I found another highly amusing video from GB News on YouTube the other day. It was so amusing I didn’t watch it, but just enjoyed its title. Because it was about the Scots comedian, Leo Kearse, getting terribly ‘frit’ as Thatcher would have said, about the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn might make a bid to be mayor of London.
If only.
This seems to follow a story in the Depress which came up on my internet news page last week, reporting that Corbyn’s supporters were urging him to try to return as party leader or something. It wasn’t clear quite what, but obviously all good, virtuous right-wingers who hate Mayor Sadiq Khan because he’s some horrible anti-White, anti-British leftie Muslim supremacist are also alarmed that Corbyn might try for the job. And evening more frightening, he might just get in.
Kearse himself has appeared on a number of right-wing media and news outlets. He’s been a regular guest on the Lotus Eaters and GB News, where he frequently appears on a spot where they analyse what the papers are saying. Sometimes there’s a point to what he’s saying, such as when he appeared in mock Nazi uniform as a representative of the ‘Love’ party to confront Scots minister Humza Yusuf. Yusuf and the SNP had passed legislation banning hate speech, but the boundaries of the law were set so wide, and the types of individual and groups so numerous, that Kearse and others took it as an assault on free speech. They saw it as totalitarian, and hence Kearse turned up as a Nazi to protest it. He marched around, stating that no-one could possibly object to what he and the ‘Love’ party stood for, because they represented love. Of course, the Love party didn’t exist, and this was a piece of satire directed against Yusuf and the SNP. Whatever you feel about the intention of the act – and I doubt very many decent people really want to tolerate abuse aimed at people simply because of their sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality, or disability, I do think he had a point in that legislating against hate speech really does threaten free speech. There’s the question of who defines what hate speech is, and that reasonable discussion and criticism of vital issues is limited and curtailed by well-,meant, but badly framed laws.
He also had a point when he attacked the Scottish university and its students, who had a young student of international law disciplined and attacked because she dared to question whether transwomen were women and stated that sex and gender were defined and based on biology. It might not be a point of view that the pro-trans lobby agrees with, but it is a reasonable one, and in my view, not bigoted, but simply common sense. Her freedom of speech and belief should have been protected, and I think that Kearse was right to defend her and mock the academics and students who tried to make her life a misery.
At other times Kearse is just boorish. He had some kind of debate on GB News with a young, feminist comedian, Smurthwaite. I forgotten what the subject of the debate was, but he peppered whatever he was saying about the topic with gibes about how nobody watches women’s football. It’s almost certainly true that the audience figures for the women’s game are lower than the men’s, but some of that is probably because it’s only within the past decade or so that the women’s game has been a broadcast sport on British television. It really took off in Italy back in the 1980s, when women’s games, according to a Beeb documentary, attracted crowds of 30-40,000. Also, the size of the viewing audience doesn’t actually say anything about the quality of the game itself. When women’s football began being broadcast, Private Eye’s TV critic remarked that the quality of the football was just as good, but with fewer ponytails. Other people have commented that while women don’t have the same physical power as men, they make up for it in being more skilled. Another comment I’ve heard is that they play a better game ’cause there’s less showing off. Having seen some prize examples of this during previous World Cups, I can believe it.
Eventually, Smurthwaite allowed that people weren’t watching women’s football, at which point Kearse cried exultantly, ‘At last, some truth!’ Which isn’t an argument, just boorish needling and sneering.
I’ve got a feeling that Kearse, like the Lotus Eaters and the rest of the lamestream media, including Private Eye, believes that Corbyn really is an anti-Semite and ‘far left’. The truth is ‘no’ on both counts. Corbyn wasn’t and isn’t anti-Semitic, just pro-Palestinian. He also had a proud record of standing up for Britain’s Jewish community and had a sizable number of Jewish supporters in the Labour party. But these were outside British Jewry’s right-wing establishment – the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the United Synagogue – who all took it upon themselves to vilify Corbyn as the latest incarnation of Nazi evil. As for being ‘far left’, Corbyn really stands for a return of the post-War consensus: nationalised public utilities, a properly nationalised and funded NHS, strong trade unions and a proper welfare state that gives people what they need to live on, instead of leaving to food banks or choosing between whether they want to eat or heat their homes.
This strikes me as far more frightening to the Tories than Communism or Trotskyism because it’s far more realistic. It gave the British people a rising standard of living for three decades until the election of Maggie Thatcher. And if it returns and shows itself to be popular and successful. it will have shown the Thatcherite experiment to be what it is – a dismal, malign failure.
And that scares the living daylights out of the political, economic and media elite. Hence the desperate scramble to vilify Corbyn in any way possible, and the absolute terror in right-wingers like Kearse that he might return.
And worse, become mayor of England’s capital. Where he actually would do something for the working man or woman, rather than deceive them with lies about Brexit and cutting taxes.
The conspiracy and parapolitics magazine :Lobster has a new website with a different format. But fortunately it’s still publishing very informed news and comments about the covert political machinations that are rarely reported in the mainstream press, and which the mainstream media and the political establishment would quite often very much like to hush up. And one of these pieces of news, as discussed in the ‘News from the Bridge’ column in the magazine’s current issue, is that Lord Levy is once again abroad in the Labour party obtaining Israeli money for the Labour party. This was the situation about a quarter of a century ago after Blair bumped into Levy at a social gathering at the Israeli embassy. Levy arranged for Blair to get funding from the Israelis and Zionist Jewish businessmen in Britain. This allowed the future war criminal to stay independent of the union’s funding and pursue his programme of turning Labour into a centre-right party based on Thatcherism.
Rather more interesting, however, is the article’s remarks about the current state of the Labour party’s finances. These have declined drastically from the heady days when Corbyn was its leader. Then the party had a membership so large it dwarfed the Tories, making it the largest socialist party in Europe. Its finances were correspondingly extremely healthy too, as these members supported the party through their subscriptions. The Blairites’ campaign to purge the party of socialists and critics of Israel has resulted in a catastrophic fall in membership through decent people being smeared and thrown out of the party as anti-Semites, and other, left-wing members simply walking away due to the Blairites and Starmer taking the party sharply to the right. And they’ve made it very clear that they don’t want traditional Labour people as supporters and activists, as they regard them as Commies, Trotskyites and worse. No, they want to make the party safe for nice Thatcherite neoliberals, who will make the right noises about combating racism, prejudice and so on without necessarily doing anything about them.
But it seems that the loss of the party’s members isn’t the only the reason Labour’s finances are in trouble. Apparently, much of its finances is going to pay the lawyers for their role in defending the party from legal action brought about by the purges. This is no doubt one of the reasons that I, and doubtless other remaining Labour party members, get emails and letters from the party every so often begging for donations. I haven’t responded to them for a number of reasons, one of which is that the party wouldn’t be in its dire financial situation if it hadn’t treated its mass membership and supporters with such absolute contempt that they were either driven out or simply resigned because its leadership no longer represented them.
