Blairite Anti-Semite: Labour Investigating Another Pro-Palestinian Jew on Vacuous Charges

This is what Smeeth’s and Hodge’s gaslighting at the Labour conference was intended to protect: Stalin and the Blairites’ continued sectarian anti-Semitic persecution of decent, self-respecting Jews. The Jews they’re smearing as self-hating and anti-Semitic because they’re socialists and/or support the Palestinians. Zelo Street has put up a piece today reporting that Heather Mendick, an active member of Hackney and Shoreditch Labour party is now being investigated for actions that  “may reasonably be seen to involve antisemitic actions, stereotypes and sentiments”. Mendick is herself Jewish, and the real reason for her investigation may not be un-adjacent to her position as co-secretary of Hackney Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

She was insensitively sent the email accusing her of anti-Semitism on Erev Rosh Hashanah, the ten days of repentance observed by Jews before the festival of Yom Kippur. Last week’s Private Eye contained a number of replies from readers to my letter in the previous issue attacking Labour for their accusation that I’m an anti-Semite. One of the letters was from a Jewish woman, who found their printing of my letter insensitive during one of her faith’s festivals. This is not something I have any control over. I was just responding to a false accusation by a malicious party bureaucracy. A party bureaucracy, who, it seems, themselves have absolutely no sensitivity about causing distress to Jews during a solemn holiday. Mendick states that  “This was done in the name of … making the party welcoming for Jewish people. In making this claim, the Labour Party is excluding me from the category of ‘Jewish People’”. Absolutely. One of the most vile aspects of the particular smearing of decent Jews, is that the accusation causes strain and suspicion with other members of the community. Jackie Walker states that the false smear against her caused problems with her partner’s family. Her partner was Jewish, as is Walker.

Mendick has been accused because her twitter account appeared in a report compiled by the Community Security Trust. She says “In August 2019, my Twitter account was listed in the Community and Security Trust’s report Engine Of Hate. The report’s authors do not discuss my account except generically but they do state that looking in detail at my Twitter feed they found no anti-Semitic material”. In fact, only 12 of the 36 twitter accounts the CST examined contained anti-Semitic material. Mendick states “The group has needlessly defamed 24 individuals. It hasn’t retracted or apologised. And it appears unwilling to do so …The thought occurs that the CST may have selected some of its targets, knowing they did not have the means to go to law in order to defend themselves”. She further remarks that some of those smeared “are left to try and defend themselves as best they can, fearful of being attacked online, or worse, tracked down and attacked physically, while those who hang on the CST’s every word as if it were unvarnished fact compound the smear”. Absolutely. Jackie Walker has said that her daughters have stopped her looking at her email, because so much of it contains abuse and death threats.

As for the CST, they are, from what I’ve gathered, little more than a bunch of thugs in uniform. They were set up to defend Jews and Jewish buildings and monuments, like synagogues and cemeteries, from assault and vandalism. If they’d kept to that, then I wouldn’t have any problem with them. Jews have been assaulted by anti-Semites, and homes, synagogues and cemeteries vandalised. But they don’t confine themselves to that. They’ve been employed as stewards for Zionist rallies, and have abused and assaulted pro-Palestinian counterprotesters. According to the estimable Tony Greenstein, they’ve separated Muslim and Jewish protesters, ’cause heaven forbid that Jews and Muslims should march in peace and friendship against the persecution meted out by Israel. They’ve also assaulted women and punched an elderly rabbi in the mouth at one rally. But they’ve got the backing of officialdom and are supposedly trained by Mossad in self-defence, so behaving like a mob of White, gentile Fascists is perfectly OK.

I’ve written in a previous article that the CST ought to be wound up. They behave like a gang of out-of-control thugs, and act as a precedent for other groups and ethnicities demanding their own private police forces. Some of us remember the noxious ‘Muslim Patrol’ set up by Anjem Chaudhury, who marched up and down threatening non-Muslims in the streets outside his mosque. These included people drinking alcohol and a man wearing makeup. Chaudhury’s an Islamist, who ran an outfit in Belgium, ‘Shariah 4 Belgium’, that wanted a Muslim-only enclave in that country governed by Islamic rule and with Arabic as its official language. Chaudhury was jailed for supporting terrorists and his wretched Muslim Patrol closed down by the rozzers. The trouble is, you can’t reasonably stop Muslims having their own volunteer police forces while permitting Zionist Jews to have theirs. Muslims are at far greater risk of abuse and violence than Jews, except for Orthodox Jews because of their distinctive clothing.

