Robin Ramsay, the editor of the online parapolitics/conspiracies magazine, Lobster, has added a few new articles in his ‘View from the Bridge’ section for issue 78. One of these is about the media’s colossal, odious failure to present the real truth about the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party. Which is, basically, that the conspiracy theorists are exactly right and the whole thing is a disinformation campaign run from the Israeli embassy in London.
He begins by reporting the recent attacks on Labour for being anti-Semitic by Stephen Daisley in the Spectator, Philip Collins in the Times, and then the claim by James Cleverly, the Tory chairman, that British Jews are about to flee the UK in case Corbyn gets in. Because some Jewish friends of his told him so.
He then states that these are symptomatic of the failure of the media as a whole to tackle the real truth about these smears, and suggests why this might be so. He writes
These comments (and there were many similar in the first week of the election campaign) illustrate again the complete failure of the mainstream media to handle the Labour–is–anti-semitic operation run by the Israeli embassy in London and its assets. Why has the MSM failed so completely at this? Maybe one day some of those involved at editorial level will explain their thinking; but until then we can only speculate. Among the factors are:
* The story is too complex for the rolling 24 hour news culture and there are few journalists left in the MSM with the time to research complex stories.
* Anyone pursuing the story is going to be accused of anti-semitism or conspiracy theorising or both.
* To acknowledge the existence of the Israeli operations revealed by Al Jazeera’s covert filming, means acknowledging that the version of political reality offered by the MSM is partial at best, and false at worst. This also implies that British political journalists either don’t know what is going on or are too career-minded to stray beyond the carefully delineated boundaries of ‘serious’ or ‘respectable’ journalism.
He concludes by comparing the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby, with the Zapruder film in the way this has the potential to alter research into the real conspiracy behind the Corbyn smears. This would be similar to the way the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination has provided evidence supporting the idea that there was another shooter beside Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Al Jazeera films on ‘the lobby’ may eventually be a game-changer in the way that the 1975 showing of the Zapruder film on US TV was: after the Z film the official version that all the shots came from behind Kennedy became an absurdity. After ‘the lobby’ films no-one can seriously deny the existence of the Israel lobby.
For many people outside the milieu, the Kennedy assassination really is the archetypal modern conspiracy theory with various obsessives convinced that Oswald didn’t do it, and that it was all down to the CIA and American intelligence establishment instead. While I believe that there probably was another shooter and that the question of whether there was a wider conspiracy to kill Kennedy is a good one, Ramsey’s comparison may not be so convincing to others.
But he’s right about the conspiracy to remove Corbyn and the Israelis. The Israeli government does have an office that deals with attacking and smearing critics of the Israeli state for their brutal policies towards the Palestinians. Al-Jazeera did catch Shai Masot at the Israeli embassy trying to get a Tory minister removed from the government and replaced with Boris Johnson, because the minister, Alan Duncan, was too pro-Palestinian. And one of the Labour supporters smeared as an anti-Semite is Cyril Chilson, the son of a Holocaust survivor and Soviet airman, an Israeli, who worked in the IDF’s propaganda department. He was smeared because he recognised the libels as hasbara – the Israeli term for civilian propaganda, and called it as such.
As for the reasons the media isn’t calling it out, I think it’s probably a mixture of all three. Peter Oborne’s documentary for Channel 4’s Dispatches showed eleven years ago how the Israel lobby in this country would stop at nothing to destroy and smear critics of Israel. Independent Jewish monitoring groups were put under pressure to merge their magazines with Israeli state periodicals. Newspapers like the Guardian and its editor were accused by the Board of Deputies of anti-Semitism for accurately reporting atrocities committed by Israel and its allies, the Christian Phalange, in Lebanon. As was the Beeb and highly respected journalists like Orla Guerin when they did the same. They even tried to smear David Attenborough when he defended the Beeb’s Middle East correspondents.
The media are pushing lies by repeating these smears against Jeremy Corbyn, lies which have their origin in attempts by the Israeli state and its supporters to prevent the rise of a Labour government which genuinely wants a just peace between Israel and its indigenous Arab peoples.
Last week, Boris Johnson appointed Priti Patel to be the new Home Secretary. This is deeply ironic, as the thoroughly objectionable Patel was thrown out of the cabinet by Tweezer in 2017 after she was caught holding unscheduled meetings with Israeli ministers and supporting their objectives in the UK, purely on her own initiative. The woman, who is now in charge of British national security, is actually a threat to it.