And there’s an additional racial factor in all this. Very many of the people smeared as anti-Semites and purged were Jews. There are statistics arguing that Jews formed the majority. These were decent, self-respecting folk, who were targeted simply because they didn’t toe the line on supporting Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians. This is sectarian anti-Semitism. It came from that section of the Jewish community which fancies itself as British Jewry’s ‘establishment’ – the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Chief Rabbinate and such rags as the Jewish Chronicle. In fact, as Jewish bloggers and commenters have made very clear, these organisations represent only a declining fraction of the Jewish community. The Board of Deputies really only represents the United Synagogue, whose members also included some of the journos attacking Corbyn in the lamestream media. The I‘s writer, Simon Kellner, was one such, and there were other writers, who appeared in the papers after whom was the note so-and-so ‘is a member of the United Synagogue’. In the fact the Jewish community is as diverse in its members religious and political views as just about everyone else in British society generally. From what I understand, Judaism never has and isn’t a monolithic community and the only people who’ve ever claimed it is are genuine anti-Semites, like the Nazis.
The definition of anti-Semitism the witch-hunters use conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. But the best definition of anti-Semitism is simply hatred of Jews simply for being Jews, regardless of politics or race. And I’m dam’ sure that the Jews purged as anti-Semites by David Evans and Starmer are very aware and have more knowledge of real anti-Semitism than they’d like. Many of them are the victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and violence, or they lost family members in the Holocaust. I read somewhere, I’ve forgotten where, that half of British Jews had relatives murdered by the Nazis. This makes a mockery of the party’s policy of demanding those suspended for anti-Semitism to attend retraining on it by groups like the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion.
One of the latest victims of the purges is Jonathan Rosenhead, emeritus professor operations at the London School of Economics. Prof. Rosenhead is Jewish, but that hasn’t stopped the apparatchiks of suspending him for anti-Semitism. They’ve also told him that, despite his lifetime of political activism and his ethnicity/ religion, he has to go for compulsory retraining so he can be told how to think about anti-Semitism. I suspect that Prof Rosenhead could probably give the fanatics running the retraining course lessons on anti-Semitism, what it is, how it arises and how it must be fought, rather than have to listen to their nonsense.
The Lobster article, in fact, gives decent people two reasons not to donate to the Labour party. One is that the money from those donations are going the party’s official, sectarian anti-Semitism in smearing and purging Jewish members, as well as decent gentiles. The other is that the donations are going to the lawyers who fought the party’s victims when they tried to seek justice through the courts. People like Mike, for example, who tried to sue them for breach of contract.
As far as I’m concerned, these are reasons enough to want to tell Starmer or whoever where to stick it the next time they send a message appealing for donations.
They are in this financial mess because of their hostility and persecution of decent people, and I object to being asked to collude in this persecution by funding their legal team. If they need to pay their legal expenses, then they should do what their victims have been forced to do. They should pay it out of their own personal finances, rather than expect the very members they despise to do it for them.
I’ve been meaning to put up something about this ever since I got the wretched message from the Labour’s party’s wretched Disputes Team in the Governance and Legal Unit, but didn’t get round to doing so. As some of you may remember, I got a series of emails from the Disputes Team or whoever a little while ago telling me that I was being investigated for anti-Semitism because of a particular blog post. Naturally I argued very strongly against the accusation, and demanded to know the identity of my accusers as per natural justice in a British court of law. I was told they wouldn’t divulge that information, and Labour party investigations aren’t part of the British justice system. This is very true, as the principles of justice that are supposed to animate our legal system are completely foreign to it, as numerous people falsely accused of anti-Semitism can attest.
Several months later, on the 22nd March of this year, 2022, I got the following email from the Labour party. They decided that I had contravened the provisions on anti-Semitism and racism in the party, and that this was hampering the party’s fight against racism! But they haven’t expelled me. No, I’ve been issued with a formal warning, which will stay on my record for 18 months. Here’s the text of their message
‘
Notice of Outcome of Investigation: Formal Warning
We are writing to inform you that the Labour Party (the Party) has concluded its investigation into the allegation that you had breached Chapter 2, Clause I.11 of the Party’s Rule Book (the Rules).
A panel of the National Executive Committee (the NEC Panel) met on 18 March 2022 and considered all of the evidence that the Party put to you and any evidence submitted by you in response.
Summary of the Findings of the NEC Panel
The NEC Panel found on the balance of probabilities, that you posted an article on your blog on 05 December 2020.
The NEC Panel concluded that your conduct was in breach of Chapter 2 Clause I.11 of the Rules. In particular, your conduct undermined the Labour Party’s ability to campaign against racism. In coming to this conclusion, the NEC Panel considered that your conduct contravened the provisions of the Code of Conduct: Antisemitism and other forms of racism.
Taking into account all relevant evidence the NEC Panel concluded that the appropriate outcome is to issue you with this Formal Warning pursuant to Chapter 2, Clause I.1.D.iii of the Rules.
The NEC Panel wishes to make clear that your conduct has fallen short of the high standards expected of Party members and to remind you of the importance of behaving consistently with the Rules and Codes of Conduct at all times.
This Formal Warning will remain on your Labour Party membership record for a period of 18 months. If you commit any further breach of the Rules during that period, an NEC Panel may take this Reminder of Conduct and the behaviour that led to it into account in dealing with that breach.
Consequently, any restrictions that the Party may have imposed on your membership rights pending the outcome of this investigation have now ended. This includes any administrative suspension of your membership that may have been in place.
Conduct Expected of Labour Party Members
The Party expects you, in common with all members, to engage in civil, measured discourse, online and offline.
It also expect members to conduct themselves in a manner that avoids any discrimination or harassment on grounds of race, religion or any other protected characteristic inside the party and in wider society and support, and not to undermine, the Labour Party’s ability to campaign against all forms of racism and prejudice.
Members of the Party agree not to engage in any conduct that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Labour Party. This includes any conduct that demonstrates hostility or prejudice based on a protected characteristic; sexual harassment; bullying or intimidation; and unauthorised disclosure of confidential information.
Members must also comply with the provisions of the NEC’s Codes of Conduct, which are publicly available online here:
The Party urges you to read the NEC’s Codes of Conduct carefully and bear them in mind whenever you are involved in Labour Party activities and in discussion and debate, online and offline, about political issues and ideas.
Yours sincerely,
Disputes Team
Governance and Legal Unit
The Labour Party
c.c.
Labour South West’
I’ve been late posting anything up about this because my reaction to it is that of Catherine Tate’s schoolgirl Lauren: ‘Am I bovvered? Do I look bovvered? I ain’t bovvered’. I was expecting to be thrown out, as so many excellent people have been before me. Indeed, considering the calibre of people purged or accused of alleged anti-Semitism, like Mike, Martin Odoni, Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein, Mark Chilson, Marc Wadsworth, Asa Winstanley, Moshe Machover and far too many others, it’s almost a badge of honour to be included with them.