As for Ms Mendick being investigated simply because she was mentioned in the CST’s wretched report, this is very much like the historic witch hunts, where the mere accusation was taken as proof. Except that you probably had a greater chance of acquittal in the Middle Ages. It’s more like Pemberton Billing in the years just after the First World War and his wretched ‘little black book’. Billing was a bigot, who claimed to have a book containing the names of 50,000 ‘devotees of Sodom and Lesbia’. These gays were a security threat, because they were open to being blackmailed into spying by Germany. But it looks like he was also simply just a massive homophobe. He was constantly accusing people of homosexuality, which was then illegal, and being sued for libel as a consequence. Once such trial collapsed when he loudly claimed that the judge, too, was in his wretched little black book.

This strikes me as much the same phenomenon. Decent people are being deliberately smeared by individuals with no real evidence for an ultra-nationalist end. And the mere accusation is being taken as proof, even when there isn’t any.

The majority of people being falsely accused are Jewish. This seems to me to be sectarian anti-Semitism. And its being rightly called as such by the Labour left. People in the video I put up the other day on The World Transformed talk on Starmer’s attack on democracy in the Labour party mentioned not just the purges generally, but the purges of Jewish members specifically. Despite the fact that Starmer’s wife is Jewish, and his children are being brought up in that faith, the Labour leadership and bureaucracy are so anti-Semitic in this sense that I wonder if a new nickname for Keef isn’t called for.

Instead or as well as ‘Stalin’, it struck me that ‘Stormfront’ would also be fitting after the American neo-Nazi website.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2021/10/labour-party-goes-all-1984.html

Zionist Ben Shapiro’s Rhetoric Causing Anti-Semitism

This is a very interesting and no doubt controversial video from Sam Seder’s Majority Report, in which he shows the link between Shapiro’s rhetoric about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews and an attack on a synagogue in Indiana. Shapiro is a Republican mouthpiece, a very aggressive Zionist and Jewish. Seder’s also Jewish, describing himself as ‘the most Jewish guy you know’. But Seder’s also left-wing and a determined critic of Israel. He takes Shapiro to task for his sharp distinction between good and bad Jews, based on ethnicity versus religious practice, as distinction which is also made by neo-Nazis. And ‘bad Jews’ are Jews, who vote Democrat and specifically for Barack Obama.

Seder wondered what would happen if a public figure said something that inspired someone to commit a horrible act. And not only did they inspire the perp, they also made an equation that the perp cited as the cause for his committing the horrible act. Shapiro tried this with the Nazi, who shot up the synagogue in Pittsburgh, claiming that the Nazi was following an ideology similar to Ilhan Omar, the Muslim Congresswoman and critic of Israel. This is untrue. The Nazi didn’t, and he didn’t cite Omar as an explanation for his murder of the Synagogue’s congregation. But it has happened in the case of Shapiro and two Nazis, who vandalised a synagogue in Indiana.

The Nazis were Nolan and Kiyomi Brewer, and their crime was painting a Nazi swastika and Iron Crosses on a wall of a synagogue in Carmel. Nolan, the husband, was apparently law abiding, docile and passive. He was drawn into it by his wife, Kiyomi. She stated in her defence that she was led into the dark world of Nazism through mainstream right-wing news sites and organisations like Ben Shapirok Breitbart and Fox News. She then moved onto Stormfront, and then a Nazi site on the Discord Server. She and her husband also stated in the court papers that they deliberately selected that particular synagogue because it was full of ethnic Jews. This follows the neo-Nazi claim that Hitler wasn’t against religious Jews, but only against ethnic Jews.

Seder then shows with a series of tweets from 2011, 2016 and this year, that Shapiro himself makes the distinction. In one, he claimed that the Jewish community had always been undermined by bad Jews, and that these bad Jews voted Democrat. In the 2016 tweet, he said that there was a distinction between ethnically and religious Jews. Bernie Sanders was ethnically Jewish, and so passed the first standard, but not a Jew at all by the second standard.

Seder also shows a clip from the interview Shapiro gave with Andrew Neil, which was so embarrassing for Shapiro that he claimed that Neil was some kind of Leftist. Neil isn’t. He’s a Tory. Neil asked him about his claim that bad Jews voted for Barack Obama. Shapiro then tried to get around it by saying that American Jews were largely secular, and so his claim about nonreligious Jews was correct. Neil wasn’t going to be diverted, and stated that he hadn’t said that. He had said that bad Jews voted for Barack Obama.

