That’s the only way I think Tzipi Hotovely can fairly be described. She’s the Israeli ambassador who was hurried off the campus at LSE by the cops and her security guards as protestors against the genocidal brutality of the Israeli state made their feelings extremely clear. Needless to say, the government and the Blairite Labour leadership have metaphorically clutched their pearl in horror at what a terrible deed has been done to her. The protests have been condemned by Priti Patel and Starmerite rentagob Lisa Nandy. Mike has put up a couple of pieces about the incident, pointing out that Hotovely was never in any danger because of the police protection she enjoyed. And today he’s posted another article quoting a number of well-informed Twitterers and commenters, including Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada; the Groaniad journo Owen Jones, Natalie Strecker; Another Angry Voice and a Palestinian gent, Omar Ghraeib, which showed exactly how deeply unpleasant her extreme Israeli nationalist views are.
The Nakba, the forced expulsion of 800,000 Palestinians to create the nascent Israeli state in 1948 is well-documented. Historians have uncovered that it was achieved through massacres of thousands of Palestinians. People were gunned down hiding in mosques for sanctuary. A group of women tried to appease the Israeli troops through bringing them baskets of rice. They were shot in the stomach. All documented fact, covered in histories of the reality of the creation of Israeli on videos available on the internet. I think a few of them were put up by Abi Martin of The Empire Files on Tele-Sur. But Hotovely has declared this all ‘a lie’. This is, to me, as deplorable as the Nazis and anti-Semites peddling their lies that the Holocaust never happened, or the Turkish state covering up the Armenian genocide. But it’s also not just the Nadba she denies. She claims there’s no Palestinian people – a common trope of the Israeli state and its supporters over here. It started with Gold Meir and the Zionist pioneers claiming that the Palestinians were really recent settlers from Syria and other Arab nations because the landlords were absentees in those countries. It comes from the old Zionist slogan ‘A people without a land for a land without a people’ – except the land already had a people. Hence all the lies that the Palestinians don’t really exist, which I’ve seen repeated on extreme right-wing American and Canadian websites.
As an Israeli far-right nationalist, she wants Arab villages razed to be replaced by Jewish settlements. In May she was one of the main speakers at a Zionist demonstration in support of the Israeli embassy. During which the demonstrators showed just what kind of disgusting human beings they were by chanting in favour of burning down Palestinian villages and supporting Rabbi Mei Kahane, the founder of Kach. This is a group so extreme that even the Israelis call it a terrorist organisation. She so right-wing that she’s even called for Israel to invade Jordan and Syria. This is bonkers, but it would be supported by Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel, which would also like Israel to invade and annexe parts of Egypt and Iraq. Technically I think Syria is still at war with Israel due to the Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. A madman or -woman calling for real, renewed armed war is obviously a threat to peace in the Middle East. Which, incidentally she’s never given her explanation of how it can be achieved. A war-hungry maniac like her should not be let anywhere near power or international relations.
But let’s be fair, it’s not just Palestinians she hates. She also despises Jews, who protest against the Israeli state’s atrocities. In one of her wretched tweets she sneered at German Jewish critics, claiming in very anti-Semitic language that they were only doing it for the money. ‘Oy vey my German Euros!’, she tweeted. The mad right-wing Zionists trying to shut down any criticism of Israel do so by screeching that any critical remark must be an anti-Semitic trope. But this is a real one: that of the money-grubbing Jew. And right-wing Zionists also accuse their critics of being ‘offensive’! Well, I can only imagine how offensive her remarks must be to Jewish Germans, because the myth that Jews are materialistic, greedy and exploitative was at the heart of Nazi Jew-hatred and persecution. I’m also at a loss to know quite where she thinks these ‘German Euros’ that she claims were somehow being paid to her country’s Jewish German critics come from. They aren’t going to come from the German state, which supports Israel, nor its people, who are generally very friendly and well-disposed towards Jews. Germany is so welcoming towards Jews that many Israelis go there for their holidays. Nazism is banned under the Basic Law and Mutti Merkel’s government tried over and over to show that Germany was now a pluralist, anti-racist society that welcomed ethnic minorities. I dare say that there are individual Nazis ensconced in parts of the German state. But the German state as a whole is very, very definitely not going to give any kind of support to real anti-Semites.
The German-Jewish critics of Israel seem to me to be determinedly anti-racist generally. There’s a video on the web somewhere of the awesome Jackie Walker speaking at one of their meetings, and being given a warm welcome. This was after she was expelled from the Labour party on a trumped-up charge of anti-Semitism. She’s been subject to a torrent of horrendous abuse ever since, some of it viciously racist. She’s Black, and so her racist attackers have claimed she can’t be Jewish. There’s a vicious anti-Black racism in Israel. Abi Martin made a documentary a few years ago about the abuse and physical assaults made against Black Israelis. This included a maniac stabbing a baby in the head. The German Jews, who welcomed Walker and gave her a platform are far better people than Israel’s White supremacist defenders.
And just to show us what the state Hotovely so enthusiastically represents is actually like, Omar Ghraeib have tweeted about the shooting of a 13-year old Palestinian boy by an Israeli soldier, and Agent Rachel Swindon has also tweeted about the Israeli army’s destruction of water pipes serving four Palestinian villages. This is quite common, and is a method of squeezing the Palestinians in an attempt to force them off their land. Israeli soldiers also throw chemicals into Palestinian wells to make the water undrinkable. And the tweeters also rightly point out that the UN has condemned Israel as practicing apartheid.
