On Monday the CAA Will Attempt to Have My Libel Action Thrown Out – Their Defence?  That Their Accusations are ‘Honest Opinions’! 

One of the most remarkable things about the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn and the Left is that it has been evidence free. All the main targets – Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and myself, were suspended and then expelled – not for anti-Semitism but for catch-all charges such as bringing the Party into disrepute.

The most vicious Zionist organisation behind this campaign was the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. The CAA was formed in the summer of 2014 during the height of Operation Protective Edge. Its mission was to target opponents of Israel’s genocidal attacks, which killed2,200 civilians including 551 children, as ‘anti-Semitic’.

The CAA was one of the 2 complainants to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The other organisation, the Jewish Labour Movement, ‘the sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labor Party was also reinventedin 2015.

On 6^th February 2017 I made a formal complaintto the Charity Commission about the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism complaining that it was a political organisation masquerading as a charity. On 10^th February I followed this up with a more substantial complaint. I also put a petitionup on Change.org asking people to support my call for the CAA to be deregistered by the CC.

The CAA claimed in its plea to Change.org that its purpose was to promote racial harmony! At least they have a sense of humour

The CAA' racist profile of an average male Muslim

‘We do not libel opponents of Israel, we factually report the activities of antisemites. Claiming otherwise is severely damaging to our reputation.

The CAA probably forgot they were no longer in Israel. But since every opponent of Zionism or Israeli Apartheid is by the CAA’s definition an anti-Semite, the two amount to the same.

Change.org. emailed me on 9^th February 2017 giving me 4 days notice to respond, otherwise they would take the petition down. I spent a very long night writing a 5,000 word response! 8 days later Change.org informed me that they had rejectedthe CAA’s complaint.

Pleasebeassuredthatwewillnotremoveyourpetition unless we are legally compelled to do so.

Change.org's robust defence of freedom of speech is what British universities should do when these McCarthyists approach them - the CAA shut up and its legal threats vanished

Israel's Ministry of Strategic Affairs is setting up groups like the CAA in the USA and Europe with a $50m budget

Nothing further was heard from the CAA. Their legal threats had been a bluff. The last thing they wanted was for their lies to be tested in court. The behaviour of change.orgstands in marked contrast to 38 degrees who took down a petition criticising the BBC’s Laura ‘Tory’ Kuensberg, which is why I’ll have nothing to do with 38 degrees.

I did a blogon what happened. To date the petitionhas gathered more than 8,200 signatures (You can still sign!).

Nothing illustrates better the fake and confected nature of what has been called the anti-Semitism ‘disinformation paradigm’ than the activities of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Despite calling anyone who is a critic of Israel an ‘anti-Semite’ the CAA turns a blind eye to anti-Semitism when it comes from the far-Right.  On one condition.  That these anti-Semites also support Israel. 

Hence why there are over 700 posts on the CAA’s website condemning Jeremy Corbyn and not one with anything to say about Tommy Robinson. Robinson came from the holocaust denying British National Party [BNP]. Today Robinson keeps company with the same Polish neo-Nazis that the CAA purports to oppose. Robinson however is also an ardent Zionist. As was the case with the Nazis, Zionism is more than happy to do business with anti-Semites just as long as they support their project to remove Jews from the diaspora.

It's no surprise that the CAA's go to paper is the Daily Mail which campaigned against the admission of Jewish refugees from the Nazis in the 1930's

The Revenge of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism

The CAA’s revenge was not long in coming. On 26^th February 2017 the first of 5 articles appeared with the snappy title ‘TONY GREENSTEIN’S ATTEMPT TO SHUT DOWN CAMPAIGN AGAINST ANTISEMITISM SHOWCASES THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN FAR-LEFT AND FAR-RIGHT”. It accused me of being a ‘notorious anti-Semite’.

The CAA love capital letters, probably because they believe shouting works best. It is one more thing that they have in common with Trump. In an attempt to discredit a letter that I and 61 others had published in the Guardian (before the letters page was Freedlandised) they referred to 30+ year old minor convictions of mine.

The CAA expressed how ‘extremely grateful they were to 3 Tory  MPs and one Tory Peer including the notorious Islamaphobes Bob Blackman MP and Lady Deech, ‘all of whom rushed to defend our work’. The Daily Mail, a paper  campaigned against the admission of Jewish refugees from Hitler published a supportive article.

When I brought out a book on Fighting Fascism in Brighton it was picketed by the Zionists friends in the EDL, complete with Israeli flag! Presumably they didn't realise that I was an anti-Semite!

Why I Initiated a Libel Action

On 13^th February 2018, just before the one year limitation period was due to run out, I began legal proceedings for defamation. At the same time I launched a crowd funding appeal to pay for it, first with Justgiving and then Go Fund Me. I found the latter deducts less! Without the generosity of hundreds of people who were outraged at the behaviour of the CAA my action would have been short-lived. I am extremely grateful for the sacrifices people have made to fund this action. For tactical reasons I can’t yet divulge just how much I have received but I have spent just over £26,000 on legal advice and representation over the past 2½ years. Compare this with the CAA’s costs of £44,000 for this one hearing alone. Their total costs are over £100,000.

After having obtained initial advice from barrister Jonathan Price from Doughty Street Chambers on a pro bono basis I went on to instruct Jonathan to prepare the Claim Form and Particulars of Claim.

Secretive funding of dirty tricks groups like the CAA is standard practice for Israel's MSA

There then followed a Defence from the CAA and I then responded with a Reply. The first major hearing was on 14^th February 2019, a year after the claim was first initiated. I now instructed David Mitchell of Ely Chambers, now 39 Essex Chambers. Its purpose was to decide on meaning, except that Judge Nicklin, a conservative judge, didn’t rule on what anti-Semitism meant!

However his decision was adverse.  Under the Defamation Act 2013 there are two main defences.  One is section 2, The Truth, under which it is a defence if the Defendant is able to ‘show that the imputation conveyed by the statement complained of is substantially true.’You might have thought the Zionists would have grasped the opportunity to defend the case on the grounds that it was substantially true.  Not a bit of it.

Instead they preferred Section 3 ‘Honest Opinion’ under which a Defendant is not guilty of libeling someone if the allegation that was made is shown to be their honest opinion even if isn’t true!

In other words the choice is between fact and opinion. Quite bizzarely Nicklin decided that if you call someone an anti-Semite then that is a matter of opinion. Nicklin is a good example of the blinkered judge. If you are a food critic and go to a restaurant and your review says that the food was lousy then that is clearly a matter of opinion. If you call someone a racist or anti-Semite then that is a factual matter. However Nicklin decided otherwise.

The parties then had to go through the whole process again, submitting an amended claim and particulars, defence and reply.

After the Defence badgered me with Part 18 and 31 Requests for documents and information, they decided in April that they would go for summary judgement under Part 24, of the Civil Procedure Rules which state that judgment should be given if the ‘claimant has no real prospect of succeeding on the claim or issue’. That is what the hearing this Monday 26^th October at the Royal Courts of Justice is about.  It starts at 11.15 a.m. I don’t know if people will be admitted to the court because of COVID-19 or have a separate room. However the make or break hearing is at last here, two and a half years later.

Why the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and Honest Opinion are Strangers

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism alleged in their Amended Defence that I was, in their ‘honest opinion’ an anti-Semite because:

i.              I lied, with 61 other people, when the Guardian printed a letteralleging that the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism prevents criticism of Israel. The only problem is we didn’t say that! What we did say was that the IHRA is ‘designed to silence public debate on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.’ 

ii.           I lied when I told the Charity Commission ‘that the CAA was a rightwing political Zionist organisation that is not concerned with fascist groups who were anti-Semitic Holocaust deniers.’ In fact I didn’t say that either (see below). But what’s one lie amongst so many?

iii.        Almost all my tweets are about Jews and Israel which are ‘unremittingly hostile towards, and abusive about, Jews, Israel and supporters of Israel. None of them ever say anything positive about Israel or Jews.’ The lies are tiresome. None of my articles are hostile or negative towards Jews. I am also extremely supportive of Israelis who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories or who have the courage and integrity to oppose Israel’s many war crimes. The problem is that there are so few!

iv.        My blog is

‘unremittingly and aggressively antagonistic towards, the world’s only Jewish state and its supporters, and who gladly throws around anti-Semitic tropes such as comparisons between ‘Zionists’ and the Nazis. He regularly uses the word ‘Zio.’

The CAA, like all good racists, is pathologically incapable of distinguishing between Jews and Zionists. Yes Israel is the only Jewish state. Nazi Germany was the only Aryan state and South Africa the only White Christian state. The question is what kind of state Israel is not what flag it flies under.

v.           There is a whole lot of trivia concerning my tweets which it would be tedious to go through, so I shall just take a few examples: The CAA inanely claims that a forged tweet from a member of Nazi Germany Labour Against Anti-Semitism, Emma Picken was mine : It read:

‘did you treat a few Jew boys as well? Try to curb your Zionist racism – although settlers are Hitler’s children.’

This is such a pathetic forgery, an indication what fevered Zionist minds imagine we think that its barely worth commenting on. However the CAA alleged that

‘The Claimant has falsely and dishonestly claimed that this tweet was a forgery.’. Quite why it’s dishonest to deny a forgery the CAA never explain.

The CAA has nothing to say about Zionist antisemitism

‘Jew boy’ is a virulently anti-Semitic term. Out of all the millions of words I have written in the past 3 decades I defy anyone to produce a single example where I have used this term. Whereas ‘Jew boy’ is a favourite term of abuse by Zionists. Aviv Bushinsky, a former advisor to Netanyahu, calledthe US Ambassador Dan Shapiro ‘a little Jew boy’ when he issued some mild criticisms of Israel. The CAA weren’t interested.

The CAA consistently 'forget' that Raed Salah's deportation was overturned in the British courts - perhaps they think they are in Israel where people are detained without trial for years

vi.        The CAA accused me of anti-Semitism for supporting Raed Salah, a Palestinian Israeli cleric. It was claimed Salah ‘has been excluded from the United Kingdom by the government over concerns about his virulent anti-Semitism.’ What the CAA ‘forgot’ to mention was that the Upper Immigration Tribunal had overturnedRaed Salah’s deportation because it was based on a lie, a deliberate mistranslation of a poem of Salahs. But why allow a lie to be disturbed by the truth?

The CAA had nothing to say about Zionist antisemitism such as Netanyahu's son Yair    classic anti-Semitic cartoon above attacking George Soros

vii.     The CAA alleged that my statement ‘(a) Belief that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust is common to orthodox Jews’ was anti-Semitic. ‘As the Claimant well knows, virtually no Jews, orthodox or otherwise, consider that Jews are responsible for the Holocaust.’ Presumably the late Ovadia Yosef, Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel statementthat the holocaust was a punishment for past Jewish sins never happened. It is true his statement was widely condemned but amongst the orthodox it is widely accepted. Why?  Because if you are religious you believe god is responsible for everything.

Gideon Falter accuses me of anti-Semitism for revealing to non-Jews that most Orthodox Jews hold that the Holocaust was God's punishment for past sins

Daniel Lasker of Ben Gurion University wrote, in Reflection: The Holocaust as Retributive Justice’that

In the 50 years since the end of the holocaust, theologians of every persuasion have tried to make sense of that terrible event. One explanation, popular especially among the right-wing of Judaism (known as Haredim in Hebrew or ‘Ultra Orthodox’ in English) contends that the Holocaust was visited on the Jewish people as a punishment for their sins. While there is no unanimity as to what the sin was, there is general agreement that ultimately God was the author of the Holocaust, just as He is the author of all history.’ It can be found in a Special Edition of Shofar Vol. 15, No. 3.

I won’t accuse Gideon Falter [GF], Chair of the CAA, of lying. Like most Zionist zealots he knows little or nothing of Jewish or even Zionist history let alone religious debates.

viii.  I was held to be anti-Semitic for saying that

when they came to Israel thousands of Yemeni and other Jews had their babies stolen from them in hospitals.’

The CAA stated that this allegation ‘has been demonstrated to be untrue by 3 independent inquiries in 1967, 1988 and 2001.’ Here you see that the CAA is not only racist towards Palestinians but towards Arab Jews in Israel too.

According to the CAA all mention of the scandal of the theft of Yemenite babies for adoption by White Ashkenazis is 'antisemitic'

In the CAA’s ‘honest opinion’ there must be a hell of a lot of anti-Semites around, including even at the BBC. There were 3 inquiries in Israel and all of them were whitewashes.It is an ongoing scandal in Israel. [FT, 13.10.16. What happened to the lost Yemenite children of Israel?  Presumably YNet , an Israeli online version of the daily Yediot Aharnotand TheTimes of Israel  are also anti-Semitic for reporting the same allegations.  As the Guardian reported in January 2018:

Families and activists believe that several thousand children, mostly from poor Yemeni Jewish communities, were systematically abducted by childless Jewish families of east European descent. Other Arab and Balkan Jews have also claimed infants were taken after they arrived in Israel.

Despite being an 'anti-Semite' I was targeted by neo-Nazis (perhaps they didn't realise that I was a closet sympathiser)

ix.        I am alleged to be anti-Semitic for supporting Ken Livingstone’s comment that Hitler supported Zionism. Presumably Zionist historian David Cesarani was also an anti-Semite when he wrote in his book Final Solution (p.96) that

‘The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.’

x.           In Para. 9.7. the CAA lies when it claims that I allege that ‘Jews or Zionists were responsible not only for anti-semitism but for the Holocaust.’ I claim neither and of course having made a vague unsubstantiated allegation the CAA provides no proof.

xi.        In para. 9.8 the CAA claims that my blog

‘is unremittingly hostile towards Jews, Israel and supporters of Israel and is aggressive and offensive in its tone and language. Almost all the posts are on the subject of Israel. None of them ever say anything positive about Israel or Jews.

This is what their ‘honest opinion’ defence amounts to. And the crème de la crème? I am accused of anti-Semitism because:

‘The Claimant attacks Jewish MPs as ‘the MP[s] for Tel Aviv’ including Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger. An honest person could have held the opinion that the Claimant was anti-Semitic from the fact that he accuses Jewish MPs of serving Israel rather than their own constituencies.

I also allegedthat Joan Ryan, the non-Jewish Chair of Labour Friends of Israel was the MP for Jerusalem Central. During the years of South Africa Apartheid the MP for Luton North John Carlisle was calledthe MP for Bloemfontein West.My allegations have nothing to do with the MP’s religion but their political affiliations.

I won’t bore you with the rest but I shall make it available at a later date in order that you have a lesson in lies, deception and evasion.

My Defence

I produced a lengthy witness statement which I shall only precis.

1.             GF alleged in his witness statement ‘Mr Greenstein is seeking to shut down the CAA’. Although I would not shed tears at the CAA’s demise I have never sought to shut them down. I merely wish to give it the same rights as any other political organisation, including the opportunity to pay its taxes. It is fraudulent to hide behind a charity’s tax shield when you are a political group.

2.             Joe Glasman, D’s Head of Political Investigations made a video boasting: ‘The Beast is Slain’ ‘Corbyn has been slaughtered.’ The nice Mr Glasman also tweeted at Sadiq Khan ‘why you nominated an odious antisemite to be leader of the Labour Party’.

3.             The CAA consistently ignores right-wing anti-Semitism. Its only genuine concern is that from the anti-Zionist left. It ignored Boris Johnson’s anti-Semitic comments about Russian Jewish media moguls in his novel ’72 Virgins’.

GF said nothing about Joe Glasman, Sadiq Khan Jacob Rees-Mogg’s retweet of Alice Weidel, the Leader of Germany’s far-Right AfD. AfD’s former leader Frauke Petry’s call for refugee boats to be sunk led to its expulsion from the European Conservative & Reform Group in the European Parliament. The AfD also marchedalongside neo-Nazis last year, leading to some of its members being put under formal state surveillance. There is just one mention of Mogg on the CAA’s web site and that is in an article attacking Ken Livingstone! The AfD is a party full of holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis but it also ardently pro-Israel.

GF failed to comment on what Professor Michael Berkowitz, described as ‘an expressly antisemitic sentiment’, again by Mogg, who described 2 Jewish Tories, Oliver Letwin and John Bercow as  “Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves.” The Illuminati are at the centre of many anti-Semitic theories. The CAA is silent concerning Tory anti-Semitism.

When Tory MEP’s voted to support Viktor Orban, the far-Right anti-Semitic Prime Minister of Hungary, who has waged a campaign against George Soros and praised Admiral Horthy, the pro-Nazi war-time leader of Hungary as an ‘exceptional statesman’ the CAA issued a mild reprimand: 

‘Conservative Party allegedly seeks to cover up its MEPs’ Attempt to Thwart Censure of Hungarian Government...’

Contrast this with the Guardian’s‘Tory MEPs voted to protect Orban the authoritarian. This is a stain on Britain.’

4.             GF alleged that my decision to join a counter-demonstration, organised by Jewish Voice for Labour [JVL], to a rally organised by the Board of Deputies [BOD] on March 18^th2018 was motivated by anti-Semitism. GF is therefore saying that JVL, a 1,000 strong Jewish organisation, is also anti-Semitic and effectively defining all anti-Zionist Jews as anti-Semitic. Which is what one would expect of an Israeli government organisation.

The Board of Deputies demonstration was called in support of the contention that the Labour Party was anti-Semitic. Not once in its history, not even during the fight against Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts, did the BOD organise a demonstration against fascism or racism. In October 1936 the BOD advised Jews to stay away from confronting the fascists. The only demonstrations that they have ever organised have been in support of Israel.

Attendees at the BOD demonstration included Ian Paisley MP of the anti-Catholic DUP. Another first time attendee at an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration was Norman Tebbit, previously famous for his ‘cricket test’ which saidto Britain’s Asian population that they didn’t belong here. If a similar test was applied to British Jews who support Israeli sports teams CAA would presumably consider that anti-Semitic. Or would it?  Many of the demonstrators carried an anti-Semitic poster‘For the many not the Jew’. I couldn’t possibly have joined such a racist demonstration.