Shapiro apparently has a list of stupid things he’s said on his website, and this comment is now one of them. But as Seder shows, Shapiro was still defending his comment on Neil’s show just weeks before in 2019. This is disgusting, and he wonders how many times Shapiro can say stupid things like it, which go down on his list, before newspapers like the New York Times stop giving him fawning headlines like ‘The Philosopher for the Cool Kids’. Seder cites her a tweet by Almanaqa refuting another tweet by Shapiro denying that he planned the synagogue attack. He didn’t, and nobody is saying that he did. But his rhetoric did inspire the attackers. Seder also makes the point that this is what the Intellectual Dark Web, so beloved of extreme right-wing ideologues, is actually about – Nazi sites like Gab. He concludes by attacking Shapiro once again for his comments and demanding that he be held responsible for them.

I’m blogging about this because this isn’t just an American problem. In this country the lamestream media, the Conservatives and the Blairites in the Labour party are using the same Nazi distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Jews to smear the Jewish supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, as Jewish and gentile left-wing bloggers like Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni, David Rosenberg, Jewish Voice for Labour, Mike Sivier, Tim Fenton of Zelo Street and Tom of Another Angry Voice have pointed out.

It isn’t quite a distinction between ethnic and religious Jews, as the racism has included very religious, ultra-Orthodox Jews like Shraga Stern. But there is a particular venom within the Zionist right at Israel-critical Jews, like Greenstein and Jackie Walker, who are subjected to the vilest abuse. Abuse which would be considered anti-Semitic if it came from gentiles.

And right-wing Zionists do ally themselves with the Islamophobic and Nazi right. They have links to Tommy Robinson and the EDL, as well as Paul Besser and Britain First. Tony Greenstein’s put up long articles identifying the organisations and individuals involved. These include Jewish Fascist organisations, like Herut. When the Board of Deputies and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis organised their farcical rally against the Labour party last year, two of the Zionists attending sported T-shirts bearing the Kach logo. Kach was a Judaeo-Nazi terrorist organisation banned in Israel. And then there’s the antics of the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, who led a British contingent to the March of the Flags day in Israel. This is when Jewish Nazi thugs march round the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem, vandalising homes and businesses and intimidating the locals. The same Jonathan Sacks, who declared Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. Which is the rhetoric of persecution.

Those smeared as an anti-Semites by the witch-hunters – the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Board of Deputies and so on – have received death threats. Jackie Walker has been horrendously vilified. She has been told that she’s not Jewish, because she’s Black, and that she should be lynched and her body burnt or put in bin bags. Chris Williamson, the Labour MP, who rightly said that Labour had given too much ground to those making false accusations of anti-Semitism, has also received death threats.

So I wonder how long it’s going to be before someone attacks a Jewish supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and then states in court that they were doing it because he or she was ‘the wrong type of Jew’, and they were radicalised by Sacks, Mirvis, Gideon Falter and Marie van der Zyle.

 

 

 

 

Tony Greenstein Unmasks 31 Israel Activists Disrupting Palestinian Events

Back on the 9th December 2017, Tony Greenstein, the pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist activist, listed on his blog 31 pro-Israel activists, who regularly protest and disrupt pro-Palestinian events in London. He also has photos of them, and puts names to faces, along with very brief remarks about them. He begins his piece with the following passage:

Below we name and shame the 31 fascists and Zionists who have been attempting to disrupt and prevent solidarity events on Palestine. Led by Jonathan Hoffman they contain people who are members of other fascist groups like Britain First and the new Pegida. We see their connection with the far-Right. Jewish bourgeois groups like the Board of Deputies deliberately turn a blind eye to these people and no questions have been asked about Hoffman’s open links with neo-Nazis, holocaust deniers and fascists.

These people need to be treated in exactly the same way by the Left as fascists have traditionally been treated and that is to be physically driven off. As the alliance between Zionist activists and fascists grows, the Left needs to wake up to what is happening and get organised.

They’re quite a sordid bunch. At least two of these charmers have spent time in prison, or jumped bail before they could be jailed. And among the organisations they represent are the Jewish Defence League, the EDL – Jewish Division, Pegida UK, and the storm troopers of Britain First. A number of them sport Kahane T-shirts, which Greenstein explains as ‘Jewish Neo-Nazi’. I know very little about Meir Kahane, except that he was an extreme right-wing gun nut, who believed that Jews should arm themselves against persecution. And that they had an absolute right to Palestine. According to Adam Parfrey in one of his books, Apocalypse Culture or Cult Rapture, Kahane was an influence on one of the groups in the militia movement of the 1990s. The militias were right-wing, survivalist private armies, set up to defend America against despotic left-wing government and the collapse of civilisation once the Blacks, Commies, feminists and leftists took over. A number were very definitely bitterly anti-Semitic, with all the vile fantasies about ZOG. No, not Ahmed Zogu, the former king of Albania, but the Zionist Occupation Government. In their weird fantasies, America is really secretly run by the Jews, who are intent on destroying the White race through racial intermixing. It’s the same bizarre and noxious conspiracy theory you can find on neo-Nazi sites like the Daily Stormer, or Stormfront. However, one of the militia groups apparently was Jewish. Which adds further evidence to the numerous examples cited by Greenstein himself, which show how the Jewish extreme right and Zionists will make alliances with real anti-Semites and Fascist when it suits them.

