If the repeated delays in sentencing
have been unfair on the Defendants think how much worse it has been for Jonathan Hoffman, the friend of every fascist and neo-Nazi supporter of
Israel!
When I first blogged this picture Hoffman called it 'photoshopped' until the camerman, David Hoffman, threatened to sue him for libel and Hoffie had to issue a grovelling apology - it shows him with the EDL in the background and Roberta Moore of the Jewish Defence League alongside him dancing down the street. See
Tony Greenstein, Why I'm Outspoken - Crispin Flintoff
Hoffman's Delightful Email Shows the Hatred That Burns Inside the Average Zionist
On 17th May Hoffie sent
me a delightful e mail hoping that I get as long a period of free board and
accommodation, courtesy of King Charles III as possible.How sweet of him I thought even though he
told me I shouldn’t ask for kosher food because I was a JINO (Jews in name
only)
The excitement was too much for
some. Janet Clifford first asked if they still had capital punishment and then hoped
that I’d get life with hard labour. It almost pains me to have to disappoint
her. The charge only carries a maximum of 10 years and hard labour has been
abolished.
Damon Lenszner and Francis Greg hoped that I’d be the victim
of gay rape, preferably at the hands of a 300 lb Zio. I suspect that if the Zio
in question was heavier than Hoffie he’d have trouble getting into and out of
bed let alone in engaging in strenuous nocturnal activity. Still it’s the
thought that counts.
Note the delicacy of Hoffie's language and his varied vocabulary!
First and foremost is John Ware, the BBCs number one
Islamaphobe who, in an attack on Jeremy Corbyn said (0.53) that I must be ‘one of the most disagreeable individuals I’ve
ever set eyes on.’ Recommendations like that don’t come every day.
So thank you John, it’s very kind of you.
Despite calling everyone a liar, Hoffman still can't explain why he keeps company with all manner of fascists and neo-Nazis
Debate Jonathan Hoffman v Daniel Sheldon
Union of Jewish Students
The testimonial from John Ware, who
produced the BBC Propaganda Film ‘Is
Labour Anti-Semitic? even surpasses what Jon Lansman, ex-Momentum fuehrer’s
kindly said about me. Lansman informed his audience that I was:
Hoffman's world consists of nothing but 'antisemites' and 'Israel haters'
“probably
the rudest person I know in politics. He says many offensive things, most of
the time”.
John Ware attacks the 'Disagreeable' Tony Greenstein
I know that Jon meant well but
unfortunately the weasel word ‘probably’ crept
in meaning that he had sowed doubt in some peoples’ minds. In the end I had to
send him a solicitor’s letter warning him that anyone doubting my offensiveness
to Zionists and racists was guilty of libel and slander and that I would not
hesitate to sue to protect my reputation. I wasn’t ‘probably’ the rudest man in
politics I was the rudest man.
Hoffman's Apology for Rape When Israelis Are involved
You may remember the case of the British woman who was raped by 12 Israelis and then convicted of making a false claim of rape and imprisoned. Eventually the woman was cleared.
Hoffie however was convinced that it was all a question of 'antisemitism'. The Israeli boys were framed and it was all consensual. After all he had seen the videos and reached an impartial decision.
Even female journalists on the Zionist propaganda rag, the Jewish Chronicle, were having none of it.
The British Courts are Growing More & More Hostile to Direct Action Protesters
However these slights aside the
question I have been asked most in the past few months is what sentence I think
that we shall receive and the answer is, I don’t have a clue. My barrister, as
with all the Defendants, will make a plea of mitigation and we shall leave it
in the lap of the gods.
Hoffman ensconced with Kevin Caroll of the EDL and assorted fascists
The main thing is that whatever
happens the struggle of Palestine Action to rid Britain of the factories of the
Elbit war criminals must go on. People from PA have already been gaoled because the
judges have reinterpreted the law in order to criminalise our actions. What the
BBC praises when Hong Kong or Russian demonstrators take direct action is attacked and
pilloried in the mass media when we protest in this country.
As is well known climate action
protesters have been gaoled for merely mentioning climate change. Even The
Times was moved to protest this outrageous attack on basic democratic rights by
Silas Reid of Inner London Crown Court.
Hoffman breaks up Humanist meeting
Mention should also be made of Palestine
Solidarity Campaign. In 2021, despite the hostility of the Executive and Director
Ben Jamal, policy was passed instructing the Executive to give support to Palestine
Action. That has remained a dead letter. PSC are determined to try and impress
the Establishment with their moderation and the Bill outlawing BDS is their reward.
Likewise in the furore over the
banning of Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie PSChas remained silent. It has not raised the
banning of the film by Unite or the attack on anti-Zionists by the GMB. It
values the financial benefits of their affiliation rather than asking them to live
up to their fine policies.
Why is PSC so anaemic? Because it
thinks you can be pro-Palestinian without taking a position on Zionism. It’s as
if activists 30 years ago had campaigned against human rights abuses in
Apartheid South Africa without taking a position on Apartheid.
A freedom of
information request by Palestine Action Shows that the Israeli Embassy sought
to interfere in the Prosecution of Activists
Earlier this year Palestine
Action sent in an Freedom of Information asking what contact there had been
between the Attorney General’s office and the Israeli Embassy.
The answer was quite a
lot. The Embassy must have felt very confident if they felt they could approach
the prosecuting authorities in this country.
Eighteen
pages of documents have been released, heavily redacted. What they clearly
show is the highest level contacts between the Israeli Embassy and the British Government
and close co-operation on repressive legislation such as the Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Bill.
The suspicion must be that
the Israeli Embassy has had an input into the Public Order Act 2023 and previous
law and order legislation. If this is true it is an outrage. Israel is not a
democracy and yet the government appears to be taking advice on curtailing
liberties in this country at the behest of the Israeli state.
Also amongst the various hate posts
on his Facebook page, is one attacking Sadiq Khan, who I admit is a treacherous
toe rag. However fining Hoffman for speeding is probably one of the few good
things he has done, apart from getting rid of Cressida Dick from the Met.
Hoffman was convicted for harassing women activists on Palestine with fellow thug Damon Lenszner
'Heil Hitler' and 'I'm so glad that Hitler burned your grandfather'
But despite all the dross and bigotry on Hoffman's blog there was one jewel amidst the dross. An Israeli, Anton Delin, described in detail the attack on anti-judicial reform protesters by Netanyahu's supporters.
“I want to share with you an incident that happened to me on Sunday night when we joined the demonstration in Kaplan.
As
we walked past one of the buildings in Tel Aviv, a man wearing a kippa
approached us. He was Mizrahi (and you will understand why I say this in
a moment). He started giving us the “Heil Hitler” salutes and calling
out “Heil Hitler”. This shocked me but what came next broke my heart. He
said, “I am so glad that Hitler burned your grandfather.”
I
have experienced antisemitism in my life, plenty of it, but this? This,
from the mouth of a Jew, and a “religious” one at that, just stopped me
in my tracks and took my breath away. I was shattered and all I could
hear in my head was, “What have they (the government) done?”
Unfortunately,
this was, and is not, an isolated incident. The violence that erupted
on Monday night when pro-reformers, La Familia and Lahav were called to
demonstrate, was atrocious. The vitriol that spewed out of their mouth
was disgusting. The crude gestures that flew from the hands of children,
never mind adults. And it escalated from there to physical violence and
there is video evidence of each incident. All these incidents, from
attacks on female police officers, to beating and kicking a female
ant-reform protestors, to an almost lynch of an Arab taxi driver, to
full face punching of an anti-reform protestor to the attack on a
Channel 13 news reporter who sustained a broken rib and potential
internal injuries to his spleen, were perpetrated by pro-reform
demonstrators, many of them wearing kippot and tzitzit.
Hoffman of course ignored this because even he would find it difficult (though not impossible) to defend Zionists telling fellow Jews that they were glad that someone's grandfather had died in an extermination camp. However it gives an insight into the mentality of the Zionist far-Right (and not so far right). The post for anyone who is interested is on the 30 March when a haredit couple tried to run over protesters in Tel Aviv.
A summary of the choicest posts agonising over the postponement of the trial
I copy below the sad saga of the
excruciating wait that Hoffie’s fascist friends are being made to undergo as
our sentencing has been postponed some four times.
For those who are interested in reading the maddest of the mad then you can read it all here on Hoffman's Facebook page.
Just one thing puzzled me. The No. 75 besides Hoffie's name. Was it his age or IQ? Answers on a postcard.
On
January 26 the Walthamstow branch of the GMB unanimously passed a motion which stated that
the decision
to work with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) runs contrary to GMB’s support
for Palestine, has brought the union into disrepute
and that
the JLM
is effectively
the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party, a racist organisation that governed
Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly responsible for the massacre or the
expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians
The
motion noted that the ‘JLM conflates
anti-Zionism with antisemitism’ and that by continuing to support the JLM
the ‘GMB is leaving itself open to
accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of Palestinian people.’
It therefore called on Congress to ‘instruct(s)
the General Secretary and the CEC to sever all ties with JLM forthwith.’
It is a
perfectly reasonable motion. There is nothing in the slightest anti-Semitic about
it. Proposer, Bert Schouwenburg, was an organiser for the GMB’s London Region before
taking up the post of International Officer until he retired in 2018 after Tim
Roache, the General Secretary, who was alleged to have raped and molested
female members of the GMB, took over. Roache was forced to resign and was in
turn succeeded by Gary Smith, who is both a Starmer supporter and a racist Zionist.
Smith is
such an ardent supporter of the Israeli state that even the far-right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, praised
him. The CAA, an Israeli state proxy, was set up specifically to counter
solidarity with the Palestinians with accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. It is so
far to the Zionist right that even Margaret Hodge, the parliamentary
representative of the JLM, attacked
the CAA as being more interested in attacking the Labour Party than opposing
anti-Semitism.
The CAA’s
Chairperson, Gideon Falter, is Vice
Chair of the Jewish National Fund UK. The JNF funds the building of settlements
in the Occupied West Bank. The JNF only allows
Jews to rent or lease its property and it owns or control 93% of Israeli
land. The JNF has consistently
fought the idea that Jews and non-Jews should have equal access to its
land. Faltiel is also a supporter of Hindutva, Hindu Supremacy as espoused by
the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi (who is also an ardent admirer of
Zionism).
In 2018, the Hindu Forum of Britain arranged a private meeting
with Gideon Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA). The
chair – none other than Conservative MP Bob Blackman, who has a history of hosting
Islamophobes– declared that there was a need to “learn from the way the
CAA had got the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition
of antisemitism passed in the Labour Party” with regards to supposed anti-Hindu
sentiment.
A year later, two weeks before the 2019 General Election, a
spokesperson for the Hindu Council UK supported Rabbi Mirvis’ claim that the
Labour Party is antisemitic and added
that it is anti-Hindu too because a conference resolution had criticised
Modi’s policies in Kashmir.
Amrit
Wilson described
how Falter assured the meeting that he and his supporters
The International
Definition (the IHRA)
has one purpose. Conflating support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism. The GMB has also adopted the IHRA. As Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former
Court of Appeal judge observed the 500+ word IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is
indefinite.’
The CAA recalled
how, in March 2019, during the fake anti-Semitism campaign against the Labour
left and Jeremy Corbyn, Smith
‘labelled the Labour Party’s handling of antisemitism
“disgraceful” and revealed that he even thought about leaving the Party
himself.
In a
private email, Bert described how
‘for reasons I
have never fully understood, there has long been a reluctance to fully embrace
the Palestinian cause [in the GMB] despite numerous resolutions.’
On 28
April 2023 Schouwenburg received a letter from London Region Secretary Warren
Kenny suspending his GMB membership because of the motion on the JLM. As
Schouwenburg noted
I do not think
that he [Warren] is capable of sufficient independent thought to have made the
decision to suspend me himself though I can only speculate as to why it was
considered necessary to shut me down
Speculating
that ‘I needed to be made an example of pour encourager les autres.’ In other words anyone who decides that in
order to support the Palestinians one needs to oppose Zionism, the Jewish
Supremacist ideology that has led to the Palestinians dispossession, needs to
be aware that they will be expelled.
In his
barely literate letter, Kenny alleged that the motion ‘contained several factual inaccuracies. The motion also contains
serious, potentially legally actionable, and antisemitic allegations.’
However
there was nothing in Warren’s letter explaining what these inaccuracies were or
why the motion was deemed anti-Semitic. Nor did Warren explain what was ‘potentially legally actionable.’
The reason
why Warren’s assertions were unsupported was because they were false. Bert was
immediately suspended from benefit, banned from holding any GMB office and
banned from taking part in any GMB business and affairs.
The motion passed by the branch contained not a
hint of anti-Semitism nor was it inaccurate. It read:
Congress accepts that the
decision to work with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) runs contrary to GMB’s
support for Palestine, has brought the union into disrepute and should never
have been countenanced.
Congress notes that the JLM is
effectively the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party, a racist organisation that
governed Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly responsible for the massacre
or the expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians. Today, some of
their Knesset members support the most right-wing Israeli regime in history.
JLM conflates anti-Zionism
with antisemitism and by dint of its support, GMB is leaving itself open to
accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of Palestinian
people.Therefore, Congress instructs
the General Secretary and the CEC to sever all ties with JLM forthwith.
In an article
on Schouwenburg’s suspension Skwawkbox noted that the GMB officially supports
the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement, which the JLM opposes and in
both 2011 and 2013 passed resolutions not to allow its members to travel to Israel on delegations organised by
‘Trade Union Friends of Israel’.
There is
very little on the GMB website concerning Palestine and no mention at all of
BDS. Under the heading GMB Policy on Palestinewe learn that the‘GMB is a long-standing
supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Western Sahara Campaign and
supports the statement below.’
The
statement mainly opposes the Abraham Accords and for some reason includes GMB policy on the Sahrawi
people of Western Sahara. The policy condemns Israel’s ‘continuing to flout international law through its ongoing occupation
and colonisation of Palestinian land’, the expansion of settlements and the
denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The policy states that:
global
civil society must redouble its efforts to stand in solidarity with the
Palestinian and the Sahrawi people until freedom, justice and equality are
realised.’
Yet when Schouwenburg
proposed a motion putting some teeth into this policy he was suspended which
suggests that the GMB’s policy on Palestine is merely declaratory.
Were there any ‘mistakes’ in the
Walhamstow motion and why was it anti-Semitic?
The motion from
Walthamstow branch noted that ‘the JLM is
effectively the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party’ [ILP]. If you go to
the JLM website it states explicitly that the ILP is its ‘sister party.’ The motion described the
ILP as
‘a
racist organisation that governed Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly
responsible for the massacre or the expulsion of three quarters of a million
Palestinians.’
This too is a fact? The
motion could have said that it was the ILP which kept Palestinians who weren’t
expelled in 1948 under military rule from 1948 till 1966 and that it
confiscated most of their land too.
The motion stated that
the JLM
conflates
anti-Zionism with antisemitism and by dint of its support, GMB is leaving
itself open to accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of
Palestinian people.
This too is a fact.
Anyone doubting this should read Asa Winstanley’s new book‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism – How the Israel
Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn’.
The JLM were refounded
in 2015 solely in order to spearhead the
attack on Corbyn using anti-Semitism as its weapon. The JLM joined the CAA
in making a complaint to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission about the
Labour Party.
The
unspoken assumption running through Kenny’s letter is that the JLM is the
Jewish section of the Labour Party but this is not true. One of the JLM’s Values is
To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life
and its development on the basis of freedom, social justice and equality for
all its citizens.
Promoting
the centrality of Israel among Jews is a Zionist not a Jewish principle. The
JLM is a Zionist group which no Jewish person who is not a Zionist would join. The
JLM is affiliated to the UK
Zionist Federation and the World Zionist Organisation.
The
hypocrisy of the JLM is proven in their assertion that they support equality
for all Israel’s citizens but that they also support a Jewish state. An
ethno-nationalist state based on the religion of only some of its citizens cannot,
by definition, be a state where all its citizens are equal.
When Israeli
actor Rotem Sala posted
on Instagram:
When will anyone
in this government tell the public that this is a country of all its citizens,
and all people are born equal. “Arabs are also human beings. And also the
Druze, and the gays, and the lesbians and… gasp… leftists.
the reaction
of Prime Minister Netanyahu was swift. He stated
that:
Israel is not a
state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed,
Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.
The ILP
did not contradict him. That is why ‘Jewish
Settlement’ is one of the ‘values’ outlined in the racist Jewish Nation State Law,
a principle that the Israeli Labor Party adheres too.
Kenny
also doesn’t explain why Schouwenburg has been suspended and not all those
present at the branch meeting where the motion was passed unanimously. When a
motion is passed it is the property of the meeting not one individual. Why was Schouwenburg
singled out?
The GMB’s
defence of a Zionist group which supports a state which has been condemned as
committing the crime of apartheid suggests that under Gary Smith the GMB is supporting
Israeli Apartheid.
That
Israel is an apartheid state is not a matter of dispute. Every major human
rights organisation – Israel’s B’tselem,
Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty
International have condemned Israel as an apartheid state.
The only conclusion
that can be draw from Bert Schouwenburg’s proposed expulsion is, in his own
words, that the
‘GMB
are trying to shut down any voices that dissent from their newly-found
enthusiasm for Israel’s apartheid regime. Under Gary Smith, a union that once
backed the call for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) is now
supporting the most vicious, right-wing government in Israel’s history.
It
is not Bert Schouwenburg who should be suspended pending investigation but Gary
Smith and his poodle, Warren Kenny.
Smith was instrumental in having Black rapper Lowkey banned
from the Tolpuddle Festival at the behest of various Zionist organisations. See
my blog of January 1 2023 detailing how Gary
Smith acted as a messenger boy for the Apartheid State’s lobby groups.
Gary Smith's love affair with Zelensky, a Jewish fascist who has no problem with a national holiday for a mass murderer of Jews during WW2
Smith’s opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ doesn’t prevent
him from being an ardent supporter of Zelensky who has banned
Ukraine’s leftwing parties and has also abolished
the right to strike, using the war as a pretext. Zelensky is a fervent
Zionist and supported Israel’s attacks on Gaza. His support for self-determination
doesn’t include the Palestinians. Yet the GMB is fundraising to buy a vehicle
for the Ukraine military and London Region has, I understand, handed them a
donation of £5,000, as if the billions from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson/Sunak
weren’t sufficient.
Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army
(OUP) played an integral part in the massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in
1941. He is a national hero in Ukraine & the Zionists say nothing
Zelensky may be Jewish but he is also a Zionist and
that explains why it is that he has formed alliances
with Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militias. He has done and said nothing about the fact
that Stepan Bandera is the only Nazi collaborator in the world to have a national
holiday in his honour. Bandera’s Ukraine Insurgent Army murdered some 200,000 Jews as well as 100,000
Poles.
The GMB
is affiliated to Palestine Solidarity
Campaign. The silence of PSC in the face of Smith’s support for Israel and the
Zionists, in blatant contradiction of his own union’s policy on Palestine,
should have been called out. Instead PSC has remained silent as Smith and the JLM
target Palestinian supporters like Bert Schouwenburg.
Members
of PSC should be asking what is the purpose of a union’s affiliation if that
union acts as an extension of the apartheid regime? I know that Barbara Plant, the
GMB’s President is a genuine supporter of the Palestinians. PSC should be
working with her to confront Smith and his Zionist sycophants like Warren
Kenny.
Even past
General Secretary Tim Roache, put his name to an advertisement in the Guardian
in 2017 calling on the British government to apologise for the Balfour
Declaration.
The British Brothers League was set up to campaign for
anti-alienist legislation which Arthur Balfour, the Zionist hero, introduced in
1905. William Evans Gordon MP was a friend of Zionist Organisation President
Chaim Weizmann and a supporter of the Zionist movement
Arthur
Balfour was a dedicated anti-Semite who proposed the first immigration
laws, the Aliens Act, against Jewish refugees in 1905.
Weizmann, srael’s first President, described a conversation he had had with
Balfour, who told him that he had met with Cosima Wagner, the anti-Semitic widow
of Richard Wagner. Balfour explained that ‘he
shared many of her anti-Semitic postulates.’ One suspects that Smith and
Balfour would have got on quite well.
If there was an award for
the most rabidly racist, war-mongering, anti-Corbyn ‘journalist’ the name of
Nick Cohen would come high if not top of the list. Despite his name he isn’t
Jewish though he began to claim that too with an article ‘Hatred is turning me into a Jew’.
Seven years later, as the
anti-Corbyn campaign was getting going, Cohen penned an article Why
I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too. Clearly his conversion was
taking a long time!
‘My
name is Nick Cohen, and I think I’m turning into a Jew. Despite being called
“Cohen”, I’ve never been Jewish before.
An open invitation from Nick Cohen for every racist troll to convert to Judaism
When anti-Semitism was a
genuine form of racism, Jews were identified with the left and trade unionism.
Zionism has managed to transform Jews into an object of admiration for the
racist right.
Back in the early years
of New Labour Cohen was a decent journalist, writing a weekly column on the
back page of the Observer. His politics were Tribunite. He consistently
attacked New Labour’s policies towards refugees. He even opposed the Blair
government’s introduction of Holocaust Memorial Day.
My email to Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's Zionist Gatekeeper Goes Unanswered
Then 9/11 happened and
with it the War on Terror. Cohen jack-knifed to the right, becoming an
Islamaphobe and a supporter of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thus was born the
anti-Corbyn fiend and sexual predator that Freedland and Viner did their best
to protect.
My favourite Cohen
article is Don’t
tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn which he wrote just before Theresa
May called a general election in April 2017. This latter-day Nostradamus
predicted that:
On current polling, Labour
will get around a quarter of the vote. Imagine, though, how the Labour party
will fare in an election campaign when its leaders are Corbyn, John McDonnell,
Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott… The Tories have gone easy on Corbyn and his
comrades to date for the transparently obvious reason that they want to keep
them in charge of Labour.
This blog was alone in predicting Corbyn's unexpected success in 2017
In the wake of the June
2017 election, when Labour – despite the sabotage of the right - gained 30
seats and the highest
swing since 1945– I wrote a blog Jeremy
Corbyn and the Humiliation of Nick Cohen. Almost alone amongst commentators
I predicted the outcome. With the polls showing a lead of over 20% I wrote:
… it was Harold Wilson who said that a
week is a long time in politics. Seven weeks is a political eternity. Theresa
May has taken a gamble that her 21% lead will hold. It is a gamble that she may
yet come to regret.
There is only one direction that her lead
can go, and that is down. Once her lead falls, then a snowball effect can take
over. What is essential is that Labour marks out the key areas on which it is
going to base its appeal. The danger is that Corbyn is going to continue with
his ‘strategy’ of appeasing the right and appealing to all good men and
women....
Theresa May is a cautious conservative.
She is literally the product of her background - a conservative vicar’s
daughter. Reactionary, parochial and small-minded, she is a bigot for all
seasons.
On 3 June I wrote General
Election - Is Labour on the threshold of victory? After the result I wrote
to Kath Viner, offering to replace Nick Cohen at half his salary. For reasons
which remain difficult to understand to this day Viner ignored my generous
offer!
The Guardian said that Cohen’s departure was for ‘health’
reasons whereas the real reason was that he had had been a sexual predator,
preying on young female journalists, some with mental health problems, others
on temporary contracts.
Kath Viner got rid of its cartoonist of 40 years standing, Steve Bell, the only decent journalist left on the paper - Viner ruled that the appearance of Razan Al Najar - the 21 year old Palestinian medic killed by Netanyahu's snipers in Gaza, in Theresa May's fireplace was 'antisemitic'
My email to Guardian editor Kath Viner also goes unanswered
In a puff to gullible
readers who are asked to fund Kath Viner’s half a million pound salary, The Guardiancommits
itself to delivering
fearless, investigative journalism –
giving a voice to the powerless and holding power to account.”
Novara Media on Nick Cohen cover up
Except, it seems, when
the powerless happen to be young, female journalists in its newsroom.
The
Guardian Investigates
Cohen or Does It?
In January 2018 Lucy Siegle reported Cohen for
groping her. Siegle started at The
Guardian around 2001 as an editorial assistant. She described standing at a
photocopier when Cohen appeared behind her, cupped her bottom with both hands,
grunted and breathed heavily into her ear.
Siegle remembers
returning to her desk, humiliated. She never considered reporting him. “I’m
literally the least powerful person in the entire newsroom.”. For 14 years
she avoided his desk and chaperoned interns “like
a mother hen crossing a busy road.”
The #MeToo movement was
sweeping through society on Feb. 1, 2018, when Siegle met with Guardian Managing
Editor Jan Thompson. Siegle described what happened next.
The meeting began with me. I described why
I was there, and went on to tell the senior executive about Nick Cohen’s
assault on me. There was not much response at this point, just a blank stare
which I felt to be slightly hostile. But when I mentioned that I was aware
there had been another allegation, the senior executive became animated.
They set me straight (“That sort of
Twitter allegation would not be investigated in that way ever…”) and pulled a
face of disgust at the very idea of that allegation. The executive also denied
any knowledge about any allegation.
The meeting continued and the exec pointed
out a number of times that it would be difficult for me to proceed with my
complaint anonymously and made it sound as if I will have to go head-to-head
with “Nick”. He was called by his first name throughout, and there was lengthy
speculation from the exec about what he might say and how he might be affected
by such an allegation.
The main concern of Thompson
was about the possibility that Siegle would write about what happened. Thompson’s
main concern was the alleged abuse that Cohen faced for his political views,
according to notes Siegle wrote afterward. She described the meeting as a “chaotic
mess of defensiveness and attack.”
The exec then told me that Nick Cohen was frequently
targeted for abuse because of his political standpoint. They sounded like they
were defending a very precious asset, their star striker. I could not
understand why this was remotely relevant, but my brain began to compute that
this conversation was not welcome….
By the time the meeting finished, I felt
like I had been in a laundry cycle, but also a bit like I’d been beaten up. As
happens with these things, you pore over them afterwards to make sure that you
haven’t been over-sensitive or misread.
Because of this hostile
reaction, Siegle decided not to pursue the complaint within GNM.
No woman should suffer socially,
economically or professionally for challenging her abuser. But how much harder
it is to speak out when the cost may be not only your career, but the ability
to pay the rent or feed your children. And how much more likely you are to be
targeted when predatory men know that...
Even now, women are paying a price for
speaking out. Much discussion has skipped past the primary question – how women
should be treated in the workplace – to fixate on how perpetrators should be
treated, without pausing to acknowledge the penalties that victims have already
paid.
The Guardian was keen to hear from victims of sexual harassment everywhere but the Guardian!
One week before Siegle’s
complaint The Guardiansolicited
tips about workplace sexual harassment. They said:
We take all allegations of workplace
harassment extremely seriously and aim to support victims in all circumstances.
We have processes which anyone can use to raise complaints so that they can be
fully investigated.
Siegle wrote
of how she was aware of several other women who had also been “discouraged” by The Guardian from taking forward their
complaints.
New York
Times Breaks the
story that the British press, including Private Eye, Wouldn’t Touch
On 30 May the New York Times [NYT] ran British
Reporter Had a Big #MeToo Scoop. Her Editor Killed Itabout what
had happened at The Guardian and the Financial Times [FT]. It spoke of 7
women who had made allegations against Cohen but no paper would touch it
because ‘Britain’s
news media has a complicated relationship with outing its own.’
Lucy Siegle is one of multiple women to
accuse the British columnist Nick Cohen of unwanted sexual advances and groping.Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times
The NYT revealed
that FT journalist Madison Marriage
secured a “potentially explosive scoop” on the real reason behind
Cohen’s departure but her story was spiked by Editor RoulaKhalaf.
Marriage had evidence that his departure followed years of unwanted sexual
advances and groping of female journalists.
The FT’s explanation
was that “Some
reporting leads to published stories and some not.”
Jane
Bradley interviewed more than 35 journalists at The Guardian and FT to
examine sexual misconduct in Britain’s news media.
Marriage had already
begun investigating Cohen but RoulaKhalaf halted the
investigation, telling Marriage not to contact any new sources. Her team had
already interviewed five of Cohen’s accusers.
Two women were willing to
speak openly, and Marriage had supporting documentation on others. Khalaf said
that Cohen did not have a big enough business profile to make him an “F.T.
story”. Publicly, the FT had
declared “no
topic or scandal off limits.”
In February Khalaf said
she would not run the investigation as a news article, several journalists
recalled, and suggested that Marriage file it as an opinion piece. She did, but
it still did not run.
The Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf
during an appearance last year on the BBC. Credit...James
Manning/PA Images, via Getty Images
A native of Lebanon,
Khalaf is not a British media insider. Colleagues described her as a cautious
editor, and some said the Cohen article had fallen victim to an institutional
conflict between the newspaper’s investigative aspirations and its
conservative, business roots.
The spiking of the FT article hit Siegle especially hard. ‘Now
it seemed the whole industry was protecting itself.’ She described
how the response to the story showed
“#MeToo is nothing but a convenient
hashtag for the British media. The silence on its own industry is just really
conspicuous.”
Cohen was seen as someone with influence,
former colleagues said. Credit...Marco
Secchi/Getty Images
Cohen however was
unrepentant. He told the NYT that it
wasn’t the women he abused who were the victims: He was the “only person
whose life is turned over because of this”.
A GNM spokesperson told The Telegraph that the organisation “instigated
our own HR investigations” in 2018, but the group said the victim “did
not wish to pursue the complaint”. Siegle asked
If Britain’s most stridently liberal
newspaper fails to deal with claims of sexual harassment by one of its leading
writers, what does it say about the supposed progress of the #MeToo movement
On October 6 2021 Siegle posted
on Twitter describing her experience at The
Guardian.
“I don’t normally read
Nick Cohen’s column in the Observer. Ever since he ‘groped’ me at the
photocopier (zero marks for originality) at work when I was an admin assistant
in my early 20s I have avoided being anywhere near him. But I do think he is a
total creep…. lurking in the shadows to lay your hands on an underling (or
anyone) is not to my mind compatible with the position he presents.”
It was through going
public that she heard from other victims of Cohen, as did the Good Law Project
[GLP]. The experiences of Women 1-5, as the GLP refers to the complainants
(Siegle is W2) featured in a thread
posted by Jolyon Maugham. Many more have come forward since.
GNM turned down a request
for an independent inquiry into its complaint processes and handling of the
complaints. Siegle told
how
Nick Cohen is now co-operating with GNM on
an investigation and his column has been “paused”. He has previously denied
allegations as “vile and untrue”. I am sure that if Jolyon, myself, and the
other Ws had not pushed and posted threads it would still be business as usual
in Guardian HQ.
On 4 August 2022 Siegle wrote,
not in The Guardian but the New European that
It was during this time as an admin
assistant that I was assaulted by Nick Cohen, a prominent and highly-regarded
journalist and, until this week when his column was “paused” as he is
investigated by the company, still a star columnist on The Observer,
as well as other publications including The Spectator and Private
Eye.
Cohen spent two decades
as a columnist for The Observer. ‘Inside
the newsroom, he was seen as influential, colleagues said, someone who could
help your career.’
His resignation in January cited “health
grounds.” Secretly, the newspaper group paid him a financial settlement for
quitting and agreed to confidentiality, according to three colleagues and an
editor with whom Mr. Cohen spoke.
This cartoon was also deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters
In his farewell, editors
praised his “brilliant”
and “incisive” coverage. Seven women told the NYT that Cohen had groped them or made
other unwanted sexual advances over nearly two decades. Four insisted on
anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.
Siegle recounted Cohen grabbing her bottom
in the newsroom around 2001. Five other women described similar encounters at
pubs from 2008 to 2015. One said Mr. Cohen had pressed his erection against her
thigh and kissed her uninvited when they met to discuss her career. A seventh
said Mr. Cohen had repeatedly offered to send her explicit photographs in 2018
while she worked as an unpaid copy editor for him.
This cartoon too was deemed 'antisemitic' by Freedland's witchhunters
Cohen’s reputation was
widely known in the newsroom, according to 10 former colleagues. Five women
said he had groped them after work at pubs, including one who said he had
groped her “five
or six” times in 2008. One said she and other female journalists had used a
different entrance to a pub to avoid being groped by him. Another woman said
she had avoided the bar downstairs from the newsroom after Mr. Cohen grabbed
her knee during work drinks.
Private Eye too did not cover his
departure. When a reader emailed asking why, Editor Ian Hislop replied:
“Coverage of Nick Cohen’s departure from
The Observer is obviously more problematic for The Eye than the others that you
mention due to the fact that he used to write a freelance column for the
magazine.”
