

Mike comments that neither May nor Patel have acted transparently and openly, and we still don’t know what Downing Street’s role in this whole affair may have been. The Jewish Chronicle suggests it’s rather more than May and Patel are telling.

He concludes

This matter has demonstrated that Theresa May’s government has no interest in transparency and openness. Quite the opposite, in fact.

The minority Prime Minister will be hoping that it will go away, following the resignation of the offending minister.

It won’t.

We need to know exactly what happened, when it was arranged, with whom, who knew about it, who was there at the time, what was said about it afterwards and to whom, and whether all the information has been made public. My guess that it hasn’t.

Recent events involving Boris Johnson have shown that ministers cannot expect to be able to lie to us and expect us to accept it. We need the facts.

And if Theresa May can’t provide the answers, it won’t be one of her ministers who’ll need to resign.

http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/11/08/priti-patel-resigns-resigns-doesnt-theresa-may-have-the-guts-to-sack-anyone/

And Patel’s trip to Israel is just one secretive lobbying trip, paid by some very shady people, of many.

It’s time this government was forced out, and some real transparency put in place.

Radio 4 On One Israelis Protest Against the Occupation of the West Bank

Next Sunday, 15th October 2017, at 1.30 pm, Radio 4 is also broadcasting a programme, My Father’s Israel, about Shimon Tzabar. Tzabar was one of the few Israelis, who passionately objected to his countries annexation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank. The blurb for the programme on page 129 of the Radio Times states

Israel seized the so-called occupied territories in 1967 after the Six-Day War. There was strong support within the country for the wave of settlements that followed, but there were also dissenting voices. Among them was Shimon Tzabar, who went into exile in London. His son Rami visit Tel Aviv to consider a turning point in Israel’s history, and the price his own family paid for the stand taken by his father.

There’s another little snippet about the programme by Tom Goulding on page 128, which runs

It’s 50 years since Israel defeated the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria in the Six-Day War, a brief conflict with lasting consequences. Today, debate rumbles on over Israel’s identity and its place in the Arab world. Rami Tzabar, whose father was ostracised for protesting Israel’s seizure of the occupied territories in the weeks after the 1967 war, know these arguments well. In this thoughtful programme, he goes to Tel Aviv to meet the people divided in those fateful days, and asks what impact Israel’s story has had on his own family narrative.

The Real News on the Israel Lobby’s Attempt to Discredit Dr Cornel West

Earlier this morning I put up a piece commenting on a post Mike published yesterday about a piece in the Mail. This was another smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters in Momentum. They were, once again, accused of being anti-Semitic and compared to the SA, the radical paramilitary wing of the Nazis, who were massacred by the SS in the infamous ‘Night of the Long Knives’. As I’ve said before, this is a gross libel. Those accused of anti-Semitism included principled anti-racist, anti-Fascist campaigners, many of whom, like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, another Labour activist, are Jewish. They have been smeared as anti-Semites because they have dared to stand up to the Israel lobby over the persecution of the Palestinians.

It’s not just in this country that the Israel lobby is desperately trying to discredit its opponents with such smears. The major Zionist political group in America is AIPAC, the American-Israel Political Action Committee. This works to promote Israeli interests amongst American politicians, including through political donations. And they’ve been smearing those on the American Left as anti-Semites also when they’ve dared to criticise Israel and the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. One of Bernie Sanders’ staff, the woman in charge of the Jewish Outreach part of his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, was sacked after she was also smeared as an anti-Semite. This was despite the fact that she was not only Jewish, but also very active in her community.

One of the others Left-wing politicians on the other side of the Pond, who also was the victim of an attempt to discredit him, was Dr. Cornel West. Dr. West is a Black Christian theologian and politician. He was one of the major figures in Bernie Sanders’ election team. He’s everything the Republicans despise – anti-Racist, pro-welfare, pro-working class, anti-poverty, pro-feminist, pro-environment. I would also imagine that it drives them mad to hear this coming from a Christian theologian, when they want to have the absolute monopoly on Christian opinion in the United States. Dr. West angered AIPAC because he made a speech stating that the safety of ‘our dear Jewish brothers and sisters in Israel’ could not be secured with the occupation of Palestine, and that events in Gaza, the West Bank and other Palestinian areas had shown that for too long the humanity of ‘our dear Palestinian brothers and sisters’ had been denied. Dr. West describes everyone as ‘brother’ or ‘sister’, following the pattern of the rhetoric in some Christian churches, though I don’t think it’s just rhetoric either, but a sincere expression of his desire to live in love and peace with the rest of humanity. He was also very clear in condemning anti-Semitism. He declared that it had gone hand in hand with every Christian civilisation, and many Islamic. And it was to be condemned.

So, a critic of Israel, but not an anti-Semite, nor even hostile to Israel. He stated clearly that Israel’s occupation of Palestine was acting against the safety of the Jewish people there. But it was too much for AIPAC. in this piece from The Real News, the anchor talks to Glen Ford, a Black newsman, about a letter condemning West’s comments from 50 Black Democratic politicians. Ford comments that this is common tactic of the opponents of Left-wing Black politicians – to set one Black man to discredit another. The letter was written by Bakari Sellers, a Black activist who is also a member and activist for AIPAC. The letter is mostly quotations from Hillary Clinton praising Israel, with approving comments from AIPAC through Sellers. Ford and the anchor agree that the real issue, as the letter seems to acknowledge, is West’s advocacy of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction campaign, which Sellers/ AIPAC denounce as a new form of anti-Semitism, and accuse it of going behind the back of official attempts to find a peaceful solution through negotiations. They state that peace can only come through these official overtures, and not private protests.