A number of them are also members of the various fake organisations set up to combat anti-Semitism and advocate for Israel. These include the Israel Advocacy Movement, Eyeonantisemitism, UNWatch, Campaign4Truth and Hippodrome GG. Also featured is Jayda Fransen of Britain First, and various members of Essex Friends of Israel and Sussex Friends of Israel.

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/exclusive-we-name-gang-of-31-zionists.html

I don’t advocate violence to anyone, and I find the idea of violence against Jews particularly repugnant because of the long history of persecution, violence and genocide against them. But these people are Fascists, pure and simple. They have allied with Fascists, in the shape of Britain First and the EDL. They support militant armed extreme right-wing organisations, or at least those wearing the Kahane T-shirts do. If they weren’t Jews and were members of gentile extreme nationalist and racist organisations, there’d be absolutely no question that they were Fascists. And so they deserve to be called and treated as such.

Hatewatch on the Links between the American National Alliance and British Neo-Nazis

Thomas Mair, the suspect for the murder of the Labour politician Jo Cox, was a long-time members of the extreme Right, who had ordered about $600 worth of books on how to build home-made guns and ammunition from National Vanguard Books, the publishing arm of the National Alliance, the main American neo-Nazi organisation.

Michelle, one of the many great contributors to this blog, sent me this link to an article on Hatewatch, the magazine of the Southern Poverty Law Centre that documents the activities of right-wing extremists: https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/06/21/thomas-mair-brexit-and-us-uk-neo-nazi-connection. The Southern Poverty Law Centre has been around for decades. In the 1990s its leader, Maurice Dees, published a book on the threat of the Militias, independent, private armies of right-wing survivalists, bitterly alienated from the federal government, entitled Gathering Storm. The above article by Heidi Beirich, their intelligence director, describes the links to the National Alliance and other American Nazi organisations not just of Thomas Mair, but also Zack Davies, who carried out a brutal attack on a Sikh doctor in Mold in North Wales; Mark Cotterill, a former BNP member, who recruits for the National Alliance in Britain through his Heritage and Destiny website, Andrew Lovie, a former member of UKIP, and BNP stormtrooper, who has posted on the neo-Nazi website, Stormfront, in America. Among merchandising Lovie ordered from the National Alliance was a video game, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, where the player goes around shooting Blacks and Jews. As grotesque and incredible as this sounds, it is all too plausible. When I was at College thirty years ago, the German Republican Party had got into the news and very hot water because of a computer game they launched, in which the player took the part of a the commandant of a concentration camp and had to prevent Jews, gays and leftists escaping. The article also describes the activities of two Brexit advocates, Andrew Tait and Matthew Tait, and Arthur Kemp. Andrew Tait ran a pro-Brexit website, ‘Vote Leave Take Control’, while Matthew Tait was a former BNP activist, who has spoken several times at conferences by American Renaissance, a racist outfit on the other side of the Pond. Tait also has his own website, Western Spring, in which he posted a pro-Brexit piece arguing that the EU was a Communist organisation to destroy the White race. Kemp’s a racist South African, who was a former officer of the BNP, and was at one time the media director of the National Alliance. Kemp also has a racist website, the New Observer Online, in which he calls immigrants ‘invaders’ and ‘rapefugees’.

Other Nazi assassins elsewhere in Europe also have contacts with American Nazi organisations. These include Anders Breivik, who was a member of Stormfront, Peter Mangs, another National Alliance member, who killed three people in Sweden, and Maxime Brunerie, a French Fascist, who tried to kill the-then president, Jacques Chirac. David Copeland, the infamous Nazi, who killed a number of people in a bombing campaign in London targeting gays, Blacks and Asians, was partly inspired by the Turner Diaries, a work of fiction describing a future extreme-right coup in America, sold by the National Alliance. And then there’s Frank S., a German skinhead, who stabbed Henriette Reker, a mayoral candidate for Cologne. He also was active online. The current Chairman of the National Alliance, Will Williams, is also living on welfare due to psychological problems, and has a history of victimising women. He celebrated the death of Jo Cox, stating that she had placed a target on her back.