Hislop said he had
discussed the terms of The Guardian’s deal with Cohen. “Instead of
any conclusion,” Hislop said of The
Guardian investigation, “it
ended up with a secret agreement and a big cash payment.”Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
In the end the ratbiter was bitten where it hurts most but Ian Hislop joined the Street of Shame in not telling the Eye's readers why
Cohen’s column in Private
Eye was called Ratbiter, which regularly defamed Corbyn supporters
including Greg Hadfield and myself. It was a litany of lies but Private Eye supported
Cohen’s false ‘anti-Semitism’ accusations. Cohen’s departure from the Eye was mentioned only in The
Press Gazette, a media trade website.
In a phone interview with
the NYT, Cohen said he did not have
the “faintest
idea” about Siegle’s accusation and questioned why she had waited so long
to report it. He said the conversation with the copy editor was “joking” among friends. He blamed the
accusations on a campaign by supporters of Russia and transgender rights!
Steve Bell - the only honest journalist on the Guardian was sacked by Kath Viner
Informed that seven women
had complained Cohen exclaimed, “Oh, God. I assume it’s stuff I was doing
when I was drunk”. In a subsequent email, Cohen did not respond to specific
accusations.
“I have written at length about my
alcoholism. I went clean seven years ago in 2016. I look back on my addicted
life with deep shame.
Jean Hannah Edelstein, an
assistant at The Observer from 2007
to 2009, said Cohen was not alone in his behaviour. She recalled her editor
hitting her with a sex whip as she walked by. Over one boozy lunch, she said,
the same editor offered to help her career and suggested that she pose naked to
promote her book.
Another
woman, a freelancer who had recently been homeless and had depression, said she
had met Cohen at a pub in 2010 to discuss her career. As they chatted, she
said, he suddenly kissed her on the mouth and pressed his erection against her
thigh. She said she fled.
“I just remember walking along Waterloo
Bridge and thinking, ‘I can’t go to The Guardian with this. Who would they
believe? He was one of their stars, and I was a freelance journalist with
mental health issues.”
Heather Brooke, an
investigative journalist, said she had initially dismissed her encounter with
Mr. Cohen at the 2008 awards ceremony as “a one-off drunken mistake and
didn’t take it further.” (“Nick Cohen got drunk and slapped my ass … ugh!”
she wrote in her diary the next day.)
Rebecca Watson, a writer
and commentator, said Cohen had grabbed her bottom at a book party in 2009.
“To sexually assault a stranger at a book
launch, to be one of the more prominent people there, and to just assume there
will be no comeuppance,”
Not long after Siegle
lodged her 2018 complaint records show that Cohen began working with a
freelance copy editor, a single mother with autism.
She worked remotely for
Cohen, unpaid. On June 29 2018, a work conversation on Twitter became
punctuated with mutually flirtatious jokes. Cohen offered to send an explicit
photograph. The woman declined. Cohen persisted and she deflected again.
In the following days,
the copy editor said, Cohen turned cold. In messages, she apologised if she had
misread the situation. Eventually, she told him continuing to work together “would
be at a cost too high for my own mental health.”
Cohen, in an email to the
NYT, said this was the only
accusation to surface since he quit drinking and said it had been
misrepresented.
It involves a friendship with a woman I
never met that, sadly, went badly wrong.
In 2019, the copy editor
asked The Guardian’s HR team about
the process for raising sexual misconduct claims. She described the incident
without naming Cohen, saying she felt “huge
pressure” to go along with his “banter.”
Because she was not an
employee, the copy editor said she was told that she would not be informed of
the investigation’s outcome. Being frozen out of the process terrified her, so
she backed off. This is almost certainly unlawful and someone personally
contracting to do work is covered by discrimination legislation.
In the autumn of 2021,
Siegle wrote on Twitter about her experience. Her lawyer, Jolyon Maugham, began
making noises. Jan Thompson immediately emailed Siegle offering an
investigation and accusing her of turning down a previous offer in 2018, which
Siegle denied.
Eventually Cohen was
suspended and The Guardian hired a
law firm to carry out an independent inquiry. Neither Siegle nor the copy
editor agreed to participate.
Suffice to say The Guardian has not offered Lucy Siegle or any other woman
journalist the opportunity to put their side of the story. Freedom of the press
and #MeToo has its limits, after all!
The Financial Times building in London.
The newspaper spiked an investigation into Nick Cohen, a columnist at The
Observer. Credit...Andrew Testa for The NYT
From 1670
Onwards Juries Had the Right to Decide Cases According to their Own Conscience
& Conviction – That is What is Now at Stake in the decision of the Court of
Appeal in Colston
As people may know, together with 3 others, I was convicted recently
at Wolverhampton Crown Court of the heinous offence of ‘intending without lawful excuse to destroy or damage property belonging
to UAV Engines Ltd.’ which is owned by Elbit Systems Ltd, the Israeli arms company.
The British state and its Judiciary, have always put a higher
premium on the protection of property than the protection of people from that
property, in the case of arms factories. Likewise those who pour effluent into
the rivers and pollute the seas around us are immune from criminal prosecution
unlike those who protest against the pollution.
As capitalism lurches from economic to environmental crisis,
it lashes out like a wild animal. We see that in the nuclear poker game that is
being played out in Ukraine as NATO wages a proxy war against Russia.
The POA allows police to pre-emptively arrest demonstrators
is a new low but nothing is too low for the supine Labour ‘Opposition’ under
Starmer, the Zionist
without qualification. Labour MPs were ordered to abstain on the 3rd
reading and Starmer has promised to
allow the Act to ‘bed in’.
Meanwhile the Judiciary, after a relatively liberal spell
under Lady
Hale and before her Lord Neuberger, as President of the Supreme Court, has
reverted to type as the enemy of civil liberties. Epitomising this is the Lord
Chief Justice Ian Burnett.
The political establishment – from Cruella Colston Starmer, Braverman to Keir
Starmer– reacted with horror at the decision of a Bristol jury to acquit
the 4 demonstrators who rolled mass murderer and slave trader Edward Colston
into Bristol harbour. Braverman’s reaction was to be expected but it spoke
volumes about Starmer’s taking the knee during the Black Lives Matter ‘moment’
as he called it. Racism and Starmer go together like Tom and Jerry.
The Colston verdict or rather the judge’s directions that the
defence could employ human rights defences in a case involving criminal damages
was overturned at the end of last year by the Court of Appeal in a referral
from Braverman in Attorney
General’s Reference No. 1 2022.
According to Judge Chambers Rosa Parks was wrong to break the segregation laws in the Deep South of America
Here is how Henry Hill of Conservative Home saw
it:
It was easily missed,… but the Court of Appeal yesterday afforded an
important victory to Suella Braverman.
As Attorney General, she asked it to review the judgement in the
‘Colston Four’ trial, which saw four vandals acquitted on the grounds that
tearing down a public artwork was protected under human rights
legislation.
Hill is quite right. The Court of Appeal under Sir Ian
Burnett, the Lord Chief Justice, ‘afforded an important victory to Suella
Braverman.’
The decision negated the decision of the Supreme Court in Ziegler that
obstruction of the road was protected by the European Convention of Human
Rights.
In our case under Judge Michael Chambers KC, all defences of ‘lawful
excuse’ were ruled out, despite the factory we targeted manufacturing engines
for drones which kill civilians.
The tortured ‘logic’ of Chambers and Debbie ‘ghoul’ Gould,
the Prosecutor, was that it was necessary to identify which engine goes into
which drone and which child it has murdered It is not enough to show that Elbit
drones comprise 85% of Israeli drones nor that they manufacture 80% of Israel’s
ammunition.
Acts ancillary to war crimes committed in other countries are
treated as committed in this country under Section 52 of the International Criminal
Court Act 2001. But Judges have effectively rewritten the law to grant
immunity to those who profit by the death of others.
Judge Chambers is very hot on drug dealers who convey their
wares down Britain’s motorways yet their crimes pale into insignificance
compared to the death and destruction of Elbi.
The twisted and artificial ‘logic’ of the judiciary is that
drones manufactured in Britain is ‘too remote’ from the war crimes they inflict
to be prosecuted. This is a racist rationale for the crimes of British imperialism
and its Israeli allies.
No such principle was espoused in the Nuremberg War Crimes
Trials and the prosecution of IG Farben which manufactured Zyklon B, hydrogen
cyanide, which was used to exterminate millions of people. No doubt if today’s
judges had participated in the Nuremberg war crimes trials
they would have argued that it was necessary to link each crystal of Zyklon B
with each person who was gassed.
The reality is that whenever
democratic rights and freedoms have been under attack – whether it be the Taff Vale Judgment
which overturned trade union protections for the right to strike, or the attacks
on the Suffragettes or the Official Secrets prosecution
of Clive Ponting – judges have always been the nodding dogs of a reactionary
Tory Establishment.
Whilst rogues like Boris
Johnson and Lady
Mone have immunity from prosecution over the Jennifer
Arcuri and COVID frauds, because the Met Police refuse to
investigate the crimes of fraud and embezzlement that have marked the Covid contracts,
those of us who take direct action against the participation of Elbit in war
crimes are prosecuted with the full force of the law.
That is why tomorrow there will be a Right to Protest meeting
in Brighton at the BMECP Centre, 10 Fleet Street Brighton.
There will also be a Zoom
meeting on Saturday 24 June with a host of speakers including Huda Ammori from Palestine
Action, Tim Crosland, Deepa Driver from the Defend Julian Assange campaign and Tony
Greenstein, one of 4 convicted Defendants.
The deportation of Julian Assange looms ever closer after the
decision
of a single High Court judge last week to reject his attempt to stop his
extradition to the United States for the ‘crime’ of having exposed US war
crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. The hypocrisy of British judges who deliberately
turn a blind eye to the war crimes of the US and British governments is nothing
new. The millions who died under the British Empire did so under the knowing
gaze of Britain’s judges.
As always
when confronted with challenges to state authority the judicial system seeks to
criminalise political protesters. In 1912 the Prosecuting
barrister in the trial of Emmeline Pankhurst said that:
Suffrage is not the issue, it is the criminal behaviour of the
suffragettes and their incitement to partake in militant activity at which 54
windows were broken
None of this is new. All challenges to the British state are
met with attempts to criminalise the protesters. But in ruling out all defences
of lawful excuse and in particular gaoling protesters for explaining their
motives to juries, there is an arguable case under Article 6 of the European Convention
of Human Rights:which states:
In the determination of his civil rights and
obligations or of any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a
fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and
impartial tribunal established by law.
How can a trial be fair when
the Defendant can’t explain his/her motives to the jury? Craig Murray described
how
The current
legal establishment will adapt themselves to the legal framework of whatever
sort is ordained by the rulers. Anybody expecting judges to defend liberties is
likely to be sorely disappointed. They will happily remove the ability of
juries to defend liberty too.
Brighton & Hove Protest in Support of Palestine Action Prisoners
As people
may know I together with 3 other Defendants am awaiting sentence after having
been convicted of ‘intent to cause criminal
damage without lawful excuse’ to the Shenstone Elbit factory of Israeli
arms factory, Elbit.
The Judge
ruled out all lawful excuses holding that there were no lawful excuses, thus
leading inevitably to our convictions.
All five Defendants,
including one whom the jury was deadlocked on, have issued the following statement:
When
Justice is Neither Done Nor Seen to be Done
Statement from the Elbit 5
On March 9 2021 we were arrested by the
Police before we could reach Elbit’s Shenstone factory where some of us
intended to occupy the roof and decorate the factory with paint in the blood
red colour of the victims of its drones. Elbit is an Israeli arms company.
On May 15 2023, after a 7 week trial, we were
found guilty of intent to cause criminal damage without lawful excuse. Judge
Michael Chambers refused to admit all lawful excuse defences under s.3 of the
Criminal Damage Act 1971 or let us explain why it was that we had targeted
Elbit. The jury was therefore left with the impression that our only purpose
was to commit criminal damage.
At no point was the jury told that they have
the right to reach a verdict based on whether it was unjust to convict and whether
or not the use of the CDA in this case was oppressive. This is despite it being
a longstanding feature of British jurisprudence since Bushell’s case in 1670,
that a jury has the right to reach a verdict according to their conscience.
Patrick Devlin, a former Law Lord said
that the right to bring in ‘perverse acquittals’ gives protection against laws which the ordinary man regards as harsh and oppressive . . . an insurance that the criminal law will conform to the ordinary man's ideas of what is fair and just. If it does not, the jury will not be a party to its enforcement.
Similarly Heather Hallett, a member of the Court of Appeal from 2005 to 2019 and who is now chairing the COVID Inquiry, said in her 2017 Blackstone lecture on the Role of the Jury, A jury may refuse to convict in spite of
the law and the evidence because it concludes that the law is an unjust law.
The jury passes its verdict on the law. Secondly, it ensures that the
prosecution and the judge are on trial….
Israel’s recent attack on Jenin where 12
Palestinians, including 4 children, were killed is precisely why we targeted
Elbit. We should have been allowed to use the defence of necessity whereby it
is permissible to commit a smaller crime in order to prevent a far greater ill.
However the courts have decided that the victims of Elbit’s drones are too
‘remote’ from Elbit’s factories in this country.
The ‘logic’ that was employed in our trial
was that in order to avail ourselves of this defence it was necessary to
identify the particular engine in the particular drone that killed the
particular child. We believe that this is merely playing with words whilst
people are dying. In practice it enables Elbit to avoid responsibility for the
death of hundreds if not thousands of civilian victims, including children and
allows it to evade legislation on the prevention of war crimes. Elbit are
merchants of death plying their lethal trade with the protection of the law.
The International Association of Democratic Lawyersin a statement
calling for the release of Palestinian Action prisoners notedhow, on 21 June 2023, an Elbit drone extrajudicially
assassinated three Palestinians in Jenin. This was a war crime as was the
attack on Jenin where thousands of people were evicted from their homes and
forced to wander the streets without food, water or shelter.
The International
Criminal Court Act 2001 make the commission of war crimes by British
nationals or residents, or being ancillary to war crimes, be they in this
country or abroad, an offence. It would seem obvious that actions intended to
prevent the production of Elbit Drones in this country must be lawful in so far
as such actions are intended to prevent the commission of far greater crimes.
In the eyes of our judiciary, criminal damage
against Elbit factories is more serious than the enabling of war crimes.
We are at the moment awaiting sentence and
have been remanded for reports. HHJ Chambers has stated that our offences ‘cross the custody threshold’. The date
of sentencing was originally intended to be on June 26. It was then postponed
to July 10 and then August 11. The latest date is September 1 and we understand
that it may be postponed again.
This continual delay in sentence is in itself
a form of punishment as a cloud of uncertainty hangs over all of us. One of us
lost his job due to the conviction imposed and finding other means of
employment will be extremely difficult while there is no closure. Overall, this
case has been hanging over us for more than two years and now it is being
delayed again for reasons that we have not been given but which we understand
to relate to the inability of the court to agree a date with our
barristers."
We have therefore decided to issue this
statement in order that people who have been following the trials and prosecution,
some would say persecution, of Palestine Action activists, are made aware of
what is happening in this case.
Mike Lynch White (centre), cofounder of Scientist Rebellion was sentenced to 27 months in prison at Chester Crown Court
I seem to
recall a saying
that Justice Delayed is Justice Denied. This
was first coined by Sir
Edward Coke, the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobin periods,
who was variously Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas and King’s Bench
as well as Attorney General.
In the Case of Proclamations and Dr. Bonham's Case, Coke declared the King to
be subject to the law, and the laws of Parliament to be void if in violation of
"common right and reason".
Cases which foreshadowed Bushel’s Case of
1670 where a jury decided not to enforce a tyrannical statute.
A week
ago, Saturday 22 July, was Prisoners’ Day of Action. There are currently 7 supporters
of Palestine Action in prison for taking action to disrupt the production of
Israeli weapons on British soil.
Four of
them are detained after dismantling American weapons factory, Teledyne Labtech
in Wales. Teledyne are the largest listed exporters of weapons from Britain to
the Apartheid State of Israel. Two others are in prison for occupying APPH, a
Canadian weapons factory, and supplier of parts for Israeli Elbit drones and
fighter jets.
Over 100
more face trials for taking direct action against a range of weapons companies,
mainly Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons firm. Elbit supply the majority
of Israel’s military drone fleet, land equipment and munitions. Their weapons
are used against the Palestinian people, and then marketed as “battle-tested”
and sold on to other oppressive regimes across the world. Using the captive
population of Gaza as a laboratory is a crime against humanity. All strikes
against that industry are not only legitimate but essential.
The
British State’s complicity with the colonisation of Palestine goes back all the
way to the Balfour Declaration when, in
the words of Arthur Koestler ‘“One nation solemnly promised to a second nation
the country of a third.”
Palestine
Action to date have shut down two
Israeli weapons factories and cost Elbit hundreds of million pounds in lost
contracts. By imprisoning activists, the British state is demonstrating that it
prioritises protecting the military supply chain of a foreign apartheid state
over the freedom of its own citizens.
In
addition to handing down prison sentences, the State has imprisoned activists without
trial and on occasions the Crown Prosecution Service have reintroduced
previously dropped charges, after Elbit asked for a review. In reaction to both
growing public support for direct action and the number of ‘perverse acquittals’
by juries, especially the Colston
acquittals the Court of Appeal ruled, on reference from the Attorney
General, that ‘lawful excuse’ defences such as Necessity (preventing a greater
crime) and Human Rights defences of proportionality did not apply to cases of criminal
damage.
Almost 80 public figures, including members of the European
Parliament, screenwriters, lecturers, musicians, writers and journalists, have
signed an open letter calling on the UK to release detained Palestine
Action protesters who "sacrificed
their liberty to challenge colonial violence".
The protesters were arrested while obstructing the entrances
to several sites belonging to Israel's largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit
Systems, in the UK. Elbit, the letter says, manufactures "an array of weaponry, including drones
equipped with payloads", and "profit from the captive population
of Palestine — they have turned civilians into a human laboratory where
experimental weaponry can be tested, improved on, and then marketed as
"field-proven" and branded as "battle-tested" surveillance
technology and components for tanks and fighter jets."
We demand the charges are dropped against those already incarcerated
and at risk of prison over their work to disrupt the criminal production of
Israeli weapons on British soil.
We stand with those who have sacrificed their liberty to challenge
colonial violence and we call on others to do the same until they, and the
Palestinian people, are free.
Steps taken by Palestine Action, the letter continued,
have resulted in the closing down of two of Elbit's sites, and the loss
of millions of pounds through the severance of MoD contracts. Palestine Action has
inspired local communities across the country to rise up against these immoral
factories which profit from the business of war and destruction.
has decided to prioritise its interests in protecting the military
supply chain of a foreign apartheid state by incarcerating its own people.
The heroes who have
taken courageous action to expose and dismantle Britain's role in the
colonisation of Palestine should be celebrated and rewarded, not imprisoned. We
therefore call for the release of all Palestine Action political prisoners, and for the charges to be dropped.
Signatories to the letter also include British-Palestinian
filmmaker Farah Nabulsi, lawyer and winner of the Palestine Book
Award 2019 Academic Award, Professor Noura Erakat, and 2020 Creative Award Winner Susan Abulhawa, in addition to CAGE Director Moazzam Begg,
MEPs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly and academic David Miller, who was fired from Bristol University
following a campaign by the Israel lobby over his criticism of the Zionist
state.
Here is the full
statement calling for the release of Palestine Action prisoners
Activists drop a banner in Manchester calling for the freedom of Palestine Action prisoners, incarcerated for taking action to disrupt the Israeli weapons trade in Britain.
Tony Greenstein speech outside Wolverhampton Court on 6 September 2023 before 4 of the defendants were sentenced
The first thing I want to do is to thank the
hundreds of people who stood in solidarity with the four of us who
were given between 9 and 12 months suspended sentences last Wednesday. Our ‘crime’ was trying to prevent the genocidal arms factory, Elbit, from continuing to operate.
The importance of solidarity when activists
are under attack from the State should never be under estimated. It emphasises
that we are not alone in our fight for justice and the struggle against the war
makers.
The demonstration outside the court and the
willingness of activists to turn up from as far away as Wales emphasised the
support we have. It is to the shame of Palestine Solidarity Campaign that at no stage, despite its 2021 conference
policy supporting Palestine Action, did they lift a finger in our support.
PSC Executive and its Director Ben Jamal are interested in only one thing – living off the back
of the Palestinian struggle in order to build yet another NGO.
The demonstration outside Wolverhampton Crown Court when 4 Palestine Actionists were sentenced and walked free on September 6th 2023
When I walked into the dock and listened to
HHJ Michael Chambers, a notoriously reactionary Tory judge, even by the
standards of his profession, I was prepared to be sent down and I had packed my
prison bag, as had my fellow Palestine Actionists.
Chambers had clearly prepared his speech well
before he entered the court. The mitigation speeches of our barristers I
suspect made little or no impression. His intention was to instil fear in us,
so it was a pleasant surprise when he gave us the ‘benefit’ of his doubt that
we ‘would no longer undertake violent
protests’.
Of course Palestine Action has never indulged
in violent protests. Noone has ever been injured by Palestine Action. Attacking
an arms company which specialises in the supply of lethal weaponry to some of
the most horrific regimes in the world is the opposite of violence. However these simple truths elude some of the brightest minds in the judicial system.
Nonetheless
we were happy to promise the probation service that we would not be involved in
similar protests in the next two years and we all intend to abide by that
promise. Of course we don’t intend to desist from participating in protests
against Elbit’s Death Factories.
On 7 March 2021 I was rung up out of the blue
by someone from Palestine Action who asked me to drive a van to the Midlands
and to collect some ladders. Having hired a van I set off at about 9 pm. It was only when I phoned a number
from a service station on the M40 that I was given a phone number and the
address I was going to.
The disappointment of the Zionists is the best thing about the sentencing. Note that Zio Fascist Fiona Sharpe tells Brighton & Hove News editor Jo Wadsworth that she is doing 'a great job'
Arriving at an Airbnb just after 1 am I almost
immediately left with Jeremy Parker to see if we could buy lock-on gear. Whoever
had bought the other equipment had forgotten to buy anything to lock on. So much for the efficient
military-style operation that the Prosecution sought to portray the action as.
It more resembled Dads Army than the SAS.
When I arrived back at the flat all the bags were sealed and apart from the paint
tubs I had no idea what they contained. It was only later after we were stopped
on our way to Shenstone that I learnt that they contained sledge hammers and a
crow bar.
I have no principled objection to damaging an arms factory. None at all. However I don’t think that for the sake of
causing £¼m damage that activists should risk 2-3 years imprisonment unless
they make that decision collectively at the outset.
However that is water under the bridge.
The pontificating of Michael Chambers about damage to the factory – its CCTV,
air-conditioning units etc. is the purest of hypocrisy when compared to the damage that Elbit's drones cause to people's bodies.
Palestine Action in action at Manchester recruitment agency iO Associates - The demonstration was successful - all ads for Elbit's death factories were taken down
I envisage that Chambers could have sat in the
Nazi
Peoples Court denouncing individuals who had caused damage to IG Farben’s factories,
which manufactured the gas Zyklon B, used to murder an estimated 4 million people. When your only concern is for property not people then it
doesn’t matter what the factory produces.
Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel is a well known anti-Palestinian racist who describes opponents of a Factory of Death as 'thugs' - she finds Dr Iain Darcy's comments I should have been given a medal incomprehensible
I watched Chambers closely over the 7 weeks of
the trial. Not once did it even occur to him to question the lawfulness Elbit’s
operations at Shenstone, which manufactures drones that are used to murder innocent civilians.
Prosecutor Rachel Gould, who I assume is Jewish, also displayed no concern but she
is probably a Zionist.
British law prioritises concern for property over people.
As Lord Denning, former Master of the Rolls explainedin Southwark LBC v Williams
"... if hunger were once allowed to be an excuse for stealing, it would open a door through which all kinds of lawlessness and disorder would pass... if homelessness were once admitted as a defence to trespass, no one's house could be safe. Necessity would open a door which no man could shut. … So the courts must, for the sake of law and order, take a firm stand. They must refuse to admit the plea of necessity to the hungry and the homeless;"
Denning also intoned in respect of the Birmingham 6, who were wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings in 1974:
“We shouldn’t have all these
campaigns to get the Birmingham Six released if they’d been hanged. They’d have
been forgotten, and the whole community would be satisfied… It is better that
some innocent men remain in jail than that the integrity of the English
judicial system be impugned.”
I imagine that this is carved in stone in the
Chambers home. At times he seemed to operate in tandem with the Prosecutor who
has no doubt appeared before him for many years. It was on very rare occasions
that they disagreed. 95% of the time he upheld her objections and 95% of the time he
overruled the defence barristers’ objections. He even ruled that I had to
disclose what I had said to my solicitor, which is a clear breach of legal
privilege.
Good Law Project on right to defend yourself
One of the few occasions in which he overruled the
Prosecutor was on thequestion of
whether I had lied. Gould had originally asserted that when I was stopped by the
Police and asked where I was going I lied when I said ‘I’m going for a drive’. I successfully persuaded her that what I
said was factually true even though it wasn’t the answer the policeman wanted.
Chambers was having none of it. It was, as far
as he was concerned, a lie albeit he then issued what is called a Lucas direction.
Chambers is a man who operates in a moral
vacuum. He is certainly no philosopher and gave no indication that he is
capable of deep thought or reflection. That is not true of all judges and in
recent years there have been a number who were capable of both.
Free speech
included not only the inoffensive but also the irritating, the contentious, the
eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome, and the provocative, as long as such
speech did not tend to provoke violence.
Even some of the more right-wing judges such
as Jonathan
Sumption were capable of straying from black letter law. In his final
diatribe Chambers quoted Sumption to the effect that the Suffragettes had set
back the cause of women’s emancipation by 5 years. However he forgot to mention
that Sumption, in the Reith lecture, had stated that there was ‘“no moral obligation to obey the law”. Sumption went on to say
that there was no obligation to obey the COVID laws.
The one thing Chambers was good at was in his ability to be selective in who and what he quoted. During
the case and in his summing up Chambers quoted what is clearly his favourite
judge, Lord Hoffman. What he didn’t
quote was Hoffman’s observation
that
Civil
disobedience on conscientious grounds has a long and honourable history in this
country. People who break the law to affirm their belief in the injustice of a
law or government action are sometimes vindicated by history.
Mentioning
the suffragettes Hoffman went on to say that “It is the mark of a civilised community that it can accommodate
protests and demonstrations of this kind.” However most judges, Chambers
included, are incapable of understanding that the law can be an instrument of
tyranny.
As has often been pointed out, there was nothing illegal under German law in exterminating people because of their race. Demolishing peoples' homes in Israel and using torture is not illegal in Israel either.
Patrick Devlin, a former Law Lord said
of the jury system that
It is a
protection against tyranny. It is also an insurance that the criminal law will
conform to the ordinary man's idea of what is fair and just. If it does not the
jury will not be a party to its enforcement. They have in the past used their
power of acquittal to defeat the full operation of laws which they thought to
be too hard…. One way or another they
are prone to give effect to their repugnance to a law by refusing to convict
under it. The small body of men, who under modern conditions, constitute the
effective body of legislators have to bear this in mind. It affects the
character of the laws they make, for it is no use making laws which will not be
enforced.
Devlin pointed to the reality of laws. Most MPs never read what they vote for before it is passed into law. They are written by parliamentary draughtsmen.
Dame Heather Hallett, a member of the Court of
Appeal from 2005 to 2019 and who is now chairing the COVID Inquiry, said in her
2017 Blackstone lecture on
the Role of the Jury that
A jury may refuse to convict in spite of the law and the
evidence because it concludes that the law is an unjust law. The jury passes
its verdict on the law. Secondly, it ensures that the prosecution and the judge
are on trial.
Yet when I put the same sentiments in a blog
Chambers stated
that
“He’s also been calling on
jurors to return outcomes according to conscience. That’s a serious matter of
contempt.
“It’s a
serious contempt to invite jurors to return outcomes which are not in
accordance with the facts, but in accordance with their conscience
If it is a serious contempt of court to point out what is a part of the Common Law, then why is there a plaque
on the walls of the Old Bailey which refers to the Bushel case of 1670, that says exactly this?
Chambers, whatever his other sins might be, cannot be accused
of originality. He is incapable
of comprehending any social or political analysis that challenges his conventional conservative upbringing.
Chambers favourite comparison when challenged on police
malpractice was of the police uncovering a gang plying drugs on the motorway. This
was in connection to the Public Immunity Certificate that Chambers granted
before the swearing in of the jury, thus preventing any discussion on what information the police possessed. Chambers had difficulty comprehending the difference between a gang of drug smugglers and human rights activists.
It is clear that the Police had
intelligence on our action even before it occurred yet when they stopped the
van they told us that it was because the van was not registered in the area. A
clear lie. When they opened the van and saw the Palestinian flags they asked ‘are they Israeli?’ In other words the
Police were given a license to lie on oath.
Chambers
was fond of quoting the reactionary new Lady Chief Justice, Sue Carr who succeeded the even more reactionary Ian Burnett, distinguished only by
the umbrella that others held for him. Carr’s only claim to fame is that
she is the first woman to take the post. Like Thatcher the only acceptable
woman for the most senior judicial post is a deeply reactionary one.
Carr
demonstrated her mettle at the end of July when she refused to grant a right of appeal to Morgan
Trowland and Marcus Decker who had scaled Dartford Bridge as part of a Just
Stop Oil protest. I say this despite disagreeing with their method of protest.
It is oil refineries not people who should be blockaded. However the sentences
were grossly disproportionate and intended to chill the right to protest.
Amongst
the more stupid of Chambers statements
were that “It was clear from the evidence
you gave to the jury that you were unrepentant.” Were we seriously expected
to ‘repent’ for having targeted an
Israeli arms factory?
Other
equally stupid statements
were that “You each demonstrated an
unswerving, blinkered commitment to your cause.’ Blinkered?Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Elbit
doesn’t just supply Israel with 85% of its drones. It supplies every genocidal state in the world. There is no conflict –
from Yemen to Kashmir to Myanmar– in which Elbit doesn’t help murderous
regimes kill their own citizens. The case of Myanmar is particularly egregious since
the Burmese Generals have massacred and expelled the Rohinga people in their thousands. Even the
UK government has sanctioned this regime but as far as Elbit is concerned no regime is out of
bounds.
For
Chambers the real evil is not the children whose lives are snuffed out by Elbit weapons but the
daubing of the company's walls with red paint.The immorality of our judges, and Chambers is
just an example, has a long tradition.The International
Criminal Court Act 2001 has become a dead letter.
“It’s apparent to everyone
that … public attitudes have hardened towards tolerance for extreme actions or
minorities choosing disruption or criminal damage rather than using the main
routes that are open to protest in a democratic society.
“That has also
been reflected by recent decisions of the court of appeal.”
Leaving aside whether we are an 'extreme minority' it is
true that the recent
decision of the Court of Appeal on Colston was hostile to direct action and
follows the move to the right of the Supreme Court. But there is
no evidence that public attitudes have hardened.On the contrary. The Colston decision which provoked the Court of Appeal into reinterpreting the law occurred precisely because a jury had acquitted the protesters.
What is
true is that the Courts have bowed to the desire of Tory Ministers to outlaw direct action and the right to protest.
Throughout the trial Chambers displayed his
political bias, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict’. Would he have termed
the occupation of France by Nazi Germany a ‘conflict’ or an occupation?
Israel pours concrete into
water wells to deprive Palestinians of water
Whenever there is a coup e'etat, such as in the case
of Rhodesia in 1964, when it declared UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) the courts are quick to fall into line.
I quoted in my book the decision of the Dutch Supreme
Court in November 1940 by 12-5 that there were no grounds to
refuse to sign the Aryan Declaration. This meant
the Nazis were given the legal go ahead to dismiss all Jewish government
employees. In the process they betrayed fellow Supreme Court Judge Lodewijk
Visser who was Jewish. The decision
was a recognition of who held power. There was no basis in Dutch law for such a
decision.
The decision
to prosecute Palestine Action activists was itself a political act
According
to the Good
Law Project some £10 billion of the £12.5 billion spent on PPE during the
COVID crisis was written off. The government set up a VIP lane, subsequently declared
unlawful, in order that it could hand contracts to its friends and cronies who
then recycled some of it back to the Tory Party.
The
most infamous case was that of Tory peer Lady
Michelle Mone who trousered £200m and made a £100m profit on PPE that was
unfit for use. Matt Hancock’s pub landlord Alex Bourne got
away with £30m for a PPE contract that never delivered anything. Has there
even been a whisper of an investigation still less a prosecution?Of course not. The rule of law in today’s
Britain applies almost exclusively to those without means.
We
saw that in the refusal
of the Met to prosecute Boris Johnson for his violations of COVID regulations. It
was only the threat of judicial review which forced them to do so. When they
did reverse their position they chose
to investigate just 1 of the 10+ parties Johnson had attended.