None of them are or have been in any way racist or anti-Semitic. And neither was the blog post that so offended someone that they felt they just had to complain about me. The post criticised Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. This is the state of Israel, not Jews and not Israelis either. Through reading material by Jews critical of Israel, like Tony Greenstein’s and David Rosenberg’s blogs, as well as Ilan Pappe’s 12 Myths About Israel, as well as online presentations by the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, it’s massively apparent that there are very many Jews and Israelis who despise the Israeli state’s decades long ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Arabs. The Jewish people have never been a homogenous, monolithic group. The Talmud, Judaism’s second holy book, contains the records of disputes over the Law by the sages and great rabbis of antiquity. Quite often these disputes ended with ‘and so they differed’. It’s no different today. There is a wide diversity in Jewish belief, observance and political and social attitudes, just as there is in every community. However, former president Netanyahu and the Israel lobby would like us all to believe that all Jews everywhere are citizens of Israel and passionately support it, to the extent that any criticism of the country is a terrible assault on their identity. Which isn’t necessarily the case. American Jewish young people are becoming increasingly less interested, even opposed, to Israel. One American Jewish vlogger put up a video stating that he found it ridiculous that he somehow had a right to settle in a country he’d never visited – he came from Anchorage, Alaska, while his Palestinian friend, who was born there, was forbidden to return. In fact, far from speaking for the majority of British Jews, organisations like the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbinate don’t speak for anyone except the United Synagogue, which is only one of a variety of Jewish denominations. But the Board and the Chief Rabbis were very vocal in the anti-Semitism smear campaign against the Labour party and specifically against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters. Despite the sectarian nature of their support, they did their level best to present themselves falsely as the true voice of British Jews, speaking for the majority.
As for the specific charges against me, I was accused of anti-Semitism because I said that before the Second World War Zionism was a minority position among European Jews. It was. Pappe’s book, and Tony Greenstein’s and David Rosenberg’s blogs have made it very clear that it was, quoting chapter and verse from scholarly studies of Jewish history. The majority of European Jews wished to remain proud citizens of the countries in which they were born, with equal rights and respect as their gentile fellow countrymen. Ditto for Jewish Americans. As late as 1969 one of the Jewish Zionist magazines lamented that there was little interested in Israel among Jewish Americans.
My anonymous accusers also disliked me stating that all ideologies should be open to examination and criticism. Well, they should. There is nothing anti-Semitic in that. It’s one of the cornerstones of real political freedom. Presumably this alarmed them because it means that Zionism should also be examined and criticised. Which is true. Zionism, as I’ve also pointed out, is a political ideology. It is not synonymous with Jews or Judaism. In fact for many years it was just the opposite. The return of the Jews to Israel was first proposed by Christians wishing to hasten Christ’s return, long before Theodor Herzl and Jewish Zionism. Even now the largest Zionist group in America is Pastor Ted Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. It was also supported by real anti-Semites, like Richard Wagner and the various European Fascist parties before the Second World War as a way of removing them from their countries.
I also blotted my copybook defending awkward historical facts, which had resulted in the witch-hunters accusing other Labour party members of anti-Semitism. Ken Livingstone was smeared and then thrown out as an anti-Semite, because the Commie newt-fancier dared to state that Hitler supported Zionism. This is factually correct. It was the short-lived Ha’avara Agreement, in which the Nazis covertly supported the smuggling of Jewish Germans to Palestine. It’s in mainstream histories of Nazism and the Jews, and is mentioned on the website of the Holocaust Museum at Yad Vashem. But it does not support the myth the Zionists have constructed to present themselves as devoid of any collaboration with the Nazis.
Now let’s dismantle the Labour party’s statement that, because of my blog post criticising Zionism, I am harming the party’s efforts to fight racism. The simple answer is ‘No’, to the point where recent events in the Labour party make this sound like a sick, unfunny joke. The majority of the witch-hunt’s victims have been self-respecting Jews like Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, to the point that they comprise 4/5 of those purged. From this angle, it very much looks like it’s the witch hunters who are motivated by a sectarian anti-Jewish prejudice. Because peeps like Jackie and Tony ain’t the right kind of Jews. Marc Wadsworth, another victim, is Black and has campaigned tirelessly against racism. He got Stephen Lawrence’s family to meet Nelson Mandela, and in the ’80s worked with the Board to put in place legislation against real anti-Semitic attacks by the BNP in the East End. But they accused him of anti-Semitism and so had him purged.
At the moment, the Labour party is losing many of its Black and Asian members. Some of this is undoubtedly for the same reasons the party’s losing members generally: the party no longer represents the genuinely popular polices put forward by Jeremy Corbyn, policies that inspired so many to join the party that under Corbyn’s leadership it became the largest socialist party in Europe. But there’s also been a rise in anti-Black and anti-Asian racism in the Labour party as well as islamophobia under Starmer. Black and Asian MPs and activists like Diane Abbott were bullied and racially abused. One third of Muslim members say they have encountered islamophobia. But Starmer has done absolutely nothing about this. And the reason is simple:
He doesn’t care.
Starmer describes himself as ‘100 per cent Zionist’. The people he wishes to appease is the Israel lobby, and so avoid the same charges of anti-Semitism that brought down Corbyn. He does not seem to care about racism against Blacks or Asians or hostility and prejudice against Muslims. And the party’s attitude to what it considers to be anti-Semitic is highly partisan.
Starmer has been using fake charges of anti-Semitism to purge the Labour left, and so make the Blairite grip on it permanent and unchallengeable. Blair did something similar when he was in power. He ignored the left and traditional Labour voters in favour of middle class, Thatcherite swing voters. He assumed that traditional Labour voters and supporters would continue supporting the party because they had nowhere else to go. As a result, many Labour supporters stopped voting, so that even when he won elections, the percentage of people voting Labour actually declined. Some of the party’s working class supporters may have gone over to UKIP, whose supporters were largely older working class Whites who felt left behind and ignored by the existing parties.
And today there are a number of competing parties. A poll a few months ago found that there would be massive support for a new party led by Jeremy Corbyn. A number of left-wing organisations are considering allying to form a competing party, not to mention the Trades Union and Socialist Alliance, which has been around for years. And the Green Party is also growing in popularity. At the moment it’s only just behind Labour in the number of seats it holds on Bristol city council. I’m sure it’s similar in other cities up and down the country.
Starmer’s playing a very dangerous game with his purges, because rather than people keeping on voting and joining Labour because there’s nowhere else, they may very well join or set up rival parties.
This could destroy the Labour party, but I really doubt Starmer and his allies care, just as long as they retain control of the party. And it doesn’t matter how many decent people they purge and smear as anti-Semites, Communists, Trotskyites or whatever.