This is not hyperbole. Israel is a foreign power, no matter how many Zionist fanatics claim criticism of it is offensive because it’s important to their sense of Jewish identity. It’s supposed to be a friendly country, but all too frequently doesn’t behave like one. Allied, friendly nations aren’t supposed to spy on each other. But Israel does. They were caught spying on British citizens back in the days of Thatcher. She, however, certainly didn’t tolerate it. Not only did she thoroughly reprimand the Israelis, she also threatened to have their spy base over here closed down and thrown out of the country. The Israelis duly apologised and stopped.
This was in complete contrast to what happened when they did the same under Blair. Instead of threatening to close them down, the war criminal gave them a mild reprimand, essentially a slap on the wrist. Possibly he was prevented from going further because the money that funded his office, and which allowed him to be independent of the trade unions he despised, was raised through Lord Levy, whom he had a met at a gathering of the Israeli embassy, and came from pro-Israeli businessmen.
And we’ve seen over here how the Israelis have absolutely no qualms in meddling in our politics with al-Jazeera’s revelations in their documentary, ‘The Lobby’. This caught Shai Masot, an official at the Israeli embassy, conspiring – and that is the right word – with a member of the civil service – to have Alan Duncan dropped from Tweezer’s cabinet because he was a supporter of the Palestinians. He was to be replaced with someone more supportive of the Israelis. Like Boris Johnson, whose name was most definitely mentioned. And then there’s the still murky links between Joan Ryan and Labour Friends of Israel and the Israeli embassy. Ryan was caught on camera stating that she’d been given a million pounds by the Israeli government, but didn’t say what the money was for. So what was it for? It’s an obvious deduction that the money was given to make the Labour party, or at least certain individuals within it, more pro-Israel. But, alas, we didn’t learn how, and asking questions of that sort gets you tarred as an anti-Semite. Even if it’s a fair question to ask of money coming into any political party, from any foreign government.
The Israelis are also known for carrying out assassinations and other intelligence operations abroad. A few years ago it was reported by the mainstream media that an Arab militant had apparently been shot by the Israeli intelligence services in one of the other Arab nations. The Beeb report made it clear that this was not an isolated incident. But the Israelis also aren’t afraid of carrying out such operations in friendly countries in Europe. Back in the 1990s the cops in one European country caught Israeli spies trying to snatch a Arab militant from a block of flats. I think it might have been in Switzerland, but a friend of mine tells me it was Sweden. Whatever. These idiots, who were less James Bond as Johnny English, decided that their operation should best be done under cover of darkness. So they cut the electricity to the entire building at the junction box. Sweden’s – or Switzerland’s – finest were alerted, and hurried round to throw the clowns into the party van. There was much anguished comment in the paper afterwards over how the Israeli security services, who once smuggled Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing Stalin to the West three days after it was made by the Russian president, could have fallen so low. How was it that such an efficient, highly professional organisation could now have become a bunch of bungling morons?
And I’ve also heard friend of friend stories from people in this country, which claim that they were spied upon by Mossad for their contacts with other Israelis. How much truth there is in these rumours I honestly don’t know. I’ve never asked the people concerned themselves, and it could just be paranoid rumour and nothing more. Like some of the stories about people being spied on by MI5, the CIA, the KGB or the Red Chinese or whoever. On the other hand, as the Israelis have been caught interfering in our politics and spying on us and other friendly nations, it could well be true.
By making these highly unofficial meetings with senior Israeli figures, Patel showed she was quite prepared to work with them outside the knowledge and permission of her own government. She was prepared to collaborate with them against her own government. And in appointing her to his cabinet, Boris Johnson has shown that he has absolutely no objection to his ministers operating in this way and that he will docilely accept Israeli interference in British domestic affairs, even when they undermine the normal processes of democracy.
Priti Patel is a threat to British national security and the personal safety of British citizens. Just as Boris is also ready either to look the other way, or willing comply with Israeli conduct that would be roundly condemned and prosecuted by other leaders and nations.
This is the second video put up on YouTube in March 2017 by Brighton and Hove Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement. In this first, Tony Greenstein, the veteran Jewish anti-racism and anti-Zionism activist, spoke about how false accusations of anti-Semitism were used by the Israel lobby to defend the indefensible – Israel’s brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians. In this video another great anti-racism activist, Jackie Walker, continues the theme.
Targeting Walker and Jeremy Corbyn
She begins by introducing herself as a life-long anti-racist activist, teacher, trainer and writer, and that as a young woman she was involved with SWAPO, the anti-apartheid movement in Namibia, and went on from that as a natural progression to supporting the Palestinians and criticism of Israel. She states that it is very clear from watching documentaries like the al-Jazeera film, the Lobby, that the reason her posts were so delved into and organisations like the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Labour Movement had such an attraction for her is because they target anyone, who is any way prominent (as a critic of Israel). She states that she’s only a minor figure, as Tony Greenstein keeps reminding her, but he’s right. And this shows the level of paranoia and resources that is going into the campaign against activists like her.