Is opposing Jewish ‘self-determination’ and Comparing Zionism to Nazis anti-Semitic?

5.             GF alleged that I am guilty of ‘Holocaust inversion’ ‘by calling Jews Nazis’ and denying ‘the right of self-determination to Jewish people.’  Of course it is a lie that I call Jews ‘Nazis’. Zionism, being a form of exclusivist ethno-nationalism, is not dissimilar ideologically to Nazism. That is why the obsessionover Israel’s ‘demographic problem’, too many Arabs, is common to Zionist political parties.

6.             Even if Jews form a single nation why is it anti-Semitic to oppose self-determination in the form of a state? Is it racist to oppose Scottish or Catalan independence? 

7.             It is a fact that some Jews are neo-Nazis. Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, of the Hebrew University described the Jewish settlers as Judeo Nazis. The Nazis dehumanised their victims and it was this that led to their extermination. Zionism also dehumanises the Palestinians and indeed all non-Jews. For example:

a.       Rabbi Dov Lior, the Chief Rabbi of the Yesha Settlers’ Council, said that ‘a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives.’

b.       Rabbi Yaacov Perrin went one better and said that a Jewish fingernail was worth more than a million non-Jewish lives.

c.        Eli Dahan, Deputy Defence Minister saidof the Palestinians that ‘To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.’ Dahan explained that ‘“A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual,”

d.       In 2016 an Israeli soldier Elor Azaria shot a captive prisoner dead. Because it was filmed he was arrested and served 9 months in prison. A demonstration in his support was held in Tel Aviv where a crowd of thousands chanted‘Death to the Arabs’. A banner ‘Kill them all’ was held high amongst the demonstrators. Another banner proclaimed‘My honour is my loyalty’, the slogan of the Nazi SS.

e.             Israeli rabbis have repeatedly compared the Palestinians to the Jews biblical enemies Amalek and the Philistines. As former Israeli Education Minister, Shulamit Aloni wrote, ‘in the settlements the Palestinians are called "Amalek," and the intention is obvious to everyone’ which is to wipe them out, even the youngest infant.

f.         Military Chief Rabbi Rontzki in 2008 gave soldiers preparing to enter Gaza a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and that cruelty is sometimes a “good attribute".

g.        Rabbis Kastiel and Radler, who teach at the Eli pre-military academy told their students that ‘Hitler was right’ although ‘he was on the wrong side, meaning against the Jews’.[1] Radler also stated that ‘the Holocaust was a divine punishment designed to make the Jewish people leave the diaspora...’ 

GF stated that it is ‘profoundly offensive and historically inaccurate (it is) to invoke the Holocaust and to compare Israeli policy’ to that of the Nazis. But Israeli politicians repeatedly invoke the Holocaust. Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, described Yasser Arafat of the PLO, during the siege of Beirut in 1982, as ‘Hitler in his bunker.’ Matan Vilnai, a former Deputy Defence Minister, declared that the people of Gaza ‘will bring upon themselves a bigger Shoah...’

If I had said that what Israel was doing was the same as the Nazis then that would clearly be wrong but not anti-Semitic. Until Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, in June 1941, the Nazi policy towards the Jews had been expulsion not genocide. That is Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.[2]

Professor Zeev Sternhell, a child survivor of a Nazi ghetto, wrote‘In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’.  Yair Golan, Deputy Chief of Staff, made the same comparison and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak endorsed his comments.  Daniel Blatman, a Professor of Holocaust Studies compared Israel’s deportation of Black refugees to the West’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees during the Nazi era and developments in Israel to those which led to the Nuremberg Laws. Supreme Court President Esther Hayut invoked the Nazi period while Dr Ofer Cassif, a Hebrew University politics professor compared Israel to Nazi Germany and called the Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked a ‘a filthy neo-Nazi.’ Clearly there are a lot of ‘anti-Semites’ around and most of them appear to be Jewish!

Gideon Falter’s Contempt 4 Academic Freedom

8.             GF’s uses the charge of anti-Semitism to target academics in particular. This is political terrorism. It recalls the riposte of the US Army’s Counsel, Joseph Welch to Joe McCarthy. ‘"Have you no decency, sir?" GF, like McCarthy, is cruel, vindictive and demagogic. Particularly outrageous is the call for universities to dismiss lecturers who defy their dictates.

GF describes as anti-Semitic my statementthat:

‘denying the Holocaust is usually anti-Semitic. It is also, especially in the Arab and underdeveloped world a reaction to Israel’s claim that the Holocaust provides it with its legitimation. In other words there is a functional and instrumental Holocaust denial which isn’t motivated by anti-Semitism.

I attempted to explain the causes of the growth in Holocaust denial and its different forms. GF isn’t interested in why Holocaust denial is increasing but in its exploitation. 30 years ago the only people who denied the Holocaust were neo-Nazis. Today there are millions of people who deny the Holocaust because Israel has weaponised it.  Gilbert Achcar, a Jewish lecturer at the School of African and Oriental Studies asked

‘Are all forms of Holocaust denial the same? Should such denial, when it comes from oppressors not be distinguished from denial in the mouths of the oppressed., as the racism of ruling whites is distinguished from that of subjugated blacks.’ [3]

Presumably GF will be writing to SOAS demanding that Achcar be sacked. What Achcar has written pales in comparison with what Israeli historians have written.

The transference of the Holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality… not only created a false sense of the imminent danger of mass destruction.  It also immensely distorted the image of the Holocaust, dwarfing the magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, trivializing the unique agony of the victims and the survivors and utterly demonizing the Arabs and their leaders.[4] 

Fortunately Professor Zertal is beyond the reach of D. It is ideological book burning.

Charity Commission

9.             GF alleged that I lied when I made a complaint to the Charity Commission. He claimed that:

On a date unknown, the Claimant told the Charity Commission that the CAA was not concerned with fascist groups who were Holocaust deniers.

10.         I said no such thing. What I did saywas more nuanced:

The CAA might be expected to concentrate on the far-Right and holocaust deniers if it was genuinely concerned about anti--Semitism. Instead it focuses almost solely on the Labour Party and to a lesser extent on the Lib Dems (my emphasis)

11.         I followed this up with a longer submission of 10^th February:

the CAA is not a charitable organisation. It is a political group masquerading as a charity, whose primary purpose is to libel and label critics of Israel and Zionism as anti-Semitic. It devotes most of its time to making false and damaging accusations against anyone who is supportive of the Palestinians and opposed to Zionism. Its web site is dominatedby articles and allegations to this effect....

12.         What I was saying was that the D’s concern with the far-Right and Holocaust deniers was minimal not that it had no concerns.

The CAA, Tommy Robinson and the Far-Right   

13.         Not only the leading fascist figure in Britain today, Tommy Robinson, merits just one article on D’s website, and that in passing but that the BNP and Britain First are also only mentioned in passing by CAA but there is nothingon the groups themselves.  The reasonfor this is because they are pro-Israel.

14.         Other far-Right Zionists who the CAA works with are who was Intelligence Officer for the neo-Nazi Britain First, Paul Besser, Sharon Klaff, a Tommy Robinson supporter who describes herself as a national socialist and Amanda Shitrit, both of whom are supporters of Pegida, a  fascist group originating in Germany.

15.         When in 2017 PSC held a demonstration on the 100^th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration it was disrupted by these activists and EDL supporters. In its Report CAA notedgleefully:

‘the marchers did not have the streets to themselves. As they continued through the heart of London, their path was blocked by pro-Israel demonstrators waving Israeli flags and singing Israeli songs, bringing the march to a standstill for a time.’

16.         CAA admitted that ‘Volunteers from our Demonstration and Event Monitoring Unit went into the thick of the protesters to gather evidence.’ CAA worked hand in glove with the counter-demonstrators including Jonathan Hoffman, ex-Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation, who was convicted of public order offences last year. Hoffman works openly works with fascist groups, including the EDL and Tommy Robinson’s supporters.

Mel Gharial (left) and the CAA's Stephen Silverman (right)

Steve Silverman (left with back turned) with Britain First's Paul Besser (with hat)

17.         At the 2019 Al Quds demonstration which CAA tried to ban, supporters of CAA including their Investigations Officer Steven Silverman, were observed by me and others working closely with far-Right Zionists and supporters of Tommy Robinson. Silverman was photographed in the company of Daniel Thomas, Tommy Robinson’s bodyguard who served 2 years in prison for an attempted kidnapping and Mel Gharial, the link person between far-Right Zionists and Robinson’s supporters such as James Goddard, convicted for harassment of Anna Soubry MP seen with another far-right Zionist Martin Hiser.

18.         The CAA, by its own admission, works closely with far-Right Zionist David Collier who denieseven the existence of the Palestinian refugees.

Gideon Falter speaks at Hindu far-Right meeting promising support for their opposition to making caste discrimination unlawful

 Gideon Falter’s links with the Hindu far-right

19.         The CAA has been consistently Islamaphobic since its inception. A Hindu Nationalist meeting called at the House of Commons in 2018 by Bob Blackman MP, a patron of the CAA, was part of a campaignagainst making caste discrimination unlawful under the 2010 Equality Act.[5]There has been strong resistance by Hindu racists to even acknowledging caste discrimination. GF was an invited speaker. He was reported as

‘assuring the meeting that he and his supporters would do all they could to help eradicate the ‘duty’ on the government to make Caste an aspect of race’.[6] Blackman called for people  to learn from the way CAA had got the IHRA passed in the Labour Party.

20.         What Blackman meant was that ‘Hinduphobia’ should be used against opponents of Hindu racism and India’s BJP government in the same way as ‘anti-Semitism’ has been weaponised against opponents of Israeli racism. India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was bannedfrom entering the US until 2014 because of his role in the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat, where 2,000 Muslims died.

Some of Gideon Falter’s Targets

21.         GF tells how he heard Mr Rowan Laxton, who is currently British High Commissioner to Cameroon, shouting ‘fucking Jews’ at a television monitor in a gym. As a result of this false allegation Mr Laxton was convicted at first instance but cleared at Southwark Crown Court.

Malakha Shwaik

22.         On the basis of allegations against Malakha Shwaik, a student at Exeter University. a number of papers and media, both locally and nationally ran with the CAA’s false allegations.

23.         On 20 February 2017 CAA published a demonic article headlined Expel Malaka Shwaik’. All the black arts were used to portray Malaka as the devil incarnate. CAA accused Shwaik of being ‘a terrorist-supporting antisemite’. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support such vile abuse.

24.         To most people Malaka speaking at a demonstration called in protest at a spate of anti-Semitic incidents on campus would demonstrate that D’s allegation were false. Instead D, mocked Exeter students ‘They did naturally what comes to them...’  

25.         D acknowledged that Malaka was cleared after an investigation by the Students’ Guild of Exeter University but despite this dishonestly pretended not to know what the allegations were.

26.         Whilst the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Devon Live accepted the findings of the Guild investigation, apologised and retracted their allegations, CAA refused to do so.

27.         The Guild investigation found that none of Malaka’s alleged statements, had been made in comments to her as part of an interview, were anti-Semitic.

‘Zionism ideology is no different than that of Hitler’s.’ To a Palestinian dispossessed from their land this is a reasonable statement. Historian Jacob Boas wrote that

The Zionist ideal had its roots in the same romantic notions of Volk and soil which had proven so enthralling to German society long before Hitler came to power.[7]

Francis Nicosia, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University, wrote

Zionism was a volkisch Jewish ideology and movement that started from the same philosophical premises as German nationalism…’[8]

Donald Niewyk wrote that the German Zionists were known as‘volkish Jews.’ [9] If CAA is correct all 3 of these historians are anti-Semitic.

28.         Malaka was also alleged to have said:

“If terrorism means protecting and defending my land, I am so proud to be called terrorist. What an honour for the Palestinians!”

The French Resistance were called terrorists by the Nazis. As Lord Carrington, a former Foreign Secretary, observed ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’. This comment, which was made to Malaka, is obviously not anti-Semitic.

29.         If Britain was occupied would it be an act of terrorism to resist the occupation?  Being a racist GF is incapable of understanding the Palestinian perspective.

Rachel Gould

30.         In 2011 Bristol University Professor Rachel Gould wrote Beyond Anti-Semitism’ an article about how the ‘the specter of anti-Semitism’ prevented discussion about the Occupation and how the Holocaust had become ‘an instrument of ideology rather than a means of connecting with the past.’

31.         GF stated that CAA merely made ‘a disciplinary complaint’ to Gould’s employer. In fact they did rather more than that. CAA demandedthat Gould be dismissed.

32.         This is not merely chilling it is Orwellian.

33.         GF took exception to Gould’s statement ‘Claiming the Holocaust as a holy event sanctifies the state of Israel and whitewashes its crimes.’ GF claims that ‘Dr Gould’s language fell foul of the IHRA Definition.’ thus proving that the IHRA does indeed restrict public debate and discussion.

34.         There was nothing that Gould wrote that Israeli historians, such as Tom Segev and Idith Zertal haven’t already said. By making a complaint to her employer CAA was attempting to make academics fearful even to discuss certain subjects.

35.         As a letter from Bindmans made clear, D’s complaint about anti-Semitism fails to distinguish between Holocaust denial and ‘criticism of the impropermanipulation of the Holocaust’ by the Israeli state.

36.         When Kenneth Stern, the principal drafter of the IHRA, testified to Congress about how the IHRA definition had been abused, he referred to specifically to Gould as perhaps the ‘most egregious’ case where

an off-campus group citing the definition called on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor ... for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. The university then conducted the inquiry. And while it ultimately found no basis to discipline the professor, the exercise itself was chilling and McCarthy-like.

37.         The ‘off-campus group’ was the CAA yet despite this GF stated

‘I do not know who the supposed drafter of the EUMCXR Definition is, or whether they did truly made such comment, or whether it related to CAA’s actions or some other use of the EUMCXR Definition or IHRA Definition.

38.         This is one more lie from GF. On 16th July 2019 RPC the CAA’s solicitors wrote asking me for copies of Stern's testimony which I sent.It beggars belief that Falter, who has created his own bastardised version of the IHRA doesn’t know who drafted it or who Stern was referring to.

Jackie Walker – Inventing Holocaust Denial

39.         On 7 February 2017 the CAA published ‘Jackie Walker posts text asking whether Hitler can really be blamed for the Holocaust.’ It speculated that Walker’s post ‘leaves open the possibility that he was justified.’ Walker’s post also left out the possibility that the Sun revolves round the Earth! The implication was clear. Ms Walker is a holocaust denier.

40.         The CAA based the above post on a quotation from Nahum Goldmann’s ‘A Jewish Paradox’. Unknown to GF who is a typically ignorant Zionist, Goldmann was quoting from Israel’s first Prime Minister David Ben Gurion.

“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true G-d promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our G-d is not theirs. There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

41.         The quotation said nothing about Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust still less anything to suggest that the Holocaust was justified. That was a malicious invention.

Highlighted is the paragraph in Nahum Goldman's autobiography Jackie Walker was quoting from

42.         GF claimednot to have seen any evidence that Ben Gurion said the above. That is irrelevant. The fact is that Goldman believed he did.

43.         GF admits to a ‘mistake’ whilst claiming to be ‘careful to be factual.’ This was no mistake. It is evidence of D’s methodology, which is to take what someone says, distort it and put the most malevolent interpretation on it in order to label it ‘anti-Semitic’. It is noteworthy that CAA did not apologise for their ‘mistake’.

44.         Despite remembering that it was ‘corrected within minutes”GF could not recall who wrote the post. CAA clearly suffers from a selective memory.

45.         Ben Gurion, despite presiding over the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was capable of understanding the position of the Arabs. He understood that their opposition to the Israeli state did not stem from anti-Semitism but from the same reasons that indigenous people have always resisted settler-colonialism.

Jack Mendel of Jewish News is another who hasn't apologised to Jackie Walker

a.       GF alleged that the ‘only person publicising it was Ms Walker herself’, thus blaming the victim. The Canadian Zionist Group ‘Never Again’ shared the post directly from D’s website. Not only was there an extensive discussion underneath but there were 17 shares.

b.       Jack Mendel, Political Correspondent for the Jewish News shared the post from someone else, who also took it directly from the CAA’s site. CAA undoubtedly sent it to their thousands of subscribers too.

46.         GF has perfected the art of labelling anything it dislikes as ‘anti-Semitic’.

The Dishonest Use of the IHRA

47.         GF’s allegations of anti-Semitism are based on his own version of the IHRA which deliberately omits everything before the 11 illustrations. This is dishonest.

48.         GF suggests that if I fall foul of any of their examples of anti-Semitism they meet the test in s.3(4) of the Defamation Act. However honesty is indivisible. All the CAA’s allegations against me are based on a dishonest use of the IHRA.

49.         If the hypothetical reasonable person were to be asked ‘what is anti-Semitism’ their response wouldn’t be the IHRA. It would be something like ‘a person who dislikes or hates Jews’.

50.         The IHRA has no legal standing. The introduction to the IHRA describes it as a ‘non-legally binding definition of antisemitism’ CAA always fails to mention this.

51.         At an international conference on the Working Definition of Anti-Semitism in 2011, Simone Veil described the it as:

a practical guide for identifying incidents, collecting data, and supporting the implementation and enforcement of legislation dealing with antisemitism.

52.         At no stage was it suggested that the WDA should be used to label people as anti-Semites. Kenneth Stern, was clear about this:

(I) worry that some Jewish organizations... are doing so in an inappropriate way, which bastardizes what it was intended to do.... (it) was never meant to provide a framework for eviscerating free speech or academic freedom, let alone labeling anyone an antisemite.[10]

53.         GF purports not to have heard of Stern whom he describes as ‘one of the numerous drafters of the predecessor to the IHRA Definition’. This is disingenuous. Stern is universally acknowledged as the person responsible for drafting the IHRA.

54.         GF goes to considerable effort to avoid mentioning Stern’s name.

55.         D’s misuse of the IHRA, which was described by Stern as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’. goes to the question of honesty

56.         I emailed Stern on 21 August 2020 and asked ‘were you just one of many drafters of the IHRA or the principal drafter? His responsewas:

I was the "lead drafter" of the definition. Many others had a hand, but I drafted the bulk of it and coordinated the process.