As the Good Law Project, which had brought the judicial review said of the Met's reasons for not investigating:
It
points to a Met that does not want to investigate potential criminality in
Government, or to a police force that is excessively deferential to those in
power. It is a policy which dramatically undermines the rule of law.
The
Court of Appeal ruling that
those acquitted in the Colston case should
not have been able to rely on human rights defences is a continuation of a
long tradition of judicial racism that ignored the plunder and genocide of the
British Empire. That Ian Burnett and fellows should oppose the toppling of a statue
celebrating a mass murderer should be no surprise.
Liar Lee Harpin, or as I call him, Hacker Harpin, described me as a prison escapee!
The
decision to bring our prosecution is a clear contradiction of Bingham’s rule
no. 8, compliance with international law. Elbit’s factories manufacture drones,
not for civil but military use. It supplies these drones knowing full well that
they will be used against civilians, be it in Gaza, Myanmar or Sudan.
As the New York Times reported
after the 2021 military coup in Myanmar:
The generals, who staged a coup a month ago, are now back in charge with a far more
sophisticated arsenal at their disposal: Israeli-made surveillance drones,
European iPhone cracking devices and American software that can hack into
computers and vacuum up their contents.
Chamber’s only concern was the £30,000 loss that might have
been caused to Elbit Systems. The man is morally bankrupt yet he sits in
judgement on others.
The
real question is the lawfulness of Elbit operations at Shenstone not minor and petty criminal damage.
Fellow racist Gaynor Bond expresses her sympathy to Jonathan Hoffman - 'so sorry JH. X'
It
is no wonder that Chambers repeatedly called Britain a ‘mature democracy’ when the word kleptocracywould be more apposite. Clearly
the word ‘democracy’ means something different to judges, even those as
elevated as the Recorder of Wolverhampton and ordinary people.
Today
there is an attempt by the Tory government, backed up by Starmer, to
criminalise all effective public protest. The courts are making it clear that
they will not place any obstacles in their way. That is why there is an urgent
need for greater collaboration between climate action and Palestine solidarity
groups such as in Oldham where Elbit’s factory was shut down.
The Zionists were not happy with Hoffman's fellow criminal Damon Lenzner accusing the justice system of 'institutional antisemitism'
But
this is the week when we can rejoice at the discomfort of the Zionists. There
was Damon Lenzner, the crooked crony of Jonathan Hoffman telling his coterie
of Zionist fascists that the justice system was ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ for not gaoling someone who is
Jewish! And there was Hacker Harpin, arrested for eavesdropping on other
peoples’ phones (including the parents of a dead child) with his usual
quota of mistakes in the Jewish News – I counted 4 (see letter).
My letter to the Jewish News pointing out their mistakes - it was sent last Friday - has still not been corrected
But when it came
to it, HHJ Chambers proved that his bark was worse than his bite as he
recognised that gaoling those who oppose a genocidal company is not a good look
– even for the judiciary.
There is just one part of the sentence - 20 days of rehabilitation - that might prove problematic. We have no need of 'rehabilitation'. This sounds very much like a Chinese or North Korean re-education camp which teaches protestors to love their government.
Tony
Greenstein
I have reinstated all the blogs I was forced to take down
I was forced, at the end of the trial on May 16, to take down all my blogs written during the trial because of the threat of being immediately gaoled for Contempt of Court. Now the trial is over, a jury can't be prejudiced and they can be put back, which is what I have done. They are:
It is no surprise that Gary Smith of the institutionally
sexist and racist GMB and an avid Zionist, has backed NATO's neo-Nazi allies in Ukraine. The fact that Zelensky has approved laws stripping workers of their rights and banning
left-wing parties, including Platform for Life, which has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian
parliament, has been no deterrent to
Smith, since he also does his best to suppress workers’ struggles.
What is more remarkable is that Sharon Graham,
who has a reputation for supporting strikes but declared herself ‘non political’
when she was elected General Secretary, has also got into bed with the Zionists. In particular taking
advice from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an
organisation set up and funded by the Israeli state and the Jewish National
Fund,about banning Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie. Graham also has given her support to NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.
One can only hope that the Socialist
Workers Party and the Socialist
Party, who have both up till now supported Graham, see the error of their
ways and reconsider their support for this British chauvinist.
The TUC motion, which was opposed
by only two unions – the FBU and Bakers Union with the RMT and NEU
abstaining – called for more weapons to be supplied to Ukraine. These
reactionary union bureaucrats, fools all, should bear in mind that a large
percentage of the arms already supplied have found their way onto the private market.
Ukraine
is Europe’s most corrupt state.
The
United States and Britain have been directly
supplying neo-Nazi forces in
Ukraine since 2014, despite a Congressional motion cutting
aid to Azov in 2018. We face the prospect of a new Libya in Europe with
private militias and an ongoing civil war.
There
have already been credible
threats that if Ukraine doesn’t receive enough weaponry then they
will resort to terrorism in Europe. What does NATO think is going to happen
when the war ends? Do they think the fascists will disarm? We could see an
outbreak of terrorism in Europe which will make ISIS seem like a tea party.
The sonnenrad or sunwheel is one of a number of ancient European symbols appropriated by the Nazis. It bears a remarkable similarity to that of the NPGU mining union which was on display at the TUC Congress
Mark
Serwotka of PCS, who has previously been considered on the left, joined
the warmongers in offering “unequivocal
support for those currently suffering occupation by a brutal Russian invasion”.
Serwotka said
that ‘We are with the Ukrainian people
and for Russia out, only the people of Ukraine should decide what the outcome
looks like.”For Serwotka the
activities of open neo-Nazis and the attacks on Russian speaking Ukrainians since
2014 count for nothing.
Victoria
Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State in the Biden administration admitted
that the US had funded,
to the tune of over $5 billion, the overthrow of the elected President Yanukovych
in 2014. Fascists were heavily armed when they outgunned the police.
“Our solidarity must know no
borders,” said GMB
President Barbara Plant. Not a word that the GMB is used to using when it comes
to workers nearer home. Unite backed the motion despite its Executive having issued
a statement saying that “wars are
never in the interest of working people”. One wonders whether Sharon Graham
even realises that opposing war and supplying more weapons to Ukraine is a
contradiction.
The GMB has
never extended solidarity to anyone
outside Britain. It has consistently supported Israel’s ethnic cleansing and has
repeatedly sided
with the Jewish Labour Movement, the British wing of Israel’s racist Israeli
Labor Party. At the moment it is trying
to expel a former International Officer
Bert Schounberg for
moving a motion at his branch calling for the disaffiliation of the JLM.
Last year
a GMB resolution supported by Unite under its war mongering General Secretary,
Sharon Graham, called
for increased arms spending. Unbelievably it called on the TUC to back an
increase in arms spending to 3 per cent of GDP. This at a time when the NHS and
schools are being starved of money. As Chris Nineham of Stop the War Coalition wrote
‘It actually
put the TUC to the right of the Tory government which even now only dares to
push for 2.5 per cent arms spending.
At a time of austerity and a
cost-of-living crisis, that decision prioritised the arms industry over the
vital interests of millions of working people, not least the tens of thousands
of GMB members in the beleaguered public services.
It also
revealed that Smith believes that the British government can be trusted with
more weapons, despite overwhelming evidence that they are used either for wars
of aggression or for sale to despotic regimes.
Given Smith’s support for Apartheid Israel, it is no surprise that
this appalling reactionary should demand that the Tories divert yet more money
from the NHS and their own workers in the health service to feed America’s war
industry. It is a shameful comment on the British trade union movement that
this motion was passed.
The
neo-Nazi credentials of the Azov battalion, which has been integrated into the
army and now promoted to brigade status, is well documented.
That did not stop Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, a man personally
responsible for integrating far-right groups into the state from defending
them to the online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda in 2019.
“The shameful
information campaign about the alleged spread of Nazi ideology (among Azov
members) is a deliberate attempt to discredit the ‘Azov’ unit and the National
Guard of Ukraine,”
even though
Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi
problem… important as it is to defend the yellow-and-blue flag against the
Kremlin’s brutal aggression, it would be a dangerous oversight to deny
Ukraine’s antisemitic history and collaboration with Hitler’s Nazis, as well as
the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.
On the eve of
World War II, Ukraine was home to one the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with estimates as
high as 2.7 million, a remarkable number considering the territory’s
long record of antisemitism and pogroms. By the end, more than half would perish. When
German troops took control of Kyiv in 1941, they were welcomed by “Heil
Hitler” banners. Soon after, nearly 34,000 Jews — along with Roma and other
“undesirables” — were rounded up and marched to fields outside the city on the
pretext of resettlement only to be massacred in what became known as the
“Holocaust by bullets.”
Those locals were led
by Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed
wing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Ukraine is the only country in the
world to have a national holiday in memory of a Nazi collaborator, Stepan
Bandera. The Times of Israel described how Hundreds
of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator.
They quoted Dimitary,
a member of the Azov group as saying that
"I have
nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia, but Putin's not
even a Russian. Putin's a Jew."
You might think that
Zionist groups like America’s Anti-Defamation
League would be prominent in denouncing these neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.
After all they are usually able to spot ‘anti-Semites’ before they have time to unfurl the Palestinian flaga. But strangely enough they have kept remarkable quiet. Even
worse they have been excusing and justifying them.
In 2019 – before it became
politically necessary to whitewash them – the ADL itself warned
that an “extremist group called the Azov
Battalion has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists” and issued a report
on how the Ukrainian militia was trying to “connect
with like-minded extremists from the US.”
This Ukrainian extremist group, called The Azov Battalion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Our latest report on international white supremacy details how they try to connect with like-minded extremists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbNhttps://t.co/gGHMM8L46k
Ali Abunimah described
how the ADL has been turning a blind eye to Hitler’s accomplices in Ukraine and
even justifying their record. As Abunimah observed ‘So when
Washington goes to war, the lobby will often lend its propaganda services to
the cause.’
This
shows that the Zionist lobby, of which the ADL is the most prominent, are first and foremost supporters of US imperialism.
So now it is rehabilitating the Ukrainian collaborators who helped Hitler
exterminate Jews and Poles.
This
Holocaust revisionism is motivated by the need to whitewash the present-day,
far-right Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis.
The
reason the US, NATO and the European Union gives for sending weapons and
mercenaries to Ukraine is that they are helping a fellow democracy defend its
independence and sovereignty against an illegal invasion by an expansionist,
megalomaniacal madman.
It is
therefore very awkward from a Western perspective that the Ukrainian regime is
underpinned by hard-right fascists and neo-Nazis.
Acknowledging
this fact, Western war propagandists fear, would legitimize Putin’s
claim that the Russian invasion – which has been overwhelmingly
condemned by the UN General Assembly – is justified by a need to
“de-Nazify” and demilitarize Ukraine.
The current war can be
traced
directly to the 2014 coup in Ukraine, during which the US and its allies supported
far-right and neo-Nazi elements. The goal was to install a US-friendly regime
that would bring Ukraine into NATO. Moscow has long seen NATO expansion as an
existential threat.
Key
actors in the US-supported coup were neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, the Azov
Battalion and C14.
They are part of a broader Ukrainian nationalist movement that venerates Bandera,
the leader of the OUN, which collaborated with Hitler during World War II.
In an interview
with Andrew Srulevitch, ADL Director of European Affairs, Professor David
Fishman exonerated the
UPA and Bandera, who were responsible for the slaughter of 300,000
Jews and Poles. Asked about torchlit marches in Kyiv with red and black flags, Fishman had this to
say:
“For Ukrainian
nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian
independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for
tactical – not ideological – reasons.... When Ukrainian nationalists and Jews
look at those red and black flags, we see two different things.’
In fact UPA attacks on
Jews were so ferocious that Jews sought
the protection of the Germans.
The Banderite
bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews
a survivor testified
in 1948.
Jews
sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by
Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby
also the Jews.
ADL,
which purports to oppose anti-Semitism, carried the interview with Fishman on
its website and in its newsletter. Zionist organisations, which are usually so
concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’, simply echoed NATO
propaganda. As Abunimah observed:
Fishman’s
excuse that Bandera and other Nazi collaborators are “symbols” of the “fight
for Ukrainian independence” mirrors the claims
from American white supremacists that their display of the Confederate battle
flag is merely to honor their “heritage” and not to celebrate a regime that
went to war to protect its “right” to enslave people from Africa.
Dozens of Ukrainian streets
are named after Bandera and in a particularly nice touch Bandera’s street runs
right up to the site of Babi Yar.
Daniel
Lazare, in a review of Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s Stepan Bandera: The
Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist wrote:
Although
Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third
Reich as no more than “tactical,” an attempt to pit one totalitarian state
against another, it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned
the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or
providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under
the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fascist regime had in Slovakia or
Ante Pavelić’s in Croatia.
What we
are seeing is a cynical attempt to rewrite history in order to portray Bandera
and the OUN/UPA as mere Ukrainian nationalists. Why? Because NATO’s Ukrainian
friends identify with Bandera’s alliance with Nazi Germany. Bandera saw
things differently explaining that Ukrainian nationalism had taken shape “in a spirit similar to the National
Socialist ideas”.
That the
BBC and the yellow press is engaged in trying to prettify the Azov Battalion and
assorted neo-Nazis is one thing (see Ros Atkin’s apologia What untruths is Russia
spreading about Nazis in Ukraine?) but for a Zionist organisation which
purports to oppose anti-Semitism to do the same is something else.
As Jimmy Dore observed, there are now
good Nazis as well as bad Nazis. The good ones are pro-Western and publicly, at
least, play down their anti-Semitism.
An example of Azov’s
handiwork was the body of a woman found in the basement of Azov’s HQ in
Mariupol. She had been tortured and a swastika was scratched into her chest.
For which Western media blamed
Russians.
Oleksiy
Kuzmenko’s Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military
Training Hub[George Washington University, September 2021] makes for
sombre reading. Kuzmenko wrote
that:
...since 2018, the National Army Academy (NAA),
Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for Western
military assistance to the country, has been home to Centuria, a self-described order of “European
traditionalist” military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the
country’s military along right-wing ideological lines and defending the
“cultural and ethnic identity” of European peoples against “Brussels’ politicos
and bureaucrats.” The group envisions a future where “European right forces are
consolidated and national traditionalism is established as the disciplining
ideological basis for the European peoples.”
The
group, led by individuals with ties to Ukraine’s ...Azov movement, has attracted multiple
members, including current and former officer cadets of the NAA now serving in
the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Apparent members have appeared in photos giving
Nazi salutes and made seemingly extremist statements online.
The
group has been able to proselytize Ukraine’s future military elite inside the
NAA. Members have also gained access to Western military education and training
Institutions.
The
presence of the far right within the NAA is alarming because that institution
is central to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Western support for that country,
and Western military presence there. Foreign military instructors routinely
engage with the Academy’s cadets at both the Academy proper and the
International Peacekeeping and Security Center it oversees....
Azov
figures and groups linked to Azov also heaped praise on Centuria and shared its
messages online. In January 2019, for example, Eduard Yurchenko, an ideologue
of the Azov movement, praised the group on Telegram, where he now has more than
1,100 subscribers. “You should know that
this is our legendary future growing,” Yurchenko wrote of Centuria,
emphasizing that the group was holding events within the NAA. ...
Galician
Youth, a group
that is linked to the Azov movement and operates in the Western part of
Ukraine, similarly shared Centuria propaganda on Telegram in 2019.
In
May 2021, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine... accused Galician Youth of
spreading anti-Semitic posters in Lviv. The group denied having any connection
to anti-Semitic posters and stated that it condemned anti-Semitism and
xenophobia. Belying these statements, however, Galician Youth events, patches,
etc., feature white nationalist symbols.
The
evidence is overwhelming that the AFU is being penetrated at all levels by
neo-Nazi groups.
Hope not Hate, which
never lost an opportunity to attack anti-racists like Chris Williamson for
‘anti-Semitism’, went out of its way to downplay genuine anti-Semitism in
Ukraine. HnH withdrew
an award to Joe Solo for having supported Chris, though it ended up with egg on their faces
writing that:
Ukraine's
contemporary Jewish community, while facing antisemitism that all Jewish
populations sadly receive, has, in the post-communist era, become a thriving
community in the country with freedoms and protections written in law.
Eduard Dolinsky, the leader of Ukraine’s Jewish
community clearly disagreed:
Our
government encourages nationalistic groups. Our government encourages
glorification of Nazi collaborator mass murderers and murderers of Jews.
Literally
there are hundreds of monuments, streets named after killers of Jews. You can’t
imagine in the West... a monument to a policeman who was escorting Jews to Nazi
death camps.... We have anti-Semitic incidents every day – vandalism on
Holocaust mass graves, vandalism on Jewish monuments. ... No one was ever
convicted. They always deny the issue.
Western propaganda
uses the fact that Zelenskyy is Jewish
to legitimise Ukraine’s Nazis. This is not strange however. Zelensky is a
rabid Zionist and Zionism historically has always koshered anti-Semitism. It
did so with Nazi Germany.
Less than 3 weeks ago
the IsraeliAmbassador to Romania,
together with settler leader Yossi Dagan, met with the leader of the
far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians party. This is a party that
openly denies the holocaust and is descended from the Iron Guard who in 1941
staged a pogrom in Bucharest and hung the bodies of Jews from meat hooks in
butcher shops. As Ha’aretz observed in its editorial ‘Shared
Values’: Netanyahu’s Israel Cements Another Grim Alliance With Europe’s Far
Right’
Zelensky
is a puppet of Ukraine’s fascists who came to power thanks to patronage from
Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky fundedZelensky’s election campaign whilst also funding
the Azov Battalion and other far-right militias.
In 2019 Zelensky met
with a range of fascist groups telling reporters “I met
with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and
everyone else.” A few seats away from Zelensky was Yehven Karas, leader of
the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
In 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman
Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of Bandera and openly supported the AB. Zelensky, described
Zolzulya as “not only a cool football
player but a true patriot.”
In
April 2021 Zelensky tried to appoint the neo-Nazi former head of the Right
Sector in Odessa, Serhiy Sternenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).
As the former head of the neo-Nazi Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was
directly implicated in the 2014 Trade Unions House massacre in Odessa, when 46
trade unionists were burnt alive or shot whilst attempting to flee the burning
building. It is a massacre that Smith and Graham are remarkably unconcerned or ignorant about.
In
November 2021 Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an
advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the AFU. Yarosh led the Right Sector from
2013-2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
A month
later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo
the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his
frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking
children.”
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa
with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion,
which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbas.
Zelensky’s visit to Greece in April 2022 backfired dramatically in a country which was
occupied during WWII. Zelensky’s address cut away to broadcast two members of
the AB. Both said that they were of Greek heritage. It caused outrage. “Nazis Return to Parliament — Thanks to
Mitsotakis” ran one headline referring to the fact that only recently had Greece
managed to drive out its own neo-nazis.
The decision of the TUC to give blanket support to NATO’s
proxy war in Ukraine, knowing full well that neo-Nazi groups are integrated armed
forces is or should be a matter of shame. Clearly Gary Smith and Sharon Graham
have no shame.
For a number of years Peter Gregson has
been an activist on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement. Whereas
previously he has been treated as a nuisance today his activities pose a threat
to the solidarity movement and should be treated as such.
Gregson is notorious for setting up his
own ‘campaign’ groups such as LAZIR (Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic
Racism) and the Campaign Against Bogus Anti-Semitism. Now it is the One
Democratic Palestine [ODP].
Gregson was initially expelled by
Labour Against the Witchhunt in 2019 for posting a petition
linking to an article by Ian Fantom that defended a holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom,
who Gregson described as a ‘holocaust sceptic’. Fantom wrote that Kollerstrom ‘had been targeted in a witch-hunt for a
literature review he wrote on ‘The Auschwitz “Gas
Chamber” Illusion and a… swimming
pool at Auschwitz.’
When
requested to take this link down Gregson refused. Fantom and Kollerstrom are
co-founders of the Keep Talkinggroup which has hosted a variety of conspiracy
theorists like Piers Corbyn and anti-Semites such as Gilad Atzmon.
Gregson’s
reasons for participating in the ‘Keep Talking’ group’
was that ‘we need to use every
single platform we can find to get our message out.’ This included the
anti-Semitic far-Right. The Jewish Chronicle
published an article based on correspondence which Gregson
had made public detailing what had happened.
Gregson has
since been refused membership by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jewish Network
for Palestine and a host of similar groups.
Recently
Gregson has espoused openly anti-Semitic arguments seeing the source of the
government’s support for Zionism as being due to the undue influence of Jews.
In an article on the anti-Semitic Redress site, he stated:
The people
who foisted the IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support
Israel, so the question arises: do Jews in the UK have significant leverage
within the bodies that represent our interests – our courts, our media, our
trade unions, our political parties, our government?
Gregson answered his question in the
affirmative. In a section ‘Rich Jewish bankers’ Gregson declared that ‘Right
from the outset, rich Jewish bankers such as Lord Rothschild backed Zionism. It
is unlikely we would have Israel now were it not for his influence.’
The suggestion that Israel owes its
existence to ‘rich Jewish bankers’ is a classic anti-Semitic stereotype.
It is also untrue. The Rothschilds were a house divided with the majority of
the British family opposed to Zionism. For example the President of the
anti-Zionist League of British Jews, formed in the wake of the Balfour
Declaration, was Sir Lionel Rothschild, a Tory MP.
The Jewish bourgeoisie were
overwhelmingly opposed to Zionism. The only member of the Lloyd George cabinet
who opposed the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin
Montagu. However facts rarely disturb Gregson.
Gregson wrote
that ‘Plenty of politicians too… are Jewish and support Israel.’ Support
for Israel is common to all politicians, Jewish and non-Jewish. Gregson singled
out Jon Lansman and Rhea Wolfson who ‘used their tribal background shamelessly
in 2018 to successfully remove our freedom of speech on Israel.’ Gregson
completely ignores non-Jewish and Christian Zionist support for Zionism.
Gregson asserted that ‘it was the
wealthy and influential Jews in politics and the media who foisted the IHRA
definition upon us’. Gavin Williamson, who threatened universities with a
loss of funding if they didn’t adopt the IHRA, is not Jewish. In conflating
being Jewish with Zionism and Israel, Gregson echoes Zionist propaganda and the
IHRA itself.
The struggle for Palestinian liberation
and against Zionism is an anti-racist struggle. There is no place in the
Palestine solidarity movement for those who spread anti-Semitic propaganda
under the guise of support for the Palestinians. In so doing Gregson plays into
the hands of the Zionists and Israel’s supporters.
We advise supporters of Palestine to
reject Peter Gregson and keep a wide berth from his many and varied
organisations.
Representatives of religious Zionist youth group Bnei Akiva Meet Jewish Racist Bezalel Smotrich in London
Gregson’s Anti-Semitism Doesn’t Hurt Jews
But It Does Hurt Palestinians
As Palestine
solidarity activists are well aware, accusations of anti-Semitism are the only
defence that apologists for Israeli Apartheid have left in their armoury. With Jewish
neo-Nazi Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel
Smotrich in Israel’s coalition government and the reign of terror that is
being conducted by the military junta in the West Bank, ‘anti-Semitism’ is
their only answer to the call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.
It is with
extreme reluctance that I circulated the statement below to activists asking
them to sign a call for people to avoid Peter Gregson and his increasingly
bizarre anti-Semitic statements such as his remark
that
The people who foisted the
IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support Israel
Those of
us with longer memories than the day before yesterday will recollect that it
was the distinctly non-Jewish Gavin Williamson who foisted the IHRA fake
definition of anti-Semitism upon universities by threatening
their funding.
Jonathan Freedland - Led the Fake 'Antisemitism' Campaign Against Corbyn
Even
worse was the remark
of Gregson that the Zionist movement supported
the annihilation of European Jews. Such hyperbole is totally unnecessary. As I
show in my recent book Zionism
During the Holocaust the Zionists did many terrible things, from blocking
routes of escape for Jewish refugees to entering into an trading agreement with
the Nazis that destroyed the Jewish Boycott but there is no evidence that they supported
Hitler’s final solution.
until 1940 most Jews refused to move to Israel on
religious grounds. These were the people that Hitler gassed. With Zionist
support. Proof? Over the period 1942-44, Rabbi Weissmandl of Hungary made a
deal with Adolf Eichmann whereby the Germans would “sell” the Jews to him
Weissmandel made no deal with Eichmann, that was Rudolf Kasztner,
the leader of Hungarian Jewry. If Gregson is referring to the Europa Plan of Weissmandel
it was with Dieter
Wisliceny not Eichmann. To accuse any Jew, even Zionists, of having
supported Hitler’s extermination of the Jews is clearly anti-Semitic because it
is blaming the dead for their own murder. The Nazis did not distinguish between
Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in the gas chambers.
As Boris
Johnson demonstrated with his racist and anti-Semitic novel 72
Virgins the Zionist movement has no objection to genuine anti-Semitism.
Instead it seeks to redefine opposition to racism as racism in an exercise of double
think that Orwell long ago predicted.
Jews in
Britain are overwhelmingly White and suffer no discrimination on account of
being Jewish. Jews in Britain are a largely middle class community as Jewish historians
Geoffrey Alderman and William Rubinstein have documented. Of course not all Jews
are prosperous but on average they
are. Nor do they suffer from state racism.
Nonetheless
anti-Semitic prejudice is to be condemned, not because of its effect on Jews
but because it is extremely damaging to the Palestinian cause. It lends weight
to the false accusations of the Zionists that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.
It is welcome
that Asa Winstanley, author of Weaponising
Anti-Semitism, which documents the scurrilous
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged against the left and Jeremy Corbyn,has signed the statement. Altogether 57
people and organisations have added their signature, representing a cross
section of the Palestine solidarity and Jewish anti-Zionist spectrum. It is regrettable
that noone in the Jewish Socialists Group signed the statement although people
are welcome to add their signatures by commenting on the article or emailing me.
Although
national PSC declined the opportunity to sign the statement activists from 6
PSC branches have added their signature in addition to two branches, Norwich
and Cambridge. Mick Napier, founder member and former Chair of Scottish PSC has
also signed.
Five activists
from Palestine Action, including
founders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard as well five members of Jewish Network
for Palestine have added their names as has John Tymon of Football Against
Apartheid.
The Rev. Stephen Sizer - Victim of Justin Welby and the Zionists
Especially
welcome is the Rev. Stephen Sizer, who was defrocked earlier in the year after false
allegations of anti-Semitism from the Board of Deputies were upheld by a
rigged Church of England tribunal. Justin Welby, the most right-wing Archbishop
of Canterbury since George Carey, presided over the campaign against Stephen.
Carey was later found to have covered up child abuse in the Church of England as
Welby has also done.
The statement
below conveys a very simple message. The cause of Palestine is an anti-racist
one and when anti-Semites take up the cause we will act to isolate them in just
the same way as we did Gilad Atzmon a decade ago.
Unlike the Zionists and the multiplicity
of lobby groups such as the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism/CST/Board of
Deputies etc. we will not tolerate racists in our ranks and we will call them
out.
Speaking of which Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith for Palestine based in
Chester also needs to be ostracised. As this report
of a speaking engagement by Alain Alameddineof One Democratic State
Initiative shows,
Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith
for Palestinegroup is stuffed the most appalling bigots and anti-Semites.
They invited me to speak a few years ago but when I took a look at their other
speakers, who included holocaust denier Israel Shamir I declined.
It speaks volumes that
Asa Winstanley could not find a British publisher, not even Pluto Press
or Verso Books,
willing to publish the definitive account of how ‘anti-Semitism’ was weaponised
to remove the only socialist leader the Labour Party [LP] has ever had.
The so-called left press
has retreated into identity politics and abandoned the terrain of race and
class politics. I found exactly the same with my book Zionism
During the Holocaust.
Winstanley’s
book is the story of how the British Establishment, their US counterparts and
the Israel lobby set out to destroy what they saw as a threat to their
interests. Winstanley notes how documents revealed in the failed
deportation case against Raed Salah
‘demonstrated the intimate relationship between the UK’s
Home Office, the Israeli government and the British pro-Israel lobby group
Community Security Trust.’ (38)
In
a passage that reflected what I wrote in the Anti-Semitism Wars,
Winstanley wrote of how Corbyn’s election ‘must
have set off warning sirens in Whitehall and in Langley Virginia [CIA HQ].’
[13]
‘Anti-Semitism’ wasn’t
the first line of attack against Corbyn but it proved to be ‘the most successful attack vector.’ (p.20) Why? Because it enabled his opponents
to wrap themselves in the mantle of a false anti-racism. It imbued them with a
moral righteousness that opposing Corbyn’s economic policy didn’t have. When
imperialism goes to war it always does so for the best of reasons such as women’s
rights.
‘Anti-Semitism’ became
a ‘wedge issue’ to play off ‘soft’ supporters of the Palestinians like Owen
Jones, to ‘hardline’ anti-Zionists. This was put into effect during the
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign when Jones became a guest speaker at JLM conferences
and spoke out in support of the expulsion of Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone.
(125)
If
anyone is in a position to write the history of how ‘anti-Semitism’ was used to
destabilise Corbyn and the Labour left it is Winstanley, who almost alone broke
a series of stories revealing
the truth behind the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative that the BBC and the media
ran with.
Winstanley revealed
how the JLM, which led the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks, far from being the
continuation of Poale Zion [PZ], an affiliated socialist society of the LP since
1920, had been refounded
in 2015 with the specific task of undermining and removing Corbyn from the
leadership of the LP.
PZ's
original affiliation was agreed, not because it was the Jewish section of the
LP, at that time very few Jewish workers were Zionists, but because, Labour
leaders like Herbert Morrison:
Saw in Jewish
agricultural labour a form of purification, redeeming the anti-Semitic
projection of the Jew, which Morrison took for real. (156)
Richard Crossman, vehement Zionist supporter and Labour Minister, who believed that civilisation meant the genocide of native peoples
Winstanley describes
the anti-Semitic imperialism of Labour’s pro-Zionist hierarchy. People like Hugh
Dalton and Richard Crossman who was of the opinion that the Palestinians were
fortunate not to have been exterminated like other indigenous people before
them. (53)
As
an affiliated socialist society the JLM was able to move motions to LP conference
and propose rule changes. The JLM repeatedly threatened to disaffiliate from
the party. Instead of welcoming such a prospect, Corbyn ‘practically begged them to stay.’ The JLM repaid Corbyn’s appeal
to his enemies to make his life even more miserable by passing
a motion of no confidence in him in April 2019.
It
was by no means the last concession Corbyn made to the Israel lobby. (71)
Almost at the same
time Al Jazeera had made an under-cover documentary, The Lobby, infiltrating the JLM. He was able to listen to Newmark
boasting about how, in 2015, he had sat in a café in Golders Green planning to
revive a moribund JLM.
One
of Winstanley’s revelations was that the JLM’s new Director Ella Rose was a
free transfer from the Israeli Embassy and she admitted in The Lobby to having worked with spy Shai Masot.
The
JLM was effectively an Israeli Embassy front. (117). Likewise
Labour Friends of Israel [LFI], founded in 1957 by PZ, had become an empty
shell. In 2015 the Israeli Embassy all but took it over. (12)
Israel’s
Strategic Affairs Ministry developed a series of groups in Britain, such as the
Friends of Israel, passing them off as Jewish community groups whereas they are
extensions of the Israeli state. The CST, which collates anti-Semitism
statistics is a Mossad project.
The
only time Winstanley got it wrong was when he wrote of
‘an apparent power struggle in the wake of
Newmark’s forced departure, Katz was appointed chairperson in 2019.’ (65)
Newmark resigned as JLM
Chair when the Jewish Chronicle [JC] ran an expose of how he had defrauded the
Jewish Leadership Council.
There was no power
struggle. When Newmark departed former Hove MP Ivor Caplin became Chair. I
described what happened in my blog:
Early last week a report appeared in
the Jewish Chronicle stating that the JLM’s war criminal Chair, Ivor Caplin…
after having met with Labour’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby, was happy with
the Labour Party’s new Anti-Semitism
Code of Conduct.…
However when news of this leaked out
Caplin was subject to furious attacks by his fellow
Zionists…. What his opponents objected to in the new Code was best put by Pollard…
Caplin had clearly forgotten that the
anti-Semitism witchhunt had nothing to do with anti-Semitism... Even worse he
didn’t seem to grasp that the purpose of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt was that
it had to continue until Corbyn’s resignation.
Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was an ardent Zionist, seen here alongside Golda Meir, the Labour Zionist Prime Minister Who Believed that there was no Such Thing as Palestinians
The JC was right. The next JLM Conference elected Katz when
he stood against Caplin for Chair. He won over 90% of the votes. It was no
power struggle. More of a coup.
Winstanley
describes the role played by Michael Rubin, Chair of Labour Students, in the Oxford
University Labour Club affair. The Report he compiled
into allegations of anti-Semitism by its Chair Alex Chalmers consisted of a
series of rumours. (98) In
The Lobby Rubin admitted that LFI was
funded by the Israeli Embassy.