She says it’s no coincidence that they had no problem with anti-Semitism in the Labour Party until Jeremy Corbyn, one of the best-known anti-racists on the left, became leader of the Party. Can you imagine what happened in Tel Aviv, she asks the audience. She states that she will get into trouble for saying it, so she’ll say it again: accusations of anti-Semitism have become weaponised. It’s a weapon that doesn’t just affect individuals like her, but affects communities, families, Labour parties, and people who support the struggle to have better human rights. She states that she doesn’t have a problem with those on the Right and Zionists. They’re just doing their jobs. They’re our enemies. Her problem is with people, who are supposedly on the Left, who are actually undermining the campaign for justice in Palestine all the time.
The Alt-Right and Zionism
The reason Israel has put millions of pounds into undermining the BDS is not for no reason. It is a recognition of the fact that what’s happening in Gaza is being steadily raised. And as it is, we see this strange thing happening with international leaders who seem to be getting closer and closer to Israel. We see it in particular in America. And most people find that link between the Alt Right and support for Zionism very strange. But as an anti-racism campaigner, it makes total sense to her. All nationalist ideologies have more in common than things that separate them. Trump can speak a language that the Chair of the Board of Deputies of British Jews can understand, particularly when he supports Jewish settlements, or even now beginning to lay the groundwork for suggesting that the two-state solution is dead. And this plain-speaking at last may be a good thing. She thinks that for most of them this might clear the ground, as the establishment of Jewish settlements has shown that the two-state solution is unworkable. She says that as someone, who has relatives living in the settlements in Israel. ‘And let me tell you’, she states, ‘there’s no way those people are leaving’.
BDS a ‘Strategic Threat’ to Jews
Netanyahu has branded the BDS movement and people like them ‘a strategic threat’. They’re up there with Iran’s nuclear weapons, Hamas and no doubt a few other enemies of Israel. She finds it extraordinary that she, at the age of 63 and a grandmother of three, is up there with Hamas. It’s even more crazy in that the Wiesenthal Centre, who compile a list of the top ten threats to Jews in the world included Jeremy Corbyn and her at No. 2. Yes, she’s the No. 2 threat to Jews, not Hamas. This is why the campaign against them is led by the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and why they’re really gearing up on it. She makes it clear that it is not easy thing for her to resist what’s happening to her. She’s making light of it, but it’s destroyed her life, because she’s become that crazy woman who won’t be silent about the injustice she sees, or be bullied by them. She won’t allow people, who tell her that they want to see her put in a plastic bin and burnt, or put in a concentration camp, or call her any of the names they want to, silence her. And one of the reasons is that she has had racial abuse as a Black person for 63 years, and she’s got to that point you do when you get older when you can’t be a***ed any more. But she no longer has a job or young children to look after. She’s told her adult children to come off twitter so they don’t see what’s being said about their mother. She then tells the story about how she shared a platform in Norwich with a young teacher, who had the temerity to read out a poem that his children had written about children in Palestine. This man almost lost his job due to the wave of criticism that was sent to his headmaster. Every single time she goes to a meeting there are attempts to shut it down. This is even to the point that they had a security officer come into the middle of the room, as someone had said that there was a rabid racist speaking and it was going to cause trouble. This was one of the nicer techniques they use, along with the new definition of anti-Semitism, which makes it more difficult for people to speak out. This is what is happening to free speech.
The Left Particularly Under Attack
She goes on to address those of the audience, who are in the Labour Party, mentioning that she’s on her second suspension, and who think this is just a fringe problem. She asks them to think about, because it is people on the Left, who are being picked off, attacked and gagged. She is sure that had she gone quietly, they’d leave her alone. But she won’t go quietly, and there are things that are going to happen which people should look out for. Addressing the audience again, she says that those of them, who saw the film the Lobby will have seen the involvement of the Jewish Labour Movement. The Jewish Labour Movement have an affiliation with the Labour party for historical reasons, and are actively lobbying for all the changes that will come in at Conference this year. This will mean that any kind of criticism of Israel will become such a hot potato that it will become very hard to discuss it in the Constituency Labour Parties.
The Jewish Chronicle and the Other Papers
She goes on to make the point that her second suspension wasn’t for anti-Semitism, although she knows that the papers said it was. They lie. They lie in a very interesting way. She doesn’t think it’s a conspiracy, but what happens is that the Jewish Chronicle gets a story, runs it, and the other newspapers then run the same story. But they don’t come back to you to question it. They run exactly the same story. She also says, in reply to those, who’ve asked her why she hasn’t sued them, it’s because she’s not a millionaire. According to her lawyers it would cost half a million pounds to run something because of the type of case it would be, so if people would give her the money, she would be quite happy to run a case of defamation both against the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Deputies.