I had a couple of commenters come over here a few days ago to give me the benefit of their views on my article about Gary Spedding getting suspended. Spedding was all too keen to have decent people suspended and expelled on trumped up anti-Semitism charges, but has now changed his tune somewhat now that he has met the same fate. He’s been accused of passing around Green party material during the Hartlepool election. Thus Spedding now would like to offer his solidarity with others. Except when Mike asked him for an apology for calling him an anti-Semite and holocaust denier, Spedding asked why he would want to apologise to him. He hasn’t learned anything, hasn’t really changed his views. He just wants sympathy and so deserves everything he gets.
One of the commenters on my article about this said that I had a conspiratorial attitude, and a problem with people who had genuine concerns about anti-Semitism, particularly Jews. Another left a snarky comment stating that I believed all the anti-Semitic libels against the people I term ultra-Zionists, ‘who just happen to be Jews’. I deleted that comment because, sarcastic as it was, I didn’t want the anti-Semitic smears to appear on my blog, as well as the fact that I couldn’t be bother to argue against such nonsense.
In fact there is abundant evidence to show that all the anti-Semitism comes from the Labour party witch-hunters. It’s sectarian anti-Semitism directed primarily against the people that threaten the Board of Deputies’ very narrow definition of British Jewry: people like them from the United Synagogue, who wholeheartedly support Israel and demand the suppression of any reporting of its atrocities against the Palestinians. Neoliberals who support Blair and fear the revival of socialism in the Labour party, and so joined the rest of the Conservatives in looking for a way to smear Corbyn and his supporters.
Four-fifths of the people accused of anti-Semitism are Jews. They’re supposed to be self-hating. This is risible, a sick joke. There are, unfortunately, self-hating Jews. I found an academic book about the phenomenon once in the university library. In some extreme cases, they pretend to be Aryans and join neo-Nazi groups. There was a case in the ’90s of one such individual, who was the head of a neo-Nazi unit. He took his own life after being outed to his storm troopers. But none of the peeps Starmer and Evans are suspending for anti-Semitism seem even remotely like this. They look to me like decent, self-respecting, secular and Torah-observant Jews. Many of them have been victims of real anti-Semitic abuse and assault, as I’ve said ad nauseam. They’re being smeared and expelled instead because they’re socialists, supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, who criticise Israel’s barbaric ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. And this week, Starmer’s NEC suspended and smeared 11 more Jewish victims: Leah Levane, Jenny Manson, Graham Bash, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Mike Cushman, Glyn Secker, Jonathan Rosenhead, Stephen Marks, Diana Neslen, Marion Roberts, Tony Booth. Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi is one of the leading figures in Jewish Voice for Labour, which one right-wing Labour MP tweeted should be expelled en masse along with other ‘commies’. Graham Bash is a well-respected Labour member and activist of very long standing. But they’re the ‘wrong kind of Jews’.
The Blairites running these purges make great use of the fact that real Nazis and Fascists identified Jews with capitalism, and so have accused anyone attacking big business or the financial sector of being anti-Semitic. But the Nazis also believed Jews were responsible for Communism and ‘Marxist’ socialism. I’m afraid I haven’t been able to find the exact quote, but in the 1920s/30s Nazi propaganda against the SPD, the mainstream German socialist party roughly like the Labour party, was that it had been taken over by Jews. The Jews had conspired to get elected as delegates to the Reichstag and were busy expelling non-Jews from the party so they could replace them. It’s a nasty, vile piece of propaganda. And now we see something rather like it with the anti-Semitism smears. The smear merchants are claiming that the wrong type of Jews, commies and pinko lefties, are trying to take over the Labour party to oust virtuous believers in capitalism and Maggie Thatcher, and so must be purged.
But the anti-Semitism smears and lies are just one part of this general purge by Keef Stalin against the left. If he can’t smear his opponents as anti-Semites, he suspends them anyway, with no reason given. We’ve seen this with the sudden suspension of delegates to the Labour conference which begins tomorrow. It seems to be simply a method to remove delegates, who would vote out general secretary David Evans, the vile individual chiefly responsible for the purges and smear campaign within Labour. The victims haven’t been given reasons, just suspended. This is arbitrary government, the mark of the tyrant. It shows that Starmer and the NEC cannot be trusted and should not be allowed in government.
Because if they break the internal regulations of the Labour party, how much worse would they be if they felt they could break the laws of our great and beautiful country with impunity? And what would they do to real socialists, especially our Jewish brothers and sisters, if they had the power of the state?
Starmer’s continuing purge of the Labour left, and especially left-wing Jews critical of Israel, is meeting resistance. As Mike put up yesterday, Pamela Fitzpatrick has put the bargain basement Stalin on notice that she may take legal action against the Labour party for her ‘autoexclusion’. Starmer wants to expel because last year she gave an interview to Socialist Appeal, one of the four groups he wants to expel from the Labour party. But this was at a time when Socialist Appeal was still perfectly acceptable. This is retroactive justice, the criminalisation of individuals and groups for actions that were perfectly legal at the time they were committed. It’s a hallmark of tyrannies and dictatorships from Nazi Germany to Stalin’s Russia, as Fitzpatrick herself has pointed out. She tweeted
I am starting to wonder, given my line of work, as to whether the practice of introducing laws with retrospective effect, the presumption of guilt until proven innocent, the denial of appeal rights and lack of fair process is to be future Labour policy for our justice system.
This is, of course, grossly hypocritical coming from Starmer. As Steve Sammut pointed out, between 1986 and 1988 Starmer was editor of Socialist Alternatives, a magazine published by the International Marxist Tendency. Labour Party Marxists are another group Starmer has decided to expel, despite the fact that, unlike Militant Tendency in the 1980s, I’ve seen zero evidence that they are an entryist group trying to take over the party. Indeed, many of the socialist societies that came together to form the Labour party were either Marxist or Marxist influenced. And when the scandal about Militant hit Labour in the 1980s, the Swedish Social Democrats responded by saying that they had absolutely no problem with the Marxists remaining in their party, providing that they didn’t engage in those tactics. These tactics, used to subvert democracy in the party, have been taken over and applied wholesale by the real entryists, the Blairites now headed by Starmer and David Evans in the NEC.
And let’s be clear – this is an inquisition. Starmer is actually using the language used by the Christian and Roman Catholic church to excommunicate heretics. The concept of ‘autoexclusion’ was devised in the fourth century to justify the excommunication of the Donatist schismatics of north Africa. The argument was that the Church isn’t excommunicating them. Rather they are excommunicating themselves through their beliefs and actions. It’s a doctrine that isn’t confined to the sphere of religion, however. Andre Breton, the ‘Pope of Surrealism’, used it when he wanted to throw dissident artists out of his artistic movement. His victims included a group of Christian artists interested in using the techniques of Surrealism to explore their religion, which caused the militant Marxist atheist to go berserk.
But Jewish Voice for Labourare also showing thereal anti-Semitism behind these purges.
