Lobster Review of Book on the Smearing of Labour MP Chris Williamson

The conspiracy/parapolitics online magazine, Lobster, has published a review of a new book on the smear campaign against Chris Williamson, Labour, the anti-semitism crisis & the destroying of an MP, by Lee Garratt, Thinkwell Books (thinkwellbooks.org), 2021, £10.00, by John Booth. Booth states that he knows Williamson personally, having sought to work as a volunteer activist in a Tory marginal. He was sent instead to work with members of his local constituency party, who were campaigning in Joan Ryan’s constituency of Enfield North. This was because, he found out later, that Ryan’s supporters put a higher priority on making sure the chair of Labour Friends of Israel retained her seat than the party actually winning an election. Which just confirms what we knew already about the Blairites and the Israel lobby: they don’t mind destroying the party, so long as they retain their grip on it. But Booth decided instead to go to Derby North to help campaign for Williamson.

The book briefly describes Williamson’s career and the attacks on him as part of the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis, the party’s inability to fight back and the process by which unsubstantiated allegations were uncritically accepted by the party as ‘patterns of behaviour’ that required condemnation and punishment. The book also includes Williamson’s correspondence with the party about these smears and attacks. It notes that Williamson had two allies in the shape of Fabian Hamilton, the Jewish MP for Leeds North East, and Laura Smith, who was at the time MP for Nantwich. It also discusses Williamson’s critics, including Ruth Smeeth, Margaret Hodge and Luciana Berger, who actually stood as a Lib Dem candidate in the north London constituency in which Booth had hope to campaign for Labour. Booth is extremely impressed by a passage in Garratt’s book which makes it clear how absolutely vacuous all this screaming about anti-Semitism is. For all that the Blairites, Tories and Board of Deputies screamed that the party was a hotbed of Jew-hatred, hardly anyone has actually been arrested and charged by the rozzers despite the fact that it is a crime in this country. The passage runs

‘It should be acknowledged that, in modern Britain, anti-semitism is a criminal offence. One can, and should, report it to the police. Consequently, one would expect that any “anti-semitic crisis” in the
Labour Party – at the level and over the timescale that has been alleged – would have resulted in a significant number of criminal convictions. At this point in time then, one may ask, how many Labour MPs have been found guilty of committing an anti-semitic crime? The answer is zero. For those frothing at the mouth regarding Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson or Jeremy Corbyn, this must come as a surprise.
What about at the CLP [Constituency Labour Party] level? Surely constituencies such as Berger’s Liverpool Wavertree, seen by The Guardian and Berger as festering hotbeds of “anger, denial and prejudice”, would have harboured CLP individuals ripe for committing such crimes? The answer is, up to this point, not one Labour constituency member has been found guilty of committing an antisemitic crime.
Indeed, to find evidence of any anti-semitic acts that have resulted in police action, anywhere in the country amongst Labour’s half a million members, is difficult. There seems to have been only a handful of
members scattered around who have faced criminal charges. And to my knowledge, at this moment in time, not one of them has been found guilty.
This surely is an improbable state of affairs, particularly for an issue that can easily be dealt with in court. Moreover, for such a “crisis” to lack any evidence in relation to its existence, is quite an embarrassment. One looks in vain for the simple acknowledgement of this reality in either party or the media.’

Garratt goes on to describe the anti-Semitism smear campaign as a manufactured witch-hunt comparable to that of Senator McCarthy. Booth concludes his review

There is a wider and deeper context to this “non-story” which I and 2 others, as well as targeted Jewish members of the Labour party, have tried to describe. But by narrowing the focus upon the abusive treatment of Chris Williamson and by adhering to standards higher than those of his dishonest opponents and their mainstream media allies, Garratt has performed a very valuable democratic service. Are there many people left in the Labour party to act on his warning?

I honestly don’t know, as Starmer is continuing his campaign of throwing members out on the flimsiest of excuses. That’s when he can be bothered to find one. With the Blairites and Israel lobby working hard to make sure that people only see their propaganda, I felt it important to put this review up as a reply to it. Especially to book’s like Dave Rich’s, which was part of the anti-Semitism smear campaign against Labour and promoted the lies that Corby and the party were anti-Semitic. As Rich is either head, or something big in the Zionist Federation, this is what you’d expect unfortunately.

The Lobster review can be read at https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/free/lobster82/lob82-labour-anti-semitism.pdf

There is also a longer review of the book by the estimable Tony Greenstein, which can be read on Tony’s blog at: https://tonygreenstein.com/2021/09/book-review-labour-the-anti-semitism-crisis-and-the-destroying-of-an-mp/

Photo of Israeli Flag Flying Alongside Confederate at Pro-Trump Rally Shows Real Racism and Fascism of the Ultra Zionists

In a previous piece Tony Greenstein wrote protesting against the rabid witch-hunters of the Zionist Jewish establishment attacking Bristol Uni lecturer David Miller, he described the close relationship and collaboration between Israel and its supporters and real Fascists and islamophobes. Like Katie Hopkins and the noxious founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK, and all round thug, Tommy Robinson. He illustrated this with several damning photos. The one below shows Israeli flags being waved alongside the banners of the English Defence League at an EDL rally.

There’s also this Tweet from Gabriel Kanter-Webber, whose name suggests to me that he might be Jewish, asking why the Zionist Federation invited ‘Hatey’ Katie Hopkins to their annual dinner.

And then there’s this pic of the Israeli flag being waved alongside the Confederate flag at a pro-Trump rally at the Capitol, attended by real Fascists and White supremacists.

Tony writes of these shameful incidents

‘Who can forget the flying of an Israeli flag outside Capitol Hill on January 6^th alongside the Confederate flag and an assorted group of neo-Nazis and White Supremacists? Our own fascist groups such as the EDL fly the Israeli flag at demonstrations. Tommy Robinson and his Football Lads Alliance have worked closely with a group of far-Right Zionists led by Jonathan Hoffman, a former vice chair of the Zionist Federation without any criticism from the Board. That darling of the far-Right, Katie Hopkins, was a guest at an Israeli Embassy dinner and had her picture taken with the Ambassador Mark Regev.’

See: Defend Bristol University’s Professor David Miller – Defend Academic Freedom – Defend Free Speech – Tony Greenstein

This should shock many Jews, as there is a proud history of American Jews supporting Blacks in their campaign to end segregation. Jackie Walker’s parents are a Black American civil rights activist, and Russian Orthodox Jew, who met during a civil rights rally. But now it seems that Israel’s supporters have turned their back on such genuine anti-racism. Over here it seems that support from the official Jewish establishment towards such anti-racism was always somewhat lukewarm. David Rosenberg has said on his blog that the Board of Deputies tried to stop young Jews from attending Rock Against Racism events, because they were afraid this would expose them to SWP anti-Zionist propaganda. Now it seems the Zionist establishment is actively allying with real racists and Islamophobes.