Winstanley revealed
who was behind Oxford’s ‘anti-Semitism’ affair and how Chalmers had been an
intern with Israeli PR group, BICOM. (79)
Every newspaper reported Chalmer’s allegations of
‘anti-Semitism’ but gave no details. Yet on his own Facebook page he had
written that he resigned over the club’s support for Israel Apartheid Week. That
was the extent of the ‘anti-Semitism’ problem.
Corbyn
appointed Baroness Royall to head an Inquiry into what had happened but she
could find no anti-Semitism. Royall wrote of her ‘disappointment and frustration’ that she could find no
‘institutional anti-Semitism’ at the club. She found a ‘cultural problem’ of
anti-Semitism instead. Anti-Semitism was now metaphysical. (83)
The
Labour Video Keir Starmer Doesn't Want You To See
In
Nazi
Comparisons Winstanley rebuts the argument that there was anything
anti-Semitic in Ken Livingstone’s statement to BBC London presenter, Vanessa
Feltz, that Hitler supported Zionism.
‘Recounting
the historical fact that in the early 1930s, Hitler’s new Nazi government had
extensive and well-documented links with the German Zionist movement is not
anti-Semitic - precisely because it is a fact…. Instead of throwing Livingstone
under the bus… Corbyn should have brought Livingstone on side. (142) (264-5)
In
the words of veteran Israeli socialist, Moshe Machover:
It is correct
to expose Zionism as a movement based on both colonisation and collusion with
anti-Semitism. Don’t apologise for saying this. If you throw the sharks
bloodied meat, they will only come back for more. (159)
The overwhelming
majority of world Jewry supported a Boycott of Nazi Germany in 1933 yet the
Zionist movement negotiated a trade agreement, Ha'avara with it in August 1933. The intention was not to save
Germany’s Jews but to save their wealth.
Whereas 99% of Jews
wanted to strangle the Nazi state in its infancy, the Zionist movement only saw
opportunities to build their ‘Jewish’ state. Even the JC condemned this
‘unclean act’.
Instead
of defending Livingstone Corbyn threw him to the wolves. It was the same with
Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and myself. I repeatedly argued at the time that
Jackie, Marc, Ken and myself were collateral damage. The real target was
Corbyn.
The Zionists had been out
to get Livingstone, one of the few Palestinian supporters in a position of
power in the LP. The fake ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis provided the ideal opportunity.
Livingstone,
during his interview with Feltz, defended Naz Shah who had joked that if Israel
was relocated in the USA then there would be no more trouble. Shah was an aide
to John McDonnell:
The
Livingstone affair was a key moment in the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis.
It was a moment when the whole affair could have been turned around. (133)
Instead
of defending Livingstone, Corbyn intoned that Livingstone ‘has caused deep offence and hurt to the Jewish community’. Causing
offence to Muslims is a question of free speech but offending Zionists was an
entirely different matter. Corbyn and the Lansman ‘left’
Set a long
running pattern of concession, retreat and compromise which would undermine
untold numbers of Labour activists in the years ahead. If the Labour left would
not defend one of its most heavyweight veterans from politically motivated
charges of anti-Semitism, then what chance would anyone else have? (133)
The
abandonment of Livingstone by Corbyn and much of the Labour left, such as
Novara Media, ‘sent a message to the
grassroots that none were safe should they step out of line.’
Appeasing the
Unappeasable
Winstanley’s argument
that Corbyn’s overthrow was inevitable given he refused to fight back cannot be
faulted. Rather than challenge the fake charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ Corbyn tried
to appease his accusers.
Corbyn’s response to
the false accusations was not to call them out but to emphasise how much he
opposed anti-Semitism. Corbyn never understood that when Zionists talk about
anti-Semitism, they don’t mean the Oxford
English Dictionarydefinition, ‘hostility or prejudice to Jews as Jews’ but hostility to Zionism
and the Israeli state.
What Winstanley
doesn’t explain is why Corbyn was unable, despite his years in the Palestine
solidarity movement, of realising that anti-Semitism is a go to defence of
Zionists against Palestinian supporters. Why did Corbyn behaved like a rabbit
frozen in a car’s headlights?
The answer is simple
enough. Corbyn was determined to appease the Labour right. This was the fatal
strategy of the Labour left historically. It was summed up by Tony Benn when he
compared the LP to an airplane which needs two wings.
It was a superficially
clever analogy but fallacious. The LP is a political party not a flying
machine. How can pro-capitalists and anti-capitalists co-exist in one party
indefinitely?
Winstanley
quotes
Bob Crow’s maxim: ‘if you fight you might
lose but if you don’t fight you’ll certainly lose.’ Instead of fighting
back Corbyn exhibited the symptoms of Stockholm
Syndrome.
Terrorism
Another damaging
allegation was that Corbyn supported ‘terrorism’. (33) Winstanley cites the interview
Khrishnan Guru-Murthy (5-6) of
Channel 4 conducted with Corbyn in the summer of 2015.
At
a meeting addressed by spokespersons for Hamas and Hezbollah, Corbyn had
referred to them as ‘friends’.
Corbyn’s answer was they were part of the peace process therefore he was simply
being polite.
The terrorist hobgoblin repeatedly came
back to bite Corbyn.. that would contribute heavily to his ultimate downfall. (7)
The
obvious answer was that Hezbollah and Hamas weren’t terrorists. Corbyn knew that
they were the representatives of their people. As Lord Carrington, Thatcher’s
Foreign Minister said: ‘One person’s
freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist.’ Corbyn had said as much himself.
The real terrorists were those who bombed apartment blocks with families
inside. Yet Corbyn refused to take the anti-imperialist track.
The JLM's attack on Jackie Walker brought out the Zionists' visceral racism
The ‘Left’
Witchhunters
Those around Corbyn,
like Jennie Formby and Laura Murray, became better witch-hunters than Iain McNicol
and Sam Matthews. Whereas the former reinstated Walker when she was first
suspended, Murray would have expelled her straight off.
Corbyn’s staff boasted
at how efficient they were at expelling people compared to their predecessors. They
thought they were very clever in having expelled so many more socialists than
McNicol.
What
they didn’t understand was that the more people they expelled, the more they
confirmed that there was an anti-Semitism problem in the LP. It was the
historic role of the Labour left to dig its own grave.
The IHRA
misdefinition of anti-Semitism
Winstanley points to the
adoption by Labour of the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism as the point of no
return.
Winstanley is
right when he says that it was Corbyn who bore the responsibility for the
adoption of the IHRA:
the long, slow
trickle of concessions Corbyn made to the Israel lobby in the face of the
sustained ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign made capitulation inevitable.
Opposition
to the IHRA became ‘anti-Semitism’ in the eyes of the witch-hunters. (260)
Corbyn had
conceded to the JLM the right to ‘police
the discursive boundaries of the conflict.’ (242). But despite all the concessions 77%
of LP members refused to accept this false narrative. (244) Amongst Momentum members the figures
were even higher, at 92%. (353)
Jewish Voices
for Labour [JVL]
Winstanley
describes uncritically the foundation of JVL, a group that was not
anti-Zionist. Initially JVL contained Zionists whose sole purpose seems to have
been to destabilise it – people like Rob Abrahams and Colin Appleby who later surfaced in the JLM arguing that it should
disaffiliate from the LP because of ‘anti-Semitism’.
Although JVL’s
Zionists soon departed they were symptomatic of a wider political problem. JVL
never fully understood that the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt was never about
anti-Semitism. They naively believed that by forming a non-Zionist Jewish group
they could take the sting out of the JLM’s claim to represent all Jews.
But the
JLM’s support derived, not from the ethno-religious make-up of its members but
its support for Zionism. Playing off one identity against another would not
overcome what was a political question.
Being a wholly Jewish
group with a second class membership for non-Jews was politically wrong and did
not avail them any because they were the ‘wrong sort of Jews.’ JVL’s belief
that they could include Zionists in the ranks of Corbyn supporters was naïve at
best.
Corbyn’s
self-imprisonment meant that ‘despite
JVL’s efforts, Corbyn effectively ignored the group while he was leader.’ (271)
In The Crucible, a nod to Arthur Miller’s play
of the same name, Winstanley writes about Jackie Walker, one of the earliest
victims of the witchhunt. Jackie was suspended twice.
The
first time Jackie was suspended she wrote, during a private Facebook
conversation, that, ‘I will never back anti-Semitism but neither am I a
Zionist’. She spoke about her Jewish-African heritage:
I hope you
feel the same towards the African holocaust? My ancestors were involved in both – on all
sides… millions more Africans were killed in the African holocaust and their
oppression continues to this day on a global scale in a way it doesn’t for Jews
and many Jews, my ancestors too, were (among)
the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade… so who are the victims
and what does it mean . We are victims
and perpetrators, to some extent by choice. And having been a victim does not give you a
right to be a perpetrator.’
On the basis of omitting, in an informal
conversation, one word, ‘among’ she was pilloried as an anti-Semite by
those whose sole agenda was propping up an apartheid state. So flimsy was the
case against Jackie that even McNicol’s witchhunters quickly reinstated her.
(see The lynching of Jackie Walker).
Jackie Walker speaking on the same platform as John McDonnell at the LRC's TUC fringe meeting in Brighton
As I predicted, the JLM were
determined to get a Black-Jewish anti-Zionist expelled. When John McDonnell
spoke on the same platform as Jackie at a meeting during the TUC Congress, the
JLM withdrew an invitation to him to speak at their LP conference meeting.
Free Speech on Israel picket of Momentum Executive Meeting at TSSA HQ which removed Jackie Walker as Vice-Chair of Momentum
The JLM’s
agenda was clear and the soft Momentum left under Jon Lansman were willing to
do the JLM’s bidding a second time around.
The
pretext for Jackie’s suspension and later expulsion was a JLM training session
on ‘anti-Semitism’ at which Katz, a political lobbyist for the privatised rail
industry, expounded on why the IHRA, which conflated anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism, was the only definition acceptable to the ‘Jewish community’
i.e. the Zionist lobby.
This was the kind of racist abuse that the Jewish Labour Movement encouraged
During the
session Jackie said that she hadn’t found a definition of anti-Semitism that
she could live with asking:
‘Wouldn’t it
be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who experienced
holocaust.’
Cue for
Zionist outrage, fed by the national media. Corbyn and his coterie immediately
capitulated and Jackie was suspended. Yet the website
of the Holocaust Memorial Day only commemorates the Nazi Holocaust and
‘subsequent genocides’ not slavery.
Jackie Walker speaking on the same platform as John McDonnell at the LRC's TUC fringe meeting in Brighton
Jackie
was right yet the truth was lost in the hypocritical outrage of the former
Hitler supporting Daily Mail and The Guardian. As a Black Jew, Jackie suffered
from vile racism at the hands of the Zionists. No one, neither Corbyn or
Lansman protested this racism because anti-Black racism was invisible. Black
Jews are not accepted as real Jews by many Zionists or are treated as second
class Jews.
The
Zionists took a few words out of context and relied on Lansman and Owen Jones to
do the rest. Jackie was from a well-known Jewish family in Jamaica who were
fleeing persecution in Spain. But as with virtually all Europeans in the West
Indies at the time, they were involved in the slave trade as financiers or
slave owners. (173)
It wasn’t
only Zionists who questioned Jackie’s Jewishness. Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani said
that Walker ‘is as Jewish as I am. And
I’m not Jewish.’ Guido Fawkes, the Tory blogger was happy to quote Bastani’s call for Walker’s
suspension. As Winstanley noted even Mike Creighton, a long standing Blairite
staff member described Walker’s suspension as ‘the weakest of the recent suspension.’
Instead
of treating the JLM as an Israeli surrogate, Rosenberg saw it as a legitimate Jewish
organisation. The JSG also controlled the Jews
for Jeremy Facebook group which removed those who criticised Corbyn’s surrender
on ‘anti-Semitism’. This refusal to allow criticism of Corbyn ensured that his mistakes
were never corrected.
I was removed
from the Jewish Socialists Facebook group by Julia Bard for criticising one of
their members, Jon Lansman! Others like Debbie Fink of J-Big, were also removed.
Marc
Wadsworth
In an attempt
to end the anti-Semitism crisis, Corbyn commissioned the Chakrabarti Report. But when, at its launch press
conference, Black anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth criticised Ruth Smeeth
MP, who was working with Telegraph
journalists, he was subject to a political lynching. Smeeth angrily walked out resulting
in Marc’s expulsion in 2018. Smeeth gave evidence to Marc’s expulsion hearing
accompanied by an all-White, KKK style march by Labour MPs.
Labour
Against the Witchhunt [LAW]
Winstanley
describes the refounding of LAW, which in the 1980s had Jeremy Corbyn as its Secretary.
Now it fighting a witchhunt led by Corbyn. Winstanley compared it to the Salem
witchhunt where
‘confessing to
the sin of witchcraft meant you were damned by your own word. But pleading your
innocence also condemned you to death.’
At Salem
the only people who were hanged were those who denied their guilt. Those who
confessed were spared. Denial of guilt was taken as proof of the accusation. The
same was true in Labour’s witchhunt. ‘Denialism’ was itself proof of one’s
guilt.
The JLM
insisted that if they made an accusation of anti-Semitism then it had to be
treated as true because it had come from Jews. When Lara McNeil, the youth
representative on Labour’s NEC defended Corbyn from one particular accusation
she was told by Izzy Lenga of the JLM, who had trained with the Israeli army, that
McNeil had no right todisagree with the
Jew JLM because ‘You’re not Jewish.’
Zionist
accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were entirely subjective and dependent solely on
the perceptions of the ‘victim’. Of course this only applied to Zionist, not
the ‘wrong sort’ of Jews!
Winstanley
wrote that ‘marginalising anti-Zionist
Jews has been a key goal of the Zionist movement from its outset.’ Jamie
Stein-Werner, an academic researcher, observed that ‘virtually every allegation’ of anti-Semitism in 2017 concerned statements
by Jews. When Michael Kalmanovitz of IJAN called for the expulsion of the JLM,
the Guardian’s Zionist gatekeeper, Jonathan Freedland equated this to a call
for the expulsion of all Jewish groups citing a right-wing Labour MP as saying
the situation was ‘redolent of the
1930s.’ (204)
Winstanley recalls
how Lansman used the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign to undermine any fightback.
Lansman worked closely with the JLM and he attacked JVL as not being part of
the Jewish community. (205) Momentum, set up to defend Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the LP, was now actively
engaged in undermining him. In Brighton, as a member of the local Committee, I
witnessed this at first hand.
BBC
Panorama’s Is Labour Anti-Semitic?
The
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign reached its climax with the Panorama programme ‘Is Labour anti-Semitic’ presented by John Ware. The
programme centred on Liverpool Riverside, the constituency of Louise Ellman MP.
It contained an allegation that at the disciplinary hearing of a Jewish member,
Helen Marks, her representative had asked investigator Ben Westerman, whether
or not he was from Israel.
The interview
was recorded so it was easy to disprove. Westerman had been asked which branch
of the LP he was from. Despite this the BBC rejected all complaints and Ofcom
refused to even investigate it. The British Establishment closed ranks behind a
wall of lies. This notorious programme, which hadn’t had the honesty to even
divulge that all the Jews who participated were officers of the JLM, was
nominated by the BBC for a BAFTA award. (271-220)
The Turning
Point
Winstanley
described Margaret Hodge’s attack on Corbyn as ‘a fucking anti-Semite and a racist.’ in summer 2018 as the ‘turning
point’. Disciplinary action was considered but who should ride to her rescue?
John McDonell who proclaimed she ‘had a
good heart.’(245)
Thanks in part
to the intervention of John McDonnell, Hodge remained unpunished. The Rubicon
had been crossed. (247)
The
summer of 2018 was an important milestone on the road to defeat. (231) It was the year of the ‘discovery’ of
a 6 year old mural of bankers sitting on the heads of the oppressed. There was
nothing obviously anti-Semitic about the mural but that didn’t stop Luciana
Berger producing it like a rabbit out of a hat in order to undermine Labour’s
local election campaign. 2018 was also the year that over 200 unarmed
Palestinian demonstrators, including 50 children, were mowed down by Israeli
sniper fire. Labour’s response was inaudible.
The Israeli
Labor Party is irrelevant in Israeli politics, holding just 4 out of 120 seats
in the Knesset. For 30 continuous years they formed the government of Israel.
Today their main role is outside Israel, sanitising the far-Right in Israel
using ‘anti-Semitism’ as their chosen weapon. As former leader Avi Gabbay made
clear when cutting links with the LP, when it comes to violence against the
Palestinians there isn’t a chink of light between them and Likud. (240)
I said to
Chris Williamson at the LAW fringe meeting at the 2018 LP conference that the
decision of Corbyn to oppose Open Selection of Labour MPs was the final nail in
the coffin of the Corbyn Project.
In his
concluding chapter Winstanley, in my view correctly, attributes to the
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign the loss of credibility that Corbyn sustained. By
repeatedly apologising he made himself seem weak and shifty rather than standing
up for his previous beliefs:
Corbyn’s
eventual embrace of the false ‘Labour anti-Semitism’ media narrative
constituted a series of own goals and his embrace of the Jewish Labour Movement
was politically suicidal… That the left-wing leader should actively support a
group openly dedicated to his removal was an entirely avoidable mistake. The
mass base never abandoned him but slowly, Corbyn seemed to abandon some of his
supporters.’ (268-9)
Chris Williamson
was the strongest supporter of Corbyn amongst MPs yet Formby, instead of
defending Williamson’s right to show the film Witchhunt in parliament led the attack on him. It was alleged he had
said, at a meeting of Sheffield Momentum, that the LP was doing too much to
tackle anti-Semitism. What he actually said was:
The party that has done more
to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party.
I have got to say I think
our party's response has been partly responsible for that because in my
opinion… we've backed off far too much, we have given too much ground, we've
been too apologetic...
We've done
more to actually address the scourge of anti-semitism than any other political
party. Any other political party. And yet we are being traduced.
Williamson’s
words were distorted into meaning their exact opposite. What he said was that
the LP had backed off too much against the false allegations of anti-Semitism.
On 27
February 2019 Williamson was suspended by Formby for a "pattern of behaviour". (259) When a Labour disciplinary panel
reinstated him, there was uproar from the right. Instead of defending him
Corbyn remained silent and Formby re-suspended him, which the High Court later held
was unlawful.
Capitulation was nowhere more evident than in
Corbyn’s willingness to allow his most dependable allies to be purged.(254)
‘He has got to go’ raged Lansman (259) and just in case they lost the case Formby
suspended Williamson for a third time. Corbyn’s own General Secretary ended up
doing the work of the Right
Formby, by
now a discredited figure, warned local Labour Parties that resolutions opposing
Williamson’s suspension were not ‘competent business’. When Corbyn was
suspended this ruling was used by David Evans, Starmer’s General Secretary, to
prevent any discussion.
The NEC in
2019 had proposed a ‘fast track’ expulsion procedure
for the most ‘egregious’ examples of ‘anti-Semitism’. In practice it applied to
everyone henceforth including, ironically, Corbyn himself.
The Corbyn Project had imploded. Corbyn’s promises to
Williamson that he would support his reinstatement were untrue. Corbyn had
jettisoned his last ally.
Corbyn’s abandoning friends
like Chris Williamson were anything but honest. As Winstanley notes Corbyn was
not a leader. He was well intentioned but incapable of fighting back against
the right.
What Winstanley
called ‘the greatest single moral failure
of Corbyn’s leadership’ was his disavowal of a meeting that he chaired in
2010. John Ware Louise Ellman Helen Marks, her representative had asked investigator
Ben Westerman, Margaret Hodge’s Avi Gabbay Hajo Meyer, an Auschwitz survivor,
was the speaker. Hajo was an anti-Zionist who rejected the Zionist movement’s
weaponisation of the Holocaust against Palestinians. This meeting was anything
but anti-Semitic yet still Corbyn issued a toe-curling apology: (273)
I have on
occasion appeared on platforms with people whose views I completely reject. I
apologise for the concerns and anxiety that this has caused.
Why was Corbyn incapable of defending his previous beliefs? Winstanley
quotes Steven Garside as saying that ‘his
critique of Zionism is evidently far from internally consistent or rigorous.’
(274) I would go
further. Corbyn supported the Palestinians but had never understood Zionism,
the ideology that led to their dispossession.
In part
this was intellectual laziness, a common trait on the Labour left. Corbyn supported
the two state solution, which meant supporting a racist Jewish state. He never called
Israel an apartheid state. His problem was that he was not an anti-Zionist.
This is
why supporting the Palestinians solely on a human rights or ‘peace’ basis is insufficient.
Zionism has to be opposed as the racist, ethnic cleansing settler-colonial
ideology/movement that it is.
This is
true not just of Corbyn but Palestine Solidarity Campaign [PSC] of which Corbyn
was a patron. The cowardly refusal of PSC to oppose Zionism, believing that if
you stand on a street corner and shout about human rights abuses then you don’t
have to challenge the Jewish Supremacist ideology that causes these very same
abuses, led to Corbyn’s inability to defend himself.
That was why, when PSC abandoned its
opposition to Zionism in 2021 I resigned from the organisation I had helped
found in 1982.
A ‘disinformation paradigm’
The Media
Reform Coalition termed the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign a ‘disinformation
paradigm’. It was led by the Guardian.
From 2015 to 2019 the Guardian published 513 articles on Labour ‘anti-Semitism’
compared to 62 on Conservative anti-Semitism, despite Boris Johnson’s anti-Semitic
72 Virgins novel which spoke of
Jewish magnates fixing elections, hook noses and the rest.
It was this
that led Corbyn to treating LFI, as a friend. (277)
‘no matter how much Corbyn tried to pander,
the Israel lobby always refused to take yes for an answer.’
Yet the
intellectual and political mediocrities surrounding Corbyn never once worked this
out. Where was Corbyn’s strategic director, Seamus Milne, a man who must have
known better? Why did no one suggest a major speech on Anti-Semitism and Zionism
early on when Corbyn could have made it explicit that although he opposed
anti-Semitism he also opposed its weaponisation?
Corbyn’s
failures were not simply ones of intellect but political strategy. He entered
the leadership intend on appeasing the Right. That was the strategy of the
whole Labour left, including Tony Benn.
The final
denouement under Starmer was predictable. Starmer was responsible as DPP for
the persecution of Julian Assange and for blocking the prosecution of MI6 over torture.
But it was Corbyn who harboured this viper within his Shadow Cabinet and
allowed him to dictate Labour’s disastrous strategy on Brexit.
Despite
Corbyn’s commitment to a host of good causes, including Palestine, as leader he
was prepared to jettison each and every one to please the right. Corbyn’s work
for Assange today doesn’t excuse his failure to support him when he could have
made a difference. Corbyn was betrayed by McDonnell, Lansman and Jones but Labour
members and hundreds of thousands of trade unionists supported him.
Once I had
mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through ev'ry day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away.
Corbyn’s failures
were not the failure of one man but a Labour left that has always sought to
reform capitalism rather than abolish it.
Asa Winstanley
has generously acknowledged the fact that I proof read chapters 2 and 5.
I have
just one minor criticism of the book. The ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt did not
begin in Oxford. It was during the summer of 2015, even before Corbyn was
elected, that the Daily Mailaccused
him of having associated with a holocaust denier Paul Eisen.
This was followed
up with a campaign against the late Gerald
Kaufman, a Jewish MP and self-declared Zionist, for having used the term ‘Jewish money’ a phrase commonly used by
influential Jews. Kaufman was referring to the funds that Conservative Friends
of Israel ploughed into the Tory party.
Kaufman
made one of the outstanding
speeches of all time to the House of Commons during Israel’s Operation
Cast Lead in 2008/9. When he died the JC's Marcus Dysch wrote an obituary‘Gerald
Kaufman: Jewish MP reviled by the community’. Hatred for Jews is part of the psychological make-up of Zionism.
Gerald Kaufman’s Speech to
the House of Commons comparing Israeli killers to the Nazis
When Palestine Action activists take
action against the Death Factories of Elbit, whose sole purpose is to enable
war crimes they take a personal risk such as the deprivation of liberty,
assault, attacks in the media and so on.
The purpose of the Crowdfunder I
have set up is to meet the £156 Victim Surcharge we have allbeen landed with, despite there being no victim
and to make a contribution towards our costs. Four of the five defendants had
to travel hundreds of miles, find accommodation in a strange town, eat out etc.
I am proposing that each of the 5 Defendants receive £250.
In order that people don’t think this
is a subtle attempt at self enrichment I will not be taking anything except the
Victim Surcharge.
Any surplus will go towards the
costs that other Palestine Action Defendants will occur. We applaud people who
take the risk to get rid of Elbit we should not expect them to also pay for the
privilege. Many people are literally on the breadline.
Only in the twisted mind of the British
State can war criminals be considered victims and their accusers criminals yet it
is us who have to pay a Victim Surcharge. If Elbit was forced to pay for each
of their victims they would have been bankrupt years ago.
Elbit are a company totally without
any ethics or morality. Not only do they supply the apartheid regime in Israel
with 85% of its drones but they supply any genocidal state in the world with
what it wants. Myanmar, whose military junta even Britain has put an arms
embargo on and which has murdered thousands of the Rohinga people, is supplied
with Elbit’s latest weaponry.
Being on bail, subject to curfew,
tagged and remanded in custody is enough of an ordeal as it is, in addition to
the uncertainty and the threat of imprisonment that hanged over us for more
than two years. For more than two years we could not get our lives back
together or make plans for the future.
We were willing to make these
sacrifices but we are asking you to make a small sacrifice. We are asking you
and all supporters of the Palestinians and human rights to contribute towards
the costs and expenses of the 5 Defendants, 4 of whom were found guilty in May
this year of ‘intent to cause criminal damage’ to the Shenstone Engine Factory
of Elbit.
We have each been sentenced to
between 9 and 12 months imprisonment suspended for 2 years and between 80 and
150 hours of unpaid labour as well as 20 hours of ‘rehabililtation’ -re-education isn’t confined to countries like
China and North Korea it is alive and kicking Britain too!
Each of the 5 Defendants (the jury
was deadlocked on the fifth) has had to find the money to pay for accommodation,
meals out and travel expenses to attend court for 7 weeks (only one of us lived
locally).
Please give as much as you can
afford, however little or however much it is still appreciated.Thank you.
It is no surprise that Gary Smith of the institutionally
sexist and racist GMB and an avid Zionist, has backed NATO's neo-Nazi allies in Ukraine. The fact that Zelensky has approved laws stripping workers of their rights and banning
left-wing parties, including Platform for Life, which has 44 seats in the 450-seat Ukrainian
parliament, has been no deterrent to
Smith, since he also does his best to suppress workers’ struggles.
What is more remarkable is that Sharon Graham,
who has a reputation for supporting strikes but declared herself ‘non political’
when she was elected General Secretary, has also got into bed with the Zionists. In particular taking
advice from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an
organisation set up and funded by the Israeli state and the Jewish National
Fund,about banning Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie. Graham also has given her support to NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine.
One can only hope that the Socialist
Workers Party and the Socialist
Party, who have both up till now supported Graham, see the error of their
ways and reconsider their support for this British chauvinist.
The TUC motion, which was opposed
by only two unions – the FBU and Bakers Union with the RMT and NEU
abstaining – called for more weapons to be supplied to Ukraine. These
reactionary union bureaucrats, fools all, should bear in mind that a large
percentage of the arms already supplied have found their way onto the private market.
Ukraine
is Europe’s most corrupt state.
The
United States and Britain have been directly
supplying neo-Nazi forces in
Ukraine since 2014, despite a Congressional motion cutting
aid to Azov in 2018. We face the prospect of a new Libya in Europe with
private militias and an ongoing civil war.
There
have already been credible
threats that if Ukraine doesn’t receive enough weaponry then they
will resort to terrorism in Europe. What does NATO think is going to happen
when the war ends? Do they think the fascists will disarm? We could see an
outbreak of terrorism in Europe which will make ISIS seem like a tea party.
The sonnenrad or sunwheel is one of a number of ancient European symbols appropriated by the Nazis. It bears a remarkable similarity to that of the NPGU mining union which was on display at the TUC Congress
Mark
Serwotka of PCS, who has previously been considered on the left, joined
the warmongers in offering “unequivocal
support for those currently suffering occupation by a brutal Russian invasion”.
Serwotka said
that ‘We are with the Ukrainian people
and for Russia out, only the people of Ukraine should decide what the outcome
looks like.”For Serwotka the
activities of open neo-Nazis and the attacks on Russian speaking Ukrainians since
2014 count for nothing.
Victoria
Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State in the Biden administration admitted
that the US had funded,
to the tune of over $5 billion, the overthrow of the elected President Yanukovych
in 2014. Fascists were heavily armed when they outgunned the police.
“Our solidarity must know no
borders,” said GMB
President Barbara Plant. Not a word that the GMB is used to using when it comes
to workers nearer home. Unite backed the motion despite its Executive having issued
a statement saying that “wars are
never in the interest of working people”. One wonders whether Sharon Graham
even realises that opposing war and supplying more weapons to Ukraine is a
contradiction.
The GMB has
never extended solidarity to anyone
outside Britain. It has consistently supported Israel’s ethnic cleansing and has
repeatedly sided
with the Jewish Labour Movement, the British wing of Israel’s racist Israeli
Labor Party. At the moment it is trying
to expel a former International Officer
Bert Schounberg for
moving a motion at his branch calling for the disaffiliation of the JLM.
Last year
a GMB resolution supported by Unite under its war mongering General Secretary,
Sharon Graham, called
for increased arms spending. Unbelievably it called on the TUC to back an
increase in arms spending to 3 per cent of GDP. This at a time when the NHS and
schools are being starved of money. As Chris Nineham of Stop the War Coalition wrote
‘It actually
put the TUC to the right of the Tory government which even now only dares to
push for 2.5 per cent arms spending.
At a time of austerity and a
cost-of-living crisis, that decision prioritised the arms industry over the
vital interests of millions of working people, not least the tens of thousands
of GMB members in the beleaguered public services.
It also
revealed that Smith believes that the British government can be trusted with
more weapons, despite overwhelming evidence that they are used either for wars
of aggression or for sale to despotic regimes.
Given Smith’s support for Apartheid Israel, it is no surprise that
this appalling reactionary should demand that the Tories divert yet more money
from the NHS and their own workers in the health service to feed America’s war
industry. It is a shameful comment on the British trade union movement that
this motion was passed.
The
neo-Nazi credentials of the Azov battalion, which has been integrated into the
army and now promoted to brigade status, is well documented.
That did not stop Arsen Avakov, Ukraine’s Interior Minister, a man personally
responsible for integrating far-right groups into the state from defending
them to the online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda in 2019.
“The shameful
information campaign about the alleged spread of Nazi ideology (among Azov
members) is a deliberate attempt to discredit the ‘Azov’ unit and the National
Guard of Ukraine,”
even though
Putin is engaging in propaganda, it’s also true that Ukraine has a genuine Nazi
problem… important as it is to defend the yellow-and-blue flag against the
Kremlin’s brutal aggression, it would be a dangerous oversight to deny
Ukraine’s antisemitic history and collaboration with Hitler’s Nazis, as well as
the latter-day embrace of neo-Nazi factions in some quarters.
On the eve of
World War II, Ukraine was home to one the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with estimates as
high as 2.7 million, a remarkable number considering the territory’s
long record of antisemitism and pogroms. By the end, more than half would perish. When
German troops took control of Kyiv in 1941, they were welcomed by “Heil
Hitler” banners. Soon after, nearly 34,000 Jews — along with Roma and other
“undesirables” — were rounded up and marched to fields outside the city on the
pretext of resettlement only to be massacred in what became known as the
“Holocaust by bullets.”
Those locals were led
by Stepan Bandera’s Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its armed
wing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). Ukraine is the only country in the
world to have a national holiday in memory of a Nazi collaborator, Stepan
Bandera. The Times of Israel described how Hundreds
of Ukrainian nationalists march in honor of Nazi collaborator.
They quoted Dimitary,
a member of the Azov group as saying that
"I have
nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia, but Putin's not
even a Russian. Putin's a Jew."
You might think that
Zionist groups like America’s Anti-Defamation
League would be prominent in denouncing these neo-Nazis and anti-Semites.
After all they are usually able to spot ‘anti-Semites’ before they have time to unfurl the Palestinian flaga. But strangely enough they have kept remarkable quiet. Even
worse they have been excusing and justifying them.
In 2019 – before it became
politically necessary to whitewash them – the ADL itself warned
that an “extremist group called the Azov
Battalion has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists” and issued a report
on how the Ukrainian militia was trying to “connect
with like-minded extremists from the US.”