They have just submitted a report to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the ongoing Forde Inquiry showing that the vast majority of the witch hunt are Jews. Four out of five of those accused of anti-Semitism are Jewish. If we had a decent media in this country, this would be reported and more than demonstrate that these accusations have nothing to do with real anti-Semitism. Instead, it’s all about protecting Israel and presenting the Board of Deputies as the real representatives of Britain’s very diverse Jewish community. Of course, the Board are nothing of the sort. Tony Greenstein and other great Jewish activists and bloggers have demonstrated that the Board really represent only the United Synagogue, who seem to be the Jewish members of the Conservative party at prayer, just as the old adage said that the Anglican Church is for Christians.
Mike reports that JVL’s statement, submitted on the 24th August 2021, runs
“We have become aware of seven new investigations of Jewish Party members. Notifications of new investigations and auto-exclusions are arriving on a daily basis.
“This means it would appear that over four times more Jewish than non-Jewish Labour Party members have faced actioned complaints of antisemitism. The disproportion is even greater in relation to JVL Committee members and officers. The staggering numbers suggest that these Jews are nearly three hundred times more likely to be investigated than non- Jewish Labour Party members. In all these cases the charges of so-called antisemitism are deeply offensive.
“Dozens of Jewish members are now being targeted by Labour as antisemites, for voicing an understanding of antisemitism that is a direct product of our Jewish political and personal heritage.
“The effect of rejecting or ignoring complaints made by JVL members of antisemitism; our experience of bullying and harassment; and the refusal to consult or involve JVL in, for instance, the EHRC required Action Plan; all show disdain for our status and roles as Jews.”
Their personal understanding of real anti-Semitism appears to me to be absolutely incontrovertible and corresponds to what the founders of modern anti-Semitism actually said. Slugs like the Austrian anti-Semitic politico, Carl von Schoenerer, stated that they hated Jews simply for being Jews. Their religion or other opinions were immaterial. Indeed, there was a nasty little rhyme they sang that said that Judaism wasn’t the issue. The ‘swinishness’ was in the blood. This is quite different from the verbose, convoluted and extremely flawed definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and used to chill criticism of Israel, as one of its authors, Kenneth Stern, has admitted.
And Jewish Labour members like Andrew Feinstein have pointed out the massive injustice in smearing decent, anti-racist Jews as anti-Semites when so many of them have been personally affected by the Holocaust. He regards their persecution by a reactionary Labour party leadership as indefensible.
And he’s right. I’ve read that half of the British Jewish population lost family members in the Shoah. And the victims of the NEC’s and now Starmer’s witch hunt has included proud, decent Jews, who have personally experience anti-Semitic abuse and violence, as well as anti-racist gentiles who have also suffered the same for their activism in support of the Jewish community.
The overwhelming preponderance of Jews as victims of the anti-Semitism witch hunt should absolutely put the lieto any claim that these people are really self-hating and anti-Semitic.
This is all about silencing criticism of Israel, and particularly Jewish critics, because their simple existence refutes the lies and propaganda by Netanyahu and his British supporters that all Jews everywhere are proud Israelis, and that the British Jewish community uncritically supports Israel.
And the witch-hunt against left-wing Jews in the Labour party is part of a strain of political anti-Semitism stretching back to the wretched Protocols of the Elders of Zion. One of the accusations levelled by the right against their opponents on the left is that they follow the classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories by confusing Jews with capitalism and the control of the government and the economy. But the Protocols of the Elders of Zion also claimed that Jews were also responsible for socialism and communism. A little while ago I blogged about a letter from Craig Ferguson published by the JVL at their site, which pointed out that British anti-Semitism was originally targeted at left-wing Jews. The British newspaper magnate who published the Protocols in the 1920s himself drew a distinction between loyal, patriotic British Jews, and radical, communist Jewish immigrants flooding in from the continent. The witch-hunters clearly seem to be guided by that kind of anti-Semitism in their attacks on JVL. The Labour MP Neil Coyle even called for their expulsion along with other ‘commies’.
And Michelle Laufer clearly showed Starmer’s personal hypocrisy in targeting entirely decent left-wing Jews considering his own dismal record of lies and intriguing as party leader in this tweet:
I’ve just heard Starmer on the radio saying he and Labour need to be honest with the British public so they can learn to trust the Labour party again. As a Jewish member of the Labour party who has had to watch other Jewish members abused, suspended and expelled as anti- Semitism has been weaponised, I’d like to know if he’s going to be honest about this. Is he going to be honest about the fraudulent way he in which he became leader, his broken pledges, the gerrymandering of Party democracy, the silencing of members of criticise apartheid Israel, his fawning obedience to the Board of Deputies who do not represent the views of the majority of Jews in this country and the imposition of antisemitism training by the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.
Well no, of course Keef Stalin isn’t. He’s an authoritarian liar, and this would destroy him and the other Thatcherite entryists driving this witch-hunt, as well as his attempts to ingratiate himself with all those Tory voters out there.
Mike concludes his article with these comments
And the problem isn’t anti-Semites; it’s him – and the entryists who are supporting him because they know falsely accusing Labour socialists (the people for whom the party was originally created) of a heinous offence will make the party unelectable, leaving the way clear for the Tory corruption that we have seen under Boris Johnson.
I think it’s just a matter of time until this particular house of cards comes crashing down around Starmer and his allies.
I hope so. And I hope it brings down everyone else who was involved in this vicious vilification and persecution of decent people, including David Evans and the woefully misnamed Jewish Labour Movement.
I’m not surprised that the Blairites and ultra-Zionist fanatics wanted to purge Tony Greenstein from the Labour party, as they have done with so many other entirely decent people. Greenstein is, like Moshe Machover, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and Jackie Walker, an anti-Zionist Jew. Which means he’s a danger to the British political and media establishment, which wishes to define British Jewry exclusively in terms of support for Israel. Or rather more narrowly, support for the current viciously racist Israeli administration. Left-wing Zionists, who also believe that the Palestinians should be treated decently and with dignity, have also suffered anti-Semitic vilification and abuse if they dare to protest against Netanyahu’s government. Jews like Greenstein, Machover, Walker and Wimborne-Idrissi are a threat to this, because they show that support for Israel is not a necessary or integral part of Jewish identity. Indeed, as David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has pointed out, Zionism was until recent decades very much a minority position among European Jews.
But Tony Greenstein has also argued very powerfully on his blog that Zionism has also been a real threat to Jews. In his view, it is an internalisation of gentile anti-Semitism, with which it has collaborated, including in the mass murder of Jews, such as in the Holocaust, by real anti-Semites. And he has supported this with a wealth of quotes from Zionism’s founders and leaders, like Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion. Here are a few more I found about Zionism’s relationship to anti-Semitism and colonialism in an article Greenstein put up on the 3rd November 2020, about a Zoom conversation he and Machover were due to have the next day about Zionism, and whether it was inevitable ‘it would create an apartheid monstrosity in Palestine’.
One is from Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi party’s ideologue and author of The Myth of the 20th Century. In 1919 he wrote
‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations [Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p.25].