And so long as this alliance continues, the ultra-Zionist organisations have no business lecturing anyone about racism.

Disgraceful! Starmer Caves in to Board’s Racist Demands over Black Women MPs

Mike put up a piece on Saturday reporting that Labour leader Keir Starmer had caved in to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and reprimanded two leading and highly respected Black women MPs, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.

These two ladies offended the Board because they appeared in a conference on Zoom, whose audience included Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein, who asked questions. The Board objected, as Jackie and Tony were two of the many people smeared as anti-Semites and expelled from the party. One of the noxious Ten Pledges that the Board persuaded Starmer and the other leadership contenders to sign was that no Labour member would share a platform with someone expelled for anti-Semitism. Hence Marie van der Zyl, the Board’s current president, sent in a complaint about the incident to Starmer calling for him to deal with them.

However, the Board’s complaint is wrong for a series of reasons. Firstly, Jackie and Tony weren’t actually expelled from the party for anti-Semitism. And as Mike says, saying that they’re anti-Semites simply because the Labour party said so has less weight than gossip.

Secondly, the two women weren’t sharing a platform with the two accused. They were merely in the audience. The fact that the van der Zyl and the Board chose to attack the two women anyway not only shows their determination to attack them, but also their failure to understand how Zoom works. Perhaps they’re like the American congressman, who was so ignorant about the internet when it first emerged in the ’90s that he asked if you needed a driver’s licence to go on the information superhighway as it then was.

Thirdly, while Starmer and the others are free to sign anything they wish, decisions affecting the party as a whole have to be ratified by conference. And the Ten Pledges weren’t. Starmer’s disciplining of the two women is therefore constitutional.

The Board’s complaint also looks more than a little racist itself. Zionism has a long history of collaborating with real anti-Semites and Fascists so long as its purposes are served. And these are frequently against the safety and wellbeing of the Jewish people as a whole. The Zionists in Nazi Germany supported the Nuremberg Laws, which defined Jews as racially distinct and incompatible with gentile Germans and signed the infamous Ha’avara Agreement in which the Nazis sent Jewish emigrants to Israel. During the War, the head of the Zionists in Hungary, Rudolf Kasztner, also made a pact with the Nazis to send tens of thousands of Jews to Auschwitz just so that a few could be sent to Israel. Israel has also supplied weapons and expertise to a string of Latin American dictatorships, including Guatemala when that nation’s government was exterminating the Mayans. When a neo-Nazi government took power in Argentina in the mid-70s and began persecuting Jews there, the Israeli government did not scruple to supply them with arms. Arms that were used against us during the Falklands War.

The Board defines itself as a Zionist organisation. It’s also politically right-wing, although perhaps not all its members are members and supporters of the Tories. And the Tories have hated Diane Abbott ever since she entered parliament in the 1980s. She was a left-wing firebrand, one of the first Black women MPs, who was determined to attack anti-Black racism. Over half of all the abusive messages sent to MPs go to her. She was one of those racially bullied by the Blairite plotters, according to the leaked anti-Semitism report. Not only did the scumbags reduce her to tears, but they told journalists where she was crying. This is in stark contrast to the treatment of Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth, who was accused of anti-Semitism and reducing a Jewish woman to tears after he caught her passing information on to a Telegraph journo at a meeting at which he was speaking. Yet instead of suspending the plotters, Starmer instead has disciplined Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy.

The Board’s record when it comes to defending Britain’s Jews against Fascism is blotchy. In the 1930s when Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was marching through the East End of London in order to intimidate the Jewish inhabitants, instead of standing up to them the Board advised Jews to stay indoors out of the way. Fortunately many courageous people ignored it, and joined Irish people, trade unionists and Communists in blocking Mosley’s march and giving his storm troops a well-deserved hiding.

The Board also showed the same twisted mentality forty years later in the 1970s when the National Front was on the rise and trying the same tactics. Instead of attacking them, the Board turned its fire on their opponents, the Anti-Nazi League. Jews were forbidden to join the organisation or allow it to hold meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because its founder was an anti-Zionist, and they were afraid of Jews hearing anti-Zionist propaganda. But others suspect that it was because the Board itself had White supremacist views.

Tony Greenstein has written a piece on his blog taking the Board and Starmer to task for their treatment of Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He discusses the shameful behaviour of the Board towards British Fascism, and quotes Maurice Ludmer, the Jewish founder of the anti-Nazi magazine, Searchlight.  Ludmer wrote in issue 41 of the magazine

“In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots… It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930’s, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. “

The-then secretary of the Anti-Nazi League, Paul Holborrow, also wrote that they were under attack from the Board. Tony is annoyed that genuine anti-racists like himself are smeared as anti-Semites for opposing and criticising Israel, while genuine racists, like Katie Hopkins, were given an invitation by the Zionist Federation to attend their gala dinner and meet the Israeli ambassador, Mark Regev. As for the Board, its previous head, Jonathan Arkush, welcomed the election of Donald Trump. Trump’s a racist, and his cabinet included real anti-Semites. However, he got a pass because he supports Israel.

Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy issued an apology for their actions. They had no call to do so, being blameless and actually the real injured parties in this sordid case. Greenstein in his piece advises them to stand firm and act like two of the heroes of the civil rights struggle in America, Paul Robeson and Angela Davies.

Robeson was a member of the Communist Party, and was thus hauled before the House Inquiry on Un-American Activities. When McCarthy asked him if he was a Communist, Robeson refused to answer, challenging the senator instead to stand behind him the next time he voted and fish his voting paper out of the ballot box to see. Greenstein also doesn’t mention it, but it is a significant fact here that Robeson was also an opponent of anti-Semitism. He gave a concert in Moscow after the War at the end of which he sang a Yiddish song by the Jewish resistance fighters against Nazism. This was not just to celebrate the millions of Jews killed by the Nazis, but also the millions of Soviet citizens murdered by Stalin.

Angela Davies is a Black American civil rights activist, who last year, 2019, was given the Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award by the Civil Rights Institute of Birmingham, Alabama. However, the Alabama equivalent of the Board got mightily offended and complained, because Davies is a critic of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians, which she compares to the police’s maltreatment of Black Americans. The Alabama Board complained, and then issued an embarrassed retraction and apology for their own racism when Davies stood her ground and called them out instead.