Nandy was yelling that the demonstration was terrible attack on free speech. Which also shows what a revolting hypocrite Nandy is. As Daniel Finn points out, Nandy will not breathe a word in defence of the Palestinians. Her commitment to anti-Palestinian racism is ‘quite extraordinary’.
Of course, Patel and Nandy have also screamed that the demonstration was ‘anti-Semitic’. No. Definitely no! Many of Israel’s most ardent critics are themselves decent, Torah-observant and secular Jews. They’re severely normal, self-respecting people, who aren’t ‘anti-Semitic’ or ‘self-hating’ or any of the other wretched, vile smears that have been thrown at them. Some of them are Haredi Jews, who believe they are to remain in galut – exile – until the coming of the Messiah, as commanded in the Hebrew Bible and Torah. Others do so because they believe Israel violates the fundamental principles of the liberal Judaism they were raised in. You know, the type of Judaism that takes as its watchword ‘Jews should always be for the oppressed, never the oppressor’. And many are socialists following the ideas of the pre-War Bund, the Jewish socialist party that wanted Jews to stay in their ancestral homelands, fighting to be accepted as equals and friends by their gentile compatriots. Over here the British Jewish community before the First World War held exactly the same attitude. They wanted to be seen as patriotic Brits and Englishmen and women, not foreigners. The British Jewish establishment actually condemned the Balfour Declaration because they were afraid it would make gentile Brits see them as foreigners. It would create anti-Semitism. Philip Gould has posted a tweet from a Jewish group over here critical of Israel, Na’amod: British Jews Against Occupation. Now I don’t claim to be any kind of expert of Judaism, but I think it’s clear from their Hebrew name that they aren’t self-haters and anti-Semites. Natalie Strecker has also posted a tweet showing that, in contrast to Israeli nationalist propaganda, it is far-rightists like Hotovely who are unrepresentative of the Jewish community: “Imagine being so racist that you think a white supremacist who believes Palestinians should be subject to genocide represents Jews!!!” This was in response to someone called Caolan, who claimed that the protests were all anti-Semitic.
Way back in the early part of this century, Blair got into terrible trouble when he arrested the Chilean Fascist dictator, General Pinochet. Pinochet was responsible for horrific torture and massacres, which included the murder of a Spanish lad. Spain had put out an extradition for his arrest. Pinochet had arrived in Britain and was visiting his old friend, Maggie Thatcher. Blair pounced and had him arrested for crimes against humanity pending extradition to Spain. Thatcher and the right screeched in protest because, well, Thatcher and a large section of the Tory party support right-wing Fascist thugs like Pinochet, and he had given us aid during the Falkland’s conflict. It was all horribly bungled, as Pinochet should have been officially told first that he was not welcome over here. Blair’s regime was also guilty of human rights violations because of its grubby illegal invasion of Iraq. But in this instance it was trying to act in accordance with international law and humanity.
Hotovely is not the head of her state, but Israel is still guilty of many of the crimes for which Pinochet’s regime is abominated and reviled. I think it can be fairly said that rather than being defended and protected, the British state should be demanding her withdrawal because her racism is so much opposed to genuine, liberal British values.
In my opinion, she’s a Fascist of the same stripe as Pinochet, who should be facing tough questions from the International Court of Human Rights. But the British establishment just loves foreign Fascists if they’re on our side. And so we could expect nothing but smears and condemnation of the LSE protestersby Patel and Nandy.
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’ve blogged many times before about Private Eye’s hatred of Jeremy Corbyn and their poisonous support for the anti-Semitism smear campaign against Labour. One of those pushing it in the Eye is ‘Ratbiter’, revealed by Tony Greenstein a little while ago to be the pseudonym of Groaniad/Absurder hack Nick Cohen. Cohen, who isn’t actually Jewish despite his name, is clearly one of those miffed that Labour has elected someone who’s actually going to do something for Britain’s working people, and isn’t prepare to ignore or support crimes committed by the British establishment’s favourite colonialist state in the Middle East. He’s the author of a piece, ‘Faking Hell…’ in this fortnight’s issue of the satirical rag for 18th-31st October 2019, praising the Stop Funding Fake News organisation for their campaign to stop advertisers using those social media sites they consider to be outlets for fake news. Cohen’s article starts by praising the site for doing what he believes Google should be doing in preventing firms advertising with extremist web sites. He starts off by describing how those on the extreme right have had their advertising revenues hit, as firms like Sky, Macmillan Cancer Care, Which?, the World Wide Fund for Nature, Manchester United, Chelsea, Ted Baker, Experian and Ebay have requested Google to take down their advertising on Breitbart, Westmonster, and TR, the site of the notorious islamophobe and jailbird Tommy Robinson. Thanks to their campaign, Robinson’s site has lost 70 per cent of its income. Which might stop some of his jaunts abroad for a little while. But almost inevitable, the article goes on to attack The Canary. This has been a particular bete noir of the Eye for some time. They really don’t seem able to stand the idea that there are any social media sites supporting Corbyn, not least because they’re also a rival to the lamestream media. Which also includes Private Eye. Describing SFFN’s attacks on The Canary and its effects, Cohen says
While far-right sites target Muslim immigrants, far-left sites target Jews. “The Canary”, the campaign tells its followers and advertisers, “regularly publishes fake news and attempts to justify anti-Semitism”. it also feeds the conspiracy theories of the far left. One hideous example came when the campaign discovered that Unicef, which tends to the victims of the Syrian and Venezuelan regimes, was advertising on the Canary, which has denied the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and pretended that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad did not use chemical weapons against Syrian civilians in Douma. In August, the Canary cut its staff from 25 to seven. Perhaps inevitably, it blamed “political Zionists” targeting advertisers.