Politically, the membership of extreme right-wing organisations in Britain is very low, but they are extremely violent, and as this article shows, several of the most vicious have transatlantic contacts. And there is a real danger that this violence will be spread and encouraged by Brexit. As one of my brother’s foreign friends has found, the amount of racism has increased and become very personal.

The Young Turks on the Alt Reich and the Anti-Semitic App

After the false allegations of anti-Semitism against leading members of the Labour party, like Ken Livingstone, Naz Shah and Jackie Walker, comes the real thing on the other side of the Pond. This time, it’s brought to you through the miracle of computer software. A few days ago, the I newspaper carried a very brief story that Google Chrome had taken off an app that was being used to track Jews on-line. This is discussed in this clip from The Young Turks, with the hosts Cenk Uygur, Bill Mankiewicz, Jimmy Dore and John Iadarola. The app was being used by a group of Conservative Trump fans styling themselves the Alt Right. There are about 2,400 of them. The device had a database of Jewish surnames, and was being used to flag up if someone had one of these monickers. The example they give is ‘Fleishman’. If someone had that surname, then the Fleishman would appear in double or triple brackets to indicate they were Jewish, thus (((Fleishman))). The members of the group posted comments about its use, saying that ‘a pattern is emerging’. To their credit, Google removed the app.

Uygur and the others try to be fair to Trump and say that he’s not responsible for their actions, and may not have been aware of what they were doing. But they make the point that he is broadly responsible for what they have done in that he has opened up the racist closet with his attacks on Muslims and Mexicans. When Trump launched his offensive against Muslims, it was rightly condemned by the ADL – the Anti-Defamation League. This is the major US body that protects Jews against anti-Semitic smears and attacks. They did so not just because it was right to condemn all forms of racism and discrimination, but also because once it became permissible to discriminate against one group, that licence would soon spread to attacks on Jews. And it has. Trump has attracted racists and White supremacists to his campaign. He’s tried to distance himself from them, but not very hard, merely stating that he doesn’t know anything about them or their support.

The Turks also have a good, well deserved laugh at the stupidity of these anti-Semites and conspiracy theorist. Bill Mankiewicz, who’s Jewish, jokes that if his people really were out to enslave the world, then why are they talking about it? If they had, there’d be no question about it. The Turks also make the wider point about the contradictions in all these daft conspiracy theories. If White gentiles are the master race, then why aren’t they in charge of everything, instead of the Jews? And also, if they’re so superior, why are their jobs being taken by supposedly racially inferior Mexicans?

Of course these accusations and conspiracies don’t make sense. Their contradictions have been pointed out hundreds of times in books and articles on the Nazis and the international Fascist right. The Turks also point out that it’s very clear when you go on White supremacist websites like Stormfront that most of the Nazi right aren’t as bright as they think they are either. That’s also true. If you look at some of the posts from the various British Nazi organisations Hope Not Hate have reproduced on their website, you’ll find that most of them are badly spelt, with an extremely poor vocabulary, most of which seems to consist of obscenity and curses. A left-wing friend of mine, who very definitely isn’t racist, also told me he once read a copy of Spearhead, the NF rag he found in the gutter outside his house after a football match, and couldn’t believe just how stupid and moronic it was. But the reality is that Trump, by advocating racist policies, has made genuine racism and Nazism just that little more acceptable in America. Here’s the video:

The Break-Up of American Zionism and the Anti-Semitism Allegations

I’m aware that I’m in serious risk of doing this subject to death, but this needs to be said. I’ve put up several blogs featuring the videos of talks and interviews given by Israeli and American Jewish activists and historians – Ilan Pappe, Elizabeth Baltzer and Norman Finkelstein, laying bare the terrible history of Israel’s persecution and systematic ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. As I’ve repeatedly said, this is because of the smears against leading figures in the Labour party that they are anti-Semites, when they are nothing of the sort, and demonstrably nothing of the sort. Ken Leninspart, when he was leader of the GLC, was notorious and reviled for his anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia stance. And if you want to read what he has to say about anti-Semitism, it’s written down in his book, Livingstone’s Labour. He decries it as one of the worst forms of reaction, along with all other forms of racism, whether it be against Blacks, Jews and Irish. Naz Shah has the backing of her local synagogue. And Jackie Walker is the daughter of a Russian Jew and Black civil rights activist, deported from America as one of the ‘Reds under the Bed’ McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover were so scared of. Her other half is also Jewish. It’s truly grotesque that she should be slandered as an anti-Semite when it is clearly not the case.