The JLM and the Labour Party
JLM are very much building up their position within the Labour party. She points out that you don’t actually have to be Jewish to be a member, and may be what needs to happen is that ‘you lot’, meaning the audience, should all join the JLM. And so there’s a question about the validity about the JLM being the voice of Jews. But what the JLM is, is a very effective voice of the Right. As such they now have a position on the NEC, and a position on the Equalities Subcommittee. That means that when people like herself and Greenstein are being suspended for being racist – because that’s all anti-Semitism is, there’s nothing special about anti-Semitism, it’s just racism, and every racism has its particularity – they’ll come up with their own ideas about what anti-Semitism is. She states that she would like to ask the Labour party, and has asked the Labour party about it, and it would be interesting to see their answer, that she was suspended the second time for comments she made at a training session. She asks the labour party if they have investigated who leaked that to the press, because it was during the Labour party conference and you couldn’t get in unless you were a party member. She has suggested that the person who brought the Labour party into disrepute was the person, who leaked that tape. There are also people, who think they know what that person was. But she hasn’t had a reply on that at all.
She concludes by telling her audience to keep their ears out, it’s an ongoing situation, they’re here in a struggle, they’re up against extraordinary forces, and she promises that, as insignificant as she is, so long as she can keep annoying them, she will keep buzzing.
Walker and Greenstein’s experience of being vilified, smeared and abused as anti-Semites is typical of those of the many other decent members of the Labour party, who’ve also been libeled as anti-Semites. And they’re also stymied in their campaigns to clear their name because of the huge expenses of the British judicial system. Jenny Randles, a UFO investigator, who was smeared with a different accusation connected with the world of UFOs, declared that the British legal system considers you guilty until declared rich, which aptly describes the situation. Mike and Tony Greenstein, however, have been helped by being able to start a crowdfunding appeal on the internet. But even so, considerable obstacles have been placed in their way of ever obtaining justice.
Walker’s revelation that, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, she and Corbyn are the number two threat to Jews around the world just shows how skewed and perverted the Zionist worldview is. That they consider two anti-racist older people, one of whom is a Jewish granny, a major threat to Jews above Hamas and many other explicitly anti-Semitic groups, is a twisted obscenity. I can remember the various documentaries celebrating Simon Wiesenthal when I was growing up. He was a Nazi hunter, and rightly admired and celebrated for bring people, who had perpetrated the most horrific crimes against humanity to justice. For the Wiesenthal Centre to mix entirely decent people like Walker and Corbyn in with real Nazis devalues Wiesenthal’s work, and should discredit the Centre itself.
And the various nationalisms certainly do have more in common with each other than differences. It’s why Alt Right figures like Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Milo Yiannopolis and the islamophobe Tommy Robinson have been welcomed in Israel. In fact the founder of the Alt Right has declared himself to be a ‘White Zionist’, and wants to create a White ethnostate in America the same as Israel is an ethnostate for Jews. Zionism is simply another form of racial nationalism, and so their enemies aren’t those on the extreme Right so much as the real anti-racists, and opponents of anti-Semitism, like Greenstein, Walker, Martin Odoni, Mike, Ken Livingstone and so many others. The Right has a near monopoly of the press, and even left-wing newspapers like the Guardian and the Mirror repeat the anti-Semitism lies and smears.
But the truth is coming out through the internet, and the more the establishment lies, the more people are increasingly seeing through them. And I hope this process goes on, until the press and the Israel lobby is completely discredited, and the reputations of those they have smeared vindicated and restored.
Verber then goes on two deal with two more conspiracy theories, which are ‘Israel Is Undermining British Democracy’ and ‘Twisting or Denying the Facts of the Holocaust’. Throughout the article, Verber appears sweetly reasonable. For example, of the first conspiracy theory he writes
It is healthy in any democracy to question foreign states’ actions. You can question whether Israel’s engagement is good for Britain, just as you might our relationship with the EU or the US. But these questions need to be rational and built on evidence, not an instinctive feeling that something “shady” is going on, just because it is Israel.
Form modern racists, Israel, as the world’s only Jewish state, has become code for “Jews” in general, whether they live there or have any links with it or not. “Israel” and “Jews” are not synonymous.