The toppling of the Canary is “the strongest evidence yet that the clickbait business model can be defeated”, the campaign said. Combine it with changes to Facebook’s algorithms to reduce the prominence of media businesses, and fake news in the UK is taking a hit.
Let’s go through and critique this pile of driveling hogwash.
Firstly, the Canary isn’t a ‘far left’ site. As I understand it, it supports Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn’s programme of nationalisation, the restoration of the NHS, welfare state, worker’s rights and trade unions, isn’t extreme left, except in the addled brains of convinced Thatcherites. It’s actually a return to the social democratic consensus, which was actually the centre left before the appearance of Thatcher and her campaign of privatisation, deregulation and the destruction of the welfare state and the decimation of working class organisations.
Secondly, it doesn’t promote anti-Semitism. What it has done is attack, rebut and refute the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party and specifically Corbyn’s and his supporters. And these are very much politically motivated. It comes from the Blairites, who are determined to cling to power whatever the cost, the British political and media establishment, which is simply terrified of anyone giving back any power to working people, and the Israel lobby. And a large part of it comes from the Israel lobby. Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada, and the Jewish American academic and critic of Israel, Norman Finkelstein, have described at length how Israel and its supporters have been smearing any and all critics of Israel as anti-Semites since the 1980s, even when they are anything but Jew-haters, as in the case of those above. It’s their only defence against the justifiable criticism and condemnation of Israel’s government for its crimes against the Palestinians. It’s hasbara, the Hebrew term for Israeli civilian propaganda. The campaign against Israel’s critics, including Corbyn, is run by a special department of the Israeli state. This is why one of those smeared as an anti-Semite is Cyril Chilson. Mr Chilson is the son of a Russian Red Army pilot and a holocaust survivor. He’s Israeli, and served in the IDF and then an intelligence unit producing such propaganda. It’s because of his work for the Israeli military that he recognised the attacks on Corbyn and his supporters for what it was, and denounced it. And as result, this man, the son of people whose resistance and survival of Nazism was truly heroic, has been smeared as a Jew-hater. Disgusting.
Thirdly, the Anglo-American media have been producing fake news about Venezuela and Syria. Some of the footage of refugees supposedly fleeing persecution by Maduro’s regime was faked. Independent experts analysing the footage and evidence of the chemical weapons attack at Douma have come to the conclusion that this was also faked. Assad is a monster, who has killed and tortured in order to maintain power, and he does oppress his country’s Sunni Muslim population. But it doesn’t look like he was responsible for that atrocity. That lies instead with the ‘freedom fighters’ – ahem- which we’re supporting. You know, groups connected with ISIS and what evolved from the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. But the neocons have been pushing for the overthrow of the Syrian regime since the 1990s, because Assad is a Shi’a, like the Iranian regime, although of a much more radical branch of that faith. He’s therefore allied to Iran, which the Americans also want to overthrow. See the pieces produced by the Jimmy Dore Show about this.
Cohen in his attack on the Canary for rightly rejecting the received view of these events is therefore parroting Neocon propaganda.
Zelo Street has written extensively about Stop Funding Fake News, exposing how it attacks decent left-wing social media sites, while at the same time remaining very shadowy itself. No-one knows who runs it, as their identities and connections are very much hidden. The Sage of Crewe has therefore advised companies not to be influenced by their misinformation and pronouncements, until they themselves become much more transparent.
And then there’s Private Eye’s hypocrisy for printing this drivel.
Ian Hislop, the magazine’s editor, appeared on Radio 4 a few years ago in a piece about satire down the centuries, explaining that what his magazine attacked was humbug, double standards. Private Eye is one of the few mainstream magazines that tries to bring the public the news behind the news, exposing double-dealing, lies and hypocrisy in the press, the government and industry. But publishing this attack on the Canary is very hypocritical, consisting as it does of nothing but lies and propaganda.
The Defunding of Arab Satirists Al-Hudood
And it’s especially hypocritical as a few pages before Cohen’s wretched piece, there’s a little article in the magazine’s ‘Street of Shame’ column, ‘Joke Now, Pay Later’, about how the Arabic satirical website, Al-Hudood, was experiencing a funding crisis. Metro Bank has told them it will no longer act as their bank, and they have not been able to find anyone else to do so. There has been no explanation from the banks for this refusal to deal with them.
This seems to be the same tactics Stop Funding Fake News are taking with the Canary and other left-wing bloggers and vloggers: try to take them down through preventing people from supporting them financially. Perhaps whichever oppressive regime or organisation has leant on the banks to withdraw their support for al-Hudood also considers that they’re ‘fake news’ and a dangerous, extremist organisation.
Private Eye does much good in its exposure of some of the underhand dealings in Britain and around the world. But this attack on the Canary is, like their attacks on Corbyn and his supporters, just pure hypocritical establishment lies.
Yesterday, the newspaper dubbed by Private Eye ‘the Absurder’ published an article in which the Community Security Trust upheld the great tradition of Zionist fanatics and Labour moderates and libeled 36 pro-Labour Tweeters ‘anti-Semites’. These people, who were not given any space to defend themselves, were denounced as Jew haters simply for attacking Rachel Riley, Tom Watson, and Luciana Berger, used the hashtag GTTO (= Get The Tories Out) and referred to al-Jazeera’s documentary ‘The Lobby’. They were also accused because they dared to point out that accusations of anti-Semitism were being weaponised and used to smear decent people. Shaun Lawson pointed this out in a series of tweets about it, and took apart the CST’s own mission statement. This proclaims that the organisation should ‘speak responsibly at all times, without exaggeration or political favour, on antisemitism and associated issues’ and commented ‘Folks: from a British Jew and grandson of a Holocaust survivor… you could’ve fooled me”. One of those named angrily replied that he could support everything he said about Luciana Berger with evidence, and wanted his name off the list.