This Ukrainian extremist group, called The Azov Battalion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Our latest report on international white supremacy details how they try to connect with like-minded extremists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbNhttps://t.co/gGHMM8L46k
Ali Abunimah described
how the ADL has been turning a blind eye to Hitler’s accomplices in Ukraine and
even justifying their record. As Abunimah observed ‘So when
Washington goes to war, the lobby will often lend its propaganda services to
the cause.’
This
shows that the Zionist lobby, of which the ADL is the most prominent, are first and foremost supporters of US imperialism.
So now it is rehabilitating the Ukrainian collaborators who helped Hitler
exterminate Jews and Poles.
This
Holocaust revisionism is motivated by the need to whitewash the present-day,
far-right Ukrainian nationalists and neo-Nazis.
The
reason the US, NATO and the European Union gives for sending weapons and
mercenaries to Ukraine is that they are helping a fellow democracy defend its
independence and sovereignty against an illegal invasion by an expansionist,
megalomaniacal madman.
It is
therefore very awkward from a Western perspective that the Ukrainian regime is
underpinned by hard-right fascists and neo-Nazis.
Acknowledging
this fact, Western war propagandists fear, would legitimize Putin’s
claim that the Russian invasion – which has been overwhelmingly
condemned by the UN General Assembly – is justified by a need to
“de-Nazify” and demilitarize Ukraine.
The current war can be
traced
directly to the 2014 coup in Ukraine, during which the US and its allies supported
far-right and neo-Nazi elements. The goal was to install a US-friendly regime
that would bring Ukraine into NATO. Moscow has long seen NATO expansion as an
existential threat.
Key
actors in the US-supported coup were neo-Nazi groups like Right Sector, the Azov
Battalion and C14.
They are part of a broader Ukrainian nationalist movement that venerates Bandera,
the leader of the OUN, which collaborated with Hitler during World War II.
In an interview
with Andrew Srulevitch, ADL Director of European Affairs, Professor David
Fishman exonerated the
UPA and Bandera, who were responsible for the slaughter of 300,000
Jews and Poles. Asked about torchlit marches in Kyiv with red and black flags, Fishman had this to
say:
“For Ukrainian
nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian
independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for
tactical – not ideological – reasons.... When Ukrainian nationalists and Jews
look at those red and black flags, we see two different things.’
In fact UPA attacks on
Jews were so ferocious that Jews sought
the protection of the Germans.
The Banderite
bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews
a survivor testified
in 1948.
Jews
sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by
Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby
also the Jews.
ADL,
which purports to oppose anti-Semitism, carried the interview with Fishman on
its website and in its newsletter. Zionist organisations, which are usually so
concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’, simply echoed NATO
propaganda. As Abunimah observed:
Fishman’s
excuse that Bandera and other Nazi collaborators are “symbols” of the “fight
for Ukrainian independence” mirrors the claims
from American white supremacists that their display of the Confederate battle
flag is merely to honor their “heritage” and not to celebrate a regime that
went to war to protect its “right” to enslave people from Africa.
Dozens of Ukrainian streets
are named after Bandera and in a particularly nice touch Bandera’s street runs
right up to the site of Babi Yar.
Daniel
Lazare, in a review of Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe’s Stepan Bandera: The
Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist wrote:
Although
Bandera and his followers would later try to paint the alliance with the Third
Reich as no more than “tactical,” an attempt to pit one totalitarian state
against another, it was in fact deep-rooted and ideological. Bandera envisioned
the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of führer, or
providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its place under
the Nazi umbrella, much as Jozef Tiso’s new fascist regime had in Slovakia or
Ante Pavelić’s in Croatia.
What we
are seeing is a cynical attempt to rewrite history in order to portray Bandera
and the OUN/UPA as mere Ukrainian nationalists. Why? Because NATO’s Ukrainian
friends identify with Bandera’s alliance with Nazi Germany. Bandera saw
things differently explaining that Ukrainian nationalism had taken shape “in a spirit similar to the National
Socialist ideas”.
That the
BBC and the yellow press is engaged in trying to prettify the Azov Battalion and
assorted neo-Nazis is one thing (see Ros Atkin’s apologia What untruths is Russia
spreading about Nazis in Ukraine?) but for a Zionist organisation which
purports to oppose anti-Semitism to do the same is something else.
As Jimmy Dore observed, there are now
good Nazis as well as bad Nazis. The good ones are pro-Western and publicly, at
least, play down their anti-Semitism.
An example of Azov’s
handiwork was the body of a woman found in the basement of Azov’s HQ in
Mariupol. She had been tortured and a swastika was scratched into her chest.
For which Western media blamed
Russians.
Oleksiy
Kuzmenko’s Far-Right Group Made Its Home in Ukraine’s Major Western Military
Training Hub[George Washington University, September 2021] makes for
sombre reading. Kuzmenko wrote
that:
...since 2018, the National Army Academy (NAA),
Ukraine’s premier military education institution and a major hub for Western
military assistance to the country, has been home to Centuria, a self-described order of “European
traditionalist” military officers that has the stated goals of reshaping the
country’s military along right-wing ideological lines and defending the
“cultural and ethnic identity” of European peoples against “Brussels’ politicos
and bureaucrats.” The group envisions a future where “European right forces are
consolidated and national traditionalism is established as the disciplining
ideological basis for the European peoples.”
The
group, led by individuals with ties to Ukraine’s ...Azov movement, has attracted multiple
members, including current and former officer cadets of the NAA now serving in
the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Apparent members have appeared in photos giving
Nazi salutes and made seemingly extremist statements online.
The
group has been able to proselytize Ukraine’s future military elite inside the
NAA. Members have also gained access to Western military education and training
Institutions.
The
presence of the far right within the NAA is alarming because that institution
is central to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Western support for that country,
and Western military presence there. Foreign military instructors routinely
engage with the Academy’s cadets at both the Academy proper and the
International Peacekeeping and Security Center it oversees....
Azov
figures and groups linked to Azov also heaped praise on Centuria and shared its
messages online. In January 2019, for example, Eduard Yurchenko, an ideologue
of the Azov movement, praised the group on Telegram, where he now has more than
1,100 subscribers. “You should know that
this is our legendary future growing,” Yurchenko wrote of Centuria,
emphasizing that the group was holding events within the NAA. ...
Galician
Youth, a group
that is linked to the Azov movement and operates in the Western part of
Ukraine, similarly shared Centuria propaganda on Telegram in 2019.
In
May 2021, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine... accused Galician Youth of
spreading anti-Semitic posters in Lviv. The group denied having any connection
to anti-Semitic posters and stated that it condemned anti-Semitism and
xenophobia. Belying these statements, however, Galician Youth events, patches,
etc., feature white nationalist symbols.
The
evidence is overwhelming that the AFU is being penetrated at all levels by
neo-Nazi groups.
Hope not Hate, which
never lost an opportunity to attack anti-racists like Chris Williamson for
‘anti-Semitism’, went out of its way to downplay genuine anti-Semitism in
Ukraine. HnH withdrew
an award to Joe Solo for having supported Chris, though it ended up with egg on their faces
writing that:
Ukraine's
contemporary Jewish community, while facing antisemitism that all Jewish
populations sadly receive, has, in the post-communist era, become a thriving
community in the country with freedoms and protections written in law.
Eduard Dolinsky, the leader of Ukraine’s Jewish
community clearly disagreed:
Our
government encourages nationalistic groups. Our government encourages
glorification of Nazi collaborator mass murderers and murderers of Jews.
Literally
there are hundreds of monuments, streets named after killers of Jews. You can’t
imagine in the West... a monument to a policeman who was escorting Jews to Nazi
death camps.... We have anti-Semitic incidents every day – vandalism on
Holocaust mass graves, vandalism on Jewish monuments. ... No one was ever
convicted. They always deny the issue.
Western propaganda
uses the fact that Zelenskyy is Jewish
to legitimise Ukraine’s Nazis. This is not strange however. Zelensky is a
rabid Zionist and Zionism historically has always koshered anti-Semitism. It
did so with Nazi Germany.
Less than 3 weeks ago
the IsraeliAmbassador to Romania,
together with settler leader Yossi Dagan, met with the leader of the
far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians party. This is a party that
openly denies the holocaust and is descended from the Iron Guard who in 1941
staged a pogrom in Bucharest and hung the bodies of Jews from meat hooks in
butcher shops. As Ha’aretz observed in its editorial ‘Shared
Values’: Netanyahu’s Israel Cements Another Grim Alliance With Europe’s Far
Right’
Zelensky
is a puppet of Ukraine’s fascists who came to power thanks to patronage from
Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky fundedZelensky’s election campaign whilst also funding
the Azov Battalion and other far-right militias.
In 2019 Zelensky met
with a range of fascist groups telling reporters “I met
with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and
everyone else.” A few seats away from Zelensky was Yehven Karas, leader of
the neo-Nazi C14 gang.
In 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman
Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of Bandera and openly supported the AB. Zelensky, described
Zolzulya as “not only a cool football
player but a true patriot.”
In
April 2021 Zelensky tried to appoint the neo-Nazi former head of the Right
Sector in Odessa, Serhiy Sternenko as head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).
As the former head of the neo-Nazi Right Sector in Odessa, Sternenko was
directly implicated in the 2014 Trade Unions House massacre in Odessa, when 46
trade unionists were burnt alive or shot whilst attempting to flee the burning
building. It is a massacre that Smith and Graham are remarkably unconcerned or ignorant about.
In
November 2021 Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an
advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the AFU. Yarosh led the Right Sector from
2013-2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.
A month
later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo
the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his
frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking
children.”
On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa
with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion,
which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbas.
Zelensky’s visit to Greece in April 2022 backfired dramatically in a country which was
occupied during WWII. Zelensky’s address cut away to broadcast two members of
the AB. Both said that they were of Greek heritage. It caused outrage. “Nazis Return to Parliament — Thanks to
Mitsotakis” ran one headline referring to the fact that only recently had Greece
managed to drive out its own neo-nazis.
The decision of the TUC to give blanket support to NATO’s
proxy war in Ukraine, knowing full well that neo-Nazi groups are integrated armed
forces is or should be a matter of shame. Clearly Gary Smith and Sharon Graham
have no shame.
A friend of mine sent me a copy
of the Communist Review(CR), journal of the Communist Party of Britain. In
it was an article‘The contested relationship
between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism’ (No 108, summer 2023) by Mary Davis.
I wrote to the Editor of CR,
twice, offering a reply but I had no response. I then wrote to Mary Davis
challenging her to a debate. Suffice to say the good Professor did not respond
either, which is no surprise since her article is indefensible.
I couldn’t find Davis’s article
on the Internet. I have therefore put it
on myself. It is as if the CPB didn’t want to wash their dirty linen in public!
Corbyn made capitulating under pressure and throwing his friends to the Zionist wolves into a fine art
What I did find was another article in the Morning Star The socialism
of fools: anti-semitism in the Labour Party?, by Mary Davis of July 27
2019. Davis’ article accepted the anti-Semitism smears of the Labour right and
the Zionists that led to the fatal undermining of Jeremy Corbyn and the left
leadership of the Labour Party.
For a party that calls itself
‘Communist’ this is shocking. Is the CPB unaware that the ascent of Corbyn to
the leadership was bound to set off a reaction in the British Establishment and
the form their narrative took was ‘anti-Semitism’?
Despite claiming to be a Marxist Davis
ran with the Zionist fable that anti-Semitism had been one unchanging
phenomenon for 2000 years. She didn’t attempt to analyse the different forms
anti-Semitism has taken historically, in particular the distinction between
feudal and racial anti-Semitism.
Briefly feudal or Christian
anti-Semitism was from below. For Marxists it represented the economic
antagonism between the peasants and the Jews as the agents of within an economy
based on use values. With the advent of imperialism in the late 19th
century anti-Semitism took on a racial form.
Wilhelm Marr's pamphlet ' The Way to Victory of Germanism over Judaism, 1879'
In 1879 Wilhelm Marr, who
popularised the term ‘anti-Semitism’,
formed the League
of Anti-Semites. To him and his successors once a Jew always a Jew. Whereas
the anti-Semitism of Martin Luther ended with conversion to Christianity to the
Nazis a Jew was always a Jew. Which is why the phenomenon of the Christian Jew
made an appearance under the Nazis. Christian by religion, Jewish by race. They
too had to wear a yellow star and they too were destined to be annihilated.
It is not surprising that Davis
has no acquaintance with Leon’s book since Leon was a Trotskyist. In this
Marxist classic Leon wrote:
Zionism
transposes modern anti-Semitism to all of history and saves itself the trouble
of studying the various forms of anti-Semitism and their evolution.
Davis and her co-author Phil Katz
subscribe to the Zionist idea of 2000 years of unchanging anti-Semitism. The
title of their article‘The
socialism of fools’’ was popularised by August Bebel, a
founder of the German Social Democratic Party in a speech to their 1893 Congress.
Davis’article is shocking in that
it accepts that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was not an invention of the Zionist
Right but was actually true. She argued that there was no contradiction between
saying that anti-Semitism was weaponised and also saying that anti-Semitism was
a problem. This is a typical Stalinist sleight of hand which Orwell described
when he spoke of doublethink.
Despite Gordon Brown appealing to backward racist sentiments using a fascist slogan, he was very much opposed to 'anti-Semitism'
These fools never once asked
themselves why, if anti-Semitism was a problem in the Labour Party, it was the
Right in the form of Tom Watson and John Mann who were its most ardent
advocates. Why Gordon Brown, who used
the fascist slogan British Jobs for
British Workers, was so disturbed by ‘anti-Semitism’. Why the Daily Mail
etc. ran with this nonsense given their own racist record including campaigning
against the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. How it was that the
BBC produced a Panorama programme ‘Is
Labour Anti-Semitic’ by the racist Islamaphobe John Ware who is now writing
for the Zionist journal Fathom?
Today, with the advent of Keir
Starmer we can see exactly where the anti-Semitism witchhunt has led. If you
are Jewish in the Labour Party today you are five times more likely to be expelled than a non-Jew. Indeed if you are Jewish and a member of
a proscribed organisation you are 13 times more likely to be expelled. However this is no excuse for Davis’ reactionary
verbal gymnastics. Davis asked:
‘Is the charge of anti-semitism in the Labour
Party a fiction manufactured by a conspiratorial alliance between the Israeli
government and anti-socialist forces seeking to discredit Jeremy Corbyn,
thereby undermining the prospect of a left-led Labour government?
Davis even mimics the methodology of
the Right. She caricatures opposition to the fake anti-Semitism narrative by
portraying its critics as alleging that there was a ‘conspiratorial alliance’ between the Israeli government and the
Labour Right. But there is no need for a conspiracy when they already agree on
everything. There are very obvious contacts between the two in the form of
Labour Friends of Israel and the JLM.
As I show in my recent book Frumka Plotniczki, a Zionist resistance fighter was ordered to abandon the fight in the ghettos & escape to Palestine where the real fight, against the Arabs, was taking place
Davis sought to discredit opponents
of the anti-Semitism witchhunt on the grounds that Corbyn accepted that there
was a problem.
The fact is that the leadership of the Labour Party itself
has acknowledged that there is an anti-semitic element within its ranks.
Corbyn acknowledged that there was a
problem because he never understood the attack in the first place. Since his
strategy was to appease the right he was in the end forced to accept the
legitimacy of their fake narrative. I said at the time to every meeting I
addressed that Jackie Walker, Marc Wadwsorth, Ken Livingstone and myself were collateral
damage. It was Corbyn they were after. Unfortunately Corbyn preferred to throw
us under the bus but it didn’t help him because the Zionists main aim was to
remove him.
Davis cited John McDonnell to prove
her case but she must have known that McDonnell was the arch exponent of
appeasement. When Corbyn was called an anti-Semite by Margaret Hodge McDonnell
rushed to her defence saying
that this shyster, who the BNP had sent
a bouquet of flowers to for her Houses for Whites policy, had ‘a good heart’.
Mary
Davis is ironically an inheritor of the Stalinist tradition of anti-Semitism on
the one hand and support for Zionism on the other. It is strange that the
Communist Party of Britain, which claims to support the Palestinians, should
carry an article repeating the hoary old Zionist smear that anti-Zionism leads
to anti-Semitism. After all Ben Chako, the Editor of the Morning Star, was the
guest speaker at the inaugural showing of Jeremy Corbyn –The Big Lie at Conway
Hall last February.
During
the witchhunt in the Labour Party the Morning Star had a generally good record
in defending the left. For example they carried a poem by the late and great
Kevin Higgins on my expulsion and an article‘Like the boy who cried wolf’ by me.
The
time has come for the CPB to make a choice between supporting the Palestinians,
including dropping its support for the apartheid two state solution and harbouring
a Zionist cuckoo. It cannot do both. It wouldn’t have given time of day to a
supporter of South Africa apartheid so why does it do so in the case of Israeli
apartheid?
Mary
Davis’s ‘The Contested Relationship Between
Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism’ is an exercise in obfuscation and
dishonesty. As George Orwell observed
political language is
largely the defence of the
indefensible…. (which) can indeed be defended but only by arguments which are
too brutal for most people to face… Thus political language hasto consist largely of euphemism,
question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness…’
Was Zionism
just another form of nationalism?
The
reason why Zionism cannot be considered a national movement of the Jews was
that it was not seeking to liberate territory where Jews lived nor did it fight
anti-Semitism. Quite the opposite. The Zionist movement formed alliances with and
befriended anti-Semites, a fact Davis ignores.
Zionism
was a racial nationalist movement that sought an alliance with imperialism. Ethno-nationalism
was common in Eastern Europe in the 30s/40s. There was the Iron Guard in
Romania, Arrow Cross in Hungary, Hlinka Guard in Slovakia and Croatia’s Ustashe,
all of which were vehemently anti-Semitic.
Zionism
was supported by only a small minority of Jews before the Holocaust. If any
group could be considered a Jewish national movement it was the Bund, which
operated over an identifiable territory, the Pale of Settlement and which represented
Yiddish speaking Jews.
Pictures of the Nakba that Davis 'forgot' to mention
The History of
Zionist colonisation in Palestine.
Davis
paints, with a broad brush, the history of Zionist colonisation in Palestine but
amazingly fails to mention the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948.
We are given a saccharin version of history whereby the Yishuv (the Jewish
community)‘sometimes, although by no
means always, co-existed relatively peacefully with the indigenous Arab
population.’ That is it.
The aftermath of a massacre during the Nakba - to Davis this was an example of good relations
The
first Aliyah (wave of immigration) in 1882 was a traditional form of
colonisation in which Arabs were employed in the colonies whilst continuing to
live on the land. These were the colonies of Barons Edmond de Rothschild and, after
his death in 1896, Maurice de Hirsch’s Jewish Colonisation Agency, (ICA) later
the Palestinian JCA (PICA). They were not Zionist.
The
second Labour Zionist aliyah (1904-14), was the beginning of Zionist settlement.
The policy of Jewish Labour, (Boycott of Arab Labour), was at its heart. Jewish
Labour, David HaCohen, a leader of Mapai (Israeli Labor Party) and a member of
the Knesset for many years, explained that:
I had to fight my friends on the issue
of Jewish socialism, to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my
trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they not buy
at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent
Arab workers from getting jobs there. ... To pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to
attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash the Arab eggs they had
bought; … to throw the fellahin [peasants] off the land – to buy
dozens of dunams from an Arab is permitted, but to sell, God forbid,
one Jewish dunam to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild, the
incarnation of capitalism, as a socialist and to name him the “benefactor” – to
do all that was not easy. (Ha'aretz 15.11.69)
The
best analysis of Zionist colonisation was contained in the 1930 Report of Sir John Hope-Simpson, set up
in the wake of the 1929 riots:
the result of the purchase of land in
Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been
extraterritorialised. It ceases to be land from which the Arab can gain any
advantage either now or at any time in the future. Not only can he never hope
to lease or to cultivate it, but, by the stringent provisions of the lease of
the Jewish National Fund, [JNF] he is deprived for ever from employment on that
land. … The land is in mortmain and inalienable. It is for this reason that
Arabs discount the professions of friendship and good will on the part of the
Zionists in view of the policy which the Zionist Organisation [ZO] deliberately
adopted.
Not
only did the Labour Zionists follow a policy of economic apartheid they sought
to extend it to the PICA settlements.
The principle of the persistent and
deliberate boycott of Arab labour… [is] confined to the Zionist colonies, but
the General Federation of Jewish Labour [Histadrut] is using every effort to
ensure that it shall be extended to the colonies of the P.I.C.A., and this with
some considerable success. Great pressure is being brought to bear on the old
P.I.C.A. colonies in the Maritime Plain and its neighbourhood—pressure which in
one instance at least has compelled police intervention.
The
Report quoted from the terms of the lease that the JNF issued to its Jewish
tenants.
" . . . . The lessee undertakes to
execute all works connected with the cultivation of the holding only with
Jewish labour. Failure to comply with this duty by the employment of nonJewish
labour shall render the lessee liable to the payment of a compensation of ten
Palestinian pounds for each default."
The lease also provides that the holding
shall never be held by any but a Jew. If the holder, being a Jew, dies, leaving
as his heir a nonJew, the Fund shall obtain the right of restitution.
Davis
criticises ‘the blanket identification of
Zionism with racism, apartheid, colonialism and worse.’ and lectures the
reader that ‘moral judgements… must not
be allowed to obscure an analysis of the Zionist movement’. Unfortunately
Davis is guilty of the very crime that she ascribes to others.
From
its inception at the end of the 19th century, Zionism saw itself as
a colonial movement. On 11 January 1902 Theodor Herzl, its founder, described a
letter he had written to Cecil Rhodes, the White supremacist leader in southern
Africa.
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,
and because it presupposes understanding of a development which will take
twenty or thirty years. … But you, Mr. Rhodes, are a visionary politician or a
practical visionary. You have already demonstrated this. And what I want you to
do is … to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan…’ [1]
Today,
when colonialism has gone out of fashion, the Zionist movement disavows its
colonial roots but when it was in fashion the ZO had a Colonization Department.
David
Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, regularly referred to the
settlements as ‘colonies’. For all her bluster Davis cannot deny the fact that
the Zionist movement saw itself as a settler-colonial movement. As we can see
from HaCohen and Hope-Simpson, racism was integral to Zionist colonisation.
The
relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Davies
is at pains to infer that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have much in common
and that the former leads to the latter. She tells us that anti-Zionism ‘‘per se’ is not anti-Semitic’ however ‘there is currently a strain of anti-Zionism…
which has normalized hostility to Israel as a Zionist entity founded by Jews.’
This apparently ‘can and often does lead
to anti-Semitism.’ Davis gives no examples and relies on pure assert ion.
Despite
the efforts of the Zionists to redefine anti-Semitism as hostility, not to Jews
but to Zionism and Israel, Davis does not once mention the IHRA.
Why
does Davis argue that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic? ‘because it singles out Israel for special treatment.’ and because
‘questioning the existence of the State
of Israel ignores the motivation for its foundation as a refuge for Jews…’.
The
argument about ‘singling out’ Israel for criticism echoes the complaints of supporters
of Apartheid in South Africa who were keen to point to the iniquities of
surrounding countries as if that was any kind of justification.
Apartheid
South Africa was founded as a refuge for the Afrikaaners and the USA was a
refuge for Christian dissenters. It is irrelevant why a state was founded. What
matters is what it does.
Nor
was Israel founded in order to save the victims of anti-Semitism from persecution.
Chaim Weizmann said in 1919 that ‘Alas,
Zionism can’t provide a solution for catastrophes.’ Palestine was closed to
thousands of survivors of the Ukrainian pogroms in the early 1920s. Gur Alroey described how Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s
first President
preferred productive immigrants over
needy refugees and thought the Land of Israel needed strong, healthy
immigrants, not refugees weak in body and spirit.
Rabbi
Abba Hillel-Silver, President of the Zionist Organisation of America asked:
Are we again, in moments of desperation
going to confuse Zionism with refugeeism which is likely to defeat Zionism?...
Zionism is not a refugee movement. It is not a product of the Second World War,
nor of the first. Were there no displaced Jews in Europe... Zionism would still
be an imperative necessity.[Robert
Silverberg, If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem,
p. 335, 1972]
The
Zionist movement opposed the rescue of Jews from the Nazis to any country bar
Palestine. After Kristallnacht in November 1938, Britain agreed to admit 10,000
Jewish children, the Kindertransport, to England. The Zionists were furious.
Ben Gurion told Mapai’s Central Committee on 9 December 1938 that
If I knew that it would be possible to save
all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of
them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second
alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also
the history of the People of Israel.[2]
A week later, on 17 December 1938 Ben Gurion wrote a memo to the Zionist Executive expressing
his fears that
If the Jews are faced with a choice between the
refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and
aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity
will prevail and our people's entire strength will be directed at aid for the
refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and
indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from
Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the
refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem.
A
Jewish state was founded, not in order to rescue individual Jews but in order
to perpetuate the Jewish race. That was the basis of the cordial relationship
between the Nazis and the Zionists during the 1930s. How else to explain the
fact that the German Zionist Federation [ZVfD] pressurised the Gestapo not to
allow Jews to emigrate to countries other than Palestine? The Gestapo ‘did everything in those days to promote
emigration, particularly to Palestine.’[3]
When
Roosevelt called the Evian Conference to discuss the plight of Europe’s Jewish
refugees, the Zionists were appalled. A meeting of the Jewish Agency Executive [JAE]
on June 26 1938 decided to:
belittle the [Evian] Conference as far as possible and to cause it to
decide nothing…. We are particularly worried that it would move Jewish
organizations to collect large sums of money for aid to Jewish refugees, and
these collections could interfere with our collection efforts.[4]
Ben-Gurion at a meeting of the JAE of 26
June 1938. explained: ‘No
rationalizations can turn the conference from a harmful to a useful one. What
can and should be done is to limit the damage as far as possible.'[5]
Menachem Ussishkin at the same meeting said that
He hoped to hear in Evian that Eretz Israel remains the main venue for
Jewish emigration. All other emigration countries do not interest him… The
greatest danger is that attempts will be made to find other territories for
Jewish emigration.[6]
(my emphasis)
The Zionist leaders welcomed the rise of the Nazis to government.
It vindicated everything they had said about the impossibility of Jews living
amongst non Jews. Zionist leaders saw the Hitler regime as a golden opportunity
to prosper. Francis Nicosia spoke of the ‘illusory
assumption’ that Zionism ‘must have
been well served by a Nazi victory’. Hitler’s victory ‘could only bolster Zionist fortunes.’ Nicosia also spoke of the
tendency to ‘view Zionist interests as
distinct from those of the larger Jewish community in the Diaspora.’ [7]
So positive was its assessment of the situation that, as early as April
1933, the ZVfD announced its determination to take advantage of the crisis to
win over the traditionally assimilationist German Jewry to Zionism [8]
Berl Katznelson, Ben-Gurion’s effective deputy, saw the rise
of Hitler as ‘an opportunity to build and
flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have.’[9]
Ben-Gurion was even more optimistic. ‘The
Nazis’ victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.”’[10]
Noah Lucas, a critical Zionist historian, wrote:
‘As the European holocaust
erupted, Ben-Gurion saw it as a decisive opportunity for Zionism... In
conditions of peace,… Zionism could not move the masses of world Jewry. The
forces unleashed by Hitler in all their horror must be harnessed to the
advantage of Zionism. ... By the end of 1942… the struggle for a Jewish state
became the primary concern of the movement.’(Noah Lucas) [11]
Zionism
began as a reaction to anti-Semitism, especially the pogroms that followed the
assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. Unlike all other Jewish groups
Zionism accepted the main premise of the anti-Semites, that Jews did not belong
in the countries where they lived. That was why anti-Semites endorsed the
Zionist movement as a way of being rid of their unwanted Jews.
Zionism
believed that anti-Semitism could not be fought because it was inherent in
every non-Jew. In the midst of the Dreyfus Affair, when over half of France had
taken up the struggle for a Jewish officer, Herzl wrote that
In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I
now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the
emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism. [Diaries, p.8]
The leader of the anti-Dreyfusards Edouard Drumont favourably
reviewed Herzl’s pamphlet The Jewish State, in ‘Solution de la Question Juive’ in La Libre Parole on 16
January 1897. Herzl expressed his delight in his Diary.[12]
Jews
viewed Zionism as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. Davis mentions that the first
Zionist Congress was held in Basel, Switzerland in 1897. What she doesn’t
mention is that it was supposed to have been held in Munich but the Jewish
community there protested against it holding that the authorities were
condoning anti-Semitism. As Sir Samuel Montagu, a Liberal MP wrote:
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.?
Zionism was a
counter-revolutionary movement. After the Kishinev pogrom in April 1903 Herzl
journeyed to see Czarist Interior Minister von Plehve who had organised the
pogroms. Herzl asked Plehve: ‘Help me to reach land sooner and the revolt will end. And so will the
defection to the Socialists.’[13]
Plehve approved the publication of a Zionist daily, Der Fraind. Uniquely Zionism was a legal political movement in
Russia. Herzl promised that the revolutionaries would stop their struggle in
return for a charter for Palestine in 15 years. The Bund were outraged.[14]
Davies makes great play
of the ‘Marxist’ Zionist Poalei Zion [PZ] omitting to mention that its founder,
Ber Borochov, was expelled from the Russian Social Democrats in 1901 for
Zionism. Socialist Zionism only began because mainstream Zionism held no
attractions for Jewish workers.
In Poland Left PZ effectively
abandoned Zionism. In Palestine PZ moved to the right as the rhythms of
colonisation and conflict with the Arabs took over.
Davis argues that PZ ‘advocated a harmonious relationship between
Jew and Arab in Palestine.’ Either she knows nothing about Zionist
colonisation or she is lying. PZ and Ahdut Ha'avodah eschewed unity between
Jewish and Arab workers.
Does Zionism
have a Left and a Right?
Davis argues that Zionism
‘was never a monolithic movement with a
settled ideology.’ Rather it was ‘fractured
from its early days and remains so until the present time.’
Although it is true that
the Zionist movement was divided into different groups it is not true that
there wasn’t a common ideology. All wings agreed that Jews formed a nation worldwide
and there was also unanimity, with the exception of the tiny Brit Shalom, that their goal was the
establishment of a Jewish state.
Whereas the Revisionists sought
to achieve this goal at once, Ben Gurion realised that the Yishuv had to build
up its strength numerically before they could realistically achieve statehood.
There was an unspoken consensus among all wings that the achievement of a Jewish
state would involve the transfer of the Arabs.
The Revisionists wanted
to jettison Zionism’s imperialist partners, the British, before the Yishuv was
ready whereas Ben Gurion realised that until they reached a critical mass the
British presence was indispensible. The differences were not ones of principle
but tactics.
The Histadrut, the Zionist
trade union, which Golda Meir described
as a ‘great colonizing agency’, was
formed in 1920.The class struggle was seen as weakening the settler
enterprise. In April 1924 the Palestine Communist
Party adopted an anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist outlook. It was expelled from
Histadrut.[15]
The Labour Zionist slogan
was ‘From class to nation’. The class
struggle was to be waged, not against the employer but the Arabs. It was Labour
Zionism which built the State of Israel. The Nakba was carried out primarily by
the Labour Zionist militias, Haganah and Palmach, not the Revisionists.
What
is a ‘Jewish State’? Is such a state inherently racist?
What
does a Jewish State mean? Davis ignores this question. Being Jewish in such a
state is a national/racial not a religious category. In Israel you can be
registered as of no religion but Jewish in terms of nationality.
The
Jewish
Nation State Law 2018, which Davis references, states
that in Israel only Jews have the right of national self-determination. Arabs
are guests, they are not part of the national collective. Israel is unique in
having no single nationality.
To
this day, Israel’s Palestinian citizens face having their villages demolished
in order to make way for Jewish towns. In July 2023 the residents of Ras Jrabah
in the Negev were given until March
2024 to destroy their homes and leave their village to make way for the
expansion of a nearby Israeli city. Half of all Israel’s Arab villages are
‘unrecognised’. They are on state land, which is a ‘Jewish’ state. Such
villages have no piped water, electricity or even ballot boxes in elections.
This is internal colonisation.
As
Netanyahu remarked,
“Israel is not a state of all its
citizens. … Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.’
Ethno-religious states are a throwback to the days of feudalism. It was the
bourgeois revolution in France which established the idea that a nation
includes all the people living within its territory, not just those of a
particular religion.
Davis
sees opposition to a Jewish state as anti-Semitic. If so then it was also racist
to oppose the apartheid state in South Africa.
6.How
Anti-Semitism was Weaponised in order to Undermine Corbyn and the Labour Left
It
is astounding that someone who calls themselves a communist cannot see how anti-Semitism
was weaponised by the right to defeat the Corbyn project. Jeremy Corbyn has allowed vile anti-Semitism
to fester and growscreamed the Daily Express. The same paper that
campaigned against the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was to
the fore in opposing Labour ‘anti-Semitism’.