Which is true enough, but not the whole truth. People believe that Israel is meddling in this country’s affairs not out of anti-Semitism, but because it is. It was revealed doing so in the al-Jazeera documentary ‘The Lobby’, where Shai Masot of the Israel embassy was recorded conspiring to have Alan Duncan removed from the cabinet. It was also revealed doing so in Channel 4’s 2009 documentary on the Israel lobby by Peter Oborne, which described how the Israel lobby gave funding to MPs in the two parties’ ‘Friends of Israel’ organisations, how the Board itself had tried to close down impartial reporting of atrocities committed by Israel and its allies with grotesque accusations of anti-Semitism, and how Mossad had tried to have independent Jewish organisations recording anti-Semitic incidents merged with those backed by Israel. If they couldn’t do this, then they tried to shut them down. And then there’s the wealth of evidence about the Israelis directing all this from their Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the various Israeli funded organisations designed to push the pro-Israel view, like BICOM. As for Israel and Jews not being synonymous, here Verber is trying to have it both ways. Now many of the verbal attacks on Jews are sloppily worded criticisms of Israel. But Netanyahu himself has stated that Israel and the Jews are one and the same, and that by attacking Israel you are attacking the Jews. And this was long before he passed his wretched law declaring that Israel was the nation state of the Jews.
Verber gives as an example of this conspiracy theories Ruth George’s accusation that the Independent Group was funded by Israel. After briefly describing George’s comments and her apology, where she said she had invoked a conspiracy theory, Verber writes
It is absolutely legitimate to ask “who is funding The Independent Group”. UK political parties are obliged to to record the donations they receive. (The Independent Group has said that it will do this once it is a registered party). However, it is not legitimate to suggest – with no evidence at all – that “Israel” is secretly funding a new group, simply because some of its members are Jewish, and one of them previously chaired a Friends of Israel Group.
But it is fair to ask if Israel is funding them, because Joan Ryan, one of the chairs of Labour Friends of Israel, was recorded by al-Jazeera in their documentary stating that she talked to conspirator Shai Masot nearly every day and had secured a million pounds worth of funding from the Israeli government. No-one is accusing the Group of being funded by Israel because it contains some Jews. They’re accusing them because many of their members – six of the original eight – were members of Labour Friends of Israel. As for the Independent Group opening up their accounts, the question is – when? Saying they will eventually is simply a promise, and one that may well prove empty.
Once again, Verber uses fine words to twist the facts subtly and try to make a reasonable question look terribly anti-Semitic.
The Independent Group’s Joan Ryan is also in the pages of the I today, making the claim that there was no anti-Semitism in the Labour party until Jeremy Corbyn took over. This, as you would expect from Ryan, is simply a flat-out lie. Not only is Corbyn not an anti-Semite and the Labour party actually less anti-Semitic than the Tories, but the complaints and allegations of anti-Semitism began long before Corbyn took over. The whining started when Ed Miliband, who’s Jewish, was leader of the party, as CremantCommunarde has shown with his timeline of these lies and smears. And what provoked all these allegations against Miliband? He dared not to give his automatic backing to Israel. And cautious or qualified support is intolerable to the fanatics and totalitarians of Likud and the Israel lobby, who, like Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and every other wretched dictator and despot, demand absolute and unquestioning support and obedience.
There’s also another, personal dimension here as well. Ryan herself has shown that she can’t be trusted. She was shown manufacturing a fake allegation of anti-Semitism against another member of the Labour party, Jean Fitzpatrick, in the al-Jazeera documentary, The Lobby. But she’s completely unrepentant about the incident. Moreover, this is the woman, who was chair of Labour Friends of Israel, got hold of £1 million of funding from the Israelis, and who claimed to meet and talk to Shai Masot at the embassy most days. Masot was the Israeli official, who was sent home in disgrace after plotting to have Alan Duncan removed from the Tory cabinet.
Well, Ryan’s no longer a member of the Labour party, but her new group is also thoroughly democrapic. They talk a lot about democracy and but really absolutely despise it. They don’t want to hold bye-election, and are an incorporated company so they don’t have to reveal who their donors are.
Ryan is therefore a liar, whose word cannot be trusted, and there are questions to be asked about who is paying her to repeat these lies. Is she still receiving money from the Israelis? Does she still meet and talk with somebody from the Israeli embassy ‘most days’, as she did with Masot? These are reasonable questions, and we have a right to see them asked and answered. No matter what she might squeal about anti-Semitism, or how she and her equally duplicitous friends might try to hide their funding.
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.
Yesterday’s I also carried another interesting piece on page 9 by Adam Forrest, which reported claims that Chuka Umunna split off from Labour for no better reason than frustrated personal ambition. The piece ran
The shadow International Trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, has claimed that Chuka Umunna only helped to form The Independent Group because “he knew he could never be the leader of the Labour Party”.
Mr Gardiner accused Mr Umunna of being motivated by frustrated personal ambitions. “It was fairly clear to me that the reason he wanted to leave the Labour Party was he knew hye could never by the leader of the Labour Party,” he told Sky News.