Ford and the anchor also discuss how the majority of Black politicians are supporters of AIPAC, but also afraid of them too. As are White politicians, and those of other ethnicities. Ford says that AIPAC isn’t afraid of, and actually boasts about, destroying politicians. He even compares them to ISIS. The willingness of Black Democratic politicians to support the Zionist lobby contrasts very much with the attitude of younger, more radical Blacks, such as the activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. This young people draw parallels between the American police’s brutal treatment of Blacks, and the brutal treatment of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians. This linking of the struggle for Black civil rights in America and the struggle of the Palestinians for dignity and independence was made as far back as 1967. This was when the student activists at the Student Non-Intervention Co-ordinating Committee – SNICC – expressed their solidarity with the Palestinians at the time of the Six Day War. However, since then AIPAC has been actively recruiting Black supporters on College campuses. One of these was Bakari Sellers, although his father was one of the pro-Palestinian members of SNICC.

Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Rvn87ozUBw

This is what’s really going on: the Zionist lobby, both here and in America, are bullies, attempting to destroy any politician or activist, Black or White, Jewish or Gentile, who dares to criticise their atrocious treatment of the Palestinians. They’re doing it to the Labour Left; they did it to Bernie Sanders, and his staff, including Dr. West. It makes no difference if you are sincere anti-racist, who has actively campaigned against anti-Semitism, and faced racial hatred yourself, as many of those, who’ve been smeared by the Zionists have. Many of the Jews and people of Jewish heritage, who’ve been libelled as such have been the victims of anti-Semitic abuse themselves. one of these was the Scots lady, who found her election to the NEC scuppered by Jim Murphy, because she was connected to Momentum, who were ‘anti-Semitic’.

These allegations of anti-Semitism are to direct attention away from, and render out of bounds, all criticism of Israel and its butchery and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people of Palestine. The Palestinians the Israelis have expelled also include thousands of the country’s indigenous Jewish population. It’s a European-American colonialist settler state. And one reason the denunciations of anti-Semitism are now being made so frequently and so shrilly is that an increasing number of people, including Jewish Americans, are becoming aware of this and demanding change.

The Young Turks: Ted Nugent Posts Anti-Semitic Rant Blaming Jews for Gun Control

The drift of the Republican Right to full-fledged Nazism continues. In this video, The Young Turks anchors Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola comment on another piece of racism by Ted Nugent, ageing rocker, pervert, draft dodger, and pillar of the N.R.A. Nugent has been severely criticised and there have been demands that he should issue an apology after he posted a piece on Facebook asking the rhetorical question who the people demanding gun control were. He called these people the enemies of freedom. And guess what? The people he chose were all Jews. He even stuck little Israeli flags next to their faces, and accused some of being Israeli agents. Uygur points out that he’s wrong about many of those, whom he identifies as Israelis. Most of the men and women he’s fingered as Mossad agents or whatever aren’t. They’re simply American citizens. And quite often they’re distinguished American citizens, whose patriotism should be unquestioned. One of them is a general and the president’s chief of staff. Another is the governor of New York state. These are foul libels.

He’s also maligned the victims of the Holocaust. There’s another post in which Nugent states that he pondered why so many Germans were taken in by Adolf, and so many Jews went quietly to their deaths. This is under the headline, ‘Soulless Sheep to the Slaughter’.

Uygur and Iadarola point out that this pretty much a natural progression. The Right has always hated the Jews. They started off attacking Mexicans and Blacks. Now they’ve moved on to Muslims when they’ve become massively unpopular. And now, inevitably, Nugent has started on the Jews after following those bandwagons.

And this is particularly rich from Nugent. Nugent was so terrified of serving in the Vietnam War that he emptied his bowels in his pants for a week or so, in order to have himself declared mentally unfit. The Turks state they don’t blame him for not wanting to fight in Vietnam. They wouldn’t have wanted to either. But he’s been trying to make up for it ever since by trying to present himself as a supermasculine advocate for hunting and gun rights.

They also point out that it’s simply not true that Jews in Nazi Germany went quietly to their deaths. Many stood up and resisted, fighting extremely hard for their lives and those of their families and communities. But they were butchered anyway, right down to the last man and woman, because the Nazis had superior fire power. So calling the victims of the Shoah ‘soulless sheep’ is a gross lie, and not just a terrible insult to the victims of one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century.

There’s also a party political aspect to this. American Jews traditionally tended to vote Democrat. Many of them were also staunchly behind NAACP and the campaign for Black Civil Rights in America. As teacher, they tended to work in the Black schools, and generally lived and worked in closer contact with Blacks than other sections of the American population. And Nixon was also paranoid about them. Despite the fact that Kissinger was Jewish and there were other Jewish Americans on his staff, Nixon was obsessed with there being a Jewish plot against him, and distrusted Jews because of their traditional left-wing leanings.

This anti-Semitism had died down somewhat after the American Right decided they were going to back Israel after the victories of the Six Day War in the 1970s. In the 1990s, members of the Likud party worked for the Republicans, helping to draft plans for a future invasion of Iraq. But now with a rising tide of anxiety about immigration from Mexico, the threat of Islamist terrorism some parts of the Republicans are once again falling back into hatred of the Jews. And as The Turks themselves point out, it always ends with the Jews.

This is frightening. Nugent’s a disgrace, and should apologise immediately. And the whole drift towards racism and Fascism in America, Britain or wherever needs to be stopped. Before anyone dies in pogroms and race riots.