Needless to say, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism was also sticking its oar in and attacking these Tweeters as anti-Semites. This is the same organisation that was deliberately set up to defend Israel from criticism after its bombing of Gaza.
After extensively critiquing the article, and showing very clearly that it doesn’t present any evidence that these people are really anti-Semites, rather than simply supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, Mike concludes
Without knowing their side of the story, this is not balanced reporting; it is a smear. From now on, my advice is: Treat the Observer as fake news and avoid anything said by the CST altogether.
Absolutely. The Groaniad and the Absurder have consistently done everything they could to attack Corbyn and his supporters. They supposedly represent the Labour ‘moderates’, which means the far-right Thatcherites, who still support Blair and the New Labour project. And as I’ve said several times before, the two newspapers have also very frequently urged their readers to vote for the Liberals and Lib Dems in general elections. With Boris Johnson down to a majority of one in parliament and Jo Swinson eager to present the Lib Dems as the real alternative to the Tories, while supporting all their policies except Brexit, it seems Kath Viner and her rags are now desperate to smear Labour again.
It also seems to me to be not coincidental that this rubbish was published just after Israel announced that it was going to build 6,000 homes for Jewish settlers but only 700 for Palestinians on the occupied West Bank. The I carried a report by Ilan Ben Zion in its issue for Thursday, 1st August 2019, on page 27. This ran
Israel has approved 700 homes for Palestinians in the West Bank – as it issued building permits for 6,000 new homes for Israeli settlers.
The announcement appears times to coincide with a visit by US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who is the White House’s chief Middle East envoy.
Mr Kushner kicked off a regional tour in Jordan yesterday to promote the Trump administration’s $50bn (£41bn) economic support plan for the Palestinians. The funds would accompany a new peace proposal, which has yet to be released – but which has been widely dismissed by Arab leaders as an attempt to bribe the Palestinians into submission.
The latest permits are for construction in what is known as Area C, which covers around 60 per cent of the West Bank where Israel exercises full control and where most Jewish settlements are located.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has approved the construction of tens of thousands of settler homes there, but permits for Palestinian construction are extremely rare. Israel captured the West Bank, along with East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.
Palestinians claim these areas as parts of a future state and most of the international community considers Israeli settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law and an impediment to a two-state solution in the region.
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said yesterday that Palestinians had the right to build on all territory occupied in 1967 without “a permit from anyone”.
Peace Now, an Israeli organisation opposed to West Bank settlements, said that the approval of 700 housing units for Palestinians “is a mockery” because it “will not provide real answers to Palestinians who already live in Area C, and certainly will not help the entire West Bank to be developed as a Palestinian area.”
Corbyn and Jackie Walker, the former vice-chair of Momentum and a Jewish critic of Israeli apartheid, have been jointly denounced by the Israelis as the second most dangerous threat to their country. Corbyn, and his supporters, like Jackie, Tony Greenstein, Mike, Martin Odoni and other decent anti-racists, have been accused of anti-Semitism by the Labour right and mendacious organisations like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism simply because they criticise Israel’s despicable maltreatment and dispossession of the Palestinians. The Electronic Intifada and Cyril Chilson, another victim of these smears, have pointed out the attacks on Corbyn in the Labour party are hasbara – state propaganda aimed at civilians – naming the department and the official responsible in Netanyahu’s wretched government.
It seems to me that the Israeli state and Zionist propaganda machine are now especially determined to destroy Corbyn and his supporters now that they are expanding their colonies in the Occupied Territories. And they, and their supporters in the British press and media establishment, are also desperate to smear Corbyn now that the Tories are down to a majority of one.
The CST’s and Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s latest attack in the Groaniad has zero to do with real anti-Semitism in the Labour party, and is really just another, desperate attempt by the Zionists to defend Israel. And the Lib Dem-supporting Graon is determined trash Labour and clear the way for the Lib Dems to continue the New Labour project of pushing Thatcherism while claiming to be somehow left-wing and progressive.
Asa Winstanley, a journalist with the pro-Palestinian website, The Electronic Intifada, has become yet another casualty in the Labour right’s attempts to silence critics of Israel. He was suspended from the party because of a Tweet he posted, which said
Israeli embassy proxy the JLM confirms it was responsible for the referencing of Labour to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for supposed “institutional antisemitism”.
Like other members of the party, who have similarly been suspended and smeared as anti-Semites, Winstanley only knew of this after it was published by the Jewish Chronicle, which also chose to reveal Winstanley’s private details. A hack from the Chronicle, Rosa Donerty, posted
It is understood that Asa Winstanley is suspended from Labour party pending investigation.
to which Winstanley commented that
The fact that a Jewish Chronicle journalist is claiming to be the first to know information, which would, if true, be confidential indicates attempts to politicise and compromise Labour’s disciplinary process.
And, as you might expect, the abuse started. Someone calling himself ‘Dr. Gonzo’ responded in classy fashion with
F**k off you anti-Semitic piece of s**t. Go play with the traffic you insufferable racist c**t.
Ali Abunimah’s article about this mentions that two years ago in 2017, lawyers from the Jewish Labour Movement, which has close ties with the Israeli embassy, tried to shut him down by threatening legal action.