And the British Board deserves to be called out on its racism. It includes as deputies individuals like Robert Festenstein, an islamophobe who appeared in a Rebel Media video with Tommy Robinson, the founder of the English Defence League and Pegida UK. Arkush and van der Zyl have also appeared at meetings in which members of the audience sported Jewish Defence League T-shirts. The JDL is a Judaeo-Nazi organisation, whose predecessor, Kach, is banned as a terrorist group in Israel. Unlike the majority of modern Jews, who strongly reject any idea that their religion makes them superior to anyone else, Kach was founded by Meir Kahane, an extreme right-wing rabbi. He really did believe that Jews are superior to gentiles, and urged Jews to arm themselves. He also absolutely believed that the Holy Land belonged solely to the Jews, and demanded the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people.

There’s a connection here to the militia movement that emerged in America during the ’90s. These were the successors to the Survivalists of the 1980s. They were arming themselves against the American government, which they believed had been corrupted by liberalism and was about to establish a murderous totalitarian dictatorship. According to their critics, such as the Southern Poverty Law Centre, the militias were White Supremacists with close connections to American Nazism and the Klan. However, according to Adam Palfrey’s Cult Rapture, an examination of American fringe culture in the aftermath of the Oklahoma bombing, there was also Jewish militia. This group also based their ideology on that of Kahane’s. Palfrey sees them, as well as the fact that the leader of one of the other militias was Black, that the movement as a whole wasn’t White Supremacist. I think he’s wrong, and it’s just that some parts of the movement were less strict in their racism than others, and were prepared to include Jews as fellow White Supremacists.

Now Arkush and Zyl did not meet the American Kahanists. But by speaking at meetings attended by their British cousins they have shown a culpable willingness to tolerate real Islamophobes with paramilitary sympathies. They deserve to be called out on this, as should the Zionist Federation for its endorsement of Hatey Katie.

Starmer should not be kowtowing to the Board and punishing real anti-racists like Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy. He should be backing them instead and holding the Board to account for their racism. As Angela Davies’ case shows, it can be done.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/02/keir-starmer-has-turned-labour-into-the-party-of-hypocrisy-and-racism/

https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-new-mccarthyism-zionist-board-of.html

 

Unrepresentative Jewish Group Makes Racist Demand to Labour to Expel Black Women MPs

This is absolutely atrocious behaviour from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, for which they should be roundly condemned by every genuinely anti-racist person in the country. Mike today has reported that the Board, led by its odious president, Marie van der Zyl, should expel two of its highly esteemed Black women MPs. The women they’re targeting are the Labour veteran, Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Why? Because they attended a conference on Zoom in which they took questions from the audience, which included two former Labour members, Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker, whom the Israel lobby and Conservative – including Blairite – establishment had smeared as anti-Semites. And because Keir Starmer had stupidly tried to win their approval by signing their wretched ‘Ten Pledges’. One of these was that Labour Party members would not share a platform with those expelled from the party for anti-Semitism.

The Board is an unrepresentative body. Despite it claims to speak for all of Britain’s Jews, it really speaks for a tiny minority, the United Synagogue. It does not represent the Haredi Jews nor the Orthodox, who have their own bodies. Furthermore, it explicitly defines itself in its constitution as a Zionist organisation, which means that it does not represent non-Zionist Jews, of which there are many. The Board is, like the rest of the British establishment, by and large very Tory, though I would not care to say that all of its members are. Starmer, and the rest of the Labour leadership candidates, has given them, an organisation outside the Labour Party and hostile to it, dictatorial powers over whom it may accept as members, how they are to behave and with whom they may associate. Many of their demands, as Mike and others have pointed out to me, would not stand up if challenged in a court of law. Indeed, I have heard that they run directly counter to it. To many people, van der Zyl’s and the Board’s obnoxious demands look like both a domineering attempt to dictate to the Labour party and its members, and also a racist attack on two distinguished Black female MPs.

And not only is the Board morally wrong to demand their expulsion, it is also technically wrong according to the terms of its own wretched pledges. Jackie and Tony weren’t on the platform. They were members of the audience. And neither of them were expelled for anti-Semitism.

Mike reproduces a number of tweets from Labour members and supporters, who are very much aware of the gross injustice and sheer arrogance of the Board’s latest demand, and strongly condemn. They include Jackie Walker, the Alternative Daily News, ‘Saboteur Aesop’, ‘Stevewhiteraven’, Kerry-Ann Mendoza, Clare Curran, the Rt Rev’d Mojito and Simon Maginn.

Mike considers that this has put Starmer in quite a quandary, as if he gives into the Board there will be such a mass walkout that by Christmas it will only consist of him and Rayner.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/05/01/this-minority-interest-group-is-dictating-racist-membership-rules-to-the-labour-party-why/

As well as being racist, it also looks very politically motivated. The right has hated Abbott since she was a radical young firebrand in the 1980s. She was one of the first of the wave of Black and ethnic minority MPs that were then entering parliament, along with the late Bernie Grant. She was among the Labour MPs smeared by the Scum in the 1987 election. They claimed that she had said that all White people are racist. They hate her because she is very loud and outspoken in her attacks on anti-Black, anti-Asian racism. But she is also a close friend, and, so I have heard, a former lover of Jeremy Corbyn. This looks very much like the Conservative Board using this as an opportunity to attack a Labour MP they have always loathed.

Despite their claims, the Board and the Israel lobby have a very poor record when it comes to combating racism when it does not involve Jews. David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group, a veteran anti-racist campaigner, states in one of the pieces on his blog that when he was in the Anti-Nazi League, the Board forbade Jews from joining or holding their meetings in synagogues. This was ostensibly because the founder of the Anti-Nazi League was an anti-Zionist, and they wished to stop impressionable Jews hearing criticism of Israel. But other Jewish left-wingers suspected there was also another agenda, to stop Jews supporting Blacks and Asians.

The Board’s demands for the two women’s expulsion also resembles the racist undertones behind the Blairites’ and Israel lobby’s demand for the expulsion of Marc Wadsworth. Wadsworth is a genuine anti-racist activist. He worked for the parents of Stephen Lawrence to meet Nelson Mandela, and with the Board in the 1980s to stop anti-Semitic assaults by the BNP around the Isle of Thanet. But he was the man, who supposedly made a Jewish Blairite MP cry when he caught her passing information on to the Telegraph at a meeting, and called her out for it. An angry squad of Blairites, including, I believe, Luciana Berger, descended on his hearing to demand his expulsion. All of them were White, and critics said it looked very much like a White lynching party about to attack a Black.