57.         I also asked if he agreed that the use of the IHRA to target individuals as anti-Semitic was an abuse? Stern referred me to an extract from his book‘The Conflict within the conflict.’

The purpose of the definition, of course, was not to label anyone an antisemite but rather to guide data collectors... For example, what should be counted as an antisemitic hate crime? The definition wanted to avoid asking the data collector to look into the actor’s mind, to see if he/she really hated Jews.

58.         Stern wrote in The Guardian of Trump’s Executive Order that

‘The ‘working definition of antisemitism’ was never intended to silence speech, but that’s what Trump’s executive order accomplished… This order is an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself.’

59.         In testimony to Congress’s Judiciary Committee on November 7 2017 Stern warned that ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus.’ Yet this is what CAA has strived to achieve. 

60.         By excluding the actual 38 word definition and the clause saying it is ‘non legally binding’ CAA has created its own definition of ‘anti-Semitism’.

The CAA naturally attacks the mild Palestine Solidarity Campaign as 'riddled with bigotry'- a term better applied to the CAA

A Question of Honesty

61.         No right-minded person, especially after the Holocaust, wants to be called an anti-Semite. The accusation of anti-Semitism is designed to intimidate people and make them afraid to speak out against Israel’s human rights abuses and ethnic cleansing.

D has dishonestlyignoredthe following qualifications before the 11 illustrations:

a.   “To guide IHRA in its work, the following examples mayserve as illustrations”

b.       “Manifestations might include…”

c.        “Contemporary examples of antisemitism… could, taking into account the overall context, include…”

62.         The illustrations are not part of the definition. As the IHRA Secretariat has confirmed, the IHRA is only the first 38 words.

This is Zionism - Jews should not live with non-Jews

The Defendant’s hypocrisy over racism

63.         If CAA was genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism it would be at the forefront of opposing other forms of racism. Instead CAA has been prominent in attacking Black Lives Matter [BLM] for ‘anti-Semitism’. CAA claimed the credit for a BBC instruction to staff not to wear BLM symbols. It also boasted of‘a considerable withdrawal of support from the movement by mainstream society and celebrities...’

64.         If the CAA were antiracist one would expect it to also criticise the racism that is the everyday experience of Arabs in Israel. Yet CAA has never once criticised Israeli racism. Indeed the very mention of such racism is deemed anti-Semitic. Yet if the treatment that Israeli Arabs experienced was meted out to British Jews, CAA would cry ‘anti-Semitism’.

Jewish homes for Jewish people - what if Britain operated a similar scheme and cities refused to rent to Jews - would that be anti-Semitic - Falter has avoided this question

65.         For example in Afula hundreds of Israeli Jews demonstrated against the sale of a single house to an Arab.[11]In Safed Chief Rabbi, Shmuel Eliyahu, issued an edict that Jews must not let property to Arabs. Dozens of other rabbis supported him. Arabs are barred from hundreds of Jewish only communities in Israel. All of this CAA supports.

The Defendant’s Fear Mongering

66.         In 2015 CAA produced a Report which concluded that 45% of British people hold anti-Semitic views.The Institute of Jewish Policy Research [IJPR] said of D’s claim that the majority of British Jews considered antisemitism today an echo of the 1930s that it “verges into irresponsible territory – it is an incendiary finding..’ It also claimedthat Report was ‘littered with flaws”. Anshel Pfeffer in Ha’aretz was even blunter.

Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in media, academia, professions.... To compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.

67.         The Jewish Chronicle’s Survation pollpoured scorn on D’s ‘findings’ that over half the British Jewish population were thinking of leaving. Some 88% of British Jews stated that they had no intention of emigrating.

The Defendant’s Anti-Muslim Racism

68.         In 2016 CAA brought out a Report‘British Muslims and Anti-Semitism’.[12] It spoke of how:

the gradual build up of understanding and friendship between Britain’s Jews and Muslims has been utterly eclipsed by growing antisemitism amongst British Muslims. On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews...’

69.          This claim is not only a racist generalisation but a deliberate attempt to stir up divisions between Jews and Muslims. As even Dave Rich of the Zionist Community Security Trust observed

This latest poll showed something else that is interesting, and is not specific to Muslims: that people who believe antisemitic things about Jews rarely think of themselves as antisemitic... simply pointing out that somebody has said, written or tweeted something antisemitic is not always a guide to how they consciously feel about Jews.

Such subtlety of analysis is beyond GF. The CAA’s purpose lies in magnifying the level of anti-Semitism as part of the Zionist goal of getting Jews to move to their ‘real home’.[13]

70.         On the cover of the CAA’s Report was a picture of a Black person holding a poster with the slogan ‘Free Gaza – Hitler You Were Right’. I have never seen anything remotely similar on a demonstration. This photograph can only have been intended to infer that such views are the norm amongst Muslims.

71.         Equally racist is the CAA’s ‘Profile of British Muslim Anti-Semitism’. If a graphic of a typical Jewish male had been printed then CAA would cry ‘anti-Semitism’. 4 years later and CAA is still using the same ‘Hitler’ poster:

72.         The CAA is fraudulently manipulating statistical surveys of public opinion, all of which have found that anti-Semitism is greater on the Right than the Left. The IJPR reported:

The political left... appears in these surveys as a more Jewish-friendly, or neutral, segment of the population.... the absence of clear signs of negativity towards Jews on the political left in these surveys appears particularly curious in the current context.

73.         In 2017 even CAA observed that ‘Labour Party supporters are less likely to be antisemitic than other voters’. This ran counter to CAA’s narrative. CAA ‘solved’ this problem in when D’s Antisemitism Barometer 2019found that

‘Antisemitism on the far-left now exceeds antisemitism on the far-right. The leader of the once fiercely anti-racist Labour Party is now the candidate of choice for anti-Jewish racists’.

74.         How was this stunning turnaround achieved? CAA achieved this by the simple device of changing the questions! Now there were 5 new questions, all about Israel, such as ‘Israel and its supporters are a bad influence on our democracy’

75.         D’s attitude to opinion polls is akin to reverse engineering. You start with the result you want and then devise the questions. D’s methodology is fundamentally dishonest.[14]

D Specialises in Targeting Jewish anti-Zionists

76.         It is not impossible for a Jewish person to be anti-Semitic. Historically most Jewish people saw Zionism as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. As Francis Nicosia, wrote:

    ‘whereas today non-Jewish criticism of Zionism or the State of Israel are often dismissed as motivated by a deeper anti-Semitism, in Herzl’s day an opposite non-Jewish reaction, one of support for the Zionist idea, might have resulted in a similar reaction.’^[15]

77.         When Lloyd George’s War Cabinet adopted the Balfour Declaration in 1917 its sole opponent was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu who issued a memotitled ‘on the Anti-Semitismof the Present (British) Government’.

It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a Christian Frenchman are of the same nation.

78.         D finds Jewish ‘anti-Semites’ everywhere. Coincidentally all of them are anti-Zionists. Virtually all prominent anti-Zionist Jews have been targeted. Not one Zionist Jew, despite the overlap between the Zionist Right and far-Right, has been named.

a.            Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi, a senior member of Jewish Voices for Labour [JVL] – CAA has no less than eight articles attackingher as anti-Semitic.

b.           Glyn Secker, the Secretary of JVL has 9 articles attackinghim as anti-Semitic.

c.            Moshe Machover, an Israeli Professor at Kings College has 10 articles devoted to him. After Machover spoke at Queen Mary College CAA wroteto the College

to ascertain why Professor Machover was allowed to speak and lodge a complaint, and have additionally written to King’s College London and the London School of Economics to ascertain his employment status, and request that disciplinary proceedings be instigated.

d.           The lateGerald Kaufman MP was Father of the House of Commons. He was an MP for 47 years until his death in 2017. He was Chair of the Culture Committee and Shadow Foreign Secretary. Although a Zionist Kaufman was appalledat the treatment of the Palestinians. It was this that made him anathema for extreme Zionists like the CAA.

Before Kaufman’s death CAA made a series of vicious attacks on him. On his death the CAA posted Sir Gerald Kaufman MP’s words have left a rotting stain on our institutions. The sheer nastiness and viciousness of this article says everything that needs to be said about CAA. The death of a Jewish MP who had contributed so much to public life in Britain meant nothing to CAA.

e.            Mike Cushman, Secretary of Free Speech on Israel has only one article attacking him. Clearly he must do better.

f.             Jenny Manson, Chair of JVL has four articles devoted to her including one whose title makes it clear what the D’s agenda is: ‘Why the so-called Jewish Voice for Labour is a sham’

79.         If the CAA were genuinely committed to combating anti-Semitism then it would reach out to all Jews including anti-Zionists. Because D’s purpose is fighting anti-Zionism it can’t do that. That is why it tries to silence even Jewish speakers.

Gideon Falter is Vice-Chair of the JNF which only rents or leases land to Jews - which explains the activities of the CAA

Gideon Falter is Vice-Chair of the Ethnic Cleansing Jewish National Fund 

80.         GF is listedas a trustee and Vice Chair of the Jewish National Fund Charitable Trust registration no. 225910 otherwise known as JNF UK.

81.         The JNF was foundedin 1901 to buy and develop land for Zionist settlements. Once purchased no Arabs could work or live on that land again.

82.         The JNF’s land discrimination policies led to the 1929 riots in Palestine. The Report of a Royal Commission into their causes, chaired by Sir John Hope-Simpson found that.

the result of the purchase of land in Palestine by the Jewish National Fund has been that land has been extra-territorialised. 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 JNF, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land....

83.         With the establishment of the Israeli State the JNF was incorporated by the 1953 JNF Law and nearly 2 million dunums of confiscated Arab land was given or sold cheaply to it.

84.         The JNF owns 13% of Israel’s land and controls a further 80%. Israeli Arabs are excluded by the JNF from its land. In 2000 in Ka’adan v Israeli Land Administration the High Court ruledthat a state body could not refuse to sell JNF land to a non-Jew. The JNF’s reaction was to quote a surveythat it had commissioned:

over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens

The JNF’s desire for a Jewish rather than a democratic state was enacted into law with the Jewish Nation State Law. Nothing could be clearer. The JNF is an agency of Apartheid and GF is its willing servant.

85.         The Objectsof JNF UK on 22 May 2010 were:

The relief of poverty, and the furtherance of any other purposes which are charitable according to English law, within the State of Israel as... Benefit persons of Jewish religion, race or origin.

Not only is Trump a Narcissist, a Zionist, a Clown and a Rapist but he is a Sadist too

In this article in The Intercept we learn that one more achievement of the, hopefully, one-term President Trump, is to restart Federal executions. In the United States not only individual states but the Federal Government carries out executions. Except that until now there had not been an execution in 17 years.

The last person was executed in 2003 under George Bush’s administration and before that under Clinton. It was Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994 and his 1996 Effective Death Penalty Act which mandated the disregarding of errors in the courts below, such as the exclusion of Black jurors. Clinton himself had won the Presidency on the back of executing 3 men in his native Arkansas. This is the man whom Tony Blair found so congenial.

The death penalty in civil society is an act of barbarism, designed to instil terror in the poor and working class. It is almost unheard of for rich white men to be executed in America. It and the prison system is the only place where Black men are overrepresented. That is why the death penalty is not just a humanitarian issue but a class issue.  Giving the state the power to deliberately kill people is to give power to the ruling class.

I don’t need to rehearse the arguments about the death penalty, such as the danger of killing someone who is innocent. In the United States, because of poor representation of Black and poor White people, a remarkably large percentage of those convicted of murder are innocent.  This is a testimony to a racist and corrupt police force. There are other arguments, prime amongst which are the fact that the death penalty demeans a civilised society. It reduces society to the level of the murderer. Far from bringing closure to the relatives of the victim, it simply fills them with the desire for vengeance.

Politically the death penalty is racist, a legacy of slavery and lynchings, inhumane in that it involves the slow and deliberate killing of an individual. 

You are 17 times more likely to be executed for killing a White person than a Black person in the United States. In 1987 in McCleskey v. Kemp the Supreme Court voted by 5-to-4 that even solid statistical evidence of race discrimination in the capital justice system did not offend the Constitution. In 1991, after he retired, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., the author of the majority opinion, was asked whether there was any vote he would like to change. “Yes,” he told his biographer. “McCleskey v. Kemp.”  As one of the dissenters in the case, Justice John Paul Stevens, wrote after his retirement in 2010.

“That the murder of Black victims is treated as less culpable than the murder of white victims provides a haunting reminder of once-prevalent Southern lynchings,”

he wrote that yearin The New York Review of Books. Opponents of the death penalty have been deeply critical of the decision, comparing it to the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court’s 1857 ruling that enslaved Black people were property and not citizens.

“McCleskey is the Dred Scott decision of our time,”Anthony G. Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University, said in a 2007 speech.

“It is a declaration that African-American life has no value which white men are bound to respect. It is a decision for which our children’s children will reproach our generation and abhor the legal legacy we leave them.”

The argument that the death penalty is a deterrent is an obvious logical fallacy. I figured that one out as a child. I remember the last hangings, of 2 men in Liverpool and Manchester in 1964. In my childish innocence I wondererd why, if the death penalty was such a great deterrent why, did they ever have to use it?

There is only one exception where the use of the death penalty is justified and that is the case of war crimes against civilians.  Those who order or are responsible for genocide, the mass murder of people for no other reason than who they are or are not, are making political decisions that whole categories of people are no longer fit to live. Those tempted to make such decisions should be in no doubt that they will pay the ultimate price. 

They are not suffering from mental illness, temporary madness, blind love or even greed.  Nor are they psychopaths.  They took decisions for political decisions and should be accountable for those decisions. The military in Burma should be accountable for its crimes against the Rohinga. ISIS for its genocide of the Yazidis. 

It is the Bill Clintons, George Bushs and Tony Blairs of this world who deserve the ultimate penalty.  Why?  Because that is how society makes it clear that war crimes are literally beyond the pale. Hence I would defend the decision of the Nuremberg courts to execute the Nazi defendants. But war crimes apart, the use of the death penalty is indefensible.

In other words it is those who are most in favour of the death penalty who are most deserving of it.

It is no accident that at a time when the death penalty in the United States is decreasing and even the Republican state of Nebraska abolished it (only to reverse its decision) that Trump has decided to reintroduce it on the federal level.

It is also no coincidence that those who describe themselves as ‘pro-life’ i.e. anti-abortion in the United States are the most vociferous supporters of the death penalty.  It is the Christian Bible Belt which uses the death penalty most, led by Texas. We can assume that Amy Coney Bennett would have no compunction in supporting the conservative majority on the Supreme Court in favour of the death penalty.  Despite being a rigid Catholic she voted in favour of the execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, the first person executed on a federal level since 2003. Coney is a good example of the hypocrisy of pro-lifers.

Of course we should not be surprised at the actions of Trump. In 1989 he took out full page ads in 4 New York newspapers calling for the execution of 5 Black teenagers who were convicted of raping and killing a young woman. In 2002  DNA tests proved they were innocent and the actual culprit confessed.  Trump has still refused to apologise to those whose death he demanded. It says something about the United States and the American people that he is in contention for the post of President when he is unfit to be a dog catcher.

Below is an excellent article from The Intercept and links to a series of similar articles.

Tony Greenstein

Less than a week after executing Christopher Vialva in front of his mother and aunt, the DOJ announced it will kill Orlando Hall next.

October 17 2020, 12:00 p.m.

 On the morning she buried her son Christopher Vialva, Lisa Brown arrived at Affordable Burial and Cremation Service, a small funeral home in a strip mall in Killeen, Texas. Her older sister was waiting, along with the funeral director, who wore a suit and a mask. The last time Brown had seen her son, he was lying under a blanket on a gurney in Terre Haute, Indiana, where a federal official had declared his time of death. Now he lay in a casket in a blue pinstripe suit, a prayer shawl, and a kippah he crocheted himself.

“I walked over to the casket and put my hand on his chest,” Brown recalled. It was the first time she had touched her son in more than 20 years. Looking down, she saw something she’d noticed inside the execution chamber. “The whole back of his hand was bruised,” she said. The funeral director said it was probably where they had inserted his IV. “And I said, ‘I know it was.’”

Brown moved her hands to Vialva’s hands and face. She touched him all over, so eagerly, the funeral director “probably thought I was mauling my son,” she chuckled. “I was thankful that he said he was an understanding man.” Brown’s sister did the same thing. “She was hugging on him and she was touching his chest. She kissed him on the forehead.”

A portrait of Stacie and Todd Bagley on the tombstone of Stacie Bagley’s grave in Dyersburg, Tenn., on Sept. 18, 2020 - Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Vialva had been executed one week earlier, on September 24, for the carjacking and murder of two youth ministers from Iowa in 1999. He was 19 years old when he shot Stacie and Todd Bagley on the grounds of Fort Hood, not far from the funeral home. Vialva’s co-defendant, Brandon Bernard, was only 18 at the time. Both were sentenced to death. After the Trump administration restarted federal executions following a 17-year pause, Vialva became the seventh man killed in the Terre Haute death chamber since July.

Even to those paying close attention, the loved ones of the condemned had remained largely invisible in Terre Haute. Although the Bureau of Prisons books travel and accommodations for the families of the victims — and arranges for them to address reporters following the executions — no such help is given to relatives of those facing execution. Until Vialva, none of the condemned had arranged for family to attend.

Brown was disturbed by the lack of communication from prison officials. After confirming that she would be in attendance, they did not speak to her until the day before he was to die. Brown was on an elevator leaving the prison after her last visit with her son when Vialva’s case manager told her that the Crisis Support Team was waiting to brief her. Answering her questions in the lobby, they were courteous, almost overly polite. “They almost seemed nervous. You know, like it was a new thing for them. Which it probably was.”