Jimmy Carter

These slanders have not been confined to Britain. They were made against the Jewish Outreach Officer of one of the Democratic presidential candidates. The lady was forced to resign, despite the fact that she was not only Jewish, but a very active member of her community dedicated to their welfare. They even tried it on with Jimmy Carter, who was just about called everything bar a card-carrying member of the American Nazi party and supporter of Stormfront. Again, dead wrong. I can remember way back in the 1970s when old peanut teeth hosted the Camp David peace negotiations between Israel and Egypt. In his own state, he was instrumental in removing the colour bar and segregation laws against people of colour. He is not, and never has been an anti-Semite or a Nazi, whatever his failings as president were. And he certainly doesn’t have the sheer amount of blood on his hands that his successor, Reagan, had through his sponsorship of real Fascists in South and Central America.

And Carter showed that he wasn’t afraid to prove he was innocent of all charges, guv. He went in front of the students at Brandeis University, the biggest secular Jewish university in the US to debate one of the author of the smears, Alan Dershowitz. He got three or four standing ovations simply for appearing on stage. And when it came to Dershowitz’s time to speak, 2/3 of the audience walked out even before the old Neo-Con warmonger had opened his mouth.

Jewish Americans Liberal

American Jews are overwhelmingly liberal. Most of them want a two-state solution – for the Palestinians to have their own state. By and large they despise George Dubya Bush and 70 per cent of them are opposed to the war in Iraq. And despite the move of the majority of Israeli voters to the right, Ilan Pappe stated in his video that Israelis were decent people. He stated that going around, talking to people, especially small businessmen and farmers, who knew what it was like to have to struggle to make something for yourself, won people over to the Palestinian cause.

Livingstone, Shah and Walker Historically Correct

Nothing Leninspart, Shah or Walker said should be remotely interpreted as racist. Red Ken was factually correct: Hitler did briefly support Zionism and the emigration or deportation of the Jews to Israel. Walker was smeared because she compared the treatment of Black Africans under slavery to the Holocaust, and the persecution of the Palestinians in Israel. Now, I can understand historians picking at this to see if they really are equivalent. Africans were captured and worked to death simply as instruments of labour, rather than because there was a conscious desire to exterminate Black Africans, as in the Holocaust. Though against that was the gradual erection of the whole intellectual edifice trying to justify their enslavement as racially inferior, just as the Nazis used twisted biological theory to justify their extermination of the Jews. It’s reasonable for historians and political scholars to debate the similarities and dissimilarities between them. But I don’t think many genuine scholars, certainly not of the slave trade or the Holocaust, would dispute that these are terrible crimes against humanity. And the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians should be no different. There is a real debate on the legal definitions of genocide, because there are so many of them. So many, in fact, that I’ve heard an academic of the subject state that these definitions should be dropped simply in favour of ordinary, common sense. When states, or their majority populations start persecuting an ethnic group or trying to suppress their identity through force, then it’s genocide.

What also comes out is that the views of Livingstone et al by and large are supported by historical scholarship, including those of mainstream historians. Finkelstein states that there’s little difference between Israeli school textbooks and dissident, left-wing scholars on the origins of Israel. It is known that Israel had a programme of ethnic cleansing from the very first. It is incontrovertible that Israel is engaged in mass torture and human rights violations. And Finkelstein himself states that it is the Israelis, not the Palestinians, who consistently failed to ‘give piece a chance’ in the words of Lennon and Ono.

Denial of Palestinian’s History ‘Historicide’

As for the view produced by the historian, Peters, that there were no Arabs until the Jews settled in Israel, bringing development and jobs, this has been comprehensively disproven. Finkelstein or Pappe, I can’t remember which, describe it as ‘historicide’, the deliberate destruction of a people’s historical reality.

Jewish and Israeli Opposition to Persecution of Palestinians

There is absolutely no question that the facts are on the side of the accused. And I honestly believe that if Leninspart, Shah and certainly Walker were given the chance to rebut their enemies in debate at a university, they would do so in the same way Carter and his supporters vociferously routed Dershowitz. 72 per cent of British Jews say that Israel is important to them, compared to only 50 per cent of American Jews under 35. But that does not mean that British Jews do not want to see an end to their country’s persecution of the Palestinians. There are Jewish organisations in Israel helping the Palestinians defend their homes, families and livelihoods. You can find pictures of Orthodox rabbis in the long, black coats and broad-brimmed hats, forming cordons and lying down in front of bulldozers. University anti-racism and Palestinian solidarity groups have invited members of these organisations to speak. It would surprise me not one whit if many of those Brits reaching out to Palestine were Jews, and active members of their universities’ Jewsocs.