Jackie Walker, a very respectable anti-racism educator and activist, has also been subject to viciously racist abuse since the Israel lobby smeared her as an anti-Semite. Apart from the grotesque hate messages she’s received demanding that she should be hanged, or burnt and her body dumped in bin bags, she’s also been racially abused by Jews. She’s Black, and so, according to their limited ideas, can’t be Jewish. I got news for them. There have been communities of Black Jews in Ethiopia for a very long time. There are also Black Jews in the West. There’s a professor of Afro-Jewish Studies at one of the American universities, an American synagogue has even made a Black woman its rabbi. And some of the older readers of this blog will remember a certain Sammy Davis jnr, a very popular singer, dancer and film star, who was a member of the famous ‘Rat Pack’ which included Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

But the Israel lobby also includes some individuals, who can certainly be fairly described as being Far Right. One of the ultra-Zionists, who turns up to protest pro-Palestinian meetings, was formerly a resident of apartheid South Africa and, it seems, very comfortable with its official racism. Others have links to the EDL and other islamophobic groups. Jonathan Hoffman, the former head of the Zionist Federation, has appeared at protests alongside Paul Besser of the extreme right-wing group, Britain First. There is also a couple who turn up to such protests, including those organised against Corbyn by the Campaign For Anti-Semitism and the Board of Deputies, wearing Kach T-shirts. Kach are an extreme right-wing Israeli terrorist group. There have also been Jews, who are extremely sympathetic to the British Nazi right. One Tory MP in Barnet, according to one anti-Zionist Jewish website I read, who used to complain that it was a pity the Conservatives and BNP were separate parties, as it divided the Nationalist vote. The great historian of the British Jewish community, Geoffrey Alderman, was also under pressure from the Board to remove the finding in one of his books in the 1970s that two per cent of the Jewish community support the National Front against Blacks and Asians. There were also some Fascists, who had no hatred of the Jews. Matthew Collins of the anti-racism, anti-religious extremism groups, Hope Not Hate, formerly a member of the BNP and other Nazi groups, recalls being told by another by another Fascist that he really couldn’t understand hatred of the Jews. This interesting snippet is in his book, Hate.

It is therefore completely possible and sensible to talk of Jewish White supremacism and anti-Black, anti-Asian racism.

Marie van der Zyl’s attacks on Diane Abbott and Bell Ribeiro-Addy is not only another partisan, Conservative, Zionist attempt to dictate to Labour under the spurious pretext of combating anti-Semitism, it also looks very much like anti-Black racism.

As one of the Tweeters quote by Mike says, get the Board out of the Labour party.

 

 

Vexatious Sneak Has Mike Suspended from Facebook

There are some very, very frightened people at the top of the Labour Party. Starmer’s and Rayner’s leadership has been embarrassed by the leak of an 865 page report that the party commissioned into its handling of the anti-Semitism crisis. This was meant to be handed over as evidence to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission for their investigation into the crisis. But it was suppressed on the advice of Labour’s lawyers. Because it showed very clearly that the handling of the crisis had been marred and manipulated by the massive political intriguing of the Blairite apparat. This included senior party officials like Ian McNichol, the party chairman, Emilie Oldknow, presently the COO for Unison, who is Starmer’s choice to succeed Jenny Formby as General Secretary, the former acting head of the governance and legal unit, Sam Mathews, and Tom Watson.

These scumbags misinformed Corbyn about the scale of the problem while at the same time doing their best to prevent any action being taken about it, because they wanted to present Corbyn’s leadership as incompetent. It shows that the Blairites were hoping to establish Watson as an interim leader after the 2017 General Election, which they hoped would force Corbyn out. They were severely disappointed when he wasn’t. The director of the Governance and Legal Affairs Unit, John Stolliday, wanted to set up an electoral college system to prevent anyone from the Labour left becoming head of the party. In London the Party HQ operated a parallel election campaign which aimed to ensure that only right-wing Labour MPs were elected. And the report lists conversation after conversation showing the Blairite party bureaucrats sneering and vilifying left-wing MPs or party activists, looking forward to purging ‘1000s of Trots’ – who were defined as anyone left of Gordon Brown. They hoped to see Labour down 20 points in the polls, cheered at the prospect of him losing elections or being ripped apart by Andrew Neil.

Basically, they did everything they could to force Corbyn out, even debating whether they should vote for Tweezer against him.

Starmer’s team has now gone into defensive mode, promising an investigation into how the report was commissioned and leaked. As Mike points out in his post, this is very much Starmer and Rayner trying to cover their arses.

Labour anti-Semitism report: Starmer acts – to cover his supporters’ arses

As for the anti-Semitism accusations, the Blairites were determined to exaggerate and magnify it to undermine Corbyn. The report notes that around half of them came from a single individual, who spent his or her time going over emails going back years. Mike comments that ‘(i)nterestingly, Labour’s report appears to describe this individual as one “who is highly abusive towards Party staff and Party members and submits large numbers of poorly formatted and poorly evidenced complaints”.

And now someone like this has got Mike suspended from Facebook.

Mike wanted to put up his piece about the report and its suppression on the site. But no! This was definitely verboten! Because someone had complained about a piece he’d written in 2016. This was about the suspension of Clement Attlee’s nephew, and showed a meme of David Cameron as Hitler with a quote from the Fuhrer about the best way to remove people’s rights. You do it slowly, so they don’t notice. This apparently, violated Facebook’s delicate community guidelines, which don’t tolerate organised hate, terrorism, people trafficking, or organised violence and crime. Mike’s piece obviously doesn’t constitute any of the above, and so he’s written to Facebook protesting against his suspension. Which looks suspiciously like the work of someone very much like the deranged individual mentioned in the report. His piece is an attack on the way Cameron is taking away people’s rights and not remotely an endorsement of that or Adolf Hitler. As for the sneak who got him suspended, Mike says

If the complaints are similar to this, both Labour and Facebook should not only refuse to countenance any further correspondence from this individual, but should name and shame that person – to ensure they cannot spread their poison any further.

Who is it, Labour? Who is it, Facebook? Tell us now.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2020/04/13/after-the-report-the-backlash-facebook-bans-posts-on-vox-political-page-due-to-vexatious-complaint/

I’d say that the person responsible is almost certainly a member of the Zionist organisations in the Labour Party, possibly Labour Friends of Israel but also the Jewish Labour Movement. This was formerly Paole Zion, and states that it is Zionist, and the sister party to the Israeli Labour Party. The obsessive, monomaniacal trawling of previous social media posts is a strategy of ultra-Zionist campaign groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the David Collier ‘GnasherJew’ troll farm. You know, the people that smeared Jackie Walker as an anti-Semite, who thinks that the Jews were responsible for slavery, despite the fact that she is manifestly nothing of the sort. This is only speculation, but the demented conduct of this individual sounds a bit like that of Jonathan Hoffman, the former head of the Zionist Federation. He was also a member of the Jewish Labour Movement, despite very definitely not being a member of the Labour Party. He’s also known for his extremely disruptive behaviour at pro-Palestinian events, where he struts about waving the Israeli flag screaming at the speakers. And he and one of his friends were also up before the beak for their aggressive conduct towards someone else. On the other hand, all of the ultra-Zionists are aggressive and disruptive, so it could almost be any one of them.