By the time she woke up on the morning of her son’s death, Brown had done as much as she could to prepare herself. She had even read the filings in a lawsuit over lethal injection, which warned that autopsies from executions carried out using pentobarbital showed clear evidence that the condemned had experienced pulmonary edema: the filling of their lungs with fluid. “For me, knowledge is power,” Brown said. “The more I’m aware of what can go wrong, the more comfortable I am.” Still, it wasn’t easy to read that Vialva might suffer a sensation akin to being waterboarded — “that same panic, suffocating, drowning feeling.”

Ron Kaz of Charleston, S.C., helps organize the Abolitionist Action Committee’s annual protest and hunger strike against the death penalty outside the U.S. Supreme Court on July 1, 2019, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A Well-Oiled Death Machine

Amid a global pandemic, national protests, and the impending presidential election, news of the federal executions had been largely eclipsed since they began this summer. Vialva had been dismayed by the lack of national media attention as the men around him went to their deaths. After the execution of Lezmond Mitchell on August 26, he wrote to a friend that they had mentioned him on the CNN crawl, but that was it. “A man’s life is taken by the government but not even a segment to talk about it,” he said.

“They are a well-oiled death machine now,” he went on. “It was sad watching them walk Mitchell right past me so they could drive him to the death house. Everything was so clinical.”

Vialva’s execution was a painful blow to those who knew and worshipped with him on death row. “I just want everyone to know that Chris was the real deal when it came to his faith and being sorry for all he had done,”one neighbor wrote to his own supporters in late September. As with every round of executions, a wave of anxiety spread across the Special Confinement Unit after Vialva died. “We don’t know when they will pick someone else, but we believe it will be 3-5 more people in the coming months.”

On September 30, the Department of Justice announced the next execution date. Orlando Hall, 49, is scheduled to die on November 19. He would be the second Black man killed in the federal execution chamber this year. In a media release, his lawyers noted that Hall was sentenced to death by an all-white jury, one of myriad ways in which the federal death penalty mirrors the same flaws and inequities of state systems. On October 16, the DOJ announced execution dates for two more people. One is Lisa Montgomery, the only woman on federal death row. The other is Vialva’s co-defendant, Brandon Bernard.

Politicians on both sides have remained almost completely silent about the federal executions. Although it was the Trump administration that was preparing to take his life, Vialva was particularly critical of the Democrats before he died. The party has enshrined opposition to the death penalty as part of its platform, yet ignored the issue during the Democratic National Convention. Presidential candidate Joe Biden, who was instrumental in the expansion of federal death row but now claims to disavow capital punishment, has said nothing about the executions. Neither has vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, despite touting her opposition to the death penalty.

Two days before Vialva’s execution, as the DOJ prepared to kill William LeCroy on September 22, activists with Death Penalty Action gathered for a press conference in front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. Faith leaders were present from different religious denominations. They spoke out against the executions and called out Attorney General Bill Barr, who was scheduled to be honored the next day during the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

The event featured New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat, the sponsor of a bill to abolish the federal death penalty introduced last summer. A parallel bill was brought forward by Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who last year called for an investigation into the federal government’s lethal injection plans.

“We’ve gotta be louder about this,” Espaillat said. He echoed a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center, linking the death penalty to the legacy of slavery and lynching in the United States. Not only are Black people overrepresented on death row today, he said, “defendants convicted of killing white victims are executed at a rate 17 times greater than those convicted of killing Black victims.” Indeed, of the seven men executed in Terre Haute, almost all of their victims were white.

Activist and attorney Ashley Kincaid Eve leads a vigil across from the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., moments before the execution of Christopher Vialva on Sept. 24, 2020. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Later that day, activists under the banner of the Terre Haute Death Penalty Resistance returned to the grassy field next to the Dollar General on Route 63, directly across from the federal penitentiary. Ashley Kincaid Eve, a lawyer and activist from Indianapolis, was leading the protests that week, although she still harbored hope that Vialva’s execution would not go forward. Eve had developed a close friendship with Vialva after he saw her on the news and wrote to thank her for caring enough to protest the executions. “We are here because people decided that we are trash to be thrown in the dumpster,” he said in his first letter. But over the years, 

“I have listened to men sing the praises of their children, mourn the loss of their loved ones, talk about their ambitions while knowing they will not come to fruition, discuss their spiritual journey, and lament the decisions that put them here.”

Eve had previously spearheaded a successful lawsuit against the Indiana State Police, who barred the activists from the area across from the prison during the first round of executions in July. It was one of many ways in which authorities tried to tightly control what the public was able to see. In a nod to the First Amendment, the BOP had designated two spots in the fields along Route 63 for protesters on either side of the issue, but required participants to be transported by government buses hours in advance. No phones or electronic devices would be allowed. In the briefings for press before each execution, BOP spokespersons have repeatedly told reporters that no one has shown up to protest the executions.

While in prison Vialva crocheted a number of stuffed animals and blankets for his mother, Lisa Brown, which she keeps at her home in Killeen, Texas - 16.9.20.

BOP officials have been tight-lipped with journalists. For media witnesses, who have waited long hours on prison grounds to carry out their assignments, there are few explanations or updates. In contrast to death penalty states where prison officials routinely provide detailed descriptions about the last meals of the condemned, the BOP refuses to disclose even such trivial information. But Vialva had told Eve about LeCroy’s last meal. He had asked for KFC but his request had been rejected, she told me. The bones in the chicken presented a security risk, he was told. So, like Vialva, he requested Pizza Hut instead.

Photographs of Lisa Brown, now 61, and her son Christopher Vialva, now 41, when Christopher played football at Ellison High School, photographed at her home in Killeen, Texas, on Sept. 16, 2020. Photo: Matthew Busch for The InterceptAdd caption

Victims on Both Sides

LeCroy’s execution went later than planned. Although it was scheduled for 6 p.m., he was not declared dead until after 9 p.m. LeCroy had been sentenced to death for the brutal killing of a nurse practitioner named Joann Lee Tiesler. Court records showed that LeCroy, who had a history of mental illness, said he had killed her in the mistaken belief that she was a former babysitter who had molested him when he was a child. In a clemency application for LeCroy, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, his attorneys pointed out that LeCroy’s own family had lost his brother, a Georgia state trooper, to murder in 2010. “The pain and sorrow felt by the LeCroy family at potentially losing two of their sons is unimaginable,” they wrote.

Lisa Brown visiting her son Christopher Vialva on federal death row in August 2020. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brown

Tiesler was engaged to be married when she was murdered; her fiancé witnessed LeCroy’s execution, as did her father, Tom Tiesler. In a written statement, Tom Tiesler thanked Trump and Barr for restarting federal executions. LeCroy “died a peaceful death in contrast to the stark horror he imposed on my daughter Joann,” he wrote. 

“He was allowed to live nineteen years longer than Joann, with us taxpayers paying for his food, shelter and medical care. I am unaware that he ever showed any remorse for his evil actions, his life of crime, or the horrific burden he caused Joann’s loved ones.”

LeCroy had prepared a lengthy statement of his own, which he mailed to Sister Barbara Battista, a Catholic nun who served as his spiritual adviser, to read at his execution. But it did not arrive on time. Two days later, on the morning of Vialva’s execution, Battista brought the letter to a press conference outside the Dollar General. It began with a quote from the poet W. H. Auden. “‘Those to whom evil is done do evil in return,’” it read. This was not an excuse, he said.

“Yet it describes many of us human beings in our primitive emotional states as children. It is a fact that some abuse — physical, emotional, and/or sexual — can stunt emotional growth. … We feel that we are what happened to us, that we cannot be that which we desire to become. And we lash out in anger. … We did things that we were unable to take back, harmed another human being, ourselves, and so many who loved us.”

Activists stood behind Battista as she read the letter, holding signs and wearing masks. They were joined by Lisa Brown. In a purple mask, a black headscarf, and a gold Star of David pendant, she came forward after Battista was done, to say a few words about her son. “This is really hard,”she said, her voice breaking. “This is the first venue that I’ve had in which I could say to Todd and Stacie’s family, I am so sorry for your loss. I’ve never been able to tell you that because I was told I could not have access to you.”

Lisa Brown addresses reporters on the morning of her son’s execution. Christopher Vialva was executed on Sept. 24, 2020, at the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind. He was the seventh person executed by the Trump administration. Photo: Liliana Segura/The Intercept

Brown emphasized that her son was remorseful for his crime. But she also shared a story she told me the first time we spoke. Like LeCroy’s family, she had experienced the legal system from both sides of the courtroom. “In 2009, my daughter’s ex-husband attempted to murder her,” she said. 

“He bludgeoned her in the head with a hammer, poured gasoline over her and set her on fire. She survived with second and third degree burns over 80 percent of her body. And she forgave her attacker shortly after it happened. … And she taught me that I had to forgive. And it changed my life from being in a perpetual state of victimhood to a life that I can put that behind me, and see that there is peace in that.”

Later that day, as Brown reported to the parking lot of the Vigo County Sheriff’s Office, Eve returned to the same spot at the Dollar General to set up for the protest against Vialva’s execution. She had said goodbye to Vialva on the phone the night before, hoping to convince him to let her file a last-minute challenge to his execution. But he asked her not to. Everyone on death row had seen what happened to Daniel Lewis Lee, the first man to be executed in Terre Haute this year: Lee was lying on the gurney for four hours before the government took his life, as lawyers fought over his fate. Vialva did not want that to happen to him.

“He’s lost faith in our courts and I don’t blame him,” Eve said. “I’ve lost faith in our justice system. But I haven’t lost faith in humanity.” In the last several weeks, she had heard from people all over the world who were moved by his story.

It was just after 6 p.m. when Eve introduced the final speaker, a woman named Katie, who had traveled to Terre Haute from Minnesota. “I don’t know Chris personally,” Katie said. But she knew Vialva’s younger sister, Audrey. The two had met at a retreat for survivors of domestic violence, where Audrey had shared the story of how her ex-husband tried to kill her. “I am at risk of being a murder victim,” Katie said. Before going to prison for violating a restraining order, her own abuser beat, choked, and sexually assaulted her, she said. He is no longer incarcerated — and he could still kill her one day, she said. But she does not want his life.

Katie pointed to the penitentiary complex behind her. “Do you think that what’s going on behind us right now is going to save my life?”she asked. “Do you think he knows that this is happening and it’s going to deter him from anything he wants to do? It’s not.”

At 6:48 p.m., a BOP spokesperson sent out an email to reporters. “Please report back to the Media Center at this time if you choose to,” he wrote. The execution had been carried out. At the media center, officials handed out a statement from the mother of Todd Bagley. She said she was “hurt and disappointed” by the coverage of the case that morning, which focused on Vialva and how he had changed. Todd and Stacie also touched many lives, she wrote. “We will never know how many people they could have influenced for good if they had been given the chance.” She was heartened by the fact that they were in Heaven, she said. “I know without a doubt we will have a glorious reunion with them one day!”

Lisa Brown with her son Christopher Vialva and his younger sister, Audrey, in 1988. Photo: Courtesy of Lisa Brown

The Ultimate Price

On October 1, a few dozen guests gathered at the Killeen City Cemetery for Vialva’s funeral. His gray casket was covered in white lilies and chrysanthemums. His mother and sister sat in the front row. Eve, who drove down from Indianapolis, sat behind them under the tent.

Vialva’s 11-year-old nephew read a tribute from Vialva’s best friend on death row. Then Vialva’s sister Audrey delivered his eulogy. She shared childhood memories: how they would break the rules and ride their bikes to Walmart; how he would tickle her, play freeze tag with her, and have water balloon fights with her every summer. As he got older, she said, Vialva started spending more time playing video games and listening to music with his friends. But she remembered the time they stayed up all night memorizing the lyrics to the 1994 song “Funkdafied” by Da Brat. “He kept hanging his head off the top bunk asking why it was taking so many playbacks for me to get it,” she said. “His memory was always better than mine.”

Brown read the letter Vialva had written for his funeral. He was no longer the angry 19-year-old he had been, he wrote.

“If you have written me a thousand letters or only just sat and thought about me from time to time, I appreciate it. If you came to visit me once a year or just saw my mother in passing and told her to tell me hello, I appreciate it. … If anyone here feels they could have done more, don’t. You did what you could and that is all that matters. So, thank you for those mercies and for your attendance today.”

The funeral director, Robert Falcon, was moved by the service. It was not the first time he had presided over the burial of a man executed by the state. Often times, he told me, such families “want to arrange something very private, something very, very quiet,” he said.

“I’ve had services where nobody shows up. … There may be a representative from the family, a minister, and the funeral director. And that’s it. And Christopher’s situation was quite unique in that there was about 40 people present. And I’ve never seen that.”

Falcon did not minimize the pain of the victims in cases like Vialva’s. In his decades helping families bury their loved ones, he had seen his share of murder victims. He knew that their families continued to hurt after an execution, he said. But “sometimes we forget that the person has now paid the ultimate price for their crime, and now that family is left to hurt.”

Five days after her son’s funeral, Brown spoke to the mother of Orlando Hall, the next man in line to die in Terre Haute. She learned that he has six children and a number of grandchildren. Hall’s mother is in poor health and was not sure whether she will attend the execution, Brown said. “I told her, I want to be able to help facilitate their peaceful transition through this process,” Brown said. “And she said, ‘Oh thank you, Jesus.’ She says, ‘You just made my day, Miss Lisa.’ That blessed me.”

Brown has not yet spoken to the mother of Brandon Bernard. But she feels called upon to support other families as their loved ones get execution dates. “There are so many more like me,” she said. It is also what her son would have wanted. Over the phone, she read from a card that was waiting in the mail when she returned from Terre Haute. “I know this is hard for you,” he had written. “I would even go so far as to say that it’s harder on you than me. … I just want you to stay strong. I need you to do that for me. If they do take me away, then you can let them know how much it hurts. Maybe one day your love will change things.”

See also

Trump’s Execution Spree Continues at Federal Killing Ground in Indiana - More federal executions have been carried out in 2020 than in the past 57 years combined.

Blood in the Water - Disregarding the Virus and Victims’ Families, Trump Rushes to Execute as Many People as Possible

The Life and Death of Jerry Givens, Virginia’s Executioner-Turned-Abolitionist - After killing 62 people in the death chamber, Givens became an activist against the death penalty. Then Covid-19 took his life.

The Life and Death of Jerry Givens, Virginia’s Executioner-Turned-Abolitionist

Executions Are On Hold, but States Are Still Pushing for Death Amid the Coronavirus Pandemic

The Abolitionists- A Push to Repeal the Death Penalty Gains Ground Across the Western United States

Trump Prepares to Execute Christopher Vialva for a Crime He Committed as a Teenager

The EHRC Report Should Be Rejected along with the Myth of Labour Anti-Semitism

Please click here to sign and share the excellent petition/open letter by the LLA

Anyone who believes that Jeremy Corbyn was suspended on the basis of what he actually said today needs their head examining. It was planned long ago. Back in July there were rumours emanating from Starmer’s office that Corbyn would be suspended when the EHRC Report was released.

The Canary reportedon 22^nd July that

‘According to a few Labour sources this morning, it's "very possible" and "highly likely" that Jeremy Corbyn will have the whip removed very soon, as a result of some of the recommendations in the EHRC report.’ #LabourAntisemitism.

Starmer is using the recommendations of the EHRC in order to purge the Left by removing the presence of a former leader. The question is whether or not the Left responds by declaring war on Sturmer or, like Momentum makes a pathetic plea for unity with those trying to destroy it. Some of thought that when Lansman's cronies were defeated earlier this year by Momentum Forward that its politics might change. 

Unfortunately Momentum Forward has continued where Lansman left off. Yesterday they put out an appalling statement in reaction to Corbyn’s suspension in which they protested that “This suspension risks politicisingLabour's response to antisemitism.” Perhaps someone should tell Scatterbrain that anti-Semitism has been weaponised for over 5 years now. Sturmer wants to destroy the left not unite with it!

McDonnell symbolises the political weakness of the Labour Left and Momentum - he defends Corbyn in the name of the fight against 'antisemitism' - the very thing used to get rid of Corbyn

Who do Momentum think Margaret Hodge, Tom Watson, Lucian Berger et al represent?  The anti-racist left? Momentum pathetically plead that the suspension ‘should be immediately lifted in the interests of party unity.’

Where have these dunderheads been living?  Starmer isn’t interested in party unity.  He’s interested in  driving out the left from the Labour Party. If Momentum don’t recognise this it’s because they are wedded to the same reformist illusions as Lansman.

Momentum’s co-chairs then go on to describe the EHRC Report in completely uncritical terms. Scatterbrain says that:

for many it will make for difficult reading. It concludes that the Labour Party complaints process for antisemitism is inadequate, and expresses concern that the current process does not ensure fair and transparent sanctioning of antisemitism complaints. It also finds unlawful acts to have been committed by former Labour Party agents. 

It is clear that whatever this year’s Momentum elections were about they were not about politics. The EHRC is not an anti-racist body. Its Commissioners are taken from the corporate and banking world with the odd lawyer thrown in. It is an organisation of the liberal Establishment that has been mobilised to drive a wedge into the Labour Party using identity politics to disguise its purpose.

David Isaac - the EHRC's Zionist Chair

It is a body that has said next to nothing about the Windrush scandal, done nothing about the ‘hostile environment’ policy of the Tories, it has said nothing about stop and search, refugees or institutional racism. Why?  Because it is itself an institutionally racist body.

As Simon Woolley, a former Commissioner wrotethe EHRC doesn’t have one single Black or Muslim Commissioner.  It is stuffed with liberal and corporate do gooders. Woolley wrote

‘I’ve been particularly stuck by the huge gulf between the EHRC and the new generation of young Black Lives Matter activists’.

The EHRC is utterly irrelevant to the victims of racism in Britain today. It is a body whose sole purpose is in incorporating and blunting the anti-racist message. It is as much our enemy as Boris Johnson.

Whilst we must oppose Corbyn’s suspension he is the author of his own misfortune. When the EHRC first proposed its investigation it should have been vigorously opposed as an intrusion by a State body into a democratic political party. What has happened is the kind of tactic used in police states. The State has effectively sought to neutralise a radical political party.