‘No-one is swallowing the asylum seeker lie anymore,
the game’s up’wrote Carole
Malone. We had the Sun and Mail, fresh from
employing neo-Nazi Katie Hopkins as a columnist, protesting their shock at Labour
‘anti-Semitism’. Is Mary Davis really unable to join the dots?
Tom
Watson and the Labour Right, who had made demonisation of Muslims and asylum
seekers into a fine art, protested their abhorrence at Labour ‘anti-Semitism’. Gordon
Brown, whose slogan‘British Jobs for British Workers’ was
coined by fascist groups such as the BNP and National Front, fulminated against the ‘stain’ of Labour
‘anti-Semitism’.
If
there was one thing that destroyed the Corbyn Project it was the inability of
the Labour left to fight back against false accusations of anti-Semitism. Yet
what conclusion does Davis draw?
It is an undoubted fact that the
conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism, has been and still is, a constant
theme of left discourse.
It
is as if Davis no longer recognises the meaning of words. The equation of anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism is a Zionist not left theme. Mary Davis is the CPB’s Humpty Dumpty:
“When I
use a word,… it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many
different things.’ ‘The question is,’
said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be
master — that’s all.”
Boris
Johnson, whose racist utterances are
notorious and whose 2004 book 72 Virgins was replete with racist and anti-Semitic
stereotypes, was also concerned about Labour anti-Semitism. Nor does Davis point
out the hypocrisy of Labour MPs who attacked Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ but supported Theresa May’s ‘hostile
environment’ Immigration Act 2014?
Davis
signals that there was no smoke without fire. She uses weasel words, talking
about ‘persistent allegations of
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’. John Mann and Watson were certainly
persistent but they also backed the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas in 2010 when
the High Court removed him from Parliament. Woolas had fought an election campaign based on ‘making the White folk angry.’
Davis
treats the EHRC ‘investigation’ of Labour anti-semitism as if the EHRC was some
a human rights group rather than an instrument of the British state. The same
EHRC has refused to investigate Tory Islamaphobia and whose Board is stuffed
with right-wing appointees. The Commissioner who conducted the Inquiry,
Alisdair Henderson, was later found out to have been tweeting in support of fascist
philosopher Roger Scruton and making derogatory comments about feminism.
Davis
cannot bring herself to mention the expulsion of Jewish members of the party
such that Jews in the Labour Party face a five
times greater chance of being expelled than non-Jews.
Does Israel
have a vibrant left
Davies
says that ‘vibrant oppositional forces
exist in Israel’. What she doesn’t do is explain how today Labour Zionism
is an endangered species. Having formed every government from 1949 to 1977 the
Israeli Labour Party has not formed a government since 1999. Mapam/Meretz, who
were once the second largest party in the Knesset, has no elected members.
Israel
is a society where the phrase ‘leftist’ is a term of abuse, where racism
amongst the young is rampant and where a plurality of Jews support the
expulsion of Palestinian Israelis. On every count Israeli Palestinians are
discriminated against by the State. What remains of the left in Israel is
extremely weak.
In
the demonstrations over Netanyahu’s judicial reforms, the Anti Occupation Block
has been regularly attacked by other demonstrators. The demonstrations are primarily
a protest within the Jewish collective from which Palestinian Israelis are
absent. When it comes to the army’s attack on Palestinians in Jenin and
elsewhere there is Zionist unanimity.
Davies
mentions Israeli human rights organisation B’tselem but omits to mention that
last year it concluded that Israel
was an apartheid state and that a ‘regime of Jewish
supremacy’ extends ‘from the Jordan River to
the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid.’
Today
we have the phenomenon of the Jewish neo-Nazi Otzmah Yehudit being part of the third largest block in the Knesset
yet Davies has nothing to say about this or the continuing ethnic cleansing of the
Palestinians in the West Bank. Of course in the protests some Israeli Jews will
become radicalised and begin to understand that you can’t maintain a military
dictatorship in the Occupied Territories and a Jewish democracy in Israel. In
South Africa repression of the Black population led to democracy for White
people being eroded. So too in Israel.
Two States is
an Apartheid Solution
Davies
harks back to 1947 and Stalin’s decision to support the establishment of Israel
as a ‘Jewish state’ which resulted in the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians.
If
there is one thing that the past half century teaches us it is that Israel has
no intention to create a Palestinian state. The Oslo Accords replaced the faces
of Israeli soldiers with Palestinian faces. Palestinians now recognise that the
ONLY solution is the creation, like in South Africa, of a unitary state which
guarantees equal rights for all. Only racists and Zionists oppose such an
outcome.
A
two state solution would leave an apartheid Israeli state in place together
with a repressive bantustan in the West Bank. The 700,000 settlers aren’t going
anywhere and there is no appetite or desire within Israel to remove them. The
Israeli Communist Party is wrong to cling to this ‘solution’ which would be an
invitation to Ben Gvir to expel Israeli Palestinians into such a state.
Davis
began her article by telling us how many times Zion occurs in the Bible as if
this proved anything. Zionism has always been a political not religious
movement. Yes Jews prayed for a return to the Holy Land but as Bernard Lazarre,
an early Zionist noted, what this prayer was really saying was that they wished
to be free.
When
2.5 million Russian Jews emigrated from Czarist Russia between the mid-19th
century and 1914, some 99% went to the USA and Britain. A mere trickle of
Zionist activists, most of whom returned, went to Palestine. Whenever Jews have
been given the chance, they have chosen to go anywhere but Palestine.
Mary
Davis article is one long apologia for Zionism. Its mistakes are too many to
count. It is tendentious and is based on an imperialist imposed, partition.
Israel
today reflects the anti-Semitism that Jews once experienced. Instead of ‘death to the Jews’ we have ‘death to the Arabs’ chantged. This is
the state Mary Davis wants to keep. Her article is the exact opposite of
international solidarity.
Davis
turns a blind eye to the fact that Zionism has always been supported by
anti-Semites, from Trump and Richard Spencer to Tommy
Robinson.
Israel
has excellent relations with anti-Semitic regimes in Eastern Europe from
Hungary’s Orban to Poland’s Morawiecki. At the end of August a meeting took place between Israel’s
Ambassador in Romania, Reuven Azar, with the holocaust denying Alliance for the
Union of Romanians leader George Simion. This is the Zionism that Mary Davis
denies.
Tony
Greenstein
[1]Complete
Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 1194, Ralph Patai (ed), 1960.
[2]Yoav
Gelber, ‘Zionist policy and the Fate of European Jewry,’ Yad Vashem Studies
(1939-42) p. 199; see also Tom Segev, The
Seventh Million, p. 28; Teveth p. 855; Gabriel Piterberg p. 99.
[3]Francis
Nicosia, The Third Reich and the
Palestine Question, p. 57.
[4]Boas Evron, Jewish State or Israeli Nation, fn 3, p. 260 quoting letter by
Georg Landauer to Stephen Wise, 13.2.38. This shocking letter was written at
the behest of Chaim Weizmann.
[15]Mario
Offenburg, Kommunismus in Palaestina Nation und Kalassein der
anti-Kolonialen RevolutionMeisenheim am Glan 1975 (PhD Thesis,
West Berlin, 1975) p.187. Khamsin No
7, pp. 4l-5l.
The
Establishment have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent people seeing Jeremy Corbyn – The Big Lie. The
attempts to ban it were first
started by Keir Starmer – the Labour Liar who banned
Labour councillors from seeing it.
The cudgels
were then taken up by Paul
Mason, the spook who wants to wage war on anti-imperialist academics and
all manner of socialists with his MI5 friends. The British Establishment – which
is all in favour of free speech when it comes to racists, homophobes and other
assorted bigots of the right – condemned the film, in Mason’s words because it
allegedly
presents a full-blown conspiracy theory about
Corbyn’s opponents, conflating Zionists, Jews and Israel as part of a force
that “orchestrated” his overthrow.
There were many conspiracies by
state forces, Israeli, British and American, to undermine andbring down Jeremy Corbyn. The Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism admitted as much after Corbyn lost the 2019 General Election. But
there’s all the difference in the world between conspiracy theories and
conspiracies.
Of course it’s not the exposing of
the plots and machinations by the press, BBC, Tory and Labour politicians that
bothers them it is the truth of what happened between 2015 and 2019.
The desperate attempts of Starmer,
Mason and co. to prevent the film screening is not because it is a conspiracy
film but because they don’t want people being exposed to the truth of what
happened.
The film is being put on by Brighton’s
Unite SE/6246 branch despite the scabby role of Sharon Graham who has become
desperate of late to suck up to Starmer and the Labour Right.
If you live in the Brighton and
Hove area come and see the film. Register here
to get a free ticket and find out why it is that under Keir Starmer Jews are up
to 9 times more likely to be expelled as part of the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’
Demonstration Outside Wolverhampton Crown Court - the Banner Speaks Volumes
If capitalism is an immoral, asocial system that knows only
profit and war then its most immoral part are the arms companies, what
Eisenhower called
the military-industrial complex. And no one but no one is more immoral than Elbit,
Israel’s largest arms company.
For 36 hours our Crowdfunder was suspended but now it's up and running
Perhaps the title of the most genocidal and murderous regime
in the world goes to the military junta in Myanmar (Burma). The junta has waged
war against the Rohinga people, burning them out of their villages and
massacring them. Elbit is happy
to step in to enable them to commit more war crimes.
Last Saturday I set up a Crowdfunder
on Chuffed, which I’d been
recommended to as a socially conscious crowdfunding platform. I wanted to avoid
American corporations like Just Giving. By the end of Monday we had raised over
£3,000 and then disaster struck.
On Tuesday I woke up to an email saying that the Crowdfunder
had been temporarily taken down and we had to remove all references to Elbit as
they were defamatory.
There followed a long conversation in which I was prepared to
take out most of the text criticising Elbit but I wasn’t prepared to remove the
title Help Support Elbit
Protesters and nor was I prepared the photograph which pictured two people
holding a placard saying ‘Elbit are the
real criminals’. After all that is a photo of a demonstration that took
place. How can that possibly be defamatory? News organisations showing pictures
of a demonstration would be protected under ‘fair comment.’
By the end of Monday we had reached a deadlock and I
did some research and found out that yes, Chuffed
did hold itself out to be a socially conscious crowdfunder for all sorts of
campaigns, which is to its credit, but it was giving us a hard time.
What I didn’t realise was that Elbit’s overpaid
lawyers had been on to Chuffed and
threatened them unless the blog was taken down.
So we left it with me telling Carl that I would be
left with no option but to run the Crowdfunder from my own blog and I would of
course have to explain why this had happened which would inevitably mean that
Chuffed suffered reputational damage amongst activists.
At this point Jennie Smith, their acting CEO emailed
me from Australia asking for a WhatsApp meeting. Unfortunately because I had
been blogging till the early hours and because of the different time zones we
never did manage it. However Jennie made it clear that she wanted to restore
the Crowdfunder.
I also contacted all those who had donated and asked
them to contact Chuffed and explain why
they were disappointed at what had happened and expressing the hope that it
would be resolved as quickly as possible, which many did.
I am pleased to say that Jennie was happy with my
compromise which was to take the criticism of Elbit out of the text but to
leave in the heading and the photograph which says everything really.
So to end the story on a happy note the Crowdfunder
is up
and running and at the time of writing has raised £3,100. This is more than
enough for the 5 Elbit Defendants in Wolverhampton and I propose to distribute
it to other Defendants in Elbit trials so it should be seen as a more general
defence fund.
Prominent amongst these is Amber whose crowdfunder
for £5 ,000 is to pay for her legal fees as she has been denied legal aid. I
intend that we donate £1,000 towards this and I hope others do too.
So this is a story with a happy ending. Unlike some
other crowdfunders Chuffed did enter
into correspondence with us and we reached a mutually satisfactory outcome so I
would definitely recommend people use them.
Elbit provided the White Phosphorous Used for Bombing a UN School
The moral of the story is that Elbit is quite happy
enabling war crimes and blowing kids to bits but it is very sensitive when
people criticise them. And this is the company that British Judges have bent
over backwards to protect.
I will give the next 25 purchasers of my book Zionism During the Holocaust a free copy
of my first book, ‘Fighting Fascism in Brighton
and the South Coast’. Buying Zionism
During the Holocaust directly from me costs £10 paperback and £15 hardback (inc.
p&p), one-third less than the publisher’s price!
As Zionism During the Holocaust shows the
Israeli state and Zionist groups, even after the holocaust, continued to work
with neo-Nazi groups and governments. Major Nazi war criminals such as Walter Rauf, who was
personally responsible for the death of over 100,000 people and the inventor of
the gas truck, was employed
as an Israeli agent after the war. They even paid his passage to Ecuador to
escape prosecution as a war criminal.
During the period of
the Argentinian Junta (1976-83) Israel supplied
weapons and training to those who were, at the very same time, murdering up to
3,000 Argentinian Jews.
March by the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires - Israel was a Major Supplier of Arms to this Genocidal neo-Nazi Regime
You will also read
about why the accusations against Ken Livingstone, that he was anti-Semitic for
mentioning the collaboration of the Nazis and the Zionists, in particular the Ha'avara
trading agreement, was false. When world Jewry was building a Boycott of Nazi
Germany campaign, which had already inflicted major economic damage on the Nazi
economy, the Zionists rode to the Nazis’ rescue with an agreement which
resulted in 60% of capital investment in Jewish Palestine between 1933 and 1939
coming from Nazi Germany.
NEW - Justin Trudeau blames Russian propaganda for Canadian Parliament honoring a Nazi.
"Obviously, it's extremely upsetting that this happened... this is something that is deeply embarrassing to the Parliament of Canada...
Canadian
Parliament Gives SS ‘Hero’ a Standing Ovation
This has been the week
when the hypocrisy of Western foreign policy was on display for all to see with
the honouring
of Yaroslav Hunka, a volunteer in a Ukrainian Waffen
SS unit.
Speaker
of the Canadian Parliament Anthony Rota introduced
Hunka as a Canadian and Ukrainian war hero who fought for the Waffen-SS Galicia
Division or the SS 14th Waffen Division.
Canadian Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, posed with a Banderite Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) flag in February 2022. Image credit: Sputnik News/Wyatt Reed
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland is a long standing supporter of Canada’s Ukrainian neo-Nazi exiles. See ChrystiaFreeland: Canada’s fascist queen
It was
neither a mistake nor an accident. In his introduction Rota said that Hunka ‘fought for Ukrainian independence against
the Russians.’ And who was it who fought against the Russians in the Second
World War if not the Nazis and their collaborators in Eastern Europe?
The
Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) of Stepan Bandera was prominent in that fight
just as it was prominent in the holocaust and mass murder of hundreds of
thousands of Jews and Poles.
The West,
including Israel, has openly
armed and trained Ukraine’s armed forces knowing full well that they have
integrated the neo-Nazi Azov Brigade (now upgraded to a battalion) and other
far-right forces into them. In the process the West and the Zionists have
transformed Nazis into nationalists.
The fact
that Ukraine is the only country in the world which has a national
holiday in memory of a Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera should have been
enough in itself. But that too was simply ignored.
The Anti-Defamation
League, America’s premier Zionist organisation, has openly set about
whitewashing Ukraine Nazis. In an interview
by Andrew Srulevitch, its Director of European Affairs with Dr.
David Fishman, we were told that ‘“When Ukrainian nationalists and Jews
look at those red and black flags, we see two different things.” He was
referring to the Nazi colours black and red.
Fishman
went on to say that
For Ukrainian
nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian
independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for
tactical – not ideological – reasons.
“Bandera
envisioned the Ukraine as a classic one-party state with himself in the role of
führer, or providnyk, and expected that a new Ukraine would take its
place under the Nazi umbrella.”
“The OUN had played a leading role in the
anti-Jewish pogroms that broke out in Lviv and dozens of other Ukrainian cities
on the heels of the German invasion, and now they served the Nazis by
patrolling the ghettoes and assisting in deportations, raids and shootings.”
In 1943,
Banderite members of the OUN formed their own militia, the Ukrainian Insurgent
Army, or UPA. The UPA began the ethnic cleansing and extermination of Poles
from territories they saw as belonging to Ukraine. See
Separately, the state banned 'Book of Thieves' which
criticizes the anti-Semitic actions of a different national leader for
'inciting ethnic, racial and religious hatred'
Activists
of the Svoboda (Freedom) Ukrainian nationalist party hold the photo of Stepan
Bandera in Kiev, October 14, 2013. Credit: Gleb Garanich/Reuters
Ukraine designated the birthday of a Nazi collaborator
as a national holiday and banned a book on the anti-Semitic
actions of another national leader.
The Ukrainian parliament last week declared January 1
as a national day of commemoration for Stepan Bandera, who briefly joined
forces with the Nazi
occupation of Ukraine. A nationalist, Bandera hoped the Germans would allow
his country sovereignty from the Soviet Union, though the Nazis later arrested
him.
Some of his supporters at the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists, which he headed, committed countless war crimes against
Jews.
The region of Lviv,
Bandera’s native city, this month declared 2019 “Stepan Bandera Year,” sparking
protests by Israel. Tarik Youssef Cyril Amar, the former academic director of
Lviv’s Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, this week returned an
award conferred on him by the city in protest.
Separately, Ukraine’s State Committee on Television
and Radio Broadcasting banned “Book of Thieves” by Swedish historian Anders
Rydell, which includes critical analysis of the actions of Symon Petliura, an
early-20th century nationalist whose troops murdered countless Jews in pogroms
beginning in 1919.
The December 10 decree banning the book accused Rydell
of “inciting ethnic, racial and religious
hatred,” the Regnum news agency reported Wednesday.
A Russia-born Jew killed Petliura in Paris in 1929 as
revenge for the pogroms.
“The whole book
ban is very symbolic in itself,” said Ukrainian Jewish Committee Director
Eduard Dolinsky. Both communist and Nazi authorities systematically banned
books.
For Reviews and
Talks About Zionism During the Holocaust See:
Just as Supporters
of Black Liberation in South Africa Opposed Apartheid, Supporters of the
Palestinians Must Oppose Zionism and Israel as a ‘Jewish’ State
This
is the logic of Zionism – if you believe in universal values then you are no
better than the Jews who perished in the gas chamber – indeed it is a pity that
you weren’t among them
I have written many hundreds of articles,
thousands if you count my blogs, but my article in today’s Electronic Intifada Only
anti-Zionists are real supporters of Palestineis one of the
most important, I have written.
I have long grappled with the question as to
why it was that those who purported to support the Palestinians in the Labour
Party, gave their support to an ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, whose sole
purpose was to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader because of his support for the Palestinians.
On 11 April 2016, I wrote to Ben Soffa, Secretary of Palestine
Solidarity Campaign about the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign.
Rereading it today it seems prescient.
Despite
initiatives from a number of Jewish groups… to stem the [anti-Semitism] attacks
from the Board of Deputies, the BBC and the Guardian in particular, there has
been complete silence from PSC. PSC prides itself on being the largest
solidarity organisation in Britain. The Executive boasted in its Annual Report
that it had contacted 1,042 candidates at the General Election, yet it hasn’t
seen fit to contact any Labour parliamentarians to speak up against the attacks
of the Zionists and the Labour Right…
Why haven’t you
for example organised a large public meeting on the issue with say Ken
Livingstone and a sympathetic MP as speakers or issued press releases, produced
leaflets, called press conferences, pressed for articles in the Opinion columns
of the quality press etc? I know that
PSC is renowned for its caution and timidity but there must be some limits to
this….
PSC has
resources that other groups do not…. It is inexcusable that it has done absolutely
nothing to respond to the Zionists daily attacks. …
… Part of the
problem is undoubtedly the political weakness of PSC, which supports the
Palestinians whilst not opposing Zionism. Historically PSC has prefered to act
as a campaigning group around human rights whilst avoiding thorny issues such
as Zionism and anti-Semitism.
The ceaseless
political attack by the Zionists on support for the Palestinians in the LP
cannot simply be ignored. They will not
go away because their campaign is linked with the determination of the Right in
the LP to remove Corbyn. ‘Anti-Semitism’
is their weapon of choice….
Until
Jeremy Corbyn firmly rebuts his critics he will continue to come under attack. Appeasement rarely works. It is no use Corbyn saying that he opposes
anti-Semitism because what he means by anti-Semitism and the Zionists mean by
it are two different things.… Until Corbyn speaks out saying that yes he
opposes anti-Semitism but yes he supports the Palestinians, including the
Boycott of Israel, giving chapter and verse on why Israel is a racist and
apartheid state, then the attacks will continue.
Ben Soffa’s response oozed complacency. He began
his letter to me of 20 April 2016 by quoting the 2010 Report
of the Reut Institute.
A central objective is to change this situation by
forcing them [Palestine solidarity organisations] to 'play defense'.
This means systematically exposing information
about delegitimizers, their activities, and the organizations that they operate
out of. The goal is to eventually frame them, depending on their agendas, as
anti-peace, anti-Semitic, dishonest purveyors of double standards.
Despite saying that ‘It is clear that the upsurge in attempts to link support for the rights
of the Palestinian people with anti-Semitism requires a new a concerted
response.’ Soffa went on to say that
…
I make no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would
wish to involve us in. As the Reut Institute set out, there is a plan to force
us to 'play defence' on the terrain chosen by those wishing to preserve the
status quo in Palestine. We must not fall into the trap of allowing our
opponents to set our agenda, which is precisely why PSC chooses to make the
intervention we feel are most helpful to the situation, rather than seeking to
make every intervention which might be possible…
There is much work to be done, but it
is also not necessarily most effective for PSC to be the organisation leading
on all aspects of this.
The problem with not engaging with the
‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was that it didn’t then go away. What it did
mean was Britain’s largest Palestine solidarity group was absent from the fight
against the Zionist lobby and their allies, the Labour Right.
There is good reason to believe that PSC did
not want to align itself with the Corbyn left since their strategy involved
aligning and working with those bitterly opposed to Corbyn. The problem with
this was that the Labour Right, even those like Nisa Nandy who professed to
support the Palestinians, would willingly throw the Palestinians under the bus
to get rid of Corbyn.
Almost all the trade unions affiliated to Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who
proudly use their affiliation as ‘proof’ that they support the Palestinians, were
at one and the same time supporting the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism and
the Jewish Labour Movement. The IHRA’s sole purpose was to label supporters of
the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.
Lisa Nandy's Concern for Palestinian Children's Rights Didn't Prevent Her 'Barnstorming' Speech to Labour Friends of Israel - PSC was happy to provide a Platform for these Creatures
In some unions like the GMB, the IHRA has been
used to expel genuine supporters of the Palestinians like Bert
Schouwenburg.
Even the most stupid trade union leaders, like
Gary Smith or Sharon Graham, understand the purpose behind the IHRA. Nearly all
of the IHRA’s examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ involved opposition to Israel and Zionism.
It completely ignored the genuine anti-Semitism of the far-right, yet PSC took
a conscious decision not to raise the IHRA with its trade union
affiliates.
Since PSC never asked anything of Nandy, Thornberry et al. they got nothing back except platitudes
When PSC held a trade union conference in 2019
Director Ben Jamal asked me to leave because I had distributed leaflets
opposing the IHRA. Why is it that PSC is so reluctant to raise ‘difficult
issues’ like the weaponisation of anti-Semitism with trade unions? Why does PSC
value affiliations which are politically worthless?
First She was Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine
The conclusions I reached don’t make for easy
reading but we have to face up to unpleasant truths. The trade unions, with the
support of PSC, were able to proclaim their support for the Palestinians at one
and the same time as they supported a Jewish Supremacist state.
As Jesus wisely observed you cannot serve two
masters, God and Mammon. You have to make a choice between opposition to
Israeli settler colonialism and support for the Palestinians or support for
Israel as a Jewish State.
PSC has chosen to ride two horses which is why it is ineffectual
politically. On the one hand it supports the Palestinians and on the other it
refuses to challenge the imperialist neo-colonial narrative of support for the
two state solution. It doesn’t even challenge the anti-Semitism narrative that
says Jews are an oppressed group still less argue that Israel as a ‘Jewish’
state must inevitably be a racist state.
PSC has failed to master the art of riding 2 horses at the same time
The result is that PSC’s narrative is entirely
incoherent and all that it can do is point to Israel’s human rights abuses.
That of course is fine but how is PSC different from a human rights NGO such as
War on Want? In many ways PSC is less
effective than WOW.
When it came to supporting Corbyn against the
Zionists PSC was conspicuous by its absence. PSC put up no opposition to the Zionists’
anti-Corbyn campaign for fear of upsetting trade union leaders and the Labour
Right. PSC abandoned Palestinian supporters inside the Labour Party. They left
the field clear to the Zionists.
Anyone claiming to support both Black people
in South Africa and Apartheid would have been ridiculed yet today you have
large numbers of people who claim to both support the Palestinians and the
Israeli state. Quite simply you cannot support the Executioner and the
Condemned Man – politics is about making choices not compromises.
No one was too opportunistic or right-wing to go on PSC's platforms
Today supporters of a two state solution are
in reality supporters of an Apartheid Solution in Palestine. They are
supporting the continuing existence of a state based on ethnic cleansing whilst
at the same time supporting their victims. The time has come for genuine
supporters of the Palestinians to say to groups like PSC that you have to make
a choice. You cannot continue to try and ride two horses.
I resigned from PSC in 2021 when it adopted a
Constitution which abandoned opposition to Zionism. PSC did this with the
support of the Socialist Workers Party and others who claim to be on the left.
I hope that my article stimulates the discussion
that is necessary if we are going to see a strategic change of direction for
the Palestine solidarity movement in Britain. PSC’s ‘strategy’ of
‘mainstreaming’ is dead in the water. The British Establishment is wedded to
support for Zionism, as it has been for over a century. No amount of rational
argument will change the minds of racists
like Robert Jenrick.
I am grateful to Electronic Intifada, the most
important Palestinian news site there is, for carrying my article.
Britain’s
Palestine solidarity movement is at a crossroads. Loredana
SangiulianoZUMA Press
The
statement that you can’t be a supporter of the Palestinians unless you are an
anti-Zionist may seem dogmatic, even sectarian to some.
But it is
the failure of Britain’s Palestine solidarity movement to understand this
simple truth which is responsible for so many of our recent setbacks. It is
this which has enabled the successful weaponization
of anti-Semitism.
Subjectively
speaking, it is perfectly possible to support the Palestinians and the “right
of Israel to exist” at the same time. In theory, there was no reason at all why
good men and women could not sit down and draw the boundaries of a two-state
solution equitable to all.
There was
only one problem. Such a solution failed to take into account the dynamics of
settler-colonialism and of Zionism in particular.
Many
supporters of the British Empire, liberal imperialists such as Thomas
MacCaulay and the Labour Party Fabians, really did believe that there could
be a benevolent imperialism that was compatible with supporting the rights of
the colonized. It was called“trusteeship.”
Moving from PSC to Labour Friends of Israel is effortless for Emily Thornberry because PSC asks so little of its speakers
Many honest
people believed that the colonies were the “White Man’s Burden,” as the British
novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling infamously
put it, and that we were only in India and Africa out of the goodness of
our hearts.
The Church
Missionary Society and people like John Philip would
have been aghast if you had accused them of supporting white supremacy. Yet
that is what they did.
Thornberry repays PSC's invitation by attacking BDS to Israeli Embassy Group Labour Friends of Israel
Holding
contradictory ideas inside one’s head is what most people do, for much of the
time. It’s called “cognitive dissonance” or as George Orwell termed it,
“doublethink.”
However, for
a solidarity organization to do the same renders its task impossible. Sooner or
later a choice has to be made.
Solidarity
with the Palestinians, although it involves opposing many egregious abuses of
human rights, is not at bottom a question of human rights. Just as apartheid in
South Africa was not primarily about human rights but Black liberation from
white minority rule, so too is the Palestinian question primarily about
liberation from Zionism and a state
of Jewish supremacy.
In
2022 I resigned, for the second time, from the organization I had helped
found, the Palestine
Solidarity Campaign, because it had adopted in March of that year a new
constitution which eliminated its previous opposition to Zionism. If the truth
be told, opposition to Zionism had long been abandoned by PSC. But by removing
this from its constitution PSC made explicit what before had been implicit.
Prior to its
March 2022 annual general meeting (when the
PSC executive railroaded through the changes) the PSC’s old
constitution had included an unambiguous clause stating that one of the
group’s objectives was “opposition to racism, including … the apartheid and
Zionist nature of the Israeli state.”
The new
constitution has watered this down significantly, stating only that Israel’s
system of apartheid and settler colonialism is “motivated by Zionism,” without
explaining PSC’s position on Zionism. The argument privately used by the PSC to
“justify” this change was that Zionism means different things to different
people.
Zionism is the
racist creed and movement which led to the dispossession and expulsion of the
Palestinians.
It was the
failure of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and much of the Labour left to
combine support for the Palestinians with opposition to Zionism that was their
Achilles’ heel. It was no surprise that the Jewish Labour
Movement and its faithful
poodle Jon Lansman
wanted to abolish
any mention of Zionism.
Their
reasoning was that some people used the term “Zionist” when they really meant
“Jew.” But it was the Zionists themselves who had deliberately sought to
confuse the distinction in the minds of people.
Their other
argument was that “Zionism” covered a multitude of sins – from left to right,
obscuring the fact that all wings of Zionism agreed on establishing a Jewish
state with a large majority of Jews.
Corbyn was
undoubtedly a supporter of the Palestinians but he had no understanding of
Zionism and could not therefore explain why or how the Palestinians had become
marginalized and oppressed in Israel.
Appeasement
When the
“anti-Semitism” campaign first began, Corbyn effectively became a Zionist.
He supported
a Palestinian state but also recognized
the legitimacy of the Jewish Labour Movement’s claim to represent Jews in
the Labour Party. Instead of seeing the JLM as a lobby
group, the primary purpose of which was support for the Israeli state and
therefore the oppression of the Palestinians, Corbyn accepted that the group’s
purported concerns about anti-Semitism were genuine.
Having spent
30 years as a campaigner for Palestinian rights, Corbyn above all was familiar
with the Zionist accusation of “anti-Semitism.” Yet when he became leader he
forgot all of this.
Support for
the two-state solution enabled Corbyn to both support the Zionists and support
the Palestinians. Saying, as
he did, that there was a place for both Zionists and anti-Zionists in
Labour was in effect saying there was a place for both racists and anti-racists
in the party.
Corbyn’s
human rights concerns disappeared as he lent his support to the very
organization, the JLM, which was formed
to remove him.
Those who
accept Israel’s
“right to exist” accept the legitimacy of Zionism. They fail to understand
that a “Jewish” state, as an expansionist ethno-nationalist settler-colonial
state, could never accept anything more than a set of mini bantustans.
When Corbyn
decided to commission the Chakrabarti
inquiry he set the seal on this process. He accepted that there was a
problem of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
The
resulting report, authored
in 2016 by human rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti, found no evidence that
Labour was dominated by anti-Semitism as was being claimed at the time.
Nevertheless, it made some key concessions to this false narrative.
Chakrabarti defined
Zionism not as a political creed or movement but as a form of Jewish
identity. In so doing she completely failed to understand where the accusations
of anti-Semitism were coming from.
She wrote in
the report that:
A further complexity comes from left-wing British
Jewry, including, but not exclusively, young people becoming increasingly
critical of, and disenchanted with, Israeli government policy in relation to
settlements in the West Bank and the bombardment of Gaza in particular. This
has led to some people personally redefining their Zionism in ways that appear
to grant less support to the state of Israel and more solidarity to fellow
Jewish people the world over … It seems to me that it is for all people to
self-define their political beliefs and I cannot hope to do justice to the rich
range of self-descriptions of both Jewishness or Zionism, even within the
Labour Party, that I have heard.
Of course,
anyone can self-define their political beliefs and what they understand Zionism
means. However, there is no obligation on anyone else to accept such an
identity.
The only
meaning of Zionism that counts is that of those who suffer its ill effects –
the Palestinians. People who define themselves as Zionists tell us nothing
other than what is going on in their heads.
Confusion as a badge of honor
The ability
to combine both support for the Palestinians with support for Zionism enabled political
charlatans like the lawmaker Lisa Nandy to chair Labour Friends of
Palestine whilst denouncing opposition to Zionism as anti-Semitic.
Just imagine
that someone had said that although they supported the rights of Black South
Africans they refused to oppose apartheid. They would have been ridiculed, yet
that is precisely what is happening when people claim to support the
Palestinians yet refuse to identify as anti-Zionists.
This is why
I term support for a two-state solution, with its assumption that a racist
“Jewish” state could co-exist alongside a Palestinian state, as support for the
continued oppression of the Palestinians.
Jeremy
Corbyn, with his support of the two-state solution, made his own political
confusion over Palestine into a badge of honor. He also disarmed his supporters
and gave confidence to his detractors.