He also quotes Sir Samuel Montagu, MP for Whitechapel from 1885-1900, and the only member of Balfour’s cabinet to oppose the infamous Declaration in support of a Jewish state in Palestine. Montagu said of Zionism
‘Is it not… a suspicious fact that those who have no love for the Jews, and those who are pronounced anti-Semites, all seem to welcome the Zionist proposals and aspiration.?’[Sir Samuel Montagu, The Dangers of Zionism]
The Israeli historian, Ilan Pappe, in his book 10 Myths about Israel, also points out that, far from being a pro-Jewish stance, Zionism in the 19th and early 20th centuries was associated with anti-Semitism. So much so that one German nobleman, whom Herzl approached for support in the 1920s, told him that he had previously not come forward to add his support because he didn’t want people to think that he was a Jew-hater.
Contemporary supporters of Israel deny that it’s a colonial state. For them it is simply the return of the Jewish people to their ancient homeland. But Herzl explicitly described his project of creating a Jewish state as colonial in a letter to that arch-imperialist, Cecil Rhodes:
“You are being invited to help make history…it doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial… I want you … to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain….”
As for the danger Zionism has presented to Jews. Rudolf Vrba, one of only four people to have escaped from Auschwitz, believed that Zionism had actively assisted the Nazis’ horrific campaign of extermination:
“The Zionist movement of Europe played a very important role in the mass extermination of Jews. Indeed, I believe that without the cooperation of Zionists it would have been a much more difficult task….”
In another post published on the 10th October 2020 attacking the SOAS’s head of Jewish studies, Professor Heszer for her piece in the Jewish Chronicle denying Israel’s colonialist origins, there are a few more revealing quotations. One of these is from a letter from William Stanley Shaw, the head of the British Brothers’ League, an anti-Semitic organisation set up to oppose eastern European Jewish immigration, to the Jewish Chronicle in 1901
“I am a firm believer in the Zionist movement, which the British Brothers League will do much incidentally to foster. The return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the most striking signs of the times…. All students of prophecy are watching the manifold signs of the times with almost breathless interest.”
As for Balfour, he was a racist, who refused to give the vote to Black South Africans because they weren’t the equal of Whites, and who told Chaim Weizmann that he also shared the ‘anti-Semitic postulates’ of Wagner’s widow, Cosima. What is astonishing is that Weizmann assured him that the Zionists also shared these views saying that he had
‘pointed out that we, too… had drawn attention to the fact that Germans of the Mosaic persuasion were an undesirable and demoralizing phenomenon…’ [Leonard Stein, The Balfour Declaration p.154].
I think the emphasis in these quotes is Greenstein’s, rather than in the original text.
These quotes clearly show that the criticisms of Israel and the Zionist movement by people like Tony Greenstein and the others are historically justified, as is their opposition against Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians. These views do not make anyone an anti-Semite. My own preferred view is that anti-Semitism is simply hatred of Jews as Jews, and that no state or ideology should be beyond debate and criticism. This includes Israel and Zionism. The Jews have a history of debate, and there have always been a wide range of views about the nature of Judaism. I’ve come across the adage, ‘Two Jews, three opinions’. British Jewry is also diverse with a range of differing views on Israel. But this debate is being shut down and a form of sectarianism promoted instead, which tries to present the British Jewish community as consisting almost solely of the United Synagogue and its institutions, the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbinate. As Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi has pointed out in her video with Double Down News, ‘The Wrong Kind of Jew’, this is very much what anti-Semites and racists have done to their victims: present them as a monolithic community.
It is disgusting and reprehensible that all of British Jewry is not represented in this debate by the political and media establishment, and that people, who hold entirely reasonable opinions critical of Israel are being vilified, harassed and purged as the very things they are not, racists and anti-Semites. The Labour party should be a place where issues like Zionism and the maltreatment of the Palestinians can be reasonably discussed and differing viewpoints held.
To stop this and demand absolute support for Israel is an attack on democracy, free speech, and proper historical debate. It is unacceptable, just as it is unacceptable that decent anti-racists, both Jewish and gentile, should be purged for holding these views.
Starmer’s attack on the Labour left and his drive to centralise authority around himself and the Blairites continues. On Tuesday the left-wing members of the party’s NEC staged a Virtual walkout at an online meeting in protest against Starmer’s imposition of Margaret Beckett as chair. Starmer’s action had breached party rules stating that the position was elected. The I published a piece about this, ‘Left-wingers ‘walk out’ after Beckett wins NEC chair’ by Harriet Line and Alan Jones in its edition for Wednesday 25th November 2020. This ran
Members on the left of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee staged a digital walkout in protest at the election of veteran MP Dame Margaret Beckett as chairwoman.
In a letter to the party’s general secretary, David Evans, a dozen NEC members said the “longstanding protocol” of the vice-chair being elected as chair was not being followed.
They said Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer had lobbied for Dame Margaret to be elected to the position, and accused him of “promoting factional division within Labour”.
The members staged a Virtual walkout from the NEC’s “away day”, which was being conducted via Zoom, yesterday morning.
In the letter, they said: “We believe the true reason for the leader lobbying for Dame Margaret, and indeed the reason that had been given by senior party MPs in private, is because the vice-chair, Ian Murray, was a signature to the previous correspondence sent to you seeking admonishment of the Leader.”
Signatories to the letter are believed to include the NEC’s outgoing chiar, Andi Fox, Mick Whelan, the Aslef general secretary, former MP Laura Pidcock and youth rep Lara McNeill, as well as Mr Murray. Ms Fox said the “disregard and disrespect for the left is something we could not allow.”
Some in the NEC had already expressed anger at Sir Keir’s decision to withhold the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, despite the body allowing him to return as a party member.
On Monday, Labour’s chief whip Nick Brown asked Mr Corbyn to apologise for claiming that the scale of anti-Semitism in the party was “dramatically overstated for political reasons.” In a letter seen by the PA news agency, Mr Brown said Mr Corbyn’s response to a damning Equality and Human Rights Commission report caused “distress and pain” to the Jewish community.
This looks to me like Starmer trying to keep control of the NEC after a large number of people from the party’s left were elected. As for Starmer’s imposition of Beckett as chair, of course it’s not democratic. Starmer’s a Blairite, and Blair hated grassroots democracy in the party along with anything that smacked of traditional Labour values and policies. He did everything he could to centralise power about himself and the New Labour faction.
Corbyn’s comments about the exaggeration of anti-Semitism in the party for political reasons was absolutely correct, and he has nothing to apologise for. The actual incidence of real anti-Semitism in Labour was very, very low. In 2019 the party had the joint lowest level of anti-Semitism of all of them. And contrary to what we’re now being fed, anti-Semitism, like racism generally, comes overwhelmingly from the fascist and populist right. But the right-wing British political and media establishment exaggerated its incidence in Labour in order to smear Corbyn and his supporters. They took their cue from the self-proclaimed Jewish establishment – the Board, Chief Rabbinate and various other malign organisations – who don’t represent all of Britain’s diverse Jewish community by any means. These organisations just represent the United Synagogue and were not concerned with protecting Jews from real anti-Semitism as protecting Israel from criticism for its barbarous, inhuman treatment of the Palestinians.