Mike states in his piece about this latest vile attack on a critic of Israel that it resembles his own experience. He only heard that he had been suspended when someone phoned him up about it from the Welsh paper The Western Mail. Mike also agrees with Winstanley that the disclosure of the information to a third party may be a breach of the Data Protection Act. Mike’s currently taking the Party to court, and this is very definitely going to be a part of his case. And yes, Mike has also suffered vile abuse following the Labour party’s actions. Mike also makes the point that although the party describes its investigations procedure as quasi-judicial, it has no legal validity. This means that the party can be sued by members or former members, who have suffered harm to their reputations after their treatment by the party.
The Electronic Intifada’s article states that the complaints procedure was expected to become fairer with the appointment of Jenny Formby. It hasn’t. Mike concludes
But then, it seems the attitude of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee and complaint-handling “compliance unit” really hasn’t changed in the nearly two years since my case began.
They still treat the people who pay their wages with nothing but contempt.
I’m not surprised that the Labour party has accused Winstanley of anti-Semitism. As the Electronic Intifada’s article on him says, he’s been with them since 2015, and has appeared frequently on the various alternative news media discussing and commenting on Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians, and the Israel lobby’s attempts to silence opposition and dissent, with other journalists and activists. In a way, I’m just surprised that it took this long to get round to him.
I suspect the tweet about the Jewish Labour Movement being a front for the Israeli embassy got him into trouble because, as last Friday’s piece in the I by the United Synagogue’s Richard Verber shows, the Israel lobby is claiming that accusations that Jewish or other organisations are funded by Israel is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In some cases, it may well be. But the Jewish Labour Movement was founded in 2015, as its leader, Jeremy Newmark admitted in 2016, in order to fight opposition to Israel. It has strong ties to the Israeli embassy, as does Labour Friends of Israel, whose chair, Joan Ryan, hobnobbed nearly every day with disgraced conspirator Shai Masot. And six of the original eight founders of The Independent Group were members of the LFI, and they included that organisation’s chair. Which means that Ruth George was quite right when she tweeted that she wouldn’t blame anyone for suspecting that they were funded by the Israelis.
The accusation also shows how fake and contrived these accusations of anti-Semitism are. I’ve read many articles by Winstanley and the other journos at the Electronic Intifada, and absolutely none of them have been genuinely anti-Semitic in the real, legal sense of of expressing or trying to provoke hatred of Jews as Jews. Indeed, I believe from the tenor of the articles that the opposite is true. The articles have always been very well informed and precisely worded, so that the object of criticism has been the Israeli state and right-wing politicians, activists and Israeli racism in general. But never Jews or the Israelis as a people.
Which is why I’ve no doubt that the JLM is trying to silence him now. He’s too well-informed, accurate and reliable, and definitely not an anti-Semite. I wish Mr Winstanley every success in dealing with this vile calumny and give him my full and staunch support, as I do with everyone like him – Mike, Jackie Walker, Martin Odoni, Marc Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone. May they get re-instated soon, their names cleared, and those who besmirch them exposed and thrown out instead.
This is another great video from the Baltimore-based The Real News, posted on YouTube four days ago on the 25th February 2019. The news service’s host, Greg Wilpert, talks to Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada about Israeli meddling in British politics to smear and discredit Jeremy Corbyn.
The Campaign against Ilhan Omar and Leah Whitson
Wilpert reports that the same day that Ilhan Omar in the US was attacked for anti-Semitism for comments she made about her country’s Israel lobby, an orchestrated campaign was launched in Britain to smear Leah Whitson of the Middle East section of Human Rights Watch. She had tweeted ‘Why is Israel interference in British politics acceptable? Is it only a problem when Russia does this?’ She was talking about the al-Jazeera documentary about how Israeli politicians tried to delegitimise left-wing politicians, particularly in the Labour party. Then the eight Labour MPs split, accusing Corbyn of bad leadership on Brexit and anti-Semitism. The deputy leader, John McDonnell, said they were making a mistake and should hold bye-election. This is followed by a clip of McDonnell saying that they should remain in the party to fight their corner. But if they don’t, they lose Labour party support, and should hold an election.
Wilpert then introduces Winstanley, mentioning his recent article for the Electronic Intifada, ‘Yes, Of Course Israel Is Interfering in British Politics’. Wilpert states that Israel has allocated considerable funding for Hasbara -propaganda-operations through various channels. Hasbara groups are very media savvy and have coordinated attacks in America and Britain. He then asks Winstanley what they are trying to do. What would they gain by the sacking of Leah Whitson.
Winstanley replies that they have been doing a huge number of things over the years with various degrees of success and failure. Human rights watch has been a thorn in their sides for many years because Israel is a state that abuses human rights, and this is impossible for Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to ignore. Human Rights Watch puts out detailed information about human rights abuses in Israel, war crimes against Palestinians and injustices that Israel has always perpetuated against them.
Corbyn and the Labour Party
Wilpert then asks about what Israel is trying to achieve by smearing the Labour party with anti-Semitism. Winstanley replies that the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour party is a campaign by racists to smear anti-racists. It’s a complete inversion of reality. Which is not to say that there is no such thing as anti-Semitism in the Party, it’s a mass movement of half a million people according to the latest figures, so statistically there are going to be some anti-Semites. In the main all the headlines about anti-Semitism in the Labour party have been at best an exaggeration and in many cases outright fabrications. A narrative that pro-Israel groups in the UK have been pushing for the last 3 1/2 years in order to sabotage the Labour Party. There’s footage at this point of pro-Israel demonstrators, wrapped in the Israeli flag, standing around with megaphones. Winstanley states that the party’s left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has for many decades been a Palestine solidarity activist. It fits in with the Israel lobby’s decades-long strategy of accusing anyone who is involved in Palestine solidarity of being an anti-Semite.