Boris Johnson - a genuine racist whom the EHRC is dependent on for its funding

According to a Yougov poll for Hope not Hate, nearly half of Tory Party members oppose having a Muslim Prime Minister and more than two-thirds of Tory members believe the myth that parts of the UK are under Sharia law. 45% think some areas are not safe for non-Muslims. And if that is not enough nearly two-thirds of Tory members believe that Islam is a threat to western civilisation. Yet the EHRC has fought shy of doing anything about an openly racist party led by someone who believes that Black people are 'picanninies' with 'water melon smiles.'

Unlike ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party Islamaphobia in the Tory Party is part of its DNA.  Yet this useless body has kept its mouth shut for fear of losing what’s left of its grant.  Corbyn, whose stupidity is beyond doubt, said nothing when what he should have done was to refuse all co-operation.

When 2 openly Zionist organisations, both of which are effectively extensions of the Israeli state – the Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism– made their complaints to the EHRC, Corbyn should have launched legal action to stop it in its tracks. This is state interference in a legal party and a breach of Article 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights on freedom of association.

Jon Lansman, the former owner of Momentum and his replacement, Andrew Scattergood and Gaya Sriskanthan

‘The suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by the Labour Party leadership is a factional attack on the left that inevitably undermines the fight against anti-semitism and makes a mockery of Keir Starmer’s pledge to unite the Party. Tonight our Party is more divided than ever.’ 

This perfectly reasonable meme was part of the Notice of Investigation which led to the expulsion of Simon Hindmarsh - it made a political point that all the world's worst atrocities were legal - in the eyes of Labour's witchhunters it was 'antisemitic' - go figure

When will the Scatterbrain and Sriskanthan get it into their heads that there has never been a fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party? It has always been an attack on anti-Zionism and the Palestinians. Every Letter of Investigation I have seen accuses people of anti-Semitism based on their comments about Israel, the world’s only apartheid state.

Phil Woolas, Labour MP for Oldham & Saddleworth ran a nakedly anti-Muslim campaign trying to stir up the racist White vote - and Tom Watson 'lost sleep' over the injustice of the High Court removing this racist

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged for the past 5 years was not about anti-Semitism. If it was then isn’t it strange that so many Jewish members have been expelled or suspended. And why should Labour MPs who votedto legalise torture be concerned about anti-Semitism anyway?

We know Starmer’s attitude to racism.  Black Lives Matter is just a moment whose time has gone. He believes in more funding for the racist Metropolitan Police. At a time of Black Lives Matter, stop and search, Windrush etc.  the only form of racism that matters is 'antisemitism'. Jews in Britain are a privileged White community.  To prioritise ‘anti-Semitism’ over racism against Black and Muslim people is itself racist.

Sure there is some antisemitic prejudice if you look hard enough but as the EHRC Report concedes most of it is in social media.  No one has ever died from a tweet but plenty of Black youth have died in Police custody yet Starmer has nothing but praise for the Police.

Growing up as a Jewish person in non-Jewish communities I never had to fear being attacked in the street. I didn't have to hide from the deportation squads. My father wasn't stopped when driving for being Jewish and handcuffed.  Jews in Britain are not oppressed. They are, for the most part, a prosperous middle class community. The days of working class Jewish communities are gone. The Jews of the East End have moved to London's suburbs. My favourite restaurant, Blooms in Whitechapel closed years ago. In short Jews do not experience state racism. They are the kept pets of Britain’s ruling class for whom it is a safe form of anti-racism.

The 'antisemitism' campaign was always about attacking Corbyn. Yet Momentum’s Scattergood/Sriskanthan  believes that a campaign which only arose when Corbyn became leader is somehow being jeopardized by Corbyn’s suspension! Momentum Forward and Lansman’s Momentum Renewal are peas in a pod.

If you want to read a decent statement on the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn then you can do worse than read the Morning Star’s Jeremy Corbyn's suspension is a declaration of war. And you don't win a war by asking someone trying to kill you to hold your hand!

This Saturday Labour Against the Witchhunt is organising a public meeting with Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Tony Greenstein speaking.

The following Saturday there is a similar line-up being organised with Asa Winstanley, Chris Williamson and Tony Greenstein speaking, chaired by Miko Peled, the ‘wrong sort of Israeli Jew’ chairing.

On Friday Brighton & Hove LLA will be organising a local anti-witchhunt meeting. Starmer’s suspension of his predecessor is unprecedented. We should be clear about why we oppose it and where it came from. 

Corbyn himself laid the basis for what has happened.  His opposition to Open Selection at the 2018 Labour Party Conference and then his decision at the 2019 Party Conference to support ‘fast track’ expulsions which we were assured were only for ‘egregious’ cases but which have since been used in EVERY ‘anti-Semitism’ case laid the basis for his own suspension.  Corbyn has literally fashioned his own noose. However just because someone is an idiot or a coward doesn’t mean one should not support them!

The Labour Left Alliance have launched an Open Letter: Reinstate Jeremy Corbyn please sign it.

 Labour Against the Witchhunt has also issued a statement‘Reinstate Jeremy Corbyn’ as well as a modelmotion Reinstate Jeremy Corbyn! Stop the witch-hunt!

The gloves are off and anyone who thinks that by conceding to the lie that there was an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem in Labour that they are then going to  gain a tactical advantage is seriously mistaken.  ‘Anti-Semitism’ was the Right's chosen weapon. It was never about anti-Jewish racism, hence why the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism was foisted upon the Labour Party.

In fact I am incorrect. It was Corbyn himself at the end of 2016 who unilaterally adopted the 38 word IHRA. Having spent his whole political life supporting the Palestinians, having been called an 'antisemite' countless times, he voluntarily adopted a definition whose only purpose was to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and define him as an anti-Semite.

Anti-Semitism was chosen as the method of attack precisely because it was not a form of racism but a means of denigrating opposition to the Israeli state and giving the Right some moral stature.  It fitted in well to the Left's addiction to Identity Politics rather than Class Politics. Those like Momentum’s Scatterbrain and the rest of the NCG who think they can gain Corbyn’s reinstatement on the basis of adhering to the EHRC Report are fooling themselves and no one else.

Free Speech has been Abolished By Sturmer's New General Secretary David Evans

As part of the new democratic order David Evans, Labour's General Secretary has issued another warning to local parties not to discuss the EHRC Report. It is clear that far from being a democratic party, the Labour Party has now become a tyranny.  It is of prime importance to democrats in the party that Evans is defied and told where to go.

It is crucial that local parties defy Evans and go ahead and condemn the report and Sturmer with it.  That is what Momentum should be calling for not unity with the devil.

The EHRC Report– A Brief Summation

I spent two weeks compiling a 2 part summary of the 851 page Leaked Labour Report. The EHRC Report is an insubstantial tract. At 130 pages is remarkable for the fact that it is shallow and superficial, lacking in substance. Its main focus is the alleged failure of Labour’s disciplinary and complaints processes. Whereas it took me 3 days to read Labour’s Leaked Report on Anti-Semitism the EHRC Report was a breeze. There is nothing in it apart from procedure. The EHRC has produced a mouse and yet Starmer willed it on as a means of attacking the Left.  Its failures are manifest to anyone who isn’t cerebrally challenged.  Below are some points:

1.           Quite amazingly for a report on anti-Semitism it doesn’t once try to define what it means by anti-Semitism. The EHRC know better than to define anti-Semitism concretely as hostility to or prejudice or discrimination against Jews.  Instead they rely on things that are 'offensive' to Jews, regardless of whether they are true.  It is an old trick.

Avi Gabbay, former leader of the almost extinct racist Israeli Labour Party of which the JLM is the British wing

2.           There is no attempt to ask who the 2 complainants, the Jewish Labour Movement and the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism actually are. The fact that the JLM describes itself as the ‘sister party’ of the almost extinct Israeli Labour Party is not even mentioned. Ha'aretz, Israel’s liberal daily  describesits former leader Avi Gabbay as a Likudnik. It is a party that supported Netanyahu's attempt to deport Israel's 40,000 Black African refugees because, in Netanyahu's words, they threatened Israel's racial 'Jewish identity.' 

This delightful figure illustrated the CAA's 'Muslims and Antisemitism' Report

3.           The CAA is a virulently Islamaphobic organisation, racist to its root, which works with Zionist supporters of Tommy Robinson. In other words the complainants to the EHRC are themselves deeply racist. It published a coloured graphic of the typical Muslim male as part of an attack on Muslims. If a similar graphic on Jews had been produced we would have never heard the end of it.

The Jewish Labour Movement's 'sister party' in Israel supported Netanyahu's racist policy of deporting Black refugees because they are neither Jewish nor White - the JLM has never once condemned their  racist sisters

5.           The Report singles out two people in particular, Ken Livingstone, who pioneered anti-racism in local government and Pam Bromley, a councillor in Rossendale. The attack on Livingstone is particularly egregious but what the Report doesn’t mention is that it also singled out Chris Williamson.  However Chris immediately instructed solicitors and the EHRC backed off.  You won’t read that in the Report!

6.           There was no mention of the fact, and it is a fact, that the anti-Semitism campaign began as a completely confected campaign led by that well known opponent of racism, the Daily Mail, which allegedthat Corbyn had links with Holocaust deniers Paul Eisen. Not once does it ask why the racist tabloids suddenly became so concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’.  In short the Report completely decontextualises the allegations whilst insinuating that anyone denying that there was an anti-Semitism problem was themselves anti-Semitic!  This is called ‘denialism’ which is the logic of the Salem Witchhunt when women and men were hanged for witchcraft in Massachusetts. As Elizabeth Purdy wrote:

Those who publicly questioned the guilt of a defendant were likely to be accused of witchcraft themselves.

7.           The logic of ‘denialism’ is the ‘logic’ of the 17th Century witch-hunters yet Corbyn in his idiocy gave his backing to this nonsense. The idea that denying a crime is to admit it is the stuff of Kafka.

8.           The Report talks of ‘zero tolerance’ of anti-Semitism yet the EHRC has indulged the racism of the Tory Party without even the slightest comment. It has done nothing about the hostile environment policy or Windrush where Black British citizens were illegally deported. The idea that the EHRC is an anti-racist body is for the birds.

9.           Strangely enough for a report concerned with procedural irregularities it has nothing to say about Labour’s fast track expulsions where the accused are denied a hearing.

10.      There is repeated talk of ‘Jewish community stakeholders’. It never once explains who these might be but we can assume it means the Trump Tory supporting Board of Deputies.  A body which cheered onthe Israeli army as they mowed down unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza. They blamed the death of medics and children on the victims and they then profess to be concerned about anti-Semitism.

11.      Nearly all their examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ consist of social media posts. This simply trivializes anti-Semitism. Racism is about what people do not what they post on Twitter. Noone has ever died from a tweet but plenty have died from Israeli bullets.

12.      Despite saying that they took evidence from Jewish Voices for Labour there is no evidence of this.  The EHRC comprehensively disregarded the voice of anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews.

13.      I wrote to the EHRC’s Investigation repeatedly offering to give evidence.  They were not interested.  When I pointed out their disinterest in Conservative Party racism they responded.

With reference to your submission of 13 July 2019 and your specific observation relating to the Conservative Party, we can confirm that we are actively considering what, if any, action we may take in relation to the handling of Islamophobia and other discrimination within the Conservative Party. Further, we have made the following statementin relation to Windrush and the Government’s hostile environment policies.

14.       And that was it. After having ‘actively considered’ my submissions they decided to do absolutely nothing!

15.      Clearly there were some Jews who were more important than others.  I told them that as the first Jewish person to be expelled I might have a different perspective on the fake anti-Semitism affair.  They made it clear that they weren’t interested.

15.      The EHRC said they launched their ‘investigation’ because of ‘serious public concern about allegations of anti-Semitism’. It is strange that serious public concern about Police stop and search, the Windrush deportations and other acts of state racism merited no such concern. In fact there was no public concern about Labour anti-Semitism.  It was a narrative of the Tory press and the Labour right-wing.

16.      Its main obsession was ‘political interference in the handling of anti-Semitism complaints.’ (p.7) Perhaps that was because the complaints themselves were politically motivated.

17.      It talks of ‘anti-Semitic conduct’ but never mentions what that conduct is.  Everything is inferred.

18.      It mentions (p.17) that ‘over 20 elected representatives (including MPs, peers and councillors) resigned from the Party in 2018 and 2019 citing a failure to tackle anti-Semitism in their reasons.’ It was of course no coincidence that these people were all on the anti-Corbyn wing of the Labour Party and people who had never objected to for example New Labour’s hostile environment policy towards ‘illegal’ immigrants i.e. refugees.

19.      The Report quotes uncritically the Community Security Trust reports on anti-Semitic incidents but these are not value free. The CST is another pro-Zionist organisation. 

20.      The legal basis of its inquiry, that the Labour Party was an association under the Equality Act 2010 omits the fact that it is a political party and allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were weaponised, e.g. the allegations at Oxford University which had been made by Alex Chalmers, a former intern of the Israel Lobby organisation BICOM. See How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis. By definition a political party is not a sports club or other voluntary association. The EHRC is an organ of the state. It had no right to interfere and in essence take sides in a political dispute inside the Labour Party. It was Corbyn and Formby’s stupidity which prevented them telling the EHRC to mind their own business. Corbyn has literally dug his own grave.

21.      The Report suggests as an example of indirect discrimination that a party that holds its meetings on the Sabbath is discriminating against Jewish members.  Bollocks.  The Labour Party is a secular not a religious body. It is under no obligation to take into account superstitious religious beliefs. The only time that this could possibly be relevant is if the Labour Party held meetings on Saturday but had a rule stipulating that it should not hold meetings on Fridays or Sundays.  Secularism is perfectly legal. (p.22)

22.      The Report hangs its argument on the basis that councillors, MPs and NEC members are ‘agents’ of the party.  This is extremely dubious.  They are elected representatives not agents. A political party is a free association of its members based on shared beliefs.  It is no business of the State to interfere in its running as long as it abides by its own constitution.

23.      Quite outrageously the Report describes ‘allegations that complaints of anti-Semitism are fake or smears.’ as themselves anti-Semitic (p. 28) yet this is a regular practice of Zionists who even call Jews who are not Zionists ‘self haters’ ‘traitors’ ‘kapos’ etc. It is a fact that Zionists, Jewish or other do, as a regular practice allege anti-Semitism where there is none.  The CAA, one of the complainants is a regular practitioner in making false allegations of anti-Semitism. It particularly targets Jews. Even the person who drafted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, Kenneth Stern gave testimonyto the US Congress about the ‘egregious’ behaviour of the CAA in targeting a University Professor Rachel Gould as anti-Semitic for having written an article on the use of the holocaust to protect Israel. He also wrotean article ‘I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it’. The Report deliberately ignored the context which is that racist regimes allege racism against their opponents as a matter of course.

24.      To give but one example in Israel there are hundreds of Jewish only communities.  In one city Afula, when houses under construction were due to be sold to Arabs hundreds of Jews took to the streets in protest. But if you allege Israel is a racist state then this is anti-Semitic.  This Report is a racist report and it is a disgrace that Momentum refuses to call it out for what it is.

25.      The Report makes the insinuation that Ken Livingstone’s defence of Naz Shah MP’s meme about relocating Israel inside the United States was anti-Semitic and that his references to the Israel Lobby were anti-Semitic. Perhaps these dishonest scribes would care to look at Wikipedia’s entry Israel lobby in the United States. (p.29) AIPAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee openly proclaims it is a lobby group. What the EHRC is saying is that the truth is now anti-Semitic.  This is anti-Semitic.

26.      Absurdly it described Pam Bromley’s comment ‘looks like fake accusations of anti-Semitism to undermine Labour aren’t working, so let’s have Chris Williamson reinstated.’ That is a statement of fact but even facts can be anti-Semitic apparently!

27.      Ken Livingstone’s comments about Nazi support for the Zionists in Germany, which is a fact documented by Zionist historians such as David Cesarani and Francis Nicosia ‘caused shock and anger among Jewish Labour Party members.’  Well it didn’t shock Steven Kapos, a survivor of the Hungarian holocaust who I met because he understood the treacherous role of the Zionist organisation in Hungary.  Even the Jerusalem District Court in 1955 found that Kasztner had collaborated with the Nazis.  No doubt this would cause great shock too for these naïve racist Zionists.  So what?  The truth often offends.  (p.30)

28.      Even more ludicrously ‘Pam Bromley’s conduct… contributed to a hostile environment in the Labour Party for Jewish and non Jewish members.’ Well in that case everyone on the Right was offended.  How is that anti-Semitic? (p.30)

29.      Among the examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ were people who:

·       Compared Israelis to Hitler or the Nazis

·       Described a ‘witchhunt’ in the Labour Party or said that complaints had been manufactured by the ‘Israel lobby’. (why the scare quotes?)

·       Blamed Jewish people for the ‘anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour Party’ (clearly the Report couldn’t distinguish between Jews and Zionists, which is itself anti-Semitic)

·       Blamed Jewish people generally for the actions of the State of Israel. (where could people have got this idea?  Could it be that Israel describes itself as a Jewish state?)

·       Used ‘zio’ as an anti-Semitic term. ‘zio’ is short for ‘Zionist’. If you think all Zionists are Jews then you are anti-Semitic.

·       Accused British Jews of greater loyalty to Israel than Britain. I have been called a traitor many times by Zionists who demand that Jews are loyal to Israel first and foremost.  The Israeli Absorption Ministry even conducted a poll in the United States to find out what Jews would do if there was a crisis in relations between the USA and Israel!  Now why would that be?! (p.31)

30.      The Report makes great play of ‘interference’ by the Leader of the Opposition’s office in disciplinary matters.  Why should it not have interfered given the racist bias of the Disputes Team under John Stolliday and Sam Matthews? (p.45)

31.      Because of legal action the Report was forced to concede that the only unlawful interference in disciplinary processes was  Tom Watson’s petition calling for Chris Williamson’s resuspension.  Jennie Formby and Corbyn disgracefully acceded to this pressure. Corbyn has been hoist by his own petard.