The left-wingers on the NEC were entirely right to protest, especially as Starmer is continuing his abandonment of Corbyn’s genuinely popular policies. Policies that this country and its working people, Black, White, Asian, Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, atheist or pagan, desperately need.
But Starmer doesn’t want to represent them, only the interests of the elite and affluent, and the neoliberalism that enriches them.
Whenever any clergyman or religious figure dares to criticise them, the Tories always issue this refrain: that the reverend gentleman has no business doing so, and if he stuck to promoting his religion, the seats in his place of worship would have more worshippers on them. This has been largely directed at the Tories’ critics in the Anglican Church, especially since the Church’s report published under Archbishop Runcie about the increase in poverty in Britain. I also recall that arch-Thatcherite Norman Tebbitt also made some insinuations, based on the sing-song voice and other mannerisms characteristic of a certain type of Christian clergyman at the time, that Runcie somehow was totally wet and weedy. This was in complete ignorance that Runcie had been an army chaplain and so ferocious that he was known as ‘Killer Runcie’.
But an 18th century German rabbi, Jonathan Ben Nathan/ Nata Eybeschuetz/ Eybeschitz, had an answer to such accusation. He felt that religious people had the right to attack the conduct of public figures and that this made them more popular with ordinary people, not less. I found this stated in the article on him in Bowker’s Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. This says that
In his work as a rabbi, he took the view that religion is n ot confined to ‘the religious’, i.e., that teaching and preaching must reach out to affect the conduct of public life. ‘It is regrettable that our preaching is dealing constantly with out duties to God. Let the preacher protest, with a prominent voice, against the malpractices of prominent men, and the people will come to love him and delight in his sermons. (p. 332).
So clearly criticism of the rich and powerful hadn’t driven people away from religion, at least in his experience. I’m aware that explicitly party political statements by people of faith, or statements that may be interpreted as such, can be divisive. There are as many people repelled as attracted when right-wing Christian ministers start attacking gay marriage, for example. But there should be a place for religious criticism of the powerful and their policies, and especially when they harm the poor and defenceless. That’s been a vital element of the Jewish and Christian witness ever since the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, which states very clearly that the Almighty defends the poor, weak and marginalised against the rich and powerful.
Jeremy Corbyn was in no way an anti-Semite, and he had no lack of Jewish supporters because of the depth of his commitment to defending their interests as part of his staunch opposition to every kind of racism. As did Ken Livingstone, who said on an interview with George Galloway on RT’s Sputnik, that Jews greeted him on the street and told him they knew he wasn’t an anti-Semite.
But these Jews were sidelined and deliberately ignored by a political establishment that feared Corbyn as the radical, genuinely socialist leader working Brits of all colours, ethnicities and religious views need. Instead they parroted the smears of him and his supporters as anti-Semites by a true-blue Tory Jewish establishment. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis had even sent a message congratulating Theresa May when she became Prime Minister. And the Board then went berserk accusing Corbyn of snubbing the Jewish community when he chose to spend a Passover Seder with the left-wing Jews of Jewdas. Well, the Board of Deputies and the Chief Rabbinate really only represent the United Synagogue, which has taken upon itself to try and present itself as the sole true Jewish community, despite that there has never been a monolithic Jewish community. No rabbi has more authority than any other, and there is the old Jewish saying I’ve found ‘Two Jews, three opinions’. Jewdas are a part of Britain’s diverse Jewish community, and they almost certainly invited him, so his attendance at their Passover Seder definitely wasn’t a snub to the Jewish community. Only the rich, pompous Tory section.
The Tories should stop trying to shut their left-wing critics, both Jews and Christians, up. They have a right and religious duty to defend the poor and meek against the rich and powerful.
And it’s high time that the media dropped the partisan anti-Semitic contempt for left-wing Jews, and allowed them to speak. Because the Thatcherite, Tory policies Ephraim Mirvis appears to approve of are harming working, sick, disabled and elderly Jews and well as gentiles.
This is a kind of addendum to the post I put up yesterday, which asked who decided that the United Synagogue represented all of British Jewry. I did this because so many of those accusing Corbyn and his supporters of anti-Semitism were its members or representatives, such as the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the late former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, and various hack journos writing for the I and other newspapers.
Now it seems that my suspicion is confirmed. I went and looked up ‘United Synagogue’ in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, ed. John Bowker (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1997). This says on page 1005
Association of Ashkenazi Jewish congregations in Great Britain. The organisation was established by Act of Parliament in 1870. It supports the British Chief Rabbinate, the London Bet Din and all the synagogues which accept the authority of the Chief Rabbi.
The Ashkenazi are eastern European Jews, who traditionally spoke Yiddish. The other branches of Judaism are the Sephardim, who are descended from Spanish Jews, whose traditional language was Ladino, a form of Old Spanish, and the Mizrahim, Arabicised Jews from the Middle East. Left-wing Jewish supporters of Jeremy Corbyn have also pointed out that the Board of Deputies really only represents the Board of Deputies, and that the Chief Rabbinate conflicts with the traditional Jewish view of rabbinical authority. This states that no rabbi has more authority than any other. This means that while Chief Rabbis like Sacks and his successor, Ephraim Mirvis, can bluster and pontificate about how critics of Israel are terrible anti-Semites, other rabbis and their congregations are under no obligation to believe them.
The Jewish establishment and its institutions, which claim to speak for all Britain’s Jews, really just seem to be the United Synagogue and its inmates trying to present themselves as the sole legitimate representatives of Britain’s Jews. Hence the rage at Jeremy Corbyn for daring to spend a Passover Seder with the left-wing, socialist Jews of Jewdas. Well, they obviously invited him, unlike the true-blue Tories of the Board and Chief Rabbinate, who didn’t and instead sent glowing congratulations to Tories like Tweezer when she slithered into No. 10.
I feel that the next time someone from the Board or Chief Rabbi turns up to tell us all that Corbyn is a terrible anti-Semite and an existential threat to British Jews, they should be accompanied by an explanatory warning caption at the bottom of the screen. Like those that accompany adverts, or the statements the Beeb makes when it has to mention a specific product. This caption should go
‘The Board/ Chief Rabbinate/other pompous smear merchant is a fully-owned subsidiary of the United Synagogue. Contains parts manufactured in Israel. Other forms of Judaism are available. ‘
Jeremy Corbyn’s suspension was lifted yesterday and he was readmitted to the Labour party. So there was, unsurprisingly, a mass outcry by the usual troublemakers, liars and smear merchants. Starmer responded by fudging the issue and refused Corbyn the Labour whip. This is, as Mike has pointed out, gross political interference of the type which the EHRC report into anti-Semitism in the Labour party condemned in the first place. He has also broken any number of Labour party internal regulations, as the Skwawkbox has clearly demonstrated. He’s done absolutely no good, except to annoy people with an unacceptable compromise. Unacceptable, because Corbyn’s supporters are still outraged by his unjust treatment of the Labour leader, while the smear merchants won’t be satisfied by anything less than his expulsion and the complete prostration of the Labour party to their own ultra-Zionist views.