Mr Gardiner also cast doubt on anti-Semitic abuse as a primary motivation for leaving the party. Several of the nine Labour MPs who quit last week cited the party’s failure to tackle the abuse as a reason for leaving.
Mr Gardiner said he was “deeply saddened” that one of the MPs, Luciana Berger, felt she had to leave over the harassment she suffered in her Liverpool Wavertree constituency.
“I have no time for the others at all, because actually their reasons are varied by different,” he said. “What I’m clear about is that I don’t believe that [anti-Semitism] is the sole focus of why they’ve left the Labour party.”
No, I don’t believe that they left solely because of anti-Semitism either. It’s more likely because, like Umunna, all of them are Blairite mediocrities. Umunna was asked by Sky News to name a Labour policy he disagreed with. He couldn’t. Or, as has been remarked, he daren’t because they’re all popular. As for Leslie, as I’ve said, in his interview with New Scientist he was against a 50 per cent tax rate, renationalisation of the utilities, and ending tuition fees. Angela Smith’s also for keeping the water industry private. And all of them don’t want to hold an inquiry into the Iraq invasion. And they were all, or nearly all, the subject of ‘no confidence’ votes or threatened with deselection. They were jumping before they were pushed. Six of the original eight were also members of Labour Friends of Israel. And by anti-Semitism, they almost certainly anti-Zionism, or simply criticism of Israel. They’re thus standard Blairite neoliberals and warmongers.
And I don’t doubt, that as Blairites, they’re getting money from Israel. Joan Ryan was caught by the undercover journo for al-Jazeera’s documentary, The Lobby, saying that she met Shai Masot, the disgraced official at the Israeli embassy, most days for discussions. And Blair himself was financed by the Israelis and the Israel lobby through Lord Levy, whom he met at a gathering at the Israeli embassy.
These are almost certainly the real reasons they left: an attempt to preserve Thatcherite capitalism, western, corporate driven imperialism, and the preservation of Israel from justifiable criticism. Everything else is simply lies and propaganda.
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.
With the departure of the Maleficent Seven, as they’ve been dubbed by left-wing vlogger Gordon Dimmack, the witch-hunters for anti-Semitism in the Labour party have been in full cry. Not only have they, and their most recent addition, Joan Ryan, been lying about there being a culture of bullying and anti-Semitism in the Labour party, but Margaret Hodge took it upon herself to accuse another Labour MP, Ruth George, of anti-Semitism.
Why?
Because George suggested that Umunna, Berger, Gapes, and co. could be funded by Israel.
George had posted this on Facebook:
Support from the State of Israel, which supports both Conservative and Labour ‘Friends of Israel’, of which Luciana [Berger] was chair, is possible and I would not condemn those who suggest it, especially when the group’s financial backers are not being revealed.
It’s important for democracy to know the financial backers for any political group or policy.
She later apologized, saying that she had not meant to invoke a conspiracy theory.
The incompetent, foul-mouthed and mendacious Margaret Hodge had appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme to denounce it as an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. This was at the prompting the interviewer, Evan Davies, who said, ‘Raising questions about finance and Jews is the no-no here?’. Furthermore, Hodge also claimed that criticizing America was also anti-Semitic, because of the power of the Israel lobby there. Which caused one of Mike’s fine commenters’ Jaws to gape open in absolutely astonishment.
But as Mike pointed out in his article on it, there was no anti-Semitism in George’s statement. She did not repeat the classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Jews, or a cabal of Jews, being the secret power behind world politics, or controlling the press, Hollywood, international finance or communism. She spoke simply about Israel. And Mike quotes the I.H.R.A. definition of anti-Semitism, which says that accusations of anti-Semitism can only be made about Jews, not the state of Israel.
He also makes the point that the Independent Group have formed themselves as a company, so they can avoid the electoral laws which demand they identify their backers. So Mike concludes that it is perfectly reasonable question whether the state of Israel is funding them. And we won’t know, and won’t be able to trust them, no matter who is funding them, until the Independent group actually open their books to show who their donors are.
But it’s also a good question for another reason. Gordon Dimmack, a left-wing broadcaster on YouTube, has pointed out in one of his videos that Luciana Borgia, sorry, Berger, was head of the Labour Friends of Israel. And the other six were all members. And the Israel lobby has form in interfering in British politics. Al-Jazeera filmed Shai Masot of the Israeli Embassy in their documentary, The Lobby, plotting with a Tory functionary about deciding who should be a member of the Tory cabinet. They wanted Alan Duncan out, because he’s a critic of the Israeli state’s brutal maltreatment of the Palestinians. Instead, he wanted him replaced by Boris Johnson, who was an absolute disaster as Foreign Secretary.