Political Motives behind Accusations

This isn’t about historical truth, however. This is about the Israel lobby trying to derail any criticism of the state and its persecution of the indigenous Arabs with accusations of anti-Semitism. It’s about the Blairites trying to hang on to power in Labour party by playing the race card against Jeremy Corbyn. But those accused have no real case against them. In any just court of law, they would be declared innocent, with damages found against their accusers.

Libel and Establishment Lies and Smears

Unfortunately, when it comes to libel, there is no justice in Britain. You are guilty until proven rich. And the accusations suit the British establishment very well. The Tories love it, because it harms Labour. And the Beeb’s Newsnight programme with Evan Davis uncritically swallowed all the guff from the guests that Labour had an ‘anti-Semitism problem’. One of the guests on RT’s Going Underground, with Afshid Rattansi, stated that the smears looked like the establishment coup against a leftwing British prime minister, as described in the novel and Channel 4 TV series, A Very British Coup. Listening to Finkelstein, I think that’s entirely plausible. There were smears by the establishment against Harold Wilson, which accused him of being a Communist spy. Many of them seemed to come from MI5. Finkelstein states that American funds Israel far and beyond the amount it gives to other nations, because it sees it as defending its interests in the Middle East.

Britain and America Supporting Israel to Retain Power in Region

I believe that this, or something like it, explains the British establishment’s attitude to the allegations. I can remember reading years ago a discussion on a right-wing American website about Israel, the Arabs and Britain under the Mandate. The site took the bog-standard right-wing American view that Brits must be anti-Semites, ’cause all Europeans hate Jews, as shown by the Holocaust and the increasingly secular nature of European society. The participants in the debate argued that the British deliberately set the Jews and Arabs at each other’s throats in order to maintain their control over the region. They quote the correspondence between one of the British officers involved in the Mandate, on this point. The quote was merely his own conclusion after studying the situation, and did not conclusively prove that it was so. They also quoted other correspondence, in which one British politician accused another wishing to establish a Jewish presence in the region as a kind of outpost of British influence, similar to Protestant Belfast amidst Roman Catholic Ireland.

It would not surprise me if something like that were the case. It may simply be that Britain gives unconditional support to Israel, because the Americans also give Israel their unconditional, or nearly unconditional support, in order to retain influence in the region. And since we declined as a world power, we’ve been acting as the American Empire’s junior partner and lickspittle. One former British ambassador to the US even went on Radio 4 and said that he was told by the Mandarins in London that his job was to go to Washington and ‘get up the American’s arse and stay there’.

The Beeb is the voice of the British establishment. It’s news programmes consistently support the Conservatives and industry, especially finance industry, against Labour and the trade unions. The establishment undoubtedly identifies British interests with those of Israel, though Robin Ramsey, the editor of Lobster, has said that the Beeb ties itself in knots trying to deny that it is pro-Zionist. So it is, unfortunately, a foregone conclusion that the Beeb and the establishment won’t give the accused a fair hearing. Not if there’s even more millions to be made from another bloody war.

Fighting Back against the Lies

Which doesn’t mean that the accused can’t win. The mainstream American media is also very staunchly pro-Israel and rabidly demonises the Arabs and the Muslim world. Despite this, in the polls Israel is just one point more popular amongst Americans than Iran. And you consider the massive negative campaign and image of that country in American media. The Israel Lobby – AIPAC and the leadership of J Street in America, the Labour Friends of Israel and BICOM over here, know that they’re losing the public’s hearts and minds. Hence the smears. I think the best course would be for Livingstone, Shah and Walker to stand up to them, call them out on their lies. Don’t expect any honesty from the press, ’cause that went long ago. But do it in the court of popular opinion – at public meetings, university seminars and talks, at literary events. Adam Shatz, of the London Review of Books, introduced Finkelstein and Baltzer when they spoke in New York. Perhaps the LRB can be relied on to give an unbiased platform. They should, at least regarding Jackie Walker. I can remember way back in the 1990s they published a piece on slavery at the time it was once again coming back into national consciousness. The treatment of Black people, and their abuse and discrimination, is of obvious acute interest to Jackie Walker, and so I think that more than some of the other media, they could be more inclined to give a sympathetic hearing.

This ain’t just about defending a group of accused Labour MPs. This is also about defending free speech and historical scholarship against the personal smears and gross historical distortions of a mendacious and deceitful establishment. An establishment that is prepared to grind down and destroy Jews, as well as Muslims, Christians, and those with no religion, in its campaign to preserve a monstrously racist order.