Either way, someone in the Blairites and Israel lobby is definitely afraid of Mike and what he would say about this crisis. Good. To quote a certain horror movie slogan, I hope they’re ‘afraid… very afraid’.

Mike, Martin Odoni and Zelo Street have all published very extensive pieces about the report so far. They’re at:

Labour officers spent years stabbing Corbyn in the back, according to suppressed report

Labour anti-Semitism report: Starmer acts – to cover his supporters’ arses

Socialist Labour MPs demand action on leaked Labour report but Starmer’s too busy saving his officials

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/04/labour-anti-semitism-and-thrown-election.html

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/04/labour-leak-and-emily-oldknow.html

https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/this-dossier-must-be-published/

https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2020/04/12/early-thoughts-on-the-dossier/

https://thegreatcritique.wordpress.com/2020/04/13/more-from-the-dos

When Private Eye Stood Up to Zionist Bullying

Yesterday I bought a copy of Patrick Marnham’s The Private Eye Story: The First 21 Years (London: Andre Deutsch/Private Eye 1982). This was partly because I still have some affection and respect for the magazine for the really good work it has done exposing the effects of austerity and privatisation. But it’s also because I’m still really perplexed at it continuing to push the anti-Semitism smears. And there was a time when it actually stood up to Zionist bullying and accusations of anti-Semitism.

The book tells how the Israelis attacked Private Eye as anti-Semitic because of its reports of Israeli atrocities during the 1967 war. They also caught the Zionist Federation attempting to close down criticism of Israel in the Guardian by threatening to withdraw Marks and Spencer’s advertising. Marnham writes

In the first half of 1966, sales were 39,868. In the first half of 1972, when Paul Foot left, they were 98,047. Not all the readers were equally pleased about this success. Among the least enchanted were Zionist sympathisers who objected to Private Eye reporting Israeli atrocities after the 1967 war.

In fact that war found Private Eye, with the rest of the press, generally sympathetic to Israel. But the balance quickly shifted as news of events behind the Israeli publicity screen began to reach Greek Street. An article about Moshe Dayan’s political ambitions (‘One Eyed Man for King’) in July 1967 led to many cancelled subscriptions. By November the novelist Mordechai Richler had become so offended by Private Eye’s line that he complained in The Observer that the paper was making jokes worthy of the Storm Trooper, the organ of the American Nazi party. Shortly afterwards two Labour MPs who were ardent Zionists followed this up by likening Private Eye to Der Sturmer, the organ of the German Nazi party in the thirties. Unlike Der Sturmer, Private Eye published these letters, although at that time it had no regular readers’ letter column.

In 1972 Private Eye was able to show how Zionists brought pressure on more orthodox publications. It revealed that Lord Sieff, then president of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and chairman of Marks and Spencer, had written to The Guardian in 1967 to protest against reports of the Middle East war, while threatening to withdraw all Marks and Spencer advertising unless there was an improvement. After the editor of The Guardian had been confronted by the source of the Eye’s story, he agreed that the letter had indeed been written. (pp. 127-9).

Marnham also gives the magazine’s reply to accusations that it is anti-Semitic. Former editor Richard Ingrams felt that Jews were now too sensitive, and many of those accusing the magazine of anti-Semitism were Jews, who had been caught in wrongdoing. This passage contains a nasty racial epithet for Jews, which I’ve censored. It is, however, in full in the original.

To the criticism that Private Eye is anti-semitic Ingrams replies that it is no more anti-semitic than it is anti-any other minority. He told Ann Leslie of the Daily Mail that he thought the Jews had ‘become much too sensitive; they should be more tolerant of criticism, as they used to be.’ Anne Leslie interpreted this to mean that he yearned for a Golden English Age, ‘when Jews knew their place and laughed bravely when called “***s”; not a word Private Eye has ever used, though quite a useful one for adding a little read racialist meat to Miss Leslie’s article.

Others, apart from Zionists, who accuse Private Eye of anti-semitism are those who are attacked by it. Esther Rantzen once seriously claimed that Private Eye only wrote about her husband, Desmond Wilcox, because she herself was ‘both a successful woman and a Jew’. Sir James Goldsmith also tried to explain the Eye’s hostility on the grounds that he was a Jew. The Jewish Chronicle was not very impressed. Its columnist Ben Azai wrote on 13 May 1977: ‘Apart from an intermittent concern about Israel, Goldsmith was only vaguely aware of his Jewishness until Private Eye began what he regarded as a personal vendetta against him. Scratch a semi-Jew and one will discover a full one.’ (p. 205).

The Eye has also been accused of anti-Semitism for its ‘In The City’ column, where many of the crooks and fraudsters it has exposed have been Jewish. The magazine also strongly rebuts this accusation.

The only remark made about ‘Slicker’ by Richard which I really object to is his line over Jews. When he is asked why people say Private Eye is anti-semitic he usually says that there just happen to be a lot of Jews in the City and so we happen to expose a lot of Jewish crooks. In ‘Slicker’ has attacked more non-Jews than Jews. If Jews are there it is because they are crooks, not Jews. And we have twice run stories in ‘Slicker’ attacking the City for being anti-Semitic’. (pp. 135-6).

The Eye still runs some excellent articles criticising Israel. In last fortnight’s issue, for example, it ran a story about how the Israeli authorities were not releasing the bodies of Palestinians they’d shot as ‘terrorists’ for burial. But this has not stopped it pushing the line with the rest of the press that Corbyn and his supporters are anti-Semitic, and that the very credible, authenticated allegations of Israeli involvement in the smear campaign is nothing but ‘conspiracy theories’.

I intend to talk about this in greater depth in another article, but I think there are several reasons for it. Firstly, while the Eye was first left-wing, that shifted during the Wilson era, as the book says, when it attacked the Labour governments of the day. Its network of contacts extends into the political establishment. American left-wing commenters and activists like Jimmy Dore have said that it’s because of this that the American media simply regurgitates the material they’ve been fed by establishment politicos. They’re afraid that if they criticise the people giving them this information and granting interviews, it’ll all dry up. I think the same is probably true of the Eye. I’ve also pointed out how the magazine’s founders were all very definitely members of the establishment, as is its current editor, Ian Hislop. And while there was a time when the magazine was disreputable – so much so that the Monday Club once accused it of being an organ of Commie subversion – it’s now very respectable. And I also think another strong motive is fear. Hislop and the rest may well be afraid that if they step out of line, they will suffer the same treatment as Corbyn and Momentum. And one of the accusations against the Eye is that it is the victim of its success. Other magazines were able to pursue a solid left-wing line, because they didn’t have the Eye’s assets. But the Eye isn’t poor, and so successful libel actions against it are profitable. Hislop and the others may simply feel that supporting the people – including Jews – who’ve been falsely accused simply isn’t worth it.