32.      Even if LOTO should not have interfered in the disciplinary process what business is it of the EHRC?

33.      A good example of the circular logic of the geniuses who wrote the report was the statement that ‘Jewish members are proportionately more likely than non-Jewish members to make a complaint about anti-Semitism.’ Err yes!! Consequently the practice of interference in anti-Semitism complaints put Jewish members at a particular disadvantage compared to non-Jewish members.  This is absolute nonsense.  Obviously more Jews than non-Jews make complaints about anti-Semitism. It is an absurd comparison. How can it put Jews at a particular disadvantage when non-Jews don't complain of anti-Semitism? (p.55) There is no comparator. The authors of the report don't even understand the concept of indirect discrimination!

34.      The Report also mentions that I was suspended yet given no details of the allegations against me, despite requesting information on several occasions. It reports that I successfully obtained an injunction. However what the report does not do is mention that I am Jewish (it didn’t mention me by name).

35.      Even more relevant is the fact that the Labour Party expelled and suspended Jewish members regularly.  What has this to do with anti-Semitism?  The Report doesn’t mention this because it would have been inconvenient to its narrative. (p.63)

36.      Some of the Report’s observations such as that the NEC and NCC do not give reasons for their decisions are true, but what business is it of the EHRC?

37.      The Report says that Jennie Formby suggests that ‘these systemic issues affected all complaints of all kinds, not just anti-Semitism complaints’ and it then comments that ‘If correct, this means that an even wider pool of members was treated very poorly by their political party.’ Possibly true but what business is it of the EHRC?  Have they investigated how the Tories treat their members? (p. 73)

38.      The Report notes that the Labour Party ‘has recently introduced reforms that improve the ability of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the NCC to decide cases and to expel members when appropriate.’ What they fail to mention is the inherent unfairness of people being expelled on the whim of a staff member without even a hearing.

39.      The Report refers to the ‘outcry from CAA, Board of Deputies and Labour MPs and peers’ when Chris Williamson was  reinstated.  Yet strangely there is no censure by the EHRC for this interference with the disciplinary process. Strange that!

40.      Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ was that ‘a member shared a meme in March 2018, which expressed that ‘an anti-Semite is now someone Jews hate.’ Here you have stupidity mixed with malevolence. The person who coined this meme was Hajo Meyer, an anti-Zionist survivor of the Auschwitz death camp. His actual quote was that ‘it used to be the case that an anti-Semite was someone who hated Jews, now it’s someone who the Jews hate’. An amusing observation. Jeremy Corbyn chaired a meeting at the House of Commons with Hajo in 2010  and when the Zionists publicised it the idiot apologised.  Is it any wonder that Corbyn lost credibility?  The more you apologise the more they go for you.  Why the hell did Corbyn apologise for chairing a meeting addressed by a holocaust survivor? The BBC reported that Labour's Jeremy Corbyn apologised for appearing on platforms with people whose views he "completely rejects". (p.86) 

41.      There are repeated complaints that ‘anti-Semitism’ was not given the same priority that sexual harassment allegations were. (p.93) Perhaps that was because sexual harassment claims tend to be genuine!

42.      Apparently the Labour Party committed unlawful harassment because its conduct ‘included suggesting that complaints of anti-Semitism were fake or smears’.  But I was accused of anti-Semitism and I’m Jewish.  Who am I harassing by denying this nonsense?  Utterly absurd.

43.      It was suggested that Ken Livingstone’s comments that Zionist Jews were acting on behalf of a foreign power were ‘clearly anti-Semitic’. But the definition of a Zionist is that their loyalty is to Israel.  How is that anti-Semitic? (p. 106)

44.      The moron(s) who wrote this Report therefore find ‘agent Ken Livingstone’ caused the Labour Party to indulge in harassment. It is no wonder that Keir Sturmer bought off Labour’s racist former staff.

45.      The Report found that the comments by Naz Shah ‘went beyond legitimate criticism of the Israeli government’ and that Ken Livingstone’s support for these comments  and his suggestion that scrutiny of them was part of a smear campaign are not protected by Article 10 of the ECHR.  Absolute rubbish and unsurprisingly the Report doesn’t explain why this is so. ( p. 108) The EHRC is simply wrong on this.  Of course Ken's comments are protected, despite the Zionists wishing to clamp down on free speech as they do in Israel.

46.      Likewise Pam Bromley’s comment that a ‘huge sigh of relief’ went up when an Israeli spacecraft crashed on the moon. This is garbage. If someone shouted ‘hurray’ when the Chinese spacecraft crashed would that also be racist?

47.      The fools who wrote this hatchet job concluded that ‘Pam Bromley’s comments were unwanted conduct related to Jewish ethnicity.’ Except that she didn’t mention Jews!  That was the anti-Semitic inference of the authors of this report. (110)

48.      The Report finds that the unwanted conduct it identified was contrary to the Equality Act but equally breached the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Again that proves that its conclusions are junk.

The only fitting place for this shoddy report is in a wastepaper basket.  Indeed that would be a good place to deposit Labour’s racist leader, Sir Keir Sturmer.

Tony Greenstein

Israel’s Bar Ilan University warns Jewish students they will have to share dorms with Palestinian students

There really is little need to comment on this headlinebecause it speaks for itself. It is based on a reportin Hebrew. It used to be the case that Bar Ilan, a religious university in Tel Aviv used to have separate dorms for Arab and Jewish students. However after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a student of Bar Ilan, Yigal Amir, there had to be some changes.

Jewish students in most Israeli universities are given the option of whether or not to share their accommodation with Palestinian Israeli students.  After all isn’t that what a Jewish State is about? 

When Keir Starmer told the Times of Israel

‘I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification.”

what he meant was that he supported segregation and Jewish supremacy, because that is what Zionism means. And if you said that the Zionist idea of separating Jews and Palestinians was racist, I’m sure that Starmer would say that you were being ‘anti-Semitic’. Because an anti-Semite these days is now being redefined as an anti-racist.  Bizarre isn’t it whilst actual racists like Steve Bannon and Richard Spencer are ‘supporters of the Jewish people’ and not anti-Semitic. That is what is mean by newspeak.

Is it racist to allow and permit segregation in education?  Perish the thought. This is self-determination!

In another example of what a Jewish state means I have copied 3 stories below about the reign of terror against Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, especially during the olive growing season.

The articlebelow describes the reign of terror that the illegal settlement of Yizhar wages against neighbouring Palestinian villages.  Not only does the Israeli army not protect the Palestinians but it actively protects the attackers and fires tear gas grenades into the homes of those under attack.

This aiding and abetting Israeli settler terrorists is exactly what used to happen when Jews in Russia came under attack from pogromists.  The Russian police only intervened when the Jews began to fight back against the anti-Semites.  So it is with Israel today.  Yet this is the situation that the execrable Starmer, fully backed by the pathetic Momentum and the even more pathetic John McDonnell supports when they classify anti-Zionism as ‘anti-Semitism’. Because that is what the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign and now the EHRC Report is about.

The second article is a Ha'aretz leading article on the wave of terror directed at Palestinian farmers. It excoriates the Israeli Police for deliberately turning a blind eye to settler violence. Just 9% of cases result in any form of police prosecution or action.

The third articledescribes the attack on an elderly Palestinian farmer, aged 73.  He had a large rock thrown at his head by 4 Jewish terrorists.  The Zionist Police of course did nothing.  This is the state of affairs in the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’.

Tony Greenstein

At the Foothills of an Israeli Settlement, Palestinians Are Used to Weekends of Terror

Five people wounded – that was the bloody toll of two assaults last weekend by settlers from Yitzhar and its neighboring outposts on Palestinian villagers in the West Bank. Guess which of the sides gets army protection

Mohammed Zaben and his father Imad, in a neck brace. “In the name of God, don’t throw stones at us,” they pleaded with the settlers, who kept up their barrage.

Published on 30.10.2020

The last row of houses in the village of Asira al-Qibliya, near Nablus in the West Bank, looks like a sort of fortress. Eight residential dwellings whose windows are protected with bars, courtesy of a European aid organization, their yards covered with a smattering of stones that have been thrown at them, encompassed by a fence, doors shuttered. The violent mountaintop settlement of Yitzhar next door has the people of this outlying region – not to say war zone – cringing with terror. The mobile homes of Shalhevet, one of nine unauthorized outposts that Yitzhar has spawned, are visible from the yard of the last house in Asira, looming ominously on a hilltop above the rest of the Palestinian village.

Across the way is an Israel Defense Forces base whose soldiers almost always show up together with the settler-ruffians, protecting them and sometimes also joining in the attacks on their Palestinian victims, firing live rounds into the air as well as stun grenades and tear gas. Next to Shalhevet’s trailers stands a round green structure. When there’s a light on inside, villagers say, they’re calm, but when it’s dark it’s a sign that yet another “price tag” action – some sort of retaliatory act – can be expected. Hence their name for the structure: the “price tag building.”

Occupants of that last row of homes in Asira know the drill: gather the children into one room, especially on weekends – “Friday-Saturday” is synonymous here with settler assaults – and turn up the volume of the television when they approach, so the frightened children won’t hear the barrage of stones the settlers let loose at their homes or the sounds of the soldiers’ stun grenades and shooting. Every night of the week a man from a different family stays awake to guard and to warn others if something is happening. That’s been the routine for almost 20 years. Last weekend, too.

Abd al-Basath Ahmed is a hardscrabble construction worker of 50 and the father of seven children, one of them with special needs. Last Saturday, he was at home with his wife Maisa and the family while the neighbors, some of them his relatives, went out to harvest olives in their groves nearby. Ahmed’s house and that of one of his sons are the last two houses in Asira; a simple metal fence separates them from a valley below and the hill on the other side where Yitzhar is perched. The fence was torn this week, following the latest attack by the settlers.

At about 3:30 P.M. on Saturday, he told us when we visited this week, Ahmed’s nephew, who lives in the house behind his, called to say that he could see settlers descending from the mountain. Ahmed immediately looked outside. This time they were coming from the northeast, from the direction of Shalhevet. Ahmed spotted a group of 18 to 20 settler men, dressed in white – they always wear white, in honor of the Sabbath – marching down the slope of the hill toward the village. When they drew closer they put on masks, as they always do. They carried stones. Big ones, some of them folded up in their shirts. Ahmed’s impression was that they were an organized group, all apparently in their 20s.

Quickly he hustled the children and grandchildren into his house and went up to the roof with Maisa to see what lay in store. The raiders were busy breaching the metal fence outside his yard. Ahmed decided to go down to try to stop them, a stick in his hand. His fear was that the group would break into his house, and he was the only adult male left in the area; all the others were helping in the olive harvest.

The settlers tore open the fence, and one of them entered the yard. A hail of stones was unleashed by the others. Ahmed had nowhere to escape and no way of protecting himself. One stone struck his skull, another his left shoulder and a third slammed into his thigh, smashing the mobile phone in his pocket. The settlers didn’t utter a word, he recalled, only threw stones.

Israel's Illegitimate 'Demographic Balance'

Abd al-Basath Ahmed next to the breached fence in Asira al-Qibliya.Credit: Alex Levac

Ahmed is wearing stained work clothes, his face etched with weariness, as he talks to us. As blood streamed from his head, he says, the settlers retreated: They had had enough. But by then, the army had arrived from the hill across the way, from the all-seeing base overlooking the entire area. As usual, the mission of the soldiers, six in number this time, was to protect the assailants. They aimed stun grenades at Ahmed’s house, while acting as a buffer between it and the settlers and firing live ammunition in the air. The empty casings remained in his yard. Material evidence.

The soldiers were relatively restrained this time, Ahmed relates: Breaking with custom, they didn’t fire tear gas into the house. He terms this a “gesture.” He has a permanent kit to be used against tear gas, at home: rags soaked in a solution of baking soda. It helps, he says. They also have a fire extinguisher, for any contingency.

The settlers actually renewed their stone throwing when the soldiers showed up. Hiding behind the troops, they apparently felt safer, more protected. The soldiers didn’t lift a finger to stop them – they never do, Ahmed says. They ordered him to hide until a Palestinian ambulance arrived to take him for treatment. He sat in a corner of the yard, blood oozing from his head; Maisa tried to stanch the bleeding with a piece of cloth. In the meantime, seven more settlers showed up to join their friends. Ahmed waited an hour for the ambulance to arrive; the soldiers made no effort to assist or evacuate him.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Office issued the following response on Wednesday to Haaretz:

“Last Saturday, there was friction between Israelis and Palestinians in the village of Asira al-Qibliya, which involved the throwing of stones by both sides. An IDF force was dispatched to the scene to serve as a barrier between those disturbing the peace, in order to put an end to the incident, among other ways by means of crowd dispersal. As opposed to what has been claimed, the stun grenades that were in use were not directed at the house in the village.”

Ahmed was taken to Rafadiya Hospital in Nablus, where he received six stitches in his head and then was released.

Asira al-Qibliya.Credit: Alex Levac

A few months ago, when the Israeli Civil Administration removed a mobile home, deemed illegal in Yitzhar, the settlers’ attacks intensified, taking place daily over the course of a week. That was the outlet for their anger.

This situation has continued unabated since 2002. In some cases the settlers raid the village at night and damage residents’ cars – as they did in 2012, setting some vehicles on fire – but for the most part they attack the houses at the edge of the village stones, and don’t dare enter it.

In April, Ahmed’s brother planted a fig tree in the area between his house and the hill across the valley. Yitzhar’s security officer arrived immediately and ordered him to uproot the tree. He refused. The next morning he found the tree had been set on fire.

Two years ago, the same brother tried to file a complaint with the police after settlers torched his taxi. Following a humiliating wait of hours, he was told by the police that he hadn’t paid an old traffic ticket, and that unless he did so they would not accept his complaint. Since then, the family has stopped making complaints to the police about the attacks on them.

In some instances the settlers arrive only to provoke or frighten the villagers. They take up positions next to the metal fence near the houses and dance and sing. One way or another, there isn’t a quiet Saturday.

“And now another Shabbat is coming,” Ahmed told us with a bitter smile before we parted.

One of Imad Zaben's sons, who asked his name not be used, his hand in a cast. Credit: Alex Levac

But after a few uneventful hours, at around 12:30, stones began to rain down on them from above. Zaben’s son, Mohammed, 32, suffered a skull fracture when he was struck by a stone. Another son, 28 (who asked that his name not be used), suffered a broken arm; a stone fractured the arm of Zaben’s brother, Bashir, 64; and his nephew, Ahmed, 34, Bashir’s son, was also struck in the arm. All told, four members of one family were injured. Zaben, who was careful and very worried because of his back surgery, managed to emerge unscathed; his sons protected him bodily.

The rain of stones surprised them: Because the settlers throwing them were situated above them, just meters away, on the hill, initially, the Zaben family didn’t see them.

“In the name of God, don’t throw stones at us,” they pleaded with the settlers, who didn’t utter a word but kept up their barrage – as in Asira the following day.

Despite his head injury Mohammed rode off on the horse he had brought to the site, and the settlers started to flee, though not before throwing a few more stones. Other members of the family quickly got into their cars and hurried home. Mohammed was taken by ambulance to Rafadiya Hospital and from there was transferred to the intensive care unit in Istishari Hospital in Ramallah. He was discharged after three days.

The Zaben family won’t be returning to their grove this harvest season.

Mohammed Zaben and his father Imad, in a neck brace. “In the name of God, don’t throw stones at us,” they pleaded with the settlers, who kept up their barrage.

Editorial |

Settler Violence Against Palestinian Farmers Only Grows During Harvest Time

Destroyed olive tree in the village of Mreir, West Bank, January 24, 2019.Credit: Alex Levac

Not even the coronavirus pandemic, which has derailed the entire world, managed to stop the seasonal outbreak of settler violence during the olive harvest, or the odor of collaboration by Israeli law enforcement agencies that always accompanies it.

On the contrary, according to one of the leaders of the Palestinian activist organization Faz3a, which sends volunteers to the orchards to help Palestinian farmers, this year has seen a rise in the number of violent incidents and in the level of settler aggression. The Israeli organization Yesh Din: Volunteers for Human Rights has documented 25 incidents related to the harvest since the harvest season began. These range from stealing olives to burning or chopping down trees to violent assaults on the harvesters. To date, more than 400 trees have been cut down and around 50 have been torched.

The economic fallout from the pandemic has not spared the occupied territories. As a result, the olive harvest has become a primary source of income for many families. The lawless settlers who steal the olives and uproot the trees aren’t only vandalizing Palestinian property; they are also sabotaging the livelihoods of entire families at a very difficult time.

Ohad Hemo of Channel 12 Television News reported on settler violence during the harvest last week. A moment before he and his crew were attacked by criminals from the settlements, he filmed a masked settler telling a landowner from the Palestinian village of Burqa, “God gave us this land. I’m the son of Allah and you are his slave.” This ugly arrogance captures perfectly the sick mood that has been spreading through the settlements. The Jews are the lords of the land and the Palestinians are slaves, even when the Palestinians are the legal owners of that land.

Israeli Police Investigating Uprooting of Olive Trees in West Bank Village

Palestinian Farmers Lose Hundreds of Olive, Fig Trees to West Bank Vandals

Hundreds of Trees Destroyed in West Bank Palestinian Villages, Israeli Rights Groups Report

But the settlers would not be so successful in their oppression and theft were it not for the inaction of Israeli law enforcement agencies, which do almost nothing to bring criminals from the hilltop outposts to justice. According to Yesh Din’s figures, only nine percent of investigations into cases in which Israelis assaulted Palestinians or damaged their property in the West Bank from 2005 to 2019 ended in charges being filed against the suspects. Fully 82 percent of these cases were closed for reasons that attest to the police’s failure to investigate. And when it comes to investigations into vandalizing trees, the percentage of cases in which anyone is indicted is even lower.