Many have people have pointed out that the campaign to smear the critics of Israel in the Labour party looks very much like hasbara, the Israeli term for their civilian propaganda. One of those was Cyril Chilson, a British citizen, who was formerly an Israeli. Chilson is Jewish, his mother was a Holocaust survivor, and his father a member of the Red Army, who participated in the Soviet liberation of the death camps. Mr Chilson served in the IDF, including part of their propaganda department. This man, who in no way should be regarded as an anti-Semite, recognized the accusations for what they were: Israeli psy-ops. And because he called it precisely what it was, the anti-Semitism smear machine swung into action, and called this son of heroic Jewish parents an anti-Semite.
Dimmack also goes further in one of his videos, and accuses the media people claiming that George’s question was anti-Semitic, of anti-Semitism in their turn. This includes Channel 4 News’ Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Murthy was one of those, who replied to George’s post claiming, or suggesting that she was an anti-Semite. But Dimmack points out that it is anti-Semitic to claim that all Jews share the same qualities or opinions. Murthy’s comment suggested that all British Jews were supporters of Israel, if he genuinely believes that criticizing Israel is anti-Semitic. But all British Jews very definitely don’t. The Jewish long-term critic of Israeli racism and general avowed foe of Fascism, Tony Greenstein, and other Jewish bloggers have made the point, over and again, that many Jews don’t support Israel. Many Orthodox Jews don’t, because they believe that Israel can only be refounded by the Lord through the Messiah, and until then they, as the Lord’s servant nation, are commanded to remain in exile. The Yiddish-speaking Jewish masses of eastern Europe, who backed the Bund, the Jewish Socialist party, followed its slogan of ‘Wherever We Are, There’s Our Homeland’. They wanted to remain in Poland, Lithuania and elsewhere as equal citizens with their gentile fellow-countrymen.
And the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has also joined in with the hysterical accusations of anti-Semitism, also doesn’t represent all Jewish Brits. It doesn’t represent Orthodox Jews, or the third of the Jewish community in Britain which is secular. It only represents the United Synagogue. And even there, it’s questionable who it represents. Its members are elected by their synagogues. But some of them don’t hold regular elections, as they have sitting members, while others don’t allow women to vote. And the Board explicitly defines itself as a Zionist organization in its constitution, so anti-Zionist Jews can’t become members.
George asked a perfectly reasonable question, and one to which she, and the rests of us are entitled to an answer. She wasn’t being anti-Semitic. But the real anti-Semitism comes from claiming that all Jews are supporters of Israel, with its accompanying accusation that those Jews, who don’t, are also self-hating anti-Semites. Repulsive!
Tony Greenstein has today put up on his blog a review of Karl Sabbagh’s The Anti-Semitism Wars: How the British Media Failed their Public, published by Skyscraper Publications. This is a full-scale attack on the anti-Semitism smears against the Labour party and particularly Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters, as well as the Israel lobby, the Jewish establishment, including former Chief Rabbi and Fascist marcher Jonathan Sacks, and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, who have been its promoters. The contributors include not only Sabbagh, but also Tony Greenstein himself, Cyril Chilson, Tom Suarez, Eve Mykytun, and Kerry-Ann Mendoza. This is about the way the Israel lobby and its various organs and supporters have vilified and tried to silence perfectly decent, anti-racist people, like Mike, simply for the crime of legitimately criticizing Israel, or defending those who have. And absurdly, many of those who’ve been smeared have been Jewish, like Greenstein and Chilson, a former Israeli officer, now naturalized British academic.
The first chapter, by Sabbagh, describes the beginning of the smears and witch hunt with Gordon Brown’s urging the Labour party to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the Zionist smears against Corbyn after he told two Zionist activists making a nuisance of themselves at a pro-Palestinian event that they didn’t understand the British sense of humour, and examining the role of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Jonathan Sacks in claiming that anti-Semitism was now on the rise in Britain.
Greenstein’s article covers his own suspension from the Labour party, but also argues that the anti-Semitism smears are part of concerted campaign by the Deep State. This is because the American, British and Israeli authorities see Corbyn as a threat. This campaign is being run through the Guardian, and particularly its columnist, Jonathan Freedland, who also writes for the Jewish Chronicle. Greenstein supports this claim by citing the book, Inside the Company about the CIA’s destabilization of South America by a former agent, Philip Agee. He also notes how the Beeb’s journo, John Tusa, also fronted stories from the Agency. He then goes on to describe the witch hunt against the Labour party in more detail.
Sabbagh is another victim of anti-Semitism smears. A medical journalist, his crime was to write an article describing the Deir Yassin massacre in 1981, just as a group of doctors were preparing to fly to Israel for the ‘medical Olympics’. Sabbagh wanted to warn people that the event may be held in an Israeli mental hospital, some of whose wards were the scene of the atrocity. He, the organization he worked for, and the medical journal which published the article were then subjected to a deluge of complaints and accusations of anti-Semitism chiefly from outraged Jewish doctors, beginning with the Israeli Medical Association.