Wilpert remarks that Corbyn seems to be taking a passive approach to these attacks and is not going on the offensive against pro-Israeli groups. that are trying to undermine him and his party’s electoral chances. He asks Winstanley why he thinks Corbyn’s taking this approach. Winstanley replies that he doesn’t know the answer, and believes that there are several different reasons. But Winstanley feels that essentially he feels boxed in and limited it what he can do. Corbyn’s support from the party’s grassroots always comes most strongly when he fights his corner, as he had done on so many issues. Unfortunately the issue of anti-Semitism goes straight to the heart of what it means to be an anti-racist popular movement. Jeremy Corbyn has a strong record in this regard for decades, and the accusations of racism really hurt and are having an effect. Anyone on the left, who doesn’t realise this is deluded, and there are too many people in denial about it. Smears and allegations of anti-Semitism are the main weapon of the anti-solidarity movement, and this needs to be faced up to before it can be combated.
Why No Official Investigations of Israeli Propaganda Groups?
Wilpert goes on to say that it isn’t just Corbyn, but the Israel/Palestine debate as been a major issue in British politics although Britain has not occupied Palestine for 71 years. Why doesn’t Britain investigate accusations of espionage by Israeli hasbara groups? And what do the eight former Labour MPs hope to achieve by going against the dominant political views of their own constituents? Winstanley replies that it’s an excellent question, and that when the al-Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’ first came out, showing Israeli interference primarily here in the UK, mainly in Labour but also in the Conservatives and others, the Labour Party’s initial response, even from people like Emily Thornberry, Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary, who was one of the Israelis’ supporters in parliament, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel, called for an investigation into ‘improper interference in British politics’. But this was not followed up and nothing came of it. And this week, with the defection of the eight, now nine, Labour MPs away from the party, all but one of whom joined this new group, called the Independent Group, a political party in all but name, the vast majority of whom were pro-Israel. Of the initial eight, six were listed as supporters of Labour Friends of Israel, and Ian Austin, who also resigned today [25th] is also a member of Labour Friends of Israel. This calls into question Labour Friends of Israel. If a number of its MPs are not in the Labour party, then what is it doing in the Labour party. In Winstanley’s opinion the NEC should proscribe this organisation. After all, it’s a front group for the Israeli embassy in the UK, and its activities really need to be investigated.
Ryan and the Theft of Labour Membership Details
We have also seen this week Joan Ryan, one of the MPs, who’s joined this Independent Group, she’s being accused of improper access to Labour Party members’ data. Winstanley doesn’t know the full details about this yet. It looks like she accessed Labour members private electoral data. With her known links to Israeli embassy agents, including the embassy spy, Shai Masot, who was expelled from our country in 2017 after being exposed by the al-Jazeera documentary, questions have to be asked. There should be an investigation by the British authorities into this. What is she doing with that data? and it is a completely fair question to ask if she’s sending it back to Israel. In the al-Jazeera documentary on America, one of the LFI’s members, Jon Rubin, said in his own words ‘Joan will talk to Shai most days.’ She was in close association with someone who was effectively an Israeli spy. Is she still talking to the Israeli embassy most days? This is a real question to ask, but the mainstream media aren’t going there.
This is another great video from left-wing YouTuber Gordon Dimmack expertly taking apart the new, Independent group of MPs, the Tory splitters who have joined them, and how they signal a possible return to politics of Tony Blair.
Yeah. Him. That monster. The man who killed Iraq.
He begins his video by talking about how he’s already done several other pieces on the Independents already. He points out that they aren’t a party, but a private company, and that this means that they don’t have to reveal their donors. They have, however, suggested that they might, just might, reveal the identities of people giving them over £7,500. He also says again that Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s remark that it might be racist or anti-Semitic to suggest, as Ruth George did, that the party’s funded by Israel is itself anti-Semitic. And he goes on to state that it’s obvious what the Independents are doing, considering who has just joined them: Joan Ryan.
He discusses how Ryan was accused of fabricating an accusation of anti-Semitism at a Labour party member in 2016, despite herself criticizing Jeremy Corbyn for anti-Semitism. He points his viewers to the Al-Jazeera documentary, ‘The Lobby’ and an accompanying article about it on the Electronic Intifada. Ryan was filmed by an undercover reporter fabricating her accusation against a pro-Palestinian activist, Jean Fitzpatrick, at the 2016 Labour party conference. The documentary also revealed Ryan discussing a million pounds of funding the Labour Friends of Israel were getting from Israel for junkets there with Israeli embassy official, Shai Masot. And six of the eight, who have split off from Labour were members of the LFI. The report also said that Ryan had said to him that she talked to Masot ‘most days’. This who Joan Ryan represents – not her constituency, but Israel. And by extension that’s who the Independent group also is. He’s sees no reason why anyone should have apologise for that.
Dimmack also angrily points out that Fitzpatrick, the woman smeared, had her membership suspended. She was later readmitted, but no apology was given. Ryan herself was totally unrepentant. Dimmack then angrily points out to the Labour party that if they allow this to happen – which it has, repeatedly – then people like him won’t join. He also asks the BBC if they don’t think that they should also discuss how Ryan falsely accused another Labour member of anti-Semitism in the two articles that they wrote about Ryan the day Dimmack posted his video, articles in which she continued making her claims about anti-Semitism. He states that not doing so is clear bias, and it’s not towards a party, but to another country.