By
supporting the state of Israel, Corbyn also supported the idea that Israel was
the nation state of the Jews.
If this was
the case, and if Jews were indeed a nation, despite living in most of the
world’s countries, then clearly Jews have the right to self-determination. Ipso
facto, one must welcome Israel’s new neo-Nazi police minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
Theirs is
the monstrosity that is called Israel.
Instead of
calling out the Jewish Labour Movement as supporters of a racist,
settler-colonial state, Corbyn bought into the idea that Israel was guilty of
nothing more than Jewish nationalism and its opponents were guilty of
anti-Semitism. The tragedy was that the Palestinians themselves, in the form of
the Palestine Liberation Organization, had abandoned their own anti-Zionism in
the belief that Zionism could be confined within only part of historic
Palestine – what the Zionists term Eretz Yisrael (Hebrew for the land of
Israel).
To say you
support the Palestinians while refusing to oppose Zionism, the movement with a
primary goal not of fighting anti-Semitism but fighting the native Arab
Palestinians, is to accept the left-Zionist narrative of a “conflict” between
two peoples, a clash of right vs right. It renders any solution, other than a
neo-colonial one, impossible and in practice it means surrendering to the
existing power structure in Palestine.
Nowhere is
this clearer than in Britain’s trade unions.
Nearly all
major trade unions are affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. All of
them claim to support the Palestinians.
Yet Gail Cartmail,
the assistant general secretary of Unite – which calls
itself Britain’s leading union – justified
banning the film Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie and a talk by Asa Winstanley
covering his new
bookWeaponising Anti-Semitism (which documents the fake
“anti-Semitism” campaign) all on the grounds that Jews have been hurt and even
made afraid by journalism that seeks to tell the truth.
The reality
is that by adopting Israel’s
twisted definition of anti-Semitism, British unions are facing both ways at
the same time. They support the Palestinians yet also support the Jewish Labour
Movement and those who took down Corbyn.
The trade
unions can only get away with this because supporters of the Palestinians in
the Labour Party, including Corbyn, fail to understand how anti-Semitism has
been weaponized in the service of state and nation.
How do you
reconcile your duty to speak the truth and seek justice with your refusal to speak
out against Israeli Apartheid and the Persecution of Palestinian Christians?
I realise that having risen to the dizzying heights
of Treasurer
to Enterprise Oilyou clearly have great
difficulty reconciling your allegiance to God with your devotion to Mammon. As the
Gospel says:
No
one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and money. [Matthew 6:24]
Even you must be familiar with Jesus telling
his disciples that
‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a
rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!”
It appears that you have resolved this contradiction by
choosing Mammon.
Jesus told
Pontius Pilate that ‘for this purpose I
have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.’ Yet the truth appears
to be a stranger to you.
On
September 6th you gave
a talk on “Reconciliation” at the Embrace
the Middle East event at St Martin-in-the-Field. You said that the region
was “complex and fraught”, “a tragedy”. You argued that we “must avoid binaries…” insisting that
peace in the Middle East can only come from within the region with the stronger
party making the first move.
“I’m extremely
conscious that there do not exist, ready-made solutions from this vantage point
or any other outside the region. We’re not there. There is not our home. It’s
not our base. It’s not where we find our life and our roots. I am speaking as a
white, British Archbishop of Canterbury.”
These
are weasel words. These sentiments could equally have been applied to apartheid
in South Africa or Nazi Germany as a pretext for turning a blind eye to what
was happening. After all we weren’t in those places either.
These
are arguments for why we should be selfish and turn a blind eye to oppression. They
are the exact opposite of the lessons to be drawn from the Parable
of the Good Samaritan. Instead of passing by on the other side of the road,
as others had done, the Samaritan stopped to help the injured Jewish traveller.
It is very clear what you would have done.
About
the only true thing that you said in your selfish, meandering passage was that
you were White, British and the Archbishop of Canterbury. You accepted no blame
for the fact that Britain above all was responsible for the Palestinian refugee
problem when it gave away Palestine to the Zionist settlers when it issued the Balfour
Declaration.
It
is true that the ethnic cleansing and persecution of the Palestinians is a
tragedy, however it is untrue that it is complex. It is very simple and the
only people who say it is complex are those who defend the status quo.
When
European Jewish settlers came to Palestine, the existing Jewish population were
opposed to them. Zionism was not a Jewish but a Christian Evangelical project.
The first Zionists were Christian imperialists such as Lords Palmerston
and Shaftesbury.
The latter was an anti-Semite who combined support for Zionism with opposition
to Jewish Emancipation.
The
enthusiasm of anti-Semites for Zionism was to recur constantly. After all, if
you want to be rid of your Jews where better to send them than Palestine? As AB
Yehoshua, a famous Israeli novelist said:
“Even today, in a perverse way, a real
anti-semite must be a Zionist.” [Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82] When Zionism
first began most Jews saw it as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism.
As
Sir Samuel Montagu (Lord Swaythling), a Liberal MP noted:
Is it not... a suspicious
fact that those who have no love for the Jews, and those who are pronounced
anti-Semites, all seem towelcome the
Zionist proposals and aspiration.?
That
was why the only opponent of the Balfour Declaration in Lloyd George’s War
Cabinet was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu.
The
author of the Balfour Declaration, Arthur James Balfour introduced, as Prime
Minister in 1905, the Aliens Act designed to keep Jewish refugees out of
Britain. Balfour was an avowed
anti-Semite.
Zionist
settlers began colonising Palestine from the end of the 19th
century, using the Bible as their justification and began evicting the
indigenous Palestinians, first from the economy and then from the land altogether.
This culminated in the Nakba
in 1948 resulting in the expulsion of over ¾ million Palestinians. Zionism
aimed at creating a Jewish state and that, by necessity, meant expelling the Palestinians.
The
CoE was a devoted servant of the British Empire and colonisation. From 1710 until
Abolition it owned two slave plantations, Codrington
in Barbados. 40% of the slaves it bought were dead within three years. Although
Christopher Codrington had stipulated that his bequest was to be used for the
education of slaves, when Codrington College was opened in 1745, it was for Whites
only.
Slavery,
like apartheid, was also ‘complex and
fraught’ and it was certainly a ‘tragedy’ –for the slaves - although it was
extremely profitable. When slavery was abolished the slave owners, including the
CoE, were handsomely compensated, unlike the slaves.
What
interested me most about your speech was your assertion that the first move
must come from the stronger party. If that is the case then the Palestinians
are destined to wait forever. As Martin Luther-King wrote, in his Letter
from a Birmingham Jail:
it is an
historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges
voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their
unjust posture; but… groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
If
Black people in South Africa had heeded your advice then they would still be
waiting for an end to Apartheid. It is of course easy for you to offer such
advice. You are not a Palestinian forced to buy bottled water because your
wells have been filled
with cement by the Israeli army whilst Jewish settlements have unlimited free
water, to give just one example of the Apartheid you deny.
You
made a plea for “listening” which you
then proceeded to ignore. Your two other speakers explained to you Israeli
apartheid. Your real reason for refusing to call out Israeli apartheid was that
it would bring forth accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. The Holocaust would have
been invoked by Israel’s apologists, as if those murdered by the Nazis would
have given their approval to racial discrimination similar to that which German
Jews experienced between 1933 and 1939.
Welby with his Zionist friends at the Board of Deputies
Part
of the problem is your exceptionalising anti-Semitism as the only form of
racism. In your speech
to the Board of Deputies you said:
antisemitism
is the root of all racism and the absolute foundation of all racism in our societies.
If it’s permissible to hate Jews, it’s permissible to hate all others who are
different to ourselves.
This
is absolute nonsense. Was anti-Semitism responsible for slavery? Was
anti-Semitism responsible for the famine in Ireland and Apartheid in South
Africa? Anti-Semitism has become the false anti-racism of the Right and your
comments paint you firmly as an out and out racist.
Of
course those who subscribe to a racist agenda domestically against refugees –
the Sunaks, Starmers and Bravermans – would be outraged by the suggestion that
Israel is an apartheid state. It seems that you have made political cowardice into
an art form. It wasn’t always like that.
Your
predecessor Robert Runcie was a man
of courage who commissioned Faith
in the City which challenged
Thatcher’s disregard of the urban poor and her monetarist policies. He also stood up
to Thatcher’s chauvinism over the Falklands whereas you have remained silent
over this government’s demonisation of refugees. The only group you have
defended are the bankers with whom you socialised.
Israeli
Apartheid
You referred to
Israel’s non-existent constitution as proof that it is not an apartheid state. Perhaps
you can tell us what qualifications you possess that Amnesty
International, B’tselem and Human
Rights Watch lack given that they have all reached the opposite
conclusion?
It is clear that your view of Israel does not have any
factual or evidential basis. Rather it is a question of political expediency. Instead
of taking the trouble to learn about what is happening to the Palestinians you
prefer the cheap applause of Tory tabloids and the government.
You are not the first Archbishop of Canterbury to turn a
blind eye to racial oppression and injustice. Your predecessor during the Nazi
era, Cosmo Gordon Lang was of the
opinion that the Jews were responsible for Nazi anti-Semitism . Supporting
Zionism and settler colonialism aligns you with the British Establishment and
that is your main concern.
What I found particularly disturbing was the Report of the
Israeli Committee AgainstHouse
Demolitions (ICAHD) and your conversation with their British Director, Linda
Ramsden after the Embrace Annual Lecture.
During the reception which followed, Linda spoke to the Archbishop and
asked if he would meet with Jeff Halper when he is in London this autumn
because as an Israeli Jew, he has spent nearly 30 years specifically working in
support of Palestinians. She was shocked and embarrassed by his discourteous
response. The Archbishop drew near to her face, looked her directly her eyes
and said, “No. I have no time in my
diary.” He then turned away.
Perhaps you might tell us what it is that is so important
that you refuse to find out about Israel’s practice of demolishing Palestinian
(but not Jewish) homes? Or are you worried that once you have learnt the facts
you might be expected to act upon them?
You deny that Israel is an Apartheid state yet in the West
Bank today there are two sets of laws for Palestinians and Jewish settlers. The
former are subject to military law whereas the latter are governed by Israeli
civil law.
Two legal regimes for two sets of people in the same territory
is the quintessential definition of apartheid. Even Tamir Pardo, the former
head of Israel’s Mossad (MI6) has recently stated that
“There is an
apartheid state here. In a territory where two people are judged under two
legal systems, that is an apartheid state.”
So what is it about this that you don’t understand?
It
is clear Welby that your refusal to accept that Israel is operating an
apartheid regime has everything to do with British politics and nothing to do
with the situation in Palestine. In other words your behaviour is the complete
opposite of the lessons that are drawn from Jesus and the Disciples. It would
be easy to put it down to political cowardice but it is clear that it also
stems from your reactionary politics.
I
haven’t even mentioned the situation of the Christian Church itself in
Palestine and Jerusalem such as the wave
of spitting attacks, which the Kahanist
Minister of Police Ben Gvir has justified
as being an old Jewish tradition! To say nothing of the desecration
of graveyards, the seizure of Church lands and the destruction of sacred
objects.
Your
silence over these attacks reminds me of when the exiled Polish bishop Karol
Radonski attacked
Pius XII as ‘et papa tacet’ (‘and the Pope remains silent’) over the
murder of Polish Catholics.
What
you fail to understand is that an ethno-religious state, be it Christian or
Jewish, is inevitably racist because it automatically consigns those of a
different religion to a second class citizenship, at best. Israel is an
inherently racist state and your refusal to criticise it is also racist.
I
am sure that you are familiar with the saying that ‘“The only thing necessary for the triumph of
evil is for good men to do nothing.”It is somewhat ironic that
you of all people should be living proof of its truth. I won’t call
you, as Noel Edmonds did, ‘the
reincarnation of evil’ but your silence over the evils of Zionism is in contrast
to yourplea
for forgiveness and understandingof the bankers whose frauds ushered inthe
age of austerity and misery for millions.
In July 2013 you warnedagainst naming and shaming bankers,
which you compared to the behaviour of a lynch mob. I don’t recall you speaking
up when refugees and disabled claimants are under attack.
You were, of course, following in the footsteps
of your predecessor George Carey, a Christian Zionist, who actively protected Bishop Peter Ball who was gaoled in October 2015 for 32 months for abusing those in his care.
In May 2021 you apologised after allegations
that barrister and evangelical Christian, John Smyth,beat
boys at church camps in the late 1970s until their wounds bled and left
permanent scars. Smyth was the Chair of Christian charity the Iwerne Trust.
You were a dormitory officer at camps run by
the Iwerne Trust. Smyth was described by you in 2017 as "charming"
and "delightful." You even swapped Christmas cards for
some years. Andrew Atherstone in Risk Taker and Reconciler, described you as having
been
involved in the camps as an undergraduate […] businessman and
theological college student in the 1980s and early 1990s.
At first you said "I had no contact
with them at all". It later materialised that you had attended the camp in this period and had
continued to receive the camp newsletter. In 2017
you issued an ‘'unreserved and unequivocal' apology’ after your links to Smyth
were revealed.
In 2012 a victim of Smyth reported the abuse to the Church of
England and you say you were informed in 2013. You maintained that this was the
first time you had heard of the abuse by your old friend. However there are
credible doubts about your story.
In 1982 Mark Ruston carried
out an investigation into the allegations on behalf of the Iwerne Trust, of
which you were an officer. Although Ruston confirmed that the allegations were
true, the trust decided not to refer Smyth to the authorities.
The New York Times of 14 October 2017 quoted
a senior Church of England figure as saying that
all senior members of the
trust, including officers like Archbishop Welby, had been made aware of the
allegations against Mr Smyth, even those who had been abroad
Alan Wilson, a CoE bishop who is friends with former Iwerne members, said
that he found it hard to believe your denials.
I
have no evidence, but I haven’t met a single Iwerne person who thinks it’s
credible that Justin Welby didn’t know that Smyth had left the country under a
cloud connected to his behavior toward boys who had been on Iwerne camps.
Questions have remained among Smyth victims as
to when you first knew. Some have labelled you an "observer",
a term denoting a person who knew about abuse but who did not report it.
Unfortunatelyyou have refused
to take your own advice on ‘the highest possible standards’. Despite multiple
callsto
resign you stayed on.
In the
meantime you are employing your undoubted talent to turning a blind eye to
abuse and injustice to covering up the abuse of the Israeli State against
Palestinian Christians.
Tony
Greenstein
Israeli Forces Storm Al-Aqsa Mosque
The War Against Palestinian Christians
Despite
the Zionist myth that their control of Jerusalem enables freedom of worship the
opposite is the case. The repression of Muslims and the attacks on Al Aqsa worshippers, with police
batons and stun grenades, are a matter of record. Imagine that the same
happened in a Tehran synagogue. It would be heralded as the return of the Third
Reich yet Israeli attacks
against Muslims go unremarked.
In June Al-Monitor reported that there
had been multiple verbal and physical attacks by Jews since the beginning of
the year against Christians and Christian sites in Jerusalem. Hate crimes in Jerusalem are nothing new, but they have
been treated as a fringe occurrence. That perception had changed in the last
few months.
Father
Francisco Patton, the Vatican’s Custodian of Christian Sacred Sites in the Holy
Land described
how
I am very
concerned as I watch the rise in acts of violence and hatred against
Christians. Not a week goes by without Christians being heckled and spat at,
graffiti, vandalism and other forms of harassment.
In an interview with Israeli TV, Patton, blamed Israel’s politicians, arguing
that the wave of attacks began “when the
political language became more violent.” Amongst the incidents were the
desecration of a Lutheran cemetery, the vandalizing of a Maronite prayer room
and the spraying of “death to Christians” on Armenian property.
In June an undercover journalist from Channel 13 spent
a day dressed as a priest in Jerusalem to investigate hate crimes against
Christians. Donning a priest's robe, Channel 13’s Yossi Eli was spat at just
five minutes after setting out with a Franciscan
clergyman, Father Alberto.
A bit later a man mocked them in Hebrew, saying, “Forgive me father for I have sinned.” Then an 8-year-old spat at
them, as did a soldier. This is not the first time that soldiers have been
caught committing hate
crimes against Christians in Jerusalem. In November, troops from the Givati
infantry brigade spat at the Armenian archbishop.
In July
it was reported
that an event organised by Messianic Jews was attacked by dozens of young
religious nationalists. Most of them were from Lehava
which opposes intermarriage and gay rights and Or l’Achim, which counters
Christian proselytization in Israel.
Weeks earlier Arieh King, Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem led hundreds of
religious Jews in chants of “missionaries
go home” as hundreds of Christians gathered near the Western Wall for a prayer
event. Because it isn’t a secular state, any attempt to convert Jews to another
religion is considered akin to treason. King said that “As far as I’m concerned, let every missionary know they are not welcome
in the Land of Israel.”
In June a conference organised by the Open University in Jerusalem to
discuss the increasing violence against Christians in Palestine “Why do (some) Jews spit on Goyim” was
held. It was denounced by the Mayor of Jerusalem and boycotted by the Israeli
government.
According
to a report
the Israeli Foreign Ministry boycotted the conference because according to Yisca
Harani, one of Israel’s leading experts on Christianity, “I got a call from a Foreign Ministry official who said that the name
of the conference is inappropriate and, therefore, they are not going to
attend,”.Complicity
in Hate: Israeli Government Boycotts Conference on Attacks Against Christians
Nikodemus
Schnabel, who presides over the Benedictine Abbey of the Dormition in
Jerusalem, told
the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung
that attacks against Christians have increased because “those who hate Christians now sit in the government.” In an
interview with America Magazine, he was more specific.
In 2015, I
could say there are these Jewish terrorists [attacking Christians and Christian
holy sites], but the official Israel is
supporting us.
Now we monks
have to live under a government, one of whose members is an extreme Christian
hater. The minister of national security [Itamar Ben Gvir] was the defence
lawyer of the Jewish terrorists who carried out the arson [on a church] in
Tabgha…
How should I
feel secure and safe under this government?
Middle
East Eye reportedin July that Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin
Patriarch of Jerusalem, was elevated to the rank of Cardinal. The Archbishop interpreted
it as “a sign of attention from the
Church of Rome towards the Mother Church, the Church of Jerusalem”.
The
nomination was the first extended to the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem since
the seat was established in 1847. It is perceived
as a statement by the Pope against rising Israeli violence in the Holy Land.
Wadie Abu
Nassar referred to the spike in anti-Christian hate crimes, in which the
atmosphere of Jewish supremacy had translated into violence against Christians
and harassment of clergy. These include trespassing on churches, spitting
on churchgoers, destruction of Christian symbols and vandalising Christian graves.
There are
about 185,000 Christians in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem,
representing just under two percent of the country's population. The vast
majority of them are Palestinians living in Nazareth and Haifa, while around
13,000 live in Jerusalem.
Pizzaballa
in an interview with the Associated Press said the new far–right
government had made life worse for Christians, emboldening extremists who harass
clergy and vandalise religious property.
The frequency
of these attacks, the aggressions, has become something new. These people feel
they are protected… that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify,
or tolerate, actions against Christians.
The situation
today in Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, contradicts the propaganda of
Netanyahu who proclaimed in a 2018 speech to Christian Zionists in Brazil that "There is only one safe place for
Christians in the Middle East… That's in the State of Israel,"
Ahead of
Christmas 2021, Francesco Patton wrote an article warning that "Holy Land Christians are at threat of extinction".
Latin
Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa leads a mass on Easter Sunday at
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on 9 April 2023 (AFP)
Physical
and verbal harassment are not the only disturbing phenomena. Many Christian
leaders believe that they are just manifestations of a far-reaching plan aimed
at the Judaisation of Jerusalem's Old City, with churches being one of many
obstacles in the city to be removed.
A new
national park planned on the Mount of Olives is of particular concern to the
Christian community and local churches. If implemented, the park will be built
on church-owned lands belonging to several churches, among them the Greek
Orthodox Patriarchate, the Catholic Church and the Armenian Patriarchate.
In recent weeks there has been an upsurge in spitting incidents. Ha’aretz
reported
several incidents of Jews in Jerusalem’s Old City. Tens of thousands of Jews
joined in events and prayers for the Sukkot holiday during which many of the
spitting incidents were recorded. Most of the individuals filmed in the act
were Jewish youths who spat on church buildings or at Christian worshipers they
have encountered.
One such spitting incident was recorded
as a group of Christian worshippers made its way out of a church by the Lions'
Gate in Jerusalem's Old City while carrying a large cross. As the group walked
up the street, it ran into a procession of hundreds of Jews. As soon as they
noticed the Christian worshippers they began to spit.
Nuns
at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.Credit: Ohad
Zwigenberg
An editorial
in Ha’aretz noted how the video of this spitting incident sparked outrage from
around the world and shocked many Israelis. But there were also those who
justified the spitters, one of whom is Elisha
Yered, a far-right activist and the spokesman for Limor Son Har-Melech MK,
of the Religious
Zionism party. According to Yered, spitting at Christians is an “ancient Jewish custom”.
A desecrated statue of Jesus was
vandalized by a Jewish extremist in the Church of the Flagellation in
Jerusalem, in February.Credit:
AMMAR AWAD
But although the phenomenon isn’t new, it’s changing in nature and
becoming more common. The most important development recently has been its
spread to the Muslim Quarter. In the past it was mainly the members of the
Armenian Church, which is adjacent to the Jewish Quarter, who suffered from the
spitting.
In recent years it has expanded to the route of the Via Dolorosa that
passes from Lions’ Gate to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which passes
mainly through the Muslim Quarter. This is a route on which hundreds of
thousands of Christian pilgrims march every year.
Haifa’s Stella Maris church has had
to put up with ultra-Orthodox Jews making pilgrimage to what they consider
is the grave of the Prophet Elisha. It started with only a few visitors then it
progressed to include dozens "bursting" into the church and holding
prayers in a "provocative manner", according to George Shehade, a
Haifa resident:
For the monastery, things are clear. There is a [Jewish] religious
group who came to seize the monastery, saying they have a right, but this is an
aggression that we will stand against".
The monastery is the world headquarters of a Catholic
religious order, the Carmelites. The order was formed at the end of the 12th
century when according to tradition, a French crusader who had gone to the Holy
Land had a vision of Christ denouncing the evil done by soldiers.
Fearing the loss of their church, Palestinian Christian
volunteers are now present day in day out, determined not to allow any more
Jewish prayers at the site. A metal fence has been erected to keep out undesired
visitors.
Also in Haifa, Orthodox Jews have attempted to
storm the St. Eljah Cathedral, a Melkite Greek Catholic church serving
Greek-Catholics that was constructed in 1939. The incidents at Haifa's Stella
Maris monastery and St. Elijah Cathedral are occurring following multiple
attacks against Christian sites in Jerusalem, the most recent of which was at
the Church
of the Tomb of Mary in occupied East Jerusalem.
Following the attack on the Church of the Tomb of Mary in
March, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem finally appealed for "international protection" of holy
sites citing"terrorist attacks, by radical
Israeli groups, targeting churches, cemeteries, and Christian properties".
At the beginning of the year, two young Jewish men vandalised
a Christian cemetery near Jaffa Gate. Then in February, A Jewish-American
tourist vandalised
a statue depicting Jesus at a Catholic Church inside the Old City near Bab
al-Asbat (Lion's Gate).
Palestinian Christians ask why it is that the authorities'
reactions are swift and robust when Jews are attacked yet soft and insufficient
when indicting a Jew for attacking a Christian person or property.
Like most people it was with shock and surprise that I woke
to learn that the Palestinians in Gaza led by Hamas had launched a
counter-offensive against Israel’s occupation.
My first reaction though was the opposite of the political hypocrites
and presstitutes who wondered how it could be that Palestinians were once again
attacking those poor, defenceless and long suffering Israelis. My mood in
contrast was elation not despair.
Israeli media: 200 Israelis were killed, at least 1,000 wounded.
🎥 Destruction in #TelAviv following the last barrage of 150 missiles fired by the Resistance in #Gaza in response to the Israeli bombing of a residential building
My first thoughts were that finally the inhabitants of the
Gaza Ghetto had struck back at those who had maintained a 15 year, suffocating
siege on the Strip. A siege that meant 95% of Gaza’s water was polluted, that
thousands of its inhabitants were living on the brink of starvation, that
nothing could move in or out without the agreement of the Israeli state. All
with the agreement of Egypt’s police state under its President and US puppet, Abdel
Fattah el-Sisi
SS General Jurgen Stroop, who led the attack against the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance and who was executed after the war
Of course the retribution of Israel will be bloody and savage.
So was the revenge of General
Stroop, the Commander of the Nazi forces that retook the Warsaw Ghetto after
the Ghetto Uprising in April 1943. The savagery of the colonialist is always
far greater than the violence of the oppressed.
Abu Obeida, military spokesperson for Al-Qassam Brigades:
"We hold tens of Israeli prisoners, including high-ranking officers and soldiers - All captured Israelis are in safe areas and some of them are placed in the Resistance tunnels."
We see that with the call from Al-Qassam leader, Mohammed Deif
who called
on Resistance fighters not to target old people or children. Israel is now
bombing Gaza mercilessly, it has topped 5 tower blocks already. Israel makes no
distinction between men, women and children but the only thing we shall hear
from Biden, Not So Cleverly and the other hypocritical western leaders is about
how Israeli suffering not that of the Palestinians.
To those who object to the comparison with the Warsaw Ghetto all
I have to say is that it was the last Commander of the Warsaw ghetto
resistance, Marek Edelman, who compared
their resistance with that of the Palestinian resistance. Which is why the Zionists
wrote Edelman out of history.
Two hundred Israelis have so far been killed and many captured.
The bias of BBC and Sky News were on full display as they interviewed at length
Jotam Confino, the Foreign Editor of the right-wing Zionist Jewish News who
constantly referred to ‘terrorists’ rather than guerillas or resistance
fighters.
The Palestinian Resistance has undoubtedly killed many Israeli
civilians but we have to remember that most Israelis are not only reserve
soldiers but they have given overwhelming support to the slaughter of Palestinians.
The massive demonstrations against Netanyahu’s judicial
reforms went out of their way not to include in their demands any call for
democracy in the Occupied Territories. The murder of over 240 Palestinians
including 45 children in the West Bank was not part of their agenda. Their
demands were wholly within the settler community.
It is
ordinary Israelis who have elected Israel’s neo-Nazi Police Minister Itamar Ben
Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich. Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi of the settlers’
rabbis issued a statement
at the time of the last attack on Gaza that
“There is no
such thing as enemy civilians in war time. The law of our Torah is to have
mercy on our soldiers and to save them … A thousand non-Jewish lives are not
worth a Jew’s fingernail.”
This is
the voice of a genuine Jewish Nazi yet Israelis are quite happy with having
this genocidal maniac controlling its Police and Security forces. So let no one tell us that Israeli civilians
are innocent. It was they who elected the present ethnic cleansing far-right
coalition government.
Operation
Protective Edge in 2014 killed 2,200 civilians including 551 children. This war
was supported by 95% of Israel’s Jewish population (rising at one stage to
97%). In Tel Aviv mobs took to the streets chanting‘There's no school tomorrow,there's no children left in Gaza!
Oleh!’
In 2014 there were Israelis who set up armchairs and coffee machines on a hilltop in order
that they could get a better view and cheer on the ongoing destruction taking
place in Gaza.
As Harriet Sharwood wrote
in The Guardian of 20.7.14
‘Israelis
gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza, People
drink, snack and pose for selfies against a background of explosions as
Palestinian death toll mounts in ongoing offensive.’
This attack by Hamas and other groups was also aimed at the
normalisation with Israel by the corrupt and treacherous Arab regimes led by
the chief snake of all, Mohammed Bin Salman, the mass murderer who presides
over Saudi Arabia.
The Arab regimes believe that they can
make their peace with the Zionist settler colonial regime in Tel Aviv but they
are very mistaken. As the football fans made clear in the World Cup last year
in Qatar the Arab street is firmly behind the Palestinians.
The task of the
moment is for the Arab masses to rise up and overthrow MBS and Sisi in Egypt and
all the other corrupt Arab regimes who, with Israel have been responsible for
maintaining the siege of Gaza. The Palestinians in the West Bank also have the
task of overthrowing the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah which acts as Israel’s
military subcontractor.
🔴Mohammed Deif, commander of Al-Qassam Brigades, declared in a televised speech on Saturday morning that the ‘Al-Aqsa Flood Battle’ has begun.
Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon's Hezbollah - A Paper Tiger?
But it is not
only the Arab regimes who are normalising the Israeli state who should be criticised.
So too should Hassan Nasrallah of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. In response to a call by
Hamas for them to join the resistance, Hasrallah’s response
was that
“The leadership of the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon
is closely following the significant developments on the Palestinian scene,
monitoring the field conditions with utmost interest.’
That sounds very much like Hezbollah are not going to do
anything except sit it out and allow Israel, at a time of its choosing, to
attack Lebanon again. The time to fight is now.
Whatever criticisms one can make of Hamas, we should
congratulate them on this well planned and audacious attack on the Zionist enemy.
Nearly all
the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh have become refugees overnight,
following a blitzkrieg by the Azerbaijani army which put an end to the
district’s independence.
More than
100,000 victims of ethnic cleansing have had to abandon the towns and villages their
families have lived in for generations, fleeing to Armenia across the border.
More than 100 years after the Armenian holocaust under the Ottoman Empire,
members of this small nation are again running for their lives in fear of
occupation and oppression.
However,
Azerbaijan was not alone in this campaign. Israel
supplied Azerbaijan’s army with the best and most advanced weapons that
enabled the cleansing operation. This included surface-to-surface missiles,
offensive drones, guided rockets, air defense systems, artillery, mortars, tank
upgrading equipment, assault rifles, naval vessels, anti-tank missiles, and,
obviously, cyber and espionage tools.
As
reported in Haaretz (March 6), Israel allowed an airlift from the Uvda
airbase to Azerbaijan to carry huge amounts of armaments and ammunition, on
their way to the Nagorno-Karabakh front. Unlike other customers of Israel’s
defense industry, who wish to keep their relations with Israel under wraps,
Azerbaijan’s ruler Ilham Aliyev actually enjoyed boasting about his
blue-and-white weapons systems.
Now that the
results of the fighting
in Nagorno-Karabakh are evident to everyone, it’s appropriate to ask the
heads of Israel’s defense industries and all the people who supported, aided
and enabled the billion-dollar deals with Aliyev: How do you feel when you see
Armenian families running for their lives, the terror in the eyes of children,
the new refugee camps in Armenia?
Do Michael
Federman (Elbit Systems), Yuval Steinitz (Rafael Advanced Defense Systems) and
Amir Peretz (Israel Aerospace Industries) see the ethnic cleansing and the
horrific war crimes, or just the bottom line of the companies they head? Do
they feel any empathy toward the victims or are they engaged only in
calculating the dividends their investors will receive, the royalties paid to
the government and the bonuses they’ll be paid? What passes through the head of
Rachel Klein, the director of the Defense Exports Control Agency, who
spearheaded a “reform” that loosened the regulation of such exports? Is she
happy that all the forms were correctly filled, or does she feel a twinge in
her heart?
Aliyev is
not the first tyrant whose army relies on weapons from Israel. He was preceded
by the heads of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the generals in
Argentina, Pinochet in Chile, the regime in China and the Shah of Iran.
Azerbaijan supplies oil to Israel and helps it in its confrontation with Iran.
And yet,
despite these precedents and the strategic justifications, Israel’s partnership
in the ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh requires a change in Israel’s
export policies, and the curbing of sales to aggressive dictatorships. Israel must
also provide aid to Armenia to help the country absorb the refugees.
The crocodile tears have begun over Israeli
hostages taken by Gaza militants. But
Israel has held the 2.1 million people of Gaza, including one million children,
hostage in one of the most densely populated areas on the planet for nearly 20
years. In fact, Israel was the only
country in the world to have legalized hostage taking. Revered President of the Israeli High Court
Aharon Barak held in 1997 that “a detention is legal if it is designed to
promote State security, even if the danger to State Security does not emanate
from the detainees themselves,” and that “detention ... for the purpose of
release of ... captured and missing soldiers is a vital interest to the State.”
(The decision wasn’t reversed until
2000.) If the past is any guide, Gaza’s leadership will swap the Israelis for
some of the 4,500 Palestinians being held in Israeli prisons on alleged
“security grounds.” Gaza is only playing
by the book written by Israel.
“All the chorus of calumny, which the Party of Order
never fail, in their orgies of blood, to raise against their victims, only
proves that the bourgeois of our days considers himself the legitimate
successor to the baron of old, who thought every weapon in his own hand fair
against the plebeian, while in the hands of the plebeian a weapon of any kind
constituted in itself a crime.” Karl Marx, The
Civil War in France
Dolores
Ibarruri, La Passionaria, famously exhorted during the Spanish Civil
War, “Better to die on your feet than
live forever on your knees.”