This campaign of abuse, vilification and intimidation began again in 2008 against Dr Derek Summerfield when he dared to write an article in the British Medical Journal about the effects of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. The campaign was organized by the Zionist lobby group, HonestReporting.
Chilson describes his persecution and suspension from the Labour party, because he dared to post comments criticizing Israel on Twitter. It shows just what a farcical kangaroo court the disciplinary panel hearing his case was. Members of the panel interrupted his testimony, threatened to throw him out, and then were astonished at the end when he refused to agree that the hearing was fair!
Suarez’s chapter describes how the Israel lobby tried to shut down his lecture tour promoting his 2016 book, State of Terror: How Terrorism Created Modern Israel, describing atrocities by the Irgun and Lehi terrorist organisations. The campaign was joined and aided by the Israeli embassy and the Daily Heil, as well as the Jewish Chronicle and the Board of Directors of British Jews.
The book also includes a piece on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism by Appeal Court Judge Sir Stephen Sedley making it very clear that it isn’t fit for purpose.
Eve Mykytun’s article is an expose of the tactics the Israel lobby uses to silence its critics. This shows how the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its founder and leader, Gideon Falter, lies to smear people, and grossly misuses and inflates statistics. The article examines two cases of people, who hold genuinely anti-Semitic views, who were prosecuted by the state at the instigation of the CAA. Another, genuine anti-Semite, Gilad Atzmon, also appears, who asks what Jewishness means if Israel is a Jewish state, as well as attacking Falter for ‘making his living from anti-Semitism accusations’.
Chapter 8 is a transcript of Al-Jazeera’s programme, The Lobby, which exposed Shai Masot at the Israeli plotting to decide who should be in the cabinet, and Joan Ryan in the Labour party making a false accusation of anti-Semitism against another member.
Chapter 9 is an interview by Kerry-Ann Mendoza of Stephen Orszczuk, the foreign editor of Jewish News, one of the newspapers that combined with the Jewish Chronicle and another rag to smear Corbyn. Oryszczuk criticized this vilification, and went on leave from the paper soon after.
Chapter 10 comprises a report from the Committee for Privileges and Conduct of the House of Lords about an accusation of anti-Semitism against Baroness Tonge. She had chaired a meeting at the Palestine Return Centre as part of a campaign to obtain an apology from Britain for the Balfour Declaration.
There are also several appendices. The first is a collection of quotes from prominent Zionists about gentiles, which would definitely be considered anti-Semitic if non-Jews had made them about Jews. The third is an extract from the Media Reform Coalition report, Labour, Anti-Semitism and the News.
Greenstein concludes his report by saying that is packed with information, making it and will be a handy reference to the anti-Semitism smear campaign which all activists should have, and giving details how it can be ordered from him through his paypal account.
This looks like a very thorough exposure of the malign lies and racism of the Israel lobby and their smears of decent, anti-racist men and women. I’ve no doubt that the campaign of persecution against Corbyn and his supporters is being done by the Deep State, as Corbyn’s support of the Palestinians challenges British colonial and post-colonial policies towards supporting Israel against the secular Arab states in the Middle East. And many journalists and researchers have demonstrated how the smear and vilification campaign against Israel’s critics are being directed by the Israeli state and its Office of Strategic Affairs.
And the Zionists are also deeply racist. Mike found that out when they smeared him. When they couldn’t get the better of him in an argument he had with them over the Net, they resorted to sneering and belittling him as a non-Jew. They are also viciously anti-Semitic towards those they consider to be ‘the wrong Jews’. People like Tony Greenstein, Martin Odoni and Jackie Walker, who criticize Israel and follow the Bund’s line that Jews’ homelands are where they happen to live around the world with the non-Jewish peoples of that country. These Jews, who like Cyril Chilson may be the children of Holocaust survivors, are subject to the most disgusting abuse as ‘kapos’, and told that they and their families should have died in the Holocaust.
This is a book, which should be in the bookshops, instead of some of the mendacious books, like the one by a Zionist, that maintain the smears. But I doubt very much that it ever will be. The mere idea of this book being published at all is probably enough to send the Israel lobby, the Jewish press, the Board of Deputies and the corrupt British media establishment all howling with rage.
I fervently wish Karl Sabbagh, Tony Greenstein, Cyril Chilson, Kerry-Ann Mendoza and everyone else who contributed to it all the very best, and hope that it enjoys excellent sales. May it lead to further exposes and demolitions of the Lobby, its vile undermining of our democracy and political parties, and its attempts to create division and fear between Jews and gentiles.
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