He then moves on to talk about the three Tory splitters – Sarah Wollaston, Anna Soubry and Heidi Allen. Wollaston is fairly quiet, and generally toed the Tory party line. But she astonished people in January by tabling an amendment which, if it had gone through, would have resulted in a second referendum. So she’s pro-People’s Vote and a Remainer. Like Chuka Umunna. Heidi Allen is also a Remainer, as is Anna Soubry, who can’t open her mouth without saying ‘People’s Vote’. He plays a clip of a reporter asking the Tory splitter if the honourable thing wouldn’t be for them to call a bye-election. They respond by telling him that, no, they don’t think it would, because they think the British people are sick of elections. He points out how colossally hypocritical this is, when they want a second referendum after another the first, in 2016, which hasn’t been implemented yet.
He then posts up Anna Soubry’s ‘Bloody horrible’ voting record as published on a Tweet by Dave Ward. She was
For the Bedroom Tax
For reducing corporation tax
For £9,000 tuition fees.
For phasing out secure life tenancies
Against investigating the Gulf War
Against a banker’s bonus tax
Against increasing a tax on earnings over £150,000.
Ward says in his tweet: Any former Labour MP prepared to welcome someone with this record into their new party was never a Labour MP to begin with.
Dimmack says this comment applies to all seven of the Labour defectors. And their ‘centre’ party isn’t centre, it’s centre-right. He then puts up a picture of this voting bloc from Red Resistance, another tweeter, and comments that if this is the starting 11, how crappy must the subs bench be like? They’re also trying to get two other MPs to join them. One is Ian Austin, whom Dimmack wrongly identifies as a Tory, an MP who is currently suspended on a charge of sexual harassment. They’re already a laughing stock, now they want a creepy pervert to join them. And they also want Stephen Kinnock to join them, but this guy’s holding back, because his wife will probably say ‘No’. Dimmack then plays a video of Kinnock looking absolutely dismayed when the Labour party under Corbyn got 266 seats with Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Sound of Silence’ playing.
He then criticizes Lucian Borgia, I mean, Berger for her accusations of anti-Semitism. He admits that she has suffered genuine anti-Semitic abuse, for which two people have been to prison. But she points it in the wrong direction, towards Jeremy Corbyn, the most anti-racist MP in parliament. And the most pathetic thing about her is that she was parachuted into the safest of safe seats in Liverpool in 2005. When she was going out with Euan Blair. He thanks Craig Murray for highlighting that little fact.
And just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it can. Because there are rumours that Tony Blair will return to politics to lead it. And here he shows a photograph of Blair, with black irises in his eyes, looking absolutely evil in front of pile of human skulls. As an aside, he also mentions that when Chuka Umunna was asked which of Labour’s policies he disagreed with, he couldn’t name one. Dimmack declares that the Independents are a joke, and the only way he can see them getting through it is if Tony Blair comes back in a year or two’s time and stands to lead them.
Dimmack briefly returns to the point that the Independents are a company, not a party, so we don’t know who their donors are, but thanks to Krishnan Guru-Murthy, it’s anti-Semitic to say it could be Israel. And then he returns to the possibility of Blair returning to politics. He says that someone left it in a comment to one of his videos the previous day, and when he looked into it, he found others were taking it very seriously. And the possibility of this occurring gave him nightmares. Blair is a ‘fr***ing war criminal’, he says, but considering how awful the rest of them are, ‘a war criminal might fit right in’.
It’s a nice summation of how ridiculous, evil and pernicious the Independents are. But I think he missed the point about people not joining the Labour party because of the lack of consequences for those making false accusations of anti-Semitism. I think it is being done precisely to stop people like Dimmack joining, by a Blairite clique that is still in control of the party bureaucracy. Just as I follow Mike’s post today about Derek Hatton’s suspension from the Labour party for anti-Semitism being no accident. It’s another attempt to discourage genuine leftists, concerned with Israel’s brutality, from joining.
This is another video about the Israel lobby in the US from the Boston-based The Real News Network, posted on YouTube in March 2018. In it, presented Aaron Mate talks to Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada about Al-Jazeera’s documentary about America’s Israel lobby, and AIPAC’s efforts to suppress it.
AIPAC is one of the main pro-Israel lobbying organisations in the US. I’ve already put up a video by Dena Takruri of AJ+, YouTube’s companion channel to Al-Jazeera, of what she saw when she attended AIPAC’s annual conference way back in 2016. The conference was attended by all the presidential candidates, including Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, all pledging their total support for Israel. The only one, who didn’t attend, was Bernie Sanders.
The video opens with a clip of Democrat congressman Chuck Schumer making an incredibly ignorant speech at AIPAC, in which he claims that the reason why there isn’t peace between Israel and the Palestinians is because the Palestinians don’t have the Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament. They don’t want a Jewish state at all, and that’s because they don’t have the Torah, which supports it.
Mate states that this also reveals another reason why there is no peace between Israel and the Palestinians: liberal politicians in the US hold extremist position on Israel.
He then move on to talk about Al-Jazeera’s suppressed documentary about the US Israel lobby. After their documentary, The Lobby, which exposed officials at the Israel embassy in Britain conspiring with members of the British civil service to take down politicians that were insufficiently supportive of Israel, Al-Jazeera decided to make a similar documentary about the Israel lobby in the US. They sent undercover reporters into AIPAC and other organisations. Although the documentary they produced has not been released, the identities of the reporters themselves has become known. They were reported by the newspaper Haaretz in Israel, and some Jewish newspapers in the US.