For the
past 20 years the people of Gaza, half of whom are children, have been immured
in a concentration camp. Today they
breached the camp’s walls. If we honor
John Brown’s armed resistance to slavery; if we honor the Jews who revolted in
the Warsaw Ghetto—then moral consistency commands that we honor the heroic
resistance in Gaza.
I, for
one, will never begrudge—on the contrary, it warms every fiber of my soul—the
scenes of Gaza’s smiling children as their arrogant Jewish supremacist
oppressors have, finally, been humbled.
The
stars above in heaven are looking kindly down. Glory, glory, hallelujah. The souls of Gaza go marching on!
The Palestinian Uprising has Destroyed the Myth of Israeli
Invincibility – Neither Hamas Nor Hezbollah are Terrorists –Israel Alone Deserves
That Label
I will be speaking this Wednesday
at a meeting on the Gaza-Ghetto Uprising and the significance of the attack by
the Palestinian resistance on Israel. What will be the political fall-out? What
has changed? What does the reaction of the United States and the western powers
signify? What are Israel’s intentions etc.
Socialists should be crystal clear.
Palestinians have every right, after a siege of Gaza lasting over 17 years to resist their oppressors. Anyone who
denies that is no supporter of the Palestinians.
We should also be under no doubt
as to the dangers. Netanyahu has already promised, as if a Nazi General, to raze Gaza to the ground. Yoav
Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister has already called the Palestinians ‘human animals’ thus betraying the racist
nature of Zionism and its treatment of the Palestinians. This is not an
emotional response of the moment. In 2015 Deputy Defence Minister Eli Dahan
also called Palestinians ‘animals.’
To the more faint-hearted amongst
us who recoil at some of the atrocities that the Palestinian guerillas are
alleged to have committed I say this. There is no war yet when human rights
crimes haven’t been committed by both sides. The mass rape of German women at
the end of the last war, the undoubted war crimes committed by the British when
they bombed Dresden and Nuremburg did not mean that we were neutral as between
the Nazis and the Allies.
It is perfectly possible to condemn rape, the alleged parading of a naked
Israeli woman in Gaza City and yet support the Palestinian Uprising. Because we
all know that whatever war crimes have been committed by Palestinian fighters they
pale into insignificance compared to the endless Israeli atrocities. The
violence of the oppressed can never be compared with the violence of the
oppressor. In today's Times of Israel
I came upon this report of the killing of two Israelis:
At 8:20 a.m.,
terrorists entered Dvir’s home, he lunged at them with an axe, tried to protect
my two kids who were with him, and was murdered in front of
their eyes,” she posted. “His partner Stav also tried to protect them, but was
murdered as well. The terrorist calmed down my Daria and Lavi, covered them in
a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the wall: ‘The al-Qassam [Brigades]
people don’t murder children.
When has Israel ever spared Palestinian children? Israel’s bombing
of Palestinian homes is indiscriminate by definition. The death of Palestinian children
does not disturb the average Israeli. So far this year 47 Palestinian children have been murdered
in the West Bank yet this and the brutal military occupation didn’t figure once
in the demands of Israelis in their mass demonstrations against the judicial
reforms. Ex-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called Palestinian children ‘'little
snakes'.
Let us also be clear that terrorism has a very specific meaning. It is
the deliberate use of violence against civilians for political purposes. It is Israel
which has been responsible throughout its existence for using terrorism as its
weapon of choice – be it the bombing by the Zionist Irgun of
the King David Hotel in 1946 when 92 people were killed and 46 injured to the Sabra and Chatilla massacres in
the refugee camps of Beirut in 1982 when around 2,000 unarmed Palestinians were
murdered by the Lebanese Phalange as Israeli troops lit up the skyline for them.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are NOT terrorist organizations and they are only
deemed as such by a Tory Home Secretary Savid Javid who bowed to the pressure
of the Zionist Lobby. If interpreted literally the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 could be used to
render illegal any meeting or action supporting the uprising in Gaza.
It is quite possible that a meeting where support is given to Hamas and
Islamic Jihad’s attack on Israel could be deemed to ‘encourage support for a proscribed organisation or to further its
activities.’ under s.12 of the Act. Thus we see, once again, how Britain’s
anti-terrorist legislation is there, not to prevent ISIS style terrorism, but
to crack down on free speech that the government does not like.
In the explanation justifying the proscribing of Hamas the government said that the reason for this was
that
This is an outrageous abuse of the law. In the same 2001 clash 67 Palestinian
children were murdered by Israel. Is indiscriminate
rocket attacks worse than Israel’s targeted attacks on civilians and its
bombing of residential streets and peoples’ homes? This law is not about
terrorism it is about the suppression of free speech.
Although I support the attack on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad I am
not a supporter of the two groups politically. They are Islamist groups whereas
I believe that the liberation of the Palestinians has nothing to do with
religion. It is a political struggle.
Of course the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism
has issued a typically dishonest, lying statement headed ‘We
will do whatever it takes to defend the Jewish community’. If the CAA,
which was formed in the summer of 2014 on the instigation of the Israeli state,
in order to try and smear solidarity action with Palestinians under attack in
Gaza with anti-Semitism, was seriously concerned with anti-Semitism, then they
would disband tomorrow.
Because there is nothing more likely to increase anti-Semitism in Britain
and attacks on Jews than those who do their best to associate British Jews with
Israeli war crimes.Even the Zionist Community
Security Trust admitted
this in its 2014 Anti-Semitic Incidents Report.
The single
biggest contributing factor to the record number of antisemitic incidents recorded
in 2014 was antisemitic reactions in the UK to the conflict in Israel and Gaza that
began on 8 July 2014 and ended on 26 August 2014. CST recorded the highest-ever
monthly total of 314 antisemitic incidents in July, and the third-highest ever
monthly total of 228 incidents in August.
The CAA, which is no more than an extension of the Israeli state and
which is directly
funded by the Israeli para-state organization the Jewish National Fund does
its best to equate Hamas attacks on Israel with the safety of British Jews.
In its statement the CAA accused Hamas
and Islamic Jihad of supporting the ‘genocide
of Jews.’ If anyone supports genocide it is people like Israel’s Police
Minister Itamar Ben Gvir who
had a poster of Baruch Goldstein on his living room wall. Goldstein entered
the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and opened fire with an assault rifle killing 29
worshippers and injuring nearly a hundred. It is those in Israel who march to
the chant
of ‘Death to the Arabs’ who are the
genociders but of these people the CAA has nothing to say.
Those who
glorify terrorism and delight in the massacre of Jews, and those who use the
events still unfolding as cover for antisemitic acts should be under no
misapprehension: we will pursue justice against you.
Note how the CAA conflates ‘terrorism’ i.e. support for Palestinian organisations
with murder of Jews, which is the prerogative of the friends of the CAA –
fascist groups like Britain First and people like Tommy Robinson – both of whom
they keep company with.
Nonetheless we should treat seriously their legal threats. The reason is
that Britain’s racist Home Secretary Suella
Braverman combines her racism against refugees, with her talk of hurricanes,
with putting political pressure on the
police to arrest those who support the Palestinians.
Tory MP threatens use of Anti-Terrorism Act to suppress free speech
And just to make it clear to Braverman and her racist friends in the CAA,
I support totally the right of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others to launch
attacks on Israel in response to the years of suffering and murder that they
have experienced at the hands of the Israeli state and furthermore there is nothing
you will ever be able to do about it.
Tony Greenstein
LLA
statement on Israel/Palestine: Oppression inevitably feeds resistance
The situation in the Middle East is more volatile than it has
been for many decades. We want to discuss what's going on - and if there is a
solution. Join us on Wednesday October 11 at 7pm for an open
discussion forum jointly sponsored by the LLA and the Republican
Labour Education Forum, which will be introduced by Tony Greenstein. More
details below, where you can also find the LLA's statement on the issue.
Hamas’
attack on Israel was certainly not ‘unprovoked’. The systematic and racist
oppression of the Palestinians by the colonialist state of Israel has massively
worsened with the introduction of the blockade 15 years ago and, more recently,
with the state-sponsored extension of illegal settlements and pogroms on
Palestinian land. These actions have created the horrific conditions which have
led to this dramatic act of resistance. The aim of the Israeli state is simple:
to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population. It does not exploit the
Palestinian people, as the apartheid regime in South Africa did – it simply
wants to get rid of them. As a major ally of US-led imperialism in the
otherwise unstable Middle East, Israel is supported politically, financially
and militarily in this campaign by most ‘Western’ governments and receives more
than 3 billion dollars a year from the US alone (over 150 billion since its foundation).
This
attack however will be a long-awaited opportunity for the Israeli government to
distract from its own problems, rally the divided population behind it, move to
the right politically and expand its programme of ethnic cleansing. The US government
on the other hand might well use this attack as a precursor to heat up its
conflict with Iran.
The
results for the Palestinian population remain the same: Further Israeli
repression, particularly in the Gaza strip, is inevitable. Israel has no interest
in getting rid of Hamas, otherwise it would have to govern Gaza directly, at
great cost politically and financially. But they will want to destroy as much
of Gaza as possible, in front of the TV cameras, before declaring ‘revenge’ has
been served.
The attack
has naturally been described as “anti-Semitic” – that is, after all, what the
smear campaign in the Labour movement was all about, to prepare for a moment
like this. Getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn was just a convenient side effect and
it remains true that the failure of the official Left to stand up to the
witch-hunt has helped to prepare the current ground. Any opposition to the
programme of brutal ethnic cleansing and the coming expansion of military and
financial support for the Israeli government is likely to be branded ‘racist’
and anti-Jewish.
All the more important that
socialists continue to fight:
for an end to the occupation of Palestine
against the conflation of anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism
against any political, financial or military support
for Israel
We will not be silenced by Braverman's Cries of ‘Terrorism’asSussex University Student Hanin
Barghouthi is Arrested By Brighton Police Acting as The Tories' Political
Messenger Boys
Israel has made it clear that the death of its hostages - at least 4 of whom have been killed in its bombing - will not stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide
This is Haneen Barghouthi’s Speech to a Brighton Palestine Solidarity
Demonstration
We
are seeing a determined and concerted attempt to conflate support for the
Palestinians and opposition to Israel’s Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza
with support for ‘terrorism’. Words have become meaningless to the war
criminals and liars who rule over us.
Suella
Braverman, the most racist Home Secretary Britain has ever had, issued an
extraordinary Open Letter
on Tuesday 10 October virtually instructing Britain’s Chief Constables to use
the Terrorism Act 2000
to attack supporters of the Palestinians. (see below for details of Braverman’s
racism)
Sussex
Police Attack on Free Speech – Arrest of Sussex University Student Haneen
Barghouti for Speaking at Palestine Demonstration
Right
on cue, Sussex Anti-Terrorism Police, in their desire to please Braverman, arrested
Sussex University student Hanin Barghouti for the crime of speaking at a
demonstration in Brighton last weekend in support of the Al Aqsa Flood Uprising. They have also taken her phone giving her a police phone which is constantly monitored!!
Two
days previously Sussex University Administration, instead of defending the
right of their students to take part in political debate and activity,
preemptively suspended Hanin after a witchhunting article
in the Daily Mail.
When
Kathleen Stock, the gender critical feminist, was targeted by students
demanding her dismissal, Sussex University Administration went out of their way
to defend her
on the grounds of freedom of speech.
As with the Tories Higher Education (Freedom of Speech Act) 2023, freedom of speech for the Right only applies to ideas and things they agree with. Anti-racism and support for the Palestinians don't count, as we saw with their imposition of the IHRA fake definition of anti-Semitism on universities under threat of loss of funding
Haneen Barghouti didn't mention Hamas once in her speech. It is clear that her arrest is about preventing solidarity with the Palestinians not preventing terrorism
What
is the difference between Kathleen Stock and Haneen Barghouti other than the
fact that anti-trans ideas accord with Conservative ideology whereas support
for the Palestinians is anathema to the Right. Sussex University, instead of
defending freedom of speech did the Police’s bidding.
Now
that the Police have arrested Haneen, Sussex Vice Chancellor Sasha Roseneilshould immediately reinstate Haneen andfailing that Sussex University Student Union,
of which Haneeen is an officer, should defend herand demand her reinstatement.
After
Haneen’s arrest, Sussex Police immediately lied
by connecting the arrest with making people feel safe. It takes a particular
distortion of logic to connect a speech to a Palestine Solidarity demonstration
with people, Jews, feeling afraid.
The only form of racism that Braverman opposes is 'antisemitism' which suggests it's not a form of racism
What
Braverman fears, as she transforms Britain’s Police into a nakedly political police,
is the expression of support for Palestinian resistanceto Israel and Zionism. The hidden lie is that
supporting Palestinians is somehow a threat to British Jews.
In
this insidious way a connection is made between Israel’s war crimes and British
Jews. It is the British state and its Zionist foreign policy which makes the
linkage between Jews in Britain and Israel’s actions. The purpose of the
Police’s actions is to sanitise Britain’s pro-Zionist Middle East policy by
pretending that opposition to Zionism and Israel is connected with anti-Semitism and support for terrorism. All this under the pretence of defending British
Jews when in fact they are the ones who are making them unsafe. And then they have the gall to call us anti-Semites!!
This is the rationale for proscribing Hamas as a 'terrorist' group - a child could see that if there is any terrorism it is by Israel which slaughtered 551 children in 2014 and another 700+ and rising this time around.
Hamas is NOT a Terrorist Organisations – it is Israel and Netanyahu who are the Terrorists
When proscribing Hamas in 2019, Home Secretary Sajid David relied on the thinnest of gruel to define Hamas as a terrorist organisation. There was no allegation that they had ever operated in Britain. Hamas was accused of killing 2 Israeli children in rocket strikes.
The hypocrisy is staggering. In 2014 in Operation Protective Edge Israel murdered 551 Palestinian children. By any neutral and impartial criteria Israel is a savage terrorist state. So too is Saudia Arabia which has killed thousands of Yemeni children. But here's the rub. Israel and Saudi Arabia are our friends so they can commit any amount of war crimes. Hamas on the other hand is fighting our friend Israel which is the real reason they are proscribed.
The decision to proscribe Hamas is a purely political decision. It is not based on any neutral assessment of the evidence. There is no panel to weigh up the evidence and decide. The decision is made on purely political grounds by one person, which is why, even if someone were to openly support Hamas that would NOT be support for terrorism.
In
her letter
to the Chief Constables Braverman wrote that
Sadly,
experience indicates that whenever Israel is attacked, Islamists and other
racists, seek to use legitimate Israeli defensive measures as a pretext to stir
up hatred against British Jews and increase fear within the Jewish community.
In the past, this has included vandalism of Jewish businesses, desecration of
memorials and religious sites, physical and verbal abuse of Jews on the
streets, convoys driving through Jewish neighbourhoods hurling antisemitic
abuse, and proliferation of antisemitism online. There is an obvious risk that
this pattern will be repeated during the current conflict.
This
statement was one long lie. There is no
evidence whatsoever that support for the Palestinians and opposition to
Israel’s murderous attacks on them have resulted in increased anti-Semitism of
the type that she describes. It is an evidence-free assertion.
What
does make British Jewssusceptible to
increased anti-Semitism is the repeated assertions by their so-called
representatives in the Board of Deputies that British Jews support Israel’s war
crimes even to the extent of supporting the use of snipers in 2018 against peaceful Palestinian protesters at Gaza's fence. It is the association between being Jewish and Israeli war crimes that causes anti-Semitism and it is Braverman and her ilk who are guilty.
Despite establishing a reputation for extreme racism the CST, which allegedly fights antisemitism, invited Braverman to be their guest of honour at their AGM - this proves once again that the fight against the Zionist definition of antisemitism has nothing to do with anti-racism
Cruella Braverman is a
Despicable Racist
Isn’t
it strange? Cruella Braverman has made a name for herself as an out and out
racist calling refugees an invasion
and hurricane.
Braverman
is a despicable racist who falsely claimed
that child grooming gangs in the UK were “almost
all British-Pakistani”. The claims was made in a Mail on Sunday article published in
April, where she singled out British-Pakistani men as being involved in child
sexual abuse gangs due to “cultural
attitudes completely incompatible with British values” that “have been left mostly unchallenged both
within their communities and by wider society”.
Warning: graphic content. Video given to us shows clash between Israeli and Palestinian protesters in #Kirkland following Hamas attack on Israel pic.twitter.com/IxagI5k3A9
Zionist Violence in Oakland, USA against Palestinian demonstrators
IPSOS, the press regulator said Braverman’s decision to link “the identified ethnic group and a
particular form of offending was significantly misleading” because the Home
Office’s own research had concluded offenders were mainly from white
backgrounds. Four days later the Mail on Sunday offered to amend the online
version. Braverman has neither retracted the claim or apologised yet Sunak
still keeps this racist liar on as Home Secretary.
Yet strangely enough Braverman is concerned
about ‘anti-Semitism’.Uniquely this is
the one form of racism that moves her. Anyone who falls for Braverman’s ‘concern’
for anti-Semitism literally needs their head examining. It is also no surprise
that the CST, a Mossad project which claims to
monitor anti-Semitism in Britain, invited this vile racist to their annual
dinner. By their own admission fighting racism and fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ are
two entirely different things.
Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman Comparing Israel's Attack on Gaza During Israel's Operation Cast Lead to the Nazi Murder of his Grandmother in a Polish Ghetto
Terrorism
Terrorism
means violence and terror against civilians. Hamas have never operated outside the
conflict zones of Palestine/Israel unlike ISIS or Al Qaeda. The designation of
them as ‘terrorist’ is a political decision. It is not factually based. It is
part of the British Establishment’s attack on free speech whilst at the same
time saying that the left opposes free speech.
Hamas
is an elected political party with a military wing. ISIS and Al Qaeda, both the
creations of the United States, are purely military, sectarian murderers who were
once the allies of the United States and Saudia Arabia.
It
is not Hamas which is guilty of terrorism but the Israeli state, aided and
abetted by Biden, Sunak and Europe’s leaders. Israel is openly proclaiming that
it is refusing to allow food, water and electricity into Gaza, at the very same
time as it is bombing everything that moves. Such a siege should be called by
its proper name – it is a Nazi strategy. Even the
Nazis never refused to allow food and water into a ghetto although, like Israel
previously, they restricted the amount of food to the bare minimum.
GIGANTIC Paris Pro-Palestine rally happening now in direct conflict with the French government‼️
This is now a considered an illegal protest, banned by the interior minister.
Orwell
described the purpose of political speech in his essay Politics and the English Language.
It could almost have been written with Gaza today in mind:
political
language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy
vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants
driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on
fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of
peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification
of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in
the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is
called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed
if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.
#KayBurley: "Basic human rights are water, electricity and food, & [people] are being denied that in Gaza"
Steve Barclay: "Well, and we saw people in Israel denied their rights..."
Israel
Aims to Do in Gaza City What Hitler Intended for Moscow
Israel
is pursuing a combined policy of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
Palestinians have been told to evacuate northern Gaza or die and not one word of criticism has been uttered
by their imperialist backers. Those who claimed to be upset with Russian human
rights violations in Ukrainehave no
problem with far worse crimes inGaza.
Biden
and Sunak have even been boasting of the weaponry they are sending to Israel to
complete their genocidal task. They do this under the pretext of ‘supporting
Israel’s right to defend itself’ when it is clear that it is the Palestinians
who are in need of defence.
Israel
has bombed hospitals
and the HQ of UNWRA, the UN Relief and
Workers Agency for Palestinian refugees which Israel has always hated, killing
9 of their workers. Israel has
also used White Phosphorous in Gaza against the population. This
substance burns people alive. This is terrorism, state terrorism but about that
Biden, Sunak, Starmer and the rest of Israel’s apologists have nothing to say.
Starmer was asked if cutting of the water supply to Gaza by Israel was “appropriate”.
He replied “Israel does have that right”.
Cutting off water supply began last night hitting 1mill children in Gaza.
Constituency Labour Parties have been forbidden to even discuss resolutions on Palestine because it might make certain people (Zionists) feel unwelcome in the party. Of course any decent party would want to make Zionists and racists, of whatever religious persuasion or none, feel very unwelcome but in Starmer's Labour racists are being made to feel at home.
Ironically the only MP to speak out unequivocally against the massacre of the innocents in Gaza and to say openly that war crimes are being committed is the Tory MP Crispin Blunt. All the 'left' Labour MPs - John McDonnell, Zarah Sultana, Diane Abbot, Bell Ribaire Addy, Lloyd Russell-Moyle - have remained silent. They obeyed Starmer's dictat not to participate in the Palestine solidarity demonstration at the weekend. They are utter political cowards. McDonnell is happy to take part in demonstrations supporting NATO's proxy war in Ukraine but not willing to defy the nonentity Starmer.
Half of Northern Gaza's 1.1 million Palestinians have fled south ending up in Khan Younis, a city normally of 400,000 now home to over a million. With a blockade of food and water we are seeing the imminent possibility of mass starvation and death but to Israel's war criminal prime minister Netanyahu and his accomplices in the West that is nothing to worry about.
Whereas the Labour 'Left' has Remained Silent Tory MP Crispin Blunt Has Spoken Out
Labour’s Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry on whether the Israeli government cutting off food, water and power to the Gaza Strip is against international law #Newsnight pic.twitter.com/EwT22REzCA
When
asked whether he supports the food and water blockade Starmer, the human rights
lawyer, gave it his full support, as did the pitiable Lady Nugent (Emily
Thornberry). Not one single major British politician, apart from the SNP
leader Humza Yousaf,
has said a word opposing Israel’s promise to commit genocide.
To talk of Israel’s right to self-defence
in a situation where over 724 children have been murdered according to Defence
of Children International – Palestine (declared a ‘terrorist organisation’) and thousands already killed is obscene. It is
like saying that when the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place that Nazi Germany’s burning
down of the ghetto was an exercise in self defence. These are Nazi ideas as Israel
embarks on its own final solution of the Palestinian question.
GAZA UPDATE: 447 Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, according to the Ministry of Health. Nonstop Israeli airstrikes forced our field researcher to relocate his family four times yesterday & DCIP has been unable to confirm additional fatalities. pic.twitter.com/5iSbcG2bYp
We are witnessing a new Nakba being carried out with the full support of Western leaders
Did Hamas Commit
War Crimes Equivalent to Israel?
Whatever
criticisms there may be of the Palestinian resistance and the killing of
Israeli civilians, many of whom were reserve soldiers, in what Israel boasts is
its Citizens Army, they pale into insignificance compared to the thousands of Palestinians who have died
at the hands of Israel’s murder machine and its ongoing second Nakba.
The
handwringing by certain Jewish groups evidenced by Jewish Currents in an article We
Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other and many of the messages I have seen in
Jewish Voice for Peace discussion groups, smack of
nothing so much as Jewish Exceptionalism and Angst.
We campaign and work for justice and freedom for the Palestinian people. We campaign for an end to Israel's brutal occupation and apartheid. We have never advocated violence. This weekend's tragic ongoing events will sadly only worsen things for Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/svFqKC6bJE
Sometimes
it isn’t easy to come from the oppressor, because Jews today are not victims
but oppressors. Most Jews, by virtue of the support that the Board of Deputies
and their representative organizations give to Israel, identify with the
oppression of the Palestinians. Most Jews have family ties and friends in Israel and even the most
committed Jewish anti-Zionists began to wobble under the pressure as they
experienced a conflict between the personal and the political.
Alongside
Israel’s program of genocide and ethnic cleansing there is its Siamese twin,
the Disinformation War. Britain’s newspapers and media are complicit in the
lies and distortions that Israel relies on in order to perpetuate the fiction
that it is the victim and the Palestinians are the aggressors.
For example
Israel planted the leak
reported by the Wall Street Journal, in which it falsely claimed that Iran
ordered the Hamas attack against Israel. There was no truth in this as Anthony
Blinken, US Secretary of State made clear.
The
truth about Operation Al Aqsa Flood, the Palestinian resistance operation that
swept through the Gaza Envelope is being distorted out of all recognition.
There is no doubt that there were atrocities and human rights crimes but they
pale in comparison with the massive, pre-planned war crimes that
Israel feels able to announce publicly.
It
is also the case that Hamas explicitly
instructed its operatives not to kill women, children and the elderly. This
press conference was held before the launch of Operation Al Aqsa Flood although
it appears to have been made in retrospect.
Even the Times
of Israel reporting the killing of two
Israelis wrote that:
At 8:20 a.m., terrorists entered Dvir’s home, he lunged at them
with an axe, tried to protect my two kids who were with him, and was murdered
in front of their eyes,” she posted. “His partner Stav
also tried to protect them, but was murdered as well. The terrorist calmed down
my Daria and Lavi, covered them in a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the
wall: ‘The al-Qassam [Brigades] people don’t murder children.
Many
of the fighters came from other groups who did not have the same discipline but
nonetheless far greater care was taken by the Palestinian resistance than
Israel is doing yet some fair-weather liberals are taking fright at the fact
that the Palestinian response has not accorded with the demands of human rights
law. The expectation is that the Palestinians, the victims of repeated Israeli
atrocities, should respect the Geneva Conventions and International Law at the
same time as their heavily armed occupiers and the ‘international community’
i.e. western imperialism ignores international law.
Al
Jazeera also reported that Hamas issued orders that women, children and the
elderly were not to be harmed. Hamas’s instructions have been comprehensively
ignored by the West’s free press. See here
and hereكتائب القسام تنشر لقطات من تعامل مقاتليها
مع الأطفال خلال معارك غلاف غزة (فيديو and صالح العاروري يكشف تفاصيل جديدة عن عملية
“طوفان الأقصى” (فيديو
Contrast
this with Israel which doesn’t even try to pretend that its bombing of
residential areas is not indiscriminate.
‘40 beheaded babies’ : How
media amplified an unconfirmed story | The Big Picture S3E3
There
surfaced in the Western media a few days ago reports that Hamas fighters had
beheaded 40 babies. It was reminiscent of the time when, during Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait, stories emerged that Iraqi troops had looted Kuwait City’s hospitals
of their incubators ripping out the oxygen tubs from tiny babies and leaving
them to die.
On
October 10, 1990, a fifteen-year-old Kuwaiti girl “Nayirah”testified before the
Congressional Human Rights Caucus. She told how Iraqi soldiers removed
scores of babies from incubators and left them to die. Her story was originally
corroborated by
Amnesty International.
It was credited for helping draw the U.S. into the Gulf War later that year.
According
to the New York Times in 1992, the girl’s testimony was
orchestrated by public relations firm Hill & Knowlton on behalf of the
Kuwaiti-sponsored Citizens for a Free Kuwait whose aim was to secure military
support from the U.S.
The girl
who gave the testimony was later revealed to be daughter of the Kuwaiti
Ambassador to the U.S. She had never even been in Kuwait at the time, still
less worked in a hospital. Hill & Knowlton is estimated to have been given $12 million by the Kuwaitis for their public relations campaign.
This time
we had the beheaded babies story and like that of the Iraqi babies it has
proved to be a total fake. This was first reported
by an Israeli search and rescue officer, Yossi Landau, on CNN. It was repeated
by IDF spokesperson, Maj. Libby Weiss also on CNN. From there it was reported
by the Independent, the Los Angeles Times and other outlets.
3/5 Soldiers I spoke with in Kfar Aza yesterday didn't mention "beheaded babies”. The army's spokesperson stated: “We can not confirm at this point… we are aware of the heinous acts Hamas is capable of” pic.twitter.com/enXnHID66A
Joe Biden repeated the calumny, stating
he’d seen “confirmed photographs”
of what happened. Later his press officers “clarified” that he
had not actually “seen” the photos, but was basing his statements on “Netanyahu
and Israeli media.” Israeli journalist, Oren Ziv, visited the southern Israel
communities attacked and repeatedly asked IDF officers if they could verify the
story. They told him they had seen no evidence supporting these claims. Yet CNN
and other stations ran, as if it were the unvarnished truth, pieces about
Hamas brutality in cutting off babies heads.
See Richard Silverstein’s Beheaded
babies and see the following list of media that ran with this fake
story.
Maj. Libby Weiss, “bringing Israel’s realities alive for Americans.” In
other words, bringing Israeli lies alive for the world
If
Human Rights and War Crimes had been the Litmus Test Then We Would Have Been
Neutral in World War II
I
have no doubt that human rights crimes were committed by Palestinian fighters
in their attack. There isn’t a war when war crimes haven’t been committed. But
unlike Israel the Palestinians made an effort.
More
importantly those fighting their occupiers, who by definition are in breach of
international law, are not under the same obligations as the occupiers. It is
perfectly understandable that the Palestinian fighters considered Israeli civilians
to be complicit in Gaza's occupation and therefore legitimate targets. Who the hell elected this
far-Right Israeli government if not Israel's civilians? The Israeli far-right has
the support of 2/3 Israelis so let us have less of this liberal
handwringing.
There
is an obligation on occupiers to take prisoners and not kill or torture
them.An obligation Israel honours in
the breach. Torture of prisoners is not only standard practice but legal in Israel. Israel
even tortures
and sexually abuses children.
There is no such obligation on a
guerilla force which doesn’t have gaols to put prisoners in. Did
the Partisans fighting the Nazis take them as prisoners?Of course not. They shot them and quite
rightly. When the Muslim SS Division in France rose up against their SS overseers, they spared some of them. This resulted in their being tortured and murdered.
But
just suppose that the Palestinian fighters did kill every Israeli they
encountered. Would that have been a reason to have remained neutral? In WW2
Russian soldiers engaged in mass
rape of Germanwomen.
Britain starved
3 million Bengalis to death in 1942 and firebombed Dresden
and Nuremburg.
America later used the nuclear bomb against Japan at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Would that have been a reason to be neutral between the Nazis and the Allies?
The
first slave revolt was in Santo Domingo/Haiti. In 1804 the Black slaves
perpetrated a massacre
of almost all the White population bar some Polish legionnaires and Germans. Is that a reason to condemn the revolt
and maintain our neutrality between the slavers and the enslaved?
In the
early hours of August 22, 1831, a slave named Nat Turner led more than fifty followers in a bloody revolt in
Southampton, Virginia, killing nearly 60 white people, mostly women and
children.
Even
though Turner and his followers were soon stopped, panic spreads. In the days
following the attack, 3000 soldiers, militia men, and vigilantes killed more
than one hundred suspected rebels.
In a
letter written a month later from North Carolina, Nelson Allyn described the retaliation against African
Americans. Nineteen of the 30 who had been arrested were convicted and
executed. The rest, along with 300 free blacks from Southampton County, agreed
to be exiled to Liberia in Africa. Turner was hanged on November 11, 1831.
Presumably if we had lived then there would have been liberal anti-slavers who would have said we cannot
support the slave rebellions because our friends were among the White slavers.
It is incumbent upon all of us, and I address this to Jewish anti-Zionists in particular,
to recognise these dilemmas between our own political positions and where we
come from. That Israel not only claims us, whether we like it or not, but many
of us have families in Israel which after all is the ‘Jewish State’. Sometimes
it isn’t easy to come from the oppressor, because Jews today are not victims,
and yet support the oppressed. I highly
recommend Norman Finkelstein’s THE SLAVE REVOLT IN GAZA, and Bernie
Sanders
The largest slave revolt in U.S. history against “White
supremacy” was led by Nat Turner. Turner was a religious fanatic; he believed
that the revolt was divinely inspired and sanctioned. Here’s how Wikipedia
describes what ensued:
The rebels traveled from house to house, freeing
enslaved people and killing many of the White people whom they encountered....
Historian Stephen B. Oates states that Turner called on his group to “kill all
the white people”.... Turner thought that revolutionary violence would awaken
the attitudes of Whites to the reality of the inherent brutality in
slave-holding. Turner said he wanted to spread “terror and alarm” among Whites.
Scores of White innocents were deliberately killed.
Nonetheless, the Nat Turner Rebellion now occupies an honored place in American
history.
Turner’s rebellion provoked mass genocidal hysteria among
Whites. To gain one’s moral bearings at this fraught moment, it repays to
peruse the statement issued by the great Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison
right after the revolt:
What we have so long predicted,—at the peril of being
stigmatized as an alarmist and declaimer,—has commenced its fulfilment. The
first step of the earthquake, which is ultimately to shake down the fabric of
oppression, leaving not one stone upon another, has been made. The first drops
of blood, which are but the prelude to a deluge from the gathering clouds, have
fallen. The first flash of lightning, which is to smite and consume, has been
felt. The first wailings of bereavement, which is to clothe the earth in
sackcloth, have broken up our ears.
All law, even International Humanitarian Law, is an instrument of class
rule which sooner or later is turned against those seeking their liberation.
This is something that even Marxists and revolutionary socialists find hard to
understand at times.
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