These pogroms are taking place in the name of Israel as a whole, and Israel as a whole bears responsibility for them. The law enforcement agencies, and especially the Judea and Samaria District police, treat Palestinian complainants with abysmal contempt and fail to prosecute violent settlers even when their actions and their identities have been fully documented. In effect, the state is telling the lawbreakers that they can continue to commit crimes without let or hindrance. Israel has thereby revealed its great and hidden goal – pushing the Palestinians out of the occupied territories.

Settlers Hurled Rocks at the Palestinian Farmer's Head. His Age Didn't Deter Them

Settlers stoned and injured a 73-year-old Palestinian in his grove, others vandalized another farmer's 200 trees. A journey during the season of harvest – which is also clearly the season of settler violence

At home on the outskirts of the West Bank village of Na’alin, an elderly farmer, Khalil Amira, is nursing a head wound he suffered when settlers stoned him while he harvested olives in his grove – in front of his daughter and grandchildren. About an hour’s drive south, in the village of Jab’a, two other aged farmers are lamenting the damage wrought to their olive trees by other thugs. And these are only three recent examples of the dozens of Palestinian harvesters who are being assaulted on their lands on an almost daily basis.

It’s autumn, with its clouds and its howling wind, as the old Israeli song goes, and it’s also the season of the olive harvest – and with it settlers who go on a rampage every year at this time, across the West Bank. It’s not autumn if there’s no olive harvest, and there’s no olive harvest without settler rampages. And the start of this season bodes ill.

Several weeks into the harvest, which began this year on October 5, the Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights NGO has already documented 25 violent incidents, and no one apparently intends to put a stop to them. The police accept complaints and take down testimonies, but that seems to be the extent of their activity.

According to Yesh Din, between 2005 and 2019, only 9 percent of the complaints filed by Palestinians over Israelis’ violence against them ended with the alleged perpetrators being brought to trial. Fully 82 percent of the cases were closed, including nearly all of the complaints about the destruction of olive trees.

Amira is surrounded by family in his fine house in Na’alin, west of Ramallah. His head is bandaged, concealing 15 stitches; his family envelops him with concern and warmth. Since being wounded last week by a stone thrown at him by settlers, he’s returned to the hospital twice, because of possible intracranial bleeding. A working man of 73, Amira was employed for 20 years as a welder in the predominantly ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, in Israel; he also worked for years at Elco, an industrial conglomerate. His father left him, his two sisters and his six brothers 100 dunams (25 acres) of olive trees, which he has been cultivating since his retirement, after becoming ill with a heart ailment. He speaks Hebrew fluently, and he and his family are gracious hosts.

Khalil Amira at his home. Credit: Alex Levac

Amira’s access to his land was cut off in 2008 by the construction of the West Bank separation barrier – a fate that befell many Palestinian farmers. Part of his property was also expropriated for the establishment of a settlement called Hashmona’im, which is on the other side of the barrier, yet another annexation-type stunt. Recently, settlers ruined the two wells that were his on land adjacent to Hashmona’im. They would descend into one of the wells with a ladder and wash themselves in it, contaminating the water. The settlers also made a breach in the fence that encircles Hashmona’im and dumped garbage and construction debris on another part of his land – the evidence is still there. Amira filed a complaint with the Binyamin District police, and the dumping stopped for a time, but it resumed last February. It was clear that the perpetrators of the recent assault on him also set out from Hashmona’im, even if they were not necessarily residents of the settlement.

For 11 years, the farmer was unable to visit the land he owns, adjacent to the fence surrounding Hashmona’im – others were able to work it for him – until last fall, when he was able to harvest his olives with no interference. He wanted to do the same this year. The Israel Defense Forces allow him four days to pick olives – with advance coordination. Amira was supposed to start picking Monday last week, but because of a doctor’s appointment, he didn’t arrive until the following day.

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They set out early in the morning: Amira, his son Raad, 47, his daughter Halda, 35, and three young grandchildren. The IDF does not permit them to arrive at their lands by vehicle, so they had to walk about a kilometer from the gate in the separation fence. By about midday they had collected enough olives to fill a large sack. Raad hoisted a bag with half of the olives onto his shoulder and carried it to the gate, and then returned for the other half. Seeing that Raad was tired, his father told him he didn’t have to come back again.

At 2:30 P.M., Amira hid the tools he had used in the grove, before his departure. When he returned from the hiding place, he saw that his daughter and grandchildren had already left. On his way to the gate he saw his grandson’s knapsack on the ground. He picked it up and continued to walk, when suddenly he heard shouts.

In a nearby grove, he saw four masked young people throwing rocks at his nephew, Abd al-Haq, and his son, Yusuf, who were working there separately. Spotting Amira, the masked men began hurling rocks at him as well. The fact that he was elderly apparently made no impression on them. According to Amira, they had large rocks that they had brought with them. Otherwise, they were not armed and did not wield clubs. He tried to evade the onslaught but could not escape. At one point, he was struck on the left side of his head, and he collapsed to the ground. He doesn’t know how long he lay there, nor does he remember any more about the person who threw the rock that hit looked like.

 “They didn’t look like people to me, but devils,” he tells us now.

Soldiers appeared out of nowhere and administered first aid. His wife and the three grandchildren, also arrived, and were distraught. Blood streamed from his head, and an army paramedic stanched the wound. The soldiers summoned an Israeli ambulance to meet them at Hashmona’im. Amira managed to walk with the aid of the soldiers, but the Druze guard at the settlement’s gate refused to allow any of them to enter.

“Your dogs attacked me and you guard them and don’t let me in?” Amira said to him angrily, in Arabic.

Mohammed Abu Subheiya.Credit: Alex Levac

An IDF jeep arrived and took him to the Nili checkpoint, where he was transferred to a Palestinian ambulance and taken to the Ramallah Governmental Hospital. There Amira was stitched up and held for three days to check for possible intracranial bleeding. After he was released at the end of the week, however, he started to suffer from headaches and vomiting. He returned to the hospital this past Sunday, was checked and released again. He was still experiencing headaches and continuing to throw up this week when we visited.

Amira tells us that he feels even more determined than he did before the incident. Of course he will return to his land, there’s no question, he asserts. It’s his property, no one is going to stop him. He has already filed a complaint with the police, and handed over an Israeli ID card that his nephew found at the site of the attack. It belongs to a Y.C., born in 2003, resident of Ganei Modi’in, a neighborhood in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modi’in Ilit.

•••

Trees that were cut down in Mohammed Abu Subheiya's grove. Credit: Alex Levac

Mohammed Abu Subheiya, 63, a father of eight, is waiting next to his house in Jaba, north of Hebron. For 24 years he worked in Ashdod for Ashtrom, an Israeli construction company. Lately he’s been working in construction in Israel with other employers.

In 1990, Abu Subheiya’s father planted 22 dunams of olive trees, which Abu Subheiya tends in his spare time.

We walk with him down a precipitous, rock-strewn trail to his plot of land, which lies in the valley that runs between Jaba and the settlement of Bat Ayin, which gained notoriety in 2002 when a terrorist underground was uncovered there. Some of the settlers there are newly religious, including some from the Bratslav Hasidic sect. Bat Ayin is where the assailants of the Jaba groves come from.

Abu Subheiya hadn’t visited his grove since early March, because of the coronavirus crisis, which forced him to remain in Israel and not go back and forth to the West Bank. At the beginning of October, the International Red Cross informed him that days had been set for him to harvest the trees in his grove, which lies in a danger zone because of the Bat Ayin settlers. Arriving there on October 4, he was stunned to see that only about half of the 48 trees he has here were still intact. The assailants had gone from tree to tree and sawed off the branches or uprooted the trunks completely. It will take five years for the damaged trees to recover and bear fruit again, he tells us.

We walk from one tree to the next, examining their battered branches, and reflect on the malice of people who are capable of wreaking such destruction upon the fruit of the earth and upon those who work the land. An aroma of sage wafts from bushes along the edges of the grove. Across the way, the mobile homes of Bat Ayin are perched on the slope of a hill. Abu Subheiya says that when the settlers approach his land he flees in fear. After the incident early this month, he too filed a complaint with the police, at the station in the ultra-Orthodox settlement of Betar Ilit; some officers even came to see his grove, but since then he has heard nothing from them. Nor will he. Five years ago, settlers spread a chemical substance on the ground that poisoned 13 of his oldest trees, whose jagged trunks still stand as a silent monument in the grove.

“They work very slowly,” he says of his attackers. “That’s their politics. To destroy slowly, every time somewhere else, so we will remain without olives.”

We descend the hill on the other side of the village, opposite Betar Ilit. The road leading to the olive groves was demolished by the Israeli Civil Administration six years ago, because this is Area C (under full Israeli control). Access now is possible only in a 4x4 vehicle.

Khaled Mashalla at the improvised parking lot.Credit: Alex Levac

“Why does a road bother anyone,” asks Abu Subheiya. “You want to take our land – take it. But why does a road bother anyone? We paved an asphalt road. They came and smashed it to bits.”

We are now making our way on foot to the grove belonging to Khaled Mashalla, 69, on the lower slope of the steep valley. The remains of the ruined road are still evident under the dirt. Only the section near the village was demolished, the rest was left paved as it was.

Last week, assailants came here, too, and uprooted dozens of trees; trunks and broken branches are strewn along the way. Mashalla estimates that he lost 220 trees. He’s an amiable, colorful man who works in the improvised parking lot at the Gevaot checkpoint for Palestinian laborers who cross into Israel, Together with his business partner, he takes 7 shekels ($2) protection money per car per day to guard it against theft. Plump and gleeful, he wears a tattered felt hat that he removes in a theatrical gesture to reveal his bald head. He and his brothers own 400 dunams of olive trees in the area.

The vandalism occurred on the night between Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. The Bedouin who live on the edge of the village called Mashalla to say that they saw headlights in his grove that night. The next afternoon, when he got there after working at the checkpoint, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Dozens of branches had been sawed off. When we visit, we see that the younger trees were spared. They had been wrapped in plastic tubing, to protect them from the gazelles.

 Was it inevitable that Zionism would create an Apartheid monstrosity in Palestine?

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On Wednesday November 4^th Moshe Machover, one of the founders of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel, and myself will try and answer the question, ‘What is Zionism’.

Why is Zionism important? Why not just focus on Palestine solidarity? In her Report on racism Shami Chakrabarti asked:

Moshe Machover

‘surely it is better to use the modern universal language of human rights, be it of dispossession, discrimination, segregation, occupation or persecution and to leave Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust out of it?

This is an attractive argument but it is also a false one and speaks to nothing more than Chakrabarti’s own abysmal ignorance.

Let us imagine if, in Apartheid South Africa, someone had said that it’s better to concentrate on human rights, discrimination, particular instances of dispossession and exploitation when someone raised the question of Apartheid. They would have been laughed out of court if not branded as an apologist for racism. 

Matzpen - Socialist Organisation in Israel

Why then the distinction between Israel and South Africa?  It is clear that because Israel calls itself a Jewish State that people, bearing in mind the holocaust, are wary of accusing it of behaving as the anti-Semites behaved towards the Jews. Imagine if 200,000 South Africa expatriates had lived in Britain during the apartheid erea and when people campaigned against Apartheid they protested that this was anti-Afrikaaner racism and that Apartheid was part of their identity.

Yet when people oppose Zionism they are told that it is anti-Semitic because the majority of British Jews identify with Israel. Of course British Jews are not expatriates but according to Zionist ideology they are aliens. Israel is the ‘real home’ of Jews. Indeed it is one of the unspoken aims of Zionism to alienate Jews from their surroundings.  Zionism has always had as one of its foundational aims the winding up of the accursed Galut (exile), their name for the Jewish diaspora. This was called the Afrikaaner British Jews Galut ‘negation of the diaspora’.

To the Zionists anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism

According to David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister:

‘[Zionism] means taking masses of uprooted, impoverished, sterile Jewish masses, living parasitically off the body of an alien, economic body and dependent on others – and introducing them to productive and creative life.’  [Shlomo Avineiri, The Making of Modern Zionism, p.200]

Lucien Wolfe

Lucien Wolfe, the Secretary of the Board of Deputies Conjoint Foreign Committee described how:

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’ [B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972 Cambridge 2004, Vol 1, p727].

Moshe Lillienblum, an early Zionist, believed that ‘aliens we are and aliens we shall remain, even if we become full to the brim with culture…’ [Lillienblum, Let Us Not Confuse the Issues, Hertzberg p. 170].

Heinrich Class of the Pan German League

The anti-Semites were grateful for the Zionist acknowledgement that what they said about Jews was true. Heinrich Class, President of the 100,000 strong Pan German League, who was made an honorary member of the Reichstag on Hitler's assumption of power, wrote that:

“... among the Jews themselves the nationalist movement called Zionism is gaining more and more adherents ... They also declare openly that a true assimilation of the Jewish aliens to the host nations would be impossible... the Zionists confirm what the enemies of the Jews... have always asserted...”  [If I Were the Kaiser:  Daniel Frymman (pseudonym).

When it comes to Israel Zionism, the racist movement and ideology that is responsible for the plight of the Palestinians, is treated as if it’s a badge of ethnic identity. There is a deliberate conflation by Zionist of the categories of Jew and Zionist.

Chakrabarti is a good example of the muddled headed thinking of social democratic apologists for Israel and Zionism: She boasts that

Notwithstanding a vibrant Palestinian solidarity tradition, of all British political parties the Labour Party has the longest and most consistent record of support for Zionism, and the Labour Government quickly moved to recognise the new state of Israel upon its formation in 1948.

The Labour Party has indeed a long and shameful record of supporting Zionism going back to the War Aims Memorandum of August 1917. Why, one might ask, should the Labour Party support Zionism in 1917 when it was a minority cult within the Jewish community and had almost no working class adherents? Zionism then was a middle class affair.  Jewish socialists shunned it as a movement of class collaboration. Poalei Zion had just a few hundred members, most of them middle-class Fabian types.

Alec, a fictional character in Simon Blumenfeld’s novel Jew Boy remarked,

I don’t see why I should change one set of exploiters for another because they are Jewish.’  [Brian Klug, Anti-Zionism in London’s Jewish East End, 1890-1948, p.6].

Why did the Labour Party support them? The reason was because Labour was as much a party of the British Empire as the Tories. They particularly supported settler colonialism, which they saw as progressive and not exploitative despite the fact that Zionism was in alliance with the British Empire. The Labour Party sought out the most right-wing Jews and turned its back on the militant Jewish working class of the East  End and later the anti-fascist struggle.

The socialist movement has become infected with the politics of identity. So instead of looking critically at the British Jewish community and how it has become embourgeoisified, they are accorded equal status to oppressed Palestinian because in the language of identity politics British Jews too are a minority community and suffer the same of Black people.

Being a ‘minority’ is in itself a virtue according to the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland.  So taking this to its logical absurdity a minority of exploiters or bankers or billionaires suddenly take on a progressive hue. The fact that Jewish identification with Israel is reactionary and that British Jews would be the first to protest if they were subject to even a fraction of the discrimination that the Palestinians experience, is considered irrelevant. Class politics have gone out of the window with much of the Left, including the Corbyn left.

Jews in Britain are White. They are privileged socio-economically and the majority define themselves in opposition to the Palestinians, although not as large a majority as the Zionist pretend.  According to the survey The Attitude of British Jews Towards Israel 59% of British Jews identify as Zionists and 31%.

The IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is based on the supposition that Israel represents Jews collectively. This means accepting that Jews are an alienated part of British society. It is why the definition is anti-Semitic ! If your only method of understanding society is in terms of identity not class politics you have no means of differentiating between persecuting and persecuted minorities, the exploited and the exploiting.

Identity Politics nonsense from Chakrabarti - of course Jews could define themselves as Martians but that doesn't mean one has to accept the self definition!

This is why Chakrabarti wittered on about having heard a

‘rich range of self-descriptions of both Jewishness or Zionism, even within the Labour Party.

Not only did Chakrabarti equate Jews with  Zionists but she treated Zionism, not as an ideology of Jewish supremacy but as one of many choices in a take away menu. Chakrabarti advised people

Chakrabarti knew nothing about Zionism otherwise she would know that it's Zionists who use Zionism as a euphemism for Jew

to use the term "Zionist" advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically or as part of personal abuse.

What this meant was that one should not call someone a Zionist in a derogatory fashion.  Those arguing this, the Jewish Labour Movement believed the term ‘Zionism’ was something to be worn with pride rather than as a badge of shame.

So why is Zionism important?

The reason is simple. If you don’t understand the ideology that led to the creation of the Israeli state and its functioning today you won’t understand why it is an inherently racist and expansionist state.

Zionism is based on the idea that the Jews form a nation, a nation separated by 2,000 years from its birthplace in Palestine. It is a convenient myth but that is all it is. European Jews have no attachment, other than religious, to Palestine. The direct descendants of the Hebrews who lived there at the time of Christ converted first to Christianity and then Islam. If anyone can claim a direct line of descent from the ancient Hebrews it is the Palestinians, as both David Ben Gurion and Yitzhak ben Zvi admitted.

The aim of Zionism has always been to ‘redeem’ the land, that is to alienate it from the indigenous population.

The best description of this process was in the report of the Hope Simpson Inquiry of October 1930 into the causes of bloody riots the preceding year.  Chaired by Sir John Simpson it went out to Palestine to investigate for itself and it was appalled by Zionist behaviour.

Chapter 5 ss. (iii) The Effect of the Jewish Settlement on the Arab is still relevant. After describing how leases for property from the Jewish National Fund stipulated that hired labour on land bought from absentee Arab landlords must be Jewish only, the Report said that

‘Attempts are constantly being made to establish the advantage which Jewish settlement has brought to the Arab. The most lofty sentiments are ventilated at public meetings and in Zionist propaganda. At the time of the Zionist Congress in 1921 a resolution was passed which '' solemnly declared the desire of the Jewish people to live with the Arab people in relations of friendship and mutual respect’ … This resolution is frequently quoted in proof of the excellent sentiments which Zionism cherishes towards the people of Palestine.