Amongst other things, they found that the Neocon organization, the Foundation for the Defence of Democracies collaborates with the Israeli embassy and acts as a front for the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The documentary’s revelations are apparently so damaging to the Israel lobby, that they have sent a succession of their officials to Qatar. They haven’t said that they are trying to put pressure on the Qatari government to suppress the documentary, but it seems that this is what they’re doing.
The Foundation for the Defence of Democracies also spies on anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups and compiles lists of their members. Al-Jazeera also recorded its chief, Jonathan Schanzer, openly admitting that they smear critics of Israel and pro-Palestinian activists as anti-Semites as a weapon to defend Israel. However, he also says later in the video that this strategy is no longer as effective as it once was. Winstanley states that this is also damaging to the Israel lobby, as it wants to appear powerful and hegemonic.
Since the documentary was filmed, AIPAC and the other organisations have been trying to get the government to register Al-Jazeera as a foreign agent, in the same way that they forced, or tried to force, RT as an agent of Putin and the Russian government. But the FDD should also be forced to register because of its very strong links to the Israeli government. But there has been absolutely no moves to do so.
It’s clear that if the whole documentary was aired, it would be extremely damaging to the American Israel lobby and considerably embarrassing for the Israelis. It would seriously discredit their attacks on pro-Palestinian activists.
It’s particularly a pity that the clip of Jonathan Schanzer brazenly stating that they smear their opponents as anti-Semites hasn’t been shown. This should be posted up everywhere and go viral, as it would do immense damage not just to the American smear campaign, but also to its British counterpart against pro-Palestinian activists over here, and to Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour party.
‘Michelle’, another of the great commenters on this blog, sent me the link below to a report by Asa Winstanley in the Electronic Intifada on a forthcoming Al-Jazeera documentary exposing the activities of the Israel lobby in spying on anti-Israel activists in America, and their attempts to bring the United Arab Emirates into line with Israeli and American foreign policy. And, of course, suppress Al-Jazeera.
This is being done through the Neocon organisation, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, which is gathering the data of pro-Palestinian activists and the BDS movement in the US. The top civil servant at the Israeli Ministry of Strategy Affairs is Sima Vaknin-Gil, an Israeli army officer, whose boss is an ally of Netanyahu. The Ministry is in charge of propaganda against the BDS movement. Vaknin-Gil has said that she wants to create an army of pro-Israeli trolls to flood the internet, while being formally separate from the Israeli state.
The Foundation also receives funding from Sheldon Adelson, the American casion magnate, who makes it very clear that he stands for ‘Israel first’.
The documentary also shows pro-Israel lobbyist Max Adelstein, who works for AIPAC, the big pro-Israel lobby group in the US, boasting of how he is also working to bring the UAE into closer alignment with America and Israel.
The film also shows Jonathan Schanzer, the Senior Vice-President at the Foundation, telling his minions how they are to smear pro-Palestinian activists. And he reveals how the smears increasingly aren’t work. This part of the report says
According to the source, Schanzer admits to the undercover reporter that “BDS has taken everybody by surprise.”
He calls the response by Israel lobby groups “a complete mess,” adding, “I don’t think that anybody’s doing a good job. We’re not even doing a good job.”
According to the source, Schanzer laments that attempts to smear Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine as linked to extremist Islamic terrorism have failed to gain traction.
He is also said to regret that the Israel lobby’s habitual tactic of falsely alleging Palestine solidarity activists are motivated by anti-Jewish hatred is losing its impact.
“Personally I think anti-Semitism as a smear is not what it used to be,” he is said to tell the undercover reporter.
Schanzer’s views echo a secret report endorsed by the Israeli government and distributed to Israel lobby leaders last year. That report, a leaked copy of which was published by The Electronic Intifada, concludes that Israel’s efforts to stem the growth of the Palestine solidarity movement have largely failed.
And the Emirates’ links to the Trump administration are also being investigate by Robert Mueller, who is moving away from the supposed Russian influence to include them through their connections to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
It also discusses Al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, which showed Shai Masot conspiring with members of the Conservative and Labour parties. This new documentary was supposed to be shown five months ago, but has not yet come out.
The Israel lobby has also been active travelling to Qatar to get the film suppressed, and supposedly received assurances that it won’t, though the Qataris deny this. Al-Jazeera’s investigation has been decried by Noah Pollak, another Neocon, as a foreign espionage investigation on American soil. The Israel lobby is pressuring the US government to force Al-Jazeera to register as an arm of the Qatari government.
I am frankly completely unsurprised that the Neocons were up to their neck in this. The Neocon project always was a Zionist outfit. It all started with an article in the late ’60s by their chief ideologue, William Kristol, about ways to get the American public to back Israel. Which included the vast majority of Jewish Americans at the time, who were completely indifferent in Israel, a foreign country they had never seen and had no desire to emigrate to.
As for AIPAC, there’s more than a whiff of double standards here. One of the left-wing American news channels pointed out that FARA, the piece of American legislation dating from World War II, which demands that foreign lobbyists register with the US authorities, should cover them. But it doesn’t. Because of their very powerful influence since the 1950s.
What is encouraging, however, is Schanzer’s admission that the lies and smears he and his scummy friends have been directing against pro-Palestinian activists, that they’re all connected to Islamist terror groups, or anti-Semites, increasingly aren’t working.
And when they fail completely, how is this going to make McNichol and the kangaroo courts persecuting decent, anti-racists and campaigners against anti-Semitism, who’ve been libelled by the Israel lobby because of their anti-Israel activism, going to look?
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 