Margaret Hodge
Among those crawling out from under the rocks to attack Corbyn were Margaret Hodge, Jessica Elgot, Rachel Riley, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Community Security Trust, none of whom are unbiased by any means. Hodge is the stupid, lazy and arrogant Labour MP who got herself suspended for calling Corbyn a ‘f**king anti-Semite’ in parliament. She then got herself readmitted after she started bleating about how terrifying her suspension was, and that it must have been like the terror experienced by German Jews under the Third Reich when they were waiting for a knock from Gestapo.
Her treatment was nothing like that horror, and she insulted the victims and families of those, who really had been imprisoned in the concentration camps. Her suspension was extremely lenient, no doubt helped by the fact that the media was very definitely on her side. Others would have received far harsher punishment. And her stupid, facile comments prompted an outrage response from Jews and gentiles, whose relatives had been victims of the Nazis.
But we shouldn’t be quite so surprised at her tactlessness. This is a woman who signally failed to do anything about real Nazism and anti-Semitism in her constituency. So much so that when the BNP had seven members elected to the local council in Tower Hamlets, their leader, Derek Beacon, sent her a bouquet of flowers in appreciation. She was also responsible for suppressing a report into child abuse in the council, then tried to blame its suppression on Corbyn. Apparently she was threatening to the leave the party if Corbyn was readmitted. If she did, it would be no loss to anyone, but unfortunately she hasn’t.
Jessica Elgot, Israel Lobbyist
Jessica Elgot is another Blairite, and if memory serves me right, she used to work for one of the Israel advocacy organisations. Which should immediately tell you that she isn’t concerned about genuine anti-Semitism, but simply protecting Israel.
Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Gaza and Islamophobia
The same applies to the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and its odious boss, Gerald Falter. Falter founded it in 2014 or thereabouts because he was shocked at the way British public opinion had turned against Israel because of the bombing of Gaza. His wretched organisation is tinged with Islamophobia. On its website it declares that most anti-Semites are Muslims, and one of its patrons is a Hindu bigot who hates Islam, Christianity and those at the very bottom of the Hindu caste system. This character founded Operation Dharmic Vote to mobilise right-wing Hindu voters partly because he was outraged that high-caste Hindu doctors had to treat the people previously described as ‘the Untouchables’.
Community Security Trust and Violence Against Protesters
Then we come to the Community Security Trust, a volunteer police force set up to protect Jews and their property from attack. This would be all well and good, if that was all it did. But its members are supposedly trained in self-defence by the Israeli security forces and have been responsible for instances of violence themselves against protesters demonstrating against Israel. In one case Jewish and Muslim demonstrators were forcibly separated. Others were struck and beaten, including women, the elderly and a rabbi.
There’s also more than a little racial favouritism being shown in the establishment of the CST. I don’t know of any other ethnic group, which is allowed to have its own volunteer police trained by a foreign country. It can be argued that other ethnic groups deserve such a force more, as this is relatively little anti-Semitism compared with the prejudice against Blacks, Asians and Muslims. Can you imagine the reaction of our absolutely unbiased right-wing press if, say, Britain’s Black community had their own police force organised and trained by the Jamaicans or Nigerians? Or the Hindus trained by the Indian army? Or British Muslims with Saudi Arabia, Iran or Pakistan? They’d have a screaming fit and yell that we were being taken over by foreigners. But the CST is allowed to continue with the full cooperation of the British state and police.
Rachel Riley
As for Rachel Riley, this is a woman, who seems to have a visceral, personal hatred for the Labour leader and his supporters. She was on Talk Radio yesterday telling the world how terrible the Labour leader was, because he laid a wreath on the grave of the Palestinian terrorists responsible for the murder of the Israeli Olympic team in 1974 when he was attending some kind of gathering in Tunisia. This would have been extremely difficult, as Zelo Street has pointed out, because those monsters are buried in Libya.
Corbyn’s critics have been presented as representative of the British Jewish community as a whole. They aren’t. They are representative only of the right-wing, ultra-Zionist British Jewish establishment. Corbyn had many friends and supporters in the Jewish community, as have others, who have been smeared as anti-Semites, like Ken Livingstone. Corbyn was particularly respected by the Haredi community for his help in preserving their historic burial ground from redevelopment. He was also supported by Jewish Voice for Labour and Jewdas, with whom he spent a Passover Seder. Which enraged the Board of Deputies, who claimed it was a snub to the ‘Jewish community?’
Jonathan Sacks, Sectarianism and the March of the Flags
What Jewish community? As many Jewish left-wing bloggers have pointed out, there is no monolithic Jewish community, and the Board of Deputies only seems to represent the United Synagogue. And many of Corbyn’s other critics seem to be members, such as the former Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks. Sacks died last week, and obituaries appeared praising him and his work. I’ve no doubt he was an excellent fellow in many respects, but he was also a sectarian bigot with a fanatical devotion to Israel. He caused outrage a few years ago when he, an Orthodox Jew, declared that Reform Jews were ‘enemies of the faith’. This is the language of religious hatred, uttered by bigots before launching terrible attacks on their victims. Christian anti-Semites no doubt have said the same when persecuting Jews. Sacks was also an opponent of homosexuality, before opportunistically changing his mind and declaring that people had to be more open and accepting. He also led a group of British Jews on the annual March of the Flags in Jerusalem. This is the Israeli equivalent of the various Orange marches in Northern Ireland, when the Protestants of the Orange Order march through Roman Catholic areas. In the case of the March of the Flags, it’s when Israeli boot-boys march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem to provoke and intimidate them. During these marches, Palestinians are insulted and abused, and their property vandalised. Liberal Jewish organisations asked Sacks not to go, but he refused. But what I also found interesting was that he seemed to be another member of the United Synagogue. The obituaries mentioned that he belonged to the Union of Hebrew Congregations, which looks to my inexpert eye as the United Synagogue by any other name.
The United Synagogue and the Corbyn Smears
Some of the Jewish journos, who took it upon themselves to write pieces smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semite are also members of the United Synagogue. The I published several of these pieces, noting at the bottom of the article the writer’s membership of the denomination. Which raises a few questions.
Are all, or the majority of those smearing Corbyn as an anti-Semites members of the United Synagogue? And if they are, who decided that the United Synagogue and its members spoke for all of Britain’s Jews? After all, it’s as if someone decided that only Tory Anglicans represent British Christianity. And when they produce stats claiming that Israel is important to the identity of 77 per cent of British Jews, is this really representative of all of the British Jewish Community? Or is it once again just confined to the United Synagogue?
All of Britain’s Jewish community deserve to be heard on the issue of Corbyn and Israel, not just Tory-voting ultra-Zionists and the United Synagogue.
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