David Rosenberg’s Refutation of Latest Corbyn Anti-Semitism Smears

As I said a few days ago, the Tories must be desperate. They and their allies in the press have fallen back to the old smears of anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn. A Reform Rabbi, Jonathan Romain, wrote an article in last Friday’s Times warning its readers not to vote for Labour, because he was afraid of the terrible consequences of a Corbyn-led government for Britain’s Jews. And Stephen Pollard, the non-Jewish, goysplaining editor of the Jewish Chronicle, has written an article aimed squarely at gentile Brits, urging us not to vote for Corbyn because ditto.

David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group has written another excellent reply to the latest round of smears. Rosenberg himself has been the subject of smear attacks and protests by ultra-rightwing Zionists. A few days ago Jonathan Hoffman, a former leader of the Zionist Federation, was doing his usual schtick of marching around screaming about anti-Semitism in protest at a talk Mr Rosenberg was given to the East London Humanists. Whom he also accused of anti-Semitism, because they’re militant atheists and are anti-Judaism. Well yes, they are. They are also anti-Christianity, anti-Islam, anti-Hinduism, and anti-religion generally. That does not mean that they stand for the persecution of Jews, or Christians, Muslims, Hindus or anyone else. As for Rosenberg being an anti-Semite himself, his piece, ‘Who’s Afraid of Jeremy Corbyn’, begins with him describing a journey he made as part of a group of sixty people on a four day educational visit to Poland. It was organised by Unite Against Racism and many of the people on it were trade unionists and members of the Labour party. They also ranged from sixth former to older people, including Holocaust survivors, some of whose terrible experiences he briefly describes. Rosenberg was a speaker at the event, but before he did, they were treated to a message by Jeremy Corbyn. It was not electioneering, but a private message, meant for the travelers alone. Rosenberg writes

But just before I spoke, we watched a video message that had been filmed in one of the busiest weeks of Jeremy Corbyn’s year. The election had only just been called but he found time to record a message to wish our group well on our visit. This was not electioneering. This was not a social media post to be broadcast by Labour’s Press Team for sharing far and wide. It was simply a private, personal, heartfelt message to our group, from someone who has spent their life confronting racism and fascism and posing an alternative to hatred.

“Your visit to Auschwitz,” Corbyn told us, “will be a poignant experience. I have been there myself.” He described antisemitism as an “evil cult that has to be destroyed in all forms.” He recalled a visit he made, in summer this year, “to a small Jewish museum in Romania next to a railway line, where hundreds of thousands of Jews were rounded up in 1944 and deported to their deaths.” He closed by calling on us to “unite as people to say we will not tolerate racism in any form in our society, be it antisemitism, be it Islamophobia, be it homophobia or any other kind of discrimination.”

Rosenberg goes on to criticise Romain’s article, which was part of the media’s general evidence-free argument against the Labour party. He also discusses how the Tories have been responsible for deliberately racist policies such as the Hostile Environment policy, and are now led by Boris Johnson and his vile remarks about ‘grinning picaninnies’ and women in hijabs. He also reminds voters thinking of switching from Labour to the Fib Dems because of the smears of racism just how racist the Lib Dems themselves are. They not only supported Tory austerity policies, which disproportionately affect ethnic minorities, they also supported the Hostile Environment. And they did some extremely racist campaigning themselves in Tower Hamlets. He writes

Some of us with longer memories might recall the role of the Liberal Democrats in Tower Hamlets in the early 1990s where Lib Dem leaflets linked the presence of Black and Asian people with the housing shortages, giving further credibility to the overtly racist BNP who were polling well. Other leaflets distributed by the Lib Dems accused Labour of diverting funds towards the area’s Asian communities. In the end the BNP won that seat, and the Lib Dems locally were widely seen as playing a despicable and racist role.

He also attacks the Torygraph article which quotes Conservative chairman James Cleverly that British Jews are preparing to flee Britain if Corbyn gets in. He notes that three years into Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party, fewer Jews than ever are actually leaving for Israel. But he also notes the anti-Semitic undertones of the Torygraph and Jewish Chronicle’s article. Both stereotype Jews as rich capitalists. He writes

But the more serious point contained in this suggestion is the not-so-subtle antisemtism of both the Telegraph and Cleverly.

In essence they argue that a Corbyn government will launch a vengeful attack on wealth. Those most committed to private enterprise fear being squeezed by a radical Labour government, and the suggestion seems to be that the Jewish community, often stereotyped as an overwhelmingly rich, business-orientated community, will especially feel that pinch. It is an argument that has been rehearsed by the very right wing Jewish Chronicle editor, Stephen Pollard, who gave space in December 2018 for an appalling article in his paper by Alex Brummer with a headline you might have expected to see in a fascist journal: “The thought of Jeremy Corbyn as PM has Jewish investors running for the hills”.

Three months earlier, Pollard himself, had attacked a tweet by Jeremy Corbyn in which Corbyn said that the people who caused the financial crash of 2008 “call me a threat. They’re right. Labour is a threat to a damaging and failed system rigged for the few.” Pollard tweeted: “This is ‘nudge, nudge, you know who I’m talking about don’t you? And yes I do. It’s appalling” In response I tweeted: “Stephen Pollard and Jeremy Corbyn. One of them seems to think all bankers are Jews. Clue: it is not Jeremy Corbyn.”

But when I read this drivel, stereotyping the Jewish community as capitalists, I think of the many Jews I know well who work in the health service and caring professions who will be boosted by the prospect of a Labour government that is committed to funding their sectors rather than selling them off. I think of the struggling Jewish single parents and pensioners I know, and unemployed Jews, who have every reason to welcome a Corbyn-led government that would boost welfare payments rather than cut them, and would undertake other serious anti-poverty measures. I think of Jews I know who are users of mental health services, whose provision has been cut to the bone by the Tories. I think of elderly Jewish acquaintances living in the East End for whom repairs to their council housing and a well resourced health service are very high on their agendas. These people need a Labour government to be returned on December 12^th as much as as their non-Jewish counterparts.

Absolutely. I’ve met Jews, who’ve despised the Tories for what they’ve done to the Health Service because they’ve, or their parents, have worked in it.

He also gives more news that you won’t find in the lamestream media. Apparently here are two new initiatives by British Jewish young people to tackle the Tories. One is Vashti Media, which states that it is a ‘microphone for the Jewish Left’, and another is ‘Jews Against Boris’.