Ron Paul, Racism, Conspiracy Theories and Utter Looniness

One of the pieces I’ve reblogged from Still Laughing At UKIP a short while ago is a piece noting that John Gill, the admin of UKIP’s Facebook page, is a fan of far-right Republican presidential candidate, Ron Paul. The article provides detailed information on just how far-right Paul is, with friends and political collaborators in a host of Nazi and racist organisations, including the Klan, the National Alliance – by far the largest American nationalist organisation – the National Socialist Workers Party and the racist website, Stormfront. It also has links to several websites giving even more information on Paul and his noxious connections to the racist right.

One of these is to an article in the liberal journal, Mother Jones, listing some of the extreme and offensive opinions expressed in Paul’s bulletins, which he issued from 1975 onwards. Paul tried to disown some of them, by saying that he’d never read them until after they were issued, but as he’s listed on them as ‘editor’, this seems unlikely. The views are what you’d expect from a pillar of the American far right: racist, homophobic and with a venomous hatred of any type of welfare and its recipients, whom he views as simply lazy. He also has a line in barking conspiracy theories. Two of his assertions stood out in particular to me. These were

1) AIDS was a secret experiment that escaped from Fort Dettrick, and

2) 95 per cent of Black American men in DC are criminals.

AIDS: The Germ Warfare Experiment

The idea that AIDS was secret germ warfare experiment emerged in the 1990s. Kevin McClure, a long time weird watcher, who has edited a series of small press magazines since the 1970s covering all aspect of the paranormal and alternative spirituality, tackled this one twenty years or so ago in an edition of his small press mag The Wild Places. From the evidence, it looks like this story was a piece of Soviet disinformation in retaliation for the American line that the KGB was behind the assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II, rather than a group of Turkish Fascists called the Grey Wolves.

A medical doctor writing in the American conspiracy magazine, Steamshovel Press, noted that the story was believed by large numbers of Black Americans. It was especially plausible to them, he pointed out, because of the Tuskeegee experiments in the 1930s. This was a programme in which a group of Black share croppers were given syphilis and refused treatment in order to examine the progress of the disease. Their funerals were, however, paid for by the state. The American government also conducted mind control experiments on American servicemen and unwitting civilian personnel. Again, those victimised were the poor, and particularly Blacks. Paul believed it because he’s a Nazi who’s paranoid about his government. Blacks, on the other hand, had every reason to believe it, because experiments like it had been inflicted on them.

Locking Up Black Americans, Just in Case They Commit Crime

As for Paul’s assertion that 95 per cent of Black males in Washington D.C. were crims, this largely stemmed from his own racism and bizarre belief in the absolute rectitude of his bonkers views. According to him, the only Black men, who weren’t criminals were those, who agreed with him in wishing to end the welfare state and affirmative action and anti-segregation programmes. It’s bizarre, but unfortunately, Paul’s not alone. There are plenty of others, who have similar opinions. An American friend of mine told me about one Republican politico, who decided that most crime was committed by young Black men between 18 and 30. He therefore had a simple solution to solving America’s crime rate: lock up every Black American male between those ages.

Another Republican politico had a similar, though less severe suggestion. He wanted everyone to be locked up in prison for three days on their 18th birthday, in order to deter them from a life of crime. With these, you really are dealing with the part of the Republican Party rationality forgot.

Ernst Zundl and the Nazi Flying Saucers

One of the links also takes you to a website, which details Paul’s links to Ernst Zundl. Zundl’s a notorious Canadian Nazi, who’s been publishing Holocaust Denial rubbish for decades. Back in the 1990s he was one of the talking heads on a Channel 4 documentary about the designer of gas chambers for the American prison system. Sponsored by various American Neo-Nazi organisations, this particular expert went off to examine the surviving gas chambers at Auschwitz. He concluded that there was no evidence to support the assertion that they were gas chambers. A Jewish researcher was also featured, who knocked down every piece of evidence this particular individual used in his argument.

Along with promoting Holocaust Denial, Zundl has also published stuff claiming that UFOs were really super-secret spacecraft created by Nazi scientists. One version of this claims that these ships were built under scientific instructions from an advanced technological civilisation on planets orbiting the star Aldebaran. See the video, UFO Secrets of the Third Reich, produced by Royal Atlantis Films. Kevin McClure and the anti-Ufologists over at Magonia debunked the Nazi saucer myth about a decade ago. It’s pernicious, bonkers stuff, as some of it is produced by Nazis keen to keep the myth of a technologically advanced Third Reich alive. Zundl, however, although he publishes it, doesn’t appear to believe it. He has apparently said that he only publishes it because it makes money.

This really tells you all you really need to know about Ron Paul and the really, really lunatic fringe of the American political system he represents: vindictive, racist and with a strong desire to lock anybody and everybody up, even if they’re innocent of any crime, because, well, just in case.

And these are the people John Gill admires.