He also discusses a talk the group were given by a Polish socialist and anti-fascist, who talked about the current political situation in his country and the mobilisation of anti-Fascists to combat the recent nationalist marches through Warsaw. His article concludes by commenting on the way the Fascist and Nationalist right in Poland and eastern Europe are being supported by right-wing forces across the continent, including Britain’s Tories.

As we sat in a cab driving to the airport on Monday, we passed a wall graffitied with a crossed out Star of David in a circle. The populist right and far right in Poland, and other countries central and eastern Europe, have been drawing support from right wingers in Western Europe including Britain’s Tory Party. Those elements in Britain that are leading the false charge against Jeremy Corbyn, as if he were some sort of threat to Jews in Britain, need to stop playing dangerous factional political games and face up to where the threats are really coming from.

https://rebellion602.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/whos-afraid-of-jeremy-corbyn/

As Rosenberg and other, genuine anti-Fascist activists both Jewish and gentile have made clear, Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. Since he’s been leader of the Labour party, the level of anti-Semitism has been at the lowest its ever been for years. Anti-Semitism, like racism generally, is always strongest on the right. And that means the very same Tories, who are trying to smear Corbyn as a Jew-hater.

 

Channel 4 ‘Dispatches’ Documentary from 2009: Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby – Part

The documentary then moves on to January, 2009 and the invasion of Gaza, and allegations of Human Rights abuses by Israeli forces were still circulating months later. But Oborne points out that you wouldn’t know it from the contents of the News of the World and the Mirror. Both these rags ran stories instead about the threat to Israel from the surrounding Arab nations. The hacks behind these pieces had been given free trips to Israel by BICOM, one of the wealthiest lobby groups in Britain. Oborne then goes on to interview David Newman in his office in Jerusalem. Newman worked alongside BICOM in disseminating Israeli propaganda in British universities. Newman states that there is indeed a debate within Israel about the status of the settlements in Palestinian territory. Groups like BICOM close down this debate abroad, and instead demand absolute for Israel.

Plocha Zabludowicz, the head of BICOM, is the 18th richest person in Britain. And he is very definitely not part of traditional British Anglo-Jewish society, but came up through the Jewish Leadership Council, who are described as the lords of the big Jewish donors. Oborne then interviews the head of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue, Rabbi Emeritus David Goldberg, and asks if he knows him. Goldberg states that his name doesn’t ring a bell. Zabludowicz is actually of Polish ancestry. He is a Finnish citizen with a house in north London. His father made a fortune peddling Israeli arms, as did Zabludowicz himself before moving into property and casinos. His company is registered in Lichtenstein. He is, in short, ‘a rank outsider’. He was also one of the guests at Madonna’s birthday party in Italy.

Zabludowicz generously bankrolls BICOM, to whom he gave £800,000, who wrote a clause into their accounts recognising his generosity. He had given them £1.3 million in the previous three years, and has business interests in the Middle East. These cast doubt on the possibility of reaching a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. Oborne then goes on to discuss the case of one of the illegal Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestine, whose supermarket is owned by Zabludowicz. Newman states this indicates the direction in which BICOM is moving. Rabbi Goldberg states that it shows that Zabludowicz calculates that the settlement won’t be returning to the Palestinians, even under the most generous peace deal. As for Zabludowicz himself, he declined to meet the Dispatches team, but instead released a statement claiming that he was a major supporter of the creation of a separate Palestinian state, and that he understood that concessions would need to be made. Oborne was, however, successful in talking to Lorna Fitzsimons, BICOM’s chief executive. She claimed that BICOM was very open, that their donors do not influence policy. When asked about Zabludowicz, she claimed he was different from anyone else and she didn’t know about his business connections. All the organisation was doing was to make journos and people aware of the different strands of the debate on Israel.

Oborne moves on to the other groups involved in the Israel lobby – the Jewish Leadership Council, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Zionist Federation, and states that some members of these groups are very aggressive towards the TV and press. He then interviews Alan Rusbridger about his experiences of dealing with them. Rusbridger states that some TV editors warned him to stay away from them and the whole subject of Israel and the Palestinians. The Guardian was attacked for criticising Israel in a way that no other country does. There was a special meeting at the Israeli embassy between the ambassador, Zabludowicz, Grunewald of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the property magnate Gerald Reuben. They were unhappy about a Groaniad article comparing the Israeli’s occupation of Palestine with apartheid South Africa. So Grunewald and his mate, Roman Leidel, decided to pay Rusbridger a visit. Grunewald is a lawyer, claimed that the article was fomenting anti-Semitism, and would encourage people to attack Jews on the street, a risible accusation which Rusbridger denied. This was followed by complaints to the Press Complaints Commission about the article by the pro-Israel American group, CAMERA, or Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, which specialising in attacking journos critical of Israel. The Press Complaints Commission duly investigated the article, and found that only one fact was wrong. When asked about this, Rabbi Goldberg states that Israel is indeed an apartheid state. There are two road systems, one for use by Israelis and one for the Palestinians. There are two legal systems in operation. The Israelis are governed by Israeli law, while the Palestinians are governed by military law. When asked what will happen to him when his comments are broadcast, the good rabbi simply laughs and says that he’ll be attacked once against as being an ant-Semitic, self-hating Jew.

Many other Jews are also critical of Israel. Oborne goes on to talk to Tony Lerman, formerly of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, and now a Groaniad journo. Lerman states that the Israel lobby don’t take into account the diversity of Jewish views on Israel. This is confirmed by Avi Shlaim, who says that there is a split in the Jewish community over Israel. The community’s leaders are largely pro-Israel with a narrow rightwing agenda that is not typical of Jewish Brits. And libelling Israel’s critics as ‘anti-Semitic’ is now common policy.

One example of this use of libel is a New York blogger, ‘Hawkeye’, who hunts through the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ column, claiming it is full of anti-Semitic bias. Rusbridger states that this is dangerous and disreputable. ‘Hawkeye’ attacked Lerman in particular as a nasty anti-Semite. Lerman states that this tactic has been adopted because it’s a useful defence of Israel. Rabbi Goldberg concedes that some people might be seriously anti-Semitic, others are just voicing genuine opinions, which should be respected. Michael Ancram, even, was accused of being anti-Semitic, which he said he takes with a pinch of salt.

But this leads into the whole question of whether the BBC has been corrupted by the influence of the Israel lobby. On record, BBC journos and spokespeople claim that the Corporation’s reporting of Israel is unbiased. Off-record, the stories different. News staff state that there is always pressure from top management for a pro-Israel slant. Oborne then interview Charlie Brebitt, an accountant at the LSE, who was formerly of Channel 4, who confirms that there is a very strong and active Israel lobby, and a sizable body of sympathy with Israel. The BBC has no choice but to respond. Honest Reporting, another pro-Israel media attack dog, and the other parts of the Israel lobby take advantage of this, alleging that there is an institutional bias at the Corporation against Israel.

In 2003 during the Iraq invasion the Beeb broadcast a hard-hitting documentary investigating Israel’s secret nuclear weapon’s programme, entitled ‘Israel’s Secret Weapon’ on the 16th March. The Israeli Press Office issued a statement comparing this to the worst of Nazi propaganda, and imposed restrictions on BBC staff in Israel. When Ariel Sharon, the Israeli leader, visited Downing Street, the only journos banned from covering the meeting were the Beeb. Honest Reporting UK complained that the programme was part of a campaign to vilify Israel. One member of the group, Nathan Sharansky, complained that the late Orla Guerin, here shown with two eyes, was anti-Semitic, and that she shared the goals of Palestinian terror groups.

Continued in Part 3.

Jewish Organisation Launches Campaign Against Islamophobia

On Wednesday, Mike posted a story reporting that Jewish Voice had launched a campaign against Islamophobia, called appropriately enough, #JewsAgainstIslamophobia. They are not only campaigning against Tommy Robinson and the EDL, but also against right-wing Jews, who ally themselves with these Fascists.

Mike then went on to ponder whether they would take on the authors of a statement that British anti-Semites were mostly like to be Muslim, and that this country should not shy away from tackling the immense anti-Semitism in the Muslim community as well as the general population. This statement comes from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the extreme right-wing Zionist organisation that smeared Mike as an anti-Semite. The identification of Muslims as being more anti-Semitic than the rest of the population is itself racist, as Mike pointed out. He asked

If anybody had written, for example, that British Jews are Islamophobic and sympathise with terrorism, violence and extremism, how do you think that organisation would react?

Clearly the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism would have gone berserk with rage, which shows the hypocrisy and double standards of this organisation.

He then goes on to discuss the case of one of the Campaign’s individual members, the odious, repugnant and utterly mendacious Jonathan Hoffman. Mike states that when the CAA attacked Mike, which he believes was part of a plan to stop him being elected a Labour councillor for Powys, Hoffman and his fellow trolls turned up on the Labour Party campaign facebook page to make the same accusation of anti-Semitism.

He then links to three websites that provide information on this individual, including various incidents in which he has tried to close down free speech on Israel through screams, insults, smears and intimidation.

Mike’s article can be read at: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/02/14/jewish-group-launches-campaign-against-islamophobia/

This first links to a story published in the Middle East Monitor in November last year, about how Hoffman and his mates in the Jewish Defence League turned up to disrupt a showing of the film, From Balfour to Banksy: Visions and Divisions in Palestine, shown at the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS. The film was intended to be part of an academic discussion of the history of Palestine, and the legacy of the Balfour declaration, which gave British support to a Jewish state.

This was too much for the precious snowflakes of the JDL to handle, and they began shouting and screaming, and waving Israeli flags around, in order to intimidate the organisers and drive people out of the film. Afterwards Hoffman issued a Tweet accusing the producer, Miranda Pinch, of anti-Semitism and trying to suppress free speech. When asked about this by the Middle East Monitor, Pinch stated that there was an attempt to suppress free speech, but it wasn’t by them. It was by the JDL. She said that she got the impression that they didn’t have any arguments, and so just wanted to shout them down. A student who was there described them as behaving like a bunch of football hooligans. Pinch also stated that she doesn’t have any issue with existence of the state of Israel, she just campaigns for justice for everyone there, Jewish, Christian and Muslim. She said

“I have ALWAYS made it clear that I stand for equality and human rights for all in that region and that includes Jews, Christians, Muslims and anyone else living there. I am a signatory of Jews for Justice and have many Jewish friends, both practising and non-practising. My view, as most of theirs, is that Israel does not represent the Jewish religion at all. The Old Testament exhorts the Jews again and again to care for the stranger in their midst and to love justice. Israeli policies bring Judaism into disrepute,” said Pinch.

See: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171121-pro-israeli-mob-with-ties-to-edl-causes-mayhem-at-balfour-event/

The comparison with football hooligans is very apt. The Jewish Defence League are the Jewish division of the far-right, Islamophobic English Defence League, which does have links to various firms of football hooligans, allegedly. Quite apart from the fact that a Channel 4 documentary screened a little while ago when the organisation seemed to be gaining strength showed that, while Robinson and the leadership tried to project an image of being non-racist, the grassroots membership were the usual Nazis and Fascists from organisations like the BNP and so on.

The second link goes to a page, Hoffman Chronicled, which reveals that Hoffman is a member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, and is a prolific contributor to the Jewish Chronicle website. It also shows him in the company of Kevin Carroll, the cousin of the EDL’s founder, Tommy Robinson, who’s also in the EDL. There’s also a photo of him in the company of Roberta Moore, the founder of the EDL’s Jewish Division, and one of the European organisers of Victor Vancier’s Jewish Task Force.

https://hoffmanchronicled.wordpress.com/

The third link goes to the website of David Cronin, the author of several books about Israel and its long campaign of violence and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. This describes how Hoffman repeatedly turns up at his talks and makes baseless accusations of factual inaccuracy. It also describes how he also insults and smears other activists against the Israeli oppression of Palestinians, like Jackie Walker, Thomas Suarez, the author of another book about Israel, and even Hajo Meyer, a survivor of Auschwitz. Hoffman described Meyer as ‘an amazing dancing bear’ because he had the temerity to state that Israel was dehumanising the Palestinians the way the Nazi dehumanised Jews.

But the Zionists love him. He has been consulted by the Reut Institute, a think-tank founded by a former adviser to the Israeli government. In 2011 he attended a conference, partly organised by them, on how to discredit criticism of Israel. The following year he failed to get re-elected as a vice-president of the Zionist Federation. And in 2016 he and his mate, Jonathan Newmark, who also makes spurious accusations of anti-Semitism against critics of Israel.

That isn’t the only company he keeps. He was also photographed with Paul Besser, the intelligence officer – if that isn’t an oxymoron – of the Far Right, islamophobic group, Britain First.

Cronin concludes

Hoffman is undoubtedly a bully but nobody should allow themselves to be intimidated by him or by similar lobbyists. Their belligerence illustrates that Israel feels discomfited by Palestine solidarity activists.

They don’t like the message, so they slander the messengers.

This is absolutely true. And clearly they feel very threatened by Mike, otherwise Hoffman and his fellow thugs and bullies wouldn’t have tried to smear Mike as an anti-Semite. They’re scared, and more people are becoming aware of how scared they are, and how their accusations of anti-Semitism are nothing but baseless smears and gross libel.