The Report goes on to note that their actions in dispossessing the natives ‘are not compatible with those sentiments.’ It concludes that:

The effect of the Zionist colonisation policy on the Arab.— Actually 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, he is deprived for ever from employment on that land. Nor can anyone help him by purchasing the land and restoring it to common use. 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 deliberately adopted.

When it asked the Zionist ‘trade union’ Histadrut for the reasons why Arab labour was the subject of a Boycott they were frank:

‘They pointed out that the Jewish colonies were founded and established by Jewish capital, and that the subscriptions of which this capital is composed were given with the intention that Jews should emigrate to Palestine and be settled there—that these subscriptions would never have been given had it been thought that they would be employed to support Arab labourers.’

In other words the Zionists operated a colour bar just as damaging as the colonists did in South Africa except that in this case they objected to any reemployment of Arab labour. The Arabs could go starve.

Why then is Zionism important? Well if the PLO had had an understanding of the nature of Zionism, that the Zionist settlers did not come to Palestine to share the land with the indigenous population but to expel them then they wouldn’t have agreed to the Oslo Accords, the biggest disaster for the Palestinians since the Nakba. If the PLO had understood Zionism then they would have understood that Israel could never voluntarily agree to relinquish its claim to any part of the Occupied Territories.  As the new Ambassador to Britain, religious nut Tzipi Hotoveli, then Deputy Foreign Minister, stated:

“We need to return to the basic truth of our rights to this country,” she said. “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.”

Various left intellectuals have, as a result of the anti-Semitism campaign, which has become an Establishment narrative, beaten a retreat. Professor David Feldman of the Pears Institute of Anti-Semitism has reversed his position from opposition to the IHRA to supporting the Weaponisation of anti-Semitism.

See Failing to see the Wood for the Trees – A Response to Brian Klug’s The Left And The Jews and How David Feldman of Birkbeck and the Pears Institute Changed His Views to Accommodate Zionist McCarthyism

Another academic is Brian Klug. Brian too has bent with the wind. His attempt to rehabilitate Zionism began with a talk he gave to the SWP in July 2017. Klug based his critique on a misreading of an article by Aurora Levins Morales, a Puerto Rican feminist in On Antisemitism produced by Jewish Voice for Peace. Aurora referred to “a three-cornered argument” between the Orthodox, Zionists and socialists/communists in her grandmother’s shtetl about the solution to the pogroms. Brian uses this to suggest that Zionism is Janus faced, an ideology of emancipation as well as oppression.

Klug is wrong and tries to rationalise post hoc Zionist colonisation by reaching back in time to a period when it was a sigh of despair of the Jewish petit bourgeoisie when faced with anti-Semitism on the one hand and socialist revolutionaries on the other. Zionism is not ‘Janus faced.’  Zionism is consistent but of course it changed during the flight from the Russian Pale of Settlement to Palestine.

When Zionism first arose it expressed the desire of Jewish intellectuals and the petit-bourgeosie for their own Promised Land, a safe haven where Jews would be free to exploit each other without the interference of the goy. The prayer ‘Next year in Jerusalem’, which is recited each day by the Orthodox, in essence meant, as Bernard Lazare observed, no more than an expression of hope that next year we will be free. The Jewish masses had no more intention of emigrating to Palestine than American Jews do today and of the 2 ½ million Jews who fled the Pale, just 1% went to Palestine.  America was their Promised Land.

If Zionism had simply remained a messianic movement like so many before it, it could have been dismissed as a sigh of the oppressed. In much the same way as Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement represented Black reaction, not least in its alliance with the KKK, Zionism would have been a reactionary Jewish separatist movement. Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association also preached racial segregation and racial pride.

Zionism wasn’t just a backward reaction to anti-Semitism. Its aimed to seek an alliance with imperialism and Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, spent his whole life seeking out the various rulers of Europe, from the Ottoman Sultan to the German Kaiser.

Zionism as it developed can only be understood in the context of its alliance with British imperialism, consolidated in the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and all that flowed from that. Zionism was a junior partner of British imperialism from 1917 to 1945. From 1945 onwards, indeed earlier in the case of the Irgun, Zionism fought the British in just the same way as the Boers had done. It sought independence from its imperialist sponsor.

Hungarian neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka - invited guest at the Zionist Organisation of America gala dinner

Hitler of course gave the Zionist project a massive boost and that was why, when the vast majority of Jews instinctively wanted to Boycott Hitler and the Nazis the Zionists fought so strongly against Boycott. Zionism never once fought anti-Semitism although today it seeks to brand everyone and everything who disagree with it as anti-Semitic .

That is one of the ironies of the present day fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. In the United States the Zionists have allied with Trump who fought an openly anti-Semitic campaign in 2016. His final advert in that campaign featured images of prominent Jews: financier George Soros (accompanying the words “those who control the levers of power”), Fed Chair Janet Yellen (with the words “global special interests”) and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (following the “global power structure” quote). It showed Hillary Clinton saying she partnered “with these people who don’t have your good in mind.”. He has made repeated anti-Semitic comments since such as telling American Jews that their ‘real home’ is in Israel not the USA.

This didn’t stop the Zionist Organisation of America inviting Steve Bannon, Trump’s anti-Semitic Strategic Director and the neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, another Trump adviser, as guests of honour at the ZOA’s 2016 and 2017 annual gala dinners.

Just as it doesn’t stop the Israeli state today supplying the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion with weaponry just as it did with the neo-Nazi Argentinian Junta in the 1970s and 1980s.

Zionism was unique among the very many Jewish movements that sprang up in reaction to Czarist anti-Semitism.  It accepted that Jews were aliens and therefore incapable of living amongst non-Jews. Indeed it was their very estrangement, living in an alien society that had caused the anti-social behaviour in the first place, which had resulted in anti-Semitism. The anti-Semites told the Jews that they were different and could not expect equal rights. The Zionists agreed.

Many of the things that Zionists said about the Jewish diaspora could have come from the Nazis or anti-Semites. For example Israel’s first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’. [Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’, Journal of Israeli Affairs p.169 

Jacob Klatzkin, editor of Die Welt and co-founder of Encyclopedia Judaica held that Jews were:

‘a people disfigured in both body and soul – in a word, of a horror… some sort of outlandish creature… in any case, not a pure national type... some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.’ [Arthur Hertzberg, the Zionist Idea, pp. 322/323]

Hitler and Rosenberg, a supporter of Zionism

Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party’s theoretician and head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, wrote in 1919 that

‘Zionism must be vigorously supported in order to encourage a significant number of German Jews to leave for Palestine or other destinations [Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p.25].

Rosenberg ‘intended to use Zionism as a legal justification for depriving German Jews of their civil rights’. He ‘sanctioned the use of the Zionist movement in the future drive to eliminate Jewish rights, Jewish influence and eventually the Jewish presence in Germany.  (Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, pp. 25-26]. Rosenberg who presided over a regime of terror and mass murder in captured Soviet territories was executed as a war criminal at the Nuremburg trials in 1946. 

Sir Samuel Montagu anti-Zionist Jewish MP for Whitechapel

Sir Samuel Montagu, the MP for Whitechapel (1885-1900) asked:

 ‘Is it not... a suspicious fact that those who have no love for the Jews, and those who are pronounced anti-Semites, all seem to  welcome the Zionist proposals and aspiration.?’[Sir Samuel Montagu, The Dangers of Zionism]

Not only did the anti-Semites welcome Zionism but Zionism welcomed them. That was why, in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair Herzl could write in his diaries 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.

Today Zionism calls itself a ‘national liberation movement’. Colonialism is no longer in fashion or part of the zeitgeist. But when it was fashionable to be a colonialist then Zionists were open colonists. Herzl wrote on January 

Extract from Herzl's Diaries - Letter from Herzl to Cecil Rhodes

11^th 1902, to Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of Cape Colony from 1890-1896 and after whom Rhodesia was named, saying:

“You are being invited to help make history...it doesn’t involve Africa, but a piece of Asia Minor; not Englishmen but Jews… How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial… I want you ... to put the stamp of your authority on the Zionist plan and to make the following declaration to a few people who swear by you: I, Rhodes have examined this plan and found it correct and practicable. It is a plan full of culture, excellent for the group of people for whom it is directly designed, and quite good for England, for Greater Britain…."

Chakrabarti asked why raise the holocaust and the Nazis. One reason is because Zionism cynically and deliberately exploits the memory of the holocaust in the service of their bloody racist enterprise. It is useful to see what Zionism was actually doing whilst the holocaust was taking place. The comparison by 9 holocaust survivors of Zionist policies with that of Nazi Germany is invaluable.

Rudolf Vrba - Escaped from Auschwitz - anti-Zionist who condemned Zionist collaboration with the Nazis

Rudolph Vrba, one of only 4 Jewish escapees from Auschwitz, wrote that

“The Zionist movement of Europe played a very important role in the mass extermination of Jews. Indeed, I believe that without the cooperation of Zionists it would have been a much more difficult task….

Vrba with Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz on April 10 1944 with the intention of warning Hungarian Jewry that they were next in line for extermination. Their report, the Auschwitz Protocols was delivered to the Zionist leader from Hungary, Rudolph Kasztner, who promptly suppressed it in order that he could negotiated a separate agreement with the Nazis allowing 1,646, mainly Zionist and bourgeois Jewish leaders to escape from Hungary in a special train. In exchange Kasztner kept secret where the deportation trains were actually heading. Kasztner was accused by survivors of the Hungarian holocaust of complicity in the extermination of Jews in the Kasztner Trial in Israel from 1954-1958.  Judge Benjamin Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court ruled in 1955 that Kasztner had sold his soul to the devil. The Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett promptly collapsed because they had defended Kasztner, a member of the Israeli Labor Party Mapai.

Another reason for comparing Zionism and the Nazi is because the blood and soil ideology of Zionism bears a distinct similarity to that of the Nazis.  Both were what one might call volkish. Of course Zionism hasn’t exterminated the Palestinians though there are many Zionists now who would like to do so if it were politically feasible. But the genocidal outlook of many Israelis, over half of whom support the expulsion even of Israeli Palestinians from Israel suggests that Zionism’s belief in a Jewish state is no different from the belief of the Nazis in an Aryan ethno nationalist state.  Being Jewish has been transformed from a religious into a racial category.

All criticism of Israel is written off as ‘anti-Semitism’. But how else to explain the fact that Israel today arms and equips some of the most right-wing, racist and genocidal regimes like Myanamar.

People should not feel afraid of hurting the feelings of Zionists by making such comparisons.  If that is the only way to help them escape their indoctrination then it is all to the good!

Come and hear Moshe and myself on ‘What is Zionism’ and hopefully we can have a good debate afterwards.

Tony Greenstein

 Socialism Will Not Be Silenced by Starmer and his Neo-Liberal Friends

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UPDATE:  Chris Williamson is replacing Howard Beckett who had to pull out

If there was one message that I emphasised in the past 5 years it was that when they expelled Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and myself it wasn’t us they were interested in.  We were collateral damage. The real target was Jeremy Corbyn. Unfortunately Corbyn chose not to listen and now he has become the victim of his and Jennie Formby’s own witchhunt.

On 22^ndJuly Canary reported that Adam Cailler of the Jewish Telegraph had tweeted, based on ‘a few Labour sources’ that Starmer would suspend Jeremy Corbyn. This was picked up by David Collier, one of the Zionist ghouls behind the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

Assuming that Cailler hadn’t recently come into possession of a crystal ball then it is a fair bet that this was leaked by Starmer’s office to test the water.

This appeared 3 months ago - it is clear Corbyn's suspension was planned months ago

The statement that Corbyn issued after the release of the EHRC Report had nothing to do with his suspension. It was merely a pretext, just as Rebecca Long-Bailey’s retweet of Maxine Peake ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’ was also a pretext for her dismissal.

If Starmer had long planned the suspension of Corbyn then we can be sure that this was done with a view to his expulsion not reinstatement. The beliefof some like Jon Trickett that he will be reinstated is just wishful thinking. Starmer’s promise to unify the party and carry on with Corbyn’s manifesto pledges was always worthless. He was brought in to purge the Left not unite with it. Expelling those who disagree with you whilst putting hard right-wingers like Rachel Reeves at the heart of his shadow cabinet.

This was posted 3 months ago

Momentum and the ‘Socialist’ Campaign Group are clinging to their illusions whilst Ian Lavery tells fellow MPs to keep their heads down. Momentum first issued statement which protested that “This suspension risks politicising Labour's response to antisemitism.”

After 5 years Momentum’s co-chairs, Scattergood and Sriskanthan, are still no wiser as to what the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the Right was about. They still think that the Labour Right, which has never once in its long history displayed any concern over racism against Black and Muslim people, is genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism. The same creatures who supported the ‘hostile environment’ policy which resulted in the deportation of hundreds of Black British citizens have somehow developed an acute sensitivity to anti-Semitism.  And not only them but the whole of the gutter press, from the Sun and Mail to the Guardian.

I have yet to hear a credible explanation or indeed any explanation as to why the Sun and the Mail, which employedKatie Hopkins who believesrefugees are ‘cockroaches’ are so concerned about anti-Semitism. Perhaps it’s because ‘anti-Semitism’ is a weapon against the left instead of being a genuine phenomenon?

The Conclusions of the EHRC's Report were reached in advance of its writing - they were forced to delete critical comments on Chris Williamson

Who do Momentum think that Margaret Hodge, Tom Watson, Luciana Berger, all of whom drove the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt, represent? Why should Tom Watson, who supported to the bitter end racist Labour MP Phil Woolas when the High Court forced him out of Parliament, be concerned about anti-Semitism? Watson confessedto having ‘lost sleep’ thinking about ‘poor Phil’.

Instead Momentum pathetically plead that the suspension ‘should be immediately lifted in the interests of party unity.’

Where have these blockheads been living?  Starmer’s only interest is in driving out the left from the Labour Party. If Momentum don’t recognise this it’s because they are wedded to the same reformist illusions as Lansman.

Momentum’s co-chairs describe the EHRC Report in completely uncritical terms as if the EHRC was a neutral, anti-racist body and not the Tory plaything it is currently. Scatterbrain says that:

for many it will make for difficult reading. It concludes that the Labour Party complaints process for antisemitism is inadequate, and expresses concern that the current process does not ensure fair and transparent sanctioning of antisemitism complaints. It also finds unlawful acts to have been committed by former Labour Party agents. 

Realising that this statement was hopeless Momentum’s leaders then issued a second statement which was even worse.

‘The suspension of Jeremy Corbyn by the Labour Party leadership is a factional attack on the left that inevitably undermines the fight against anti-semitism and makes a mockery of Keir Starmer’s pledge to unite the Party. Tonight our Party is more divided than ever.’ (my emphasis)

As if to underline that a ruthless purge is underway, London Regional Staff pulled the plug literally on the Zoom software on a London Regional Meeting which was about to discuss a motion condemning the suspension of Corbyn.

The reactionof Mick Moore, a London representative of Momentum was that ‘unity within Labour is “being systematically undermined by a culture of control-freakery and forced silence”. Wake up to reality Mick.  And what are you going to do about it with your 25,000 members?

New Momentum Chairs Scatterbrain and Sriskanthan are no different from Jon Lansman whose supporters they replaced

The new Momentum Forward leadership barely differs politically from Lansman’s Momentum. They still don’t get it that the ‘fight against anti-Semitism’ was a fight against the Palestinians. That is why, despite his concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ Starmer has refused even to meet with Palestinian representatives.  His declarationto the Times of Israel:

‘I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification.”

demonstrates that Starmer is a fully paid up racist when it comes to the victims of Zionism and the sooner people recognise this the better.

Momentum's 'solidarity' rally with Corbyn hauled up the white flag as they all pledge to 'fight antisemitism' still not realising that the 'antisemitism' weapon was devised to remove Corbyn

Momentum held a rallylast Friday.  Below is a report which was posted by Tina Werkman of Labour Left Alliance:

 ‘In last night’s shockingly tame Momentum rally, speaker after speaker repeated the lie that the Labour Party has a huge problem with anti-Semitism (culminating in John McDonnell’s renewed apology). Deborah Herrmans from Momentum said that, “the priority for the party must be who we improve how we tackle antisemitism”.

Not a word was said in solidarity with the thousands of other victims of the campaign of the right. Nobody dared to say the word ‘witch-hunt’. Richard Burgon welcomed a Labour government under Keir Starmer. Diane Abbott and every single Momentum speaker called for the full implementation of the EHRC report, which includes the setting up of an “independent” disciplinary process with the help of “Jewish stakeholders” (and they don’t mean Jewish Voice for Labour).

This is clearly inadequate – in effect, the mainstream Labour Left has given up. There is little point in staying in Starmer’s Labour Party if you are not prepared to fight!

Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance and many Labour members, including those who have been unjustly suspended or expelled in the latest purge, aren’t willing to accept that they should be sacrificial lambs for Zionism. The mass expulsions which are now taking place, have nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with Zionism and Israel. 

That was why Labour came under severe pressure from the Zionists to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism which deliberately conflates genuine anti-Semitism, hostility and hatred of Jews, to anti-Zionism and support for the Palestinians.

Independent Socialist Councillor Kate Knight

We have four speakers including Howard Beckett, the Assistant General Secretary of UNITE and Nicki Brennan, Councillor for East Brighton, who was ‘investigated’ by Starmer’s witchhunters and decided to quit Labour at the same time as another Labour councillor, Kate Knight. Greg Hadfield, who was removed as the elected Secretary of the District Labour Party and myself, the first Jewish expellee from the party, are also speaking.

What is being called 'bitchgate' - Carmen Appich is the real face of Starmer's Labour

Kate Knight, who earlier this year quitthe Labour Party, has recently been the recipient of the kinder, gentle politics of Starmer’s clones on Brighton and Hove Council.  The Chair of the Equalities Committee no less, Carmen Appich, called Kate a ‘bitch’ when she joined a meeting of the 70 strong housing management panel being held on Zoom. Fortunately she had not bothered to mute herself so her comments resounded around the meeting and everyone could know what an unpleasant individual she is as well as a hypocrite. Appich later apologised for what she called a ‘horrible mistake’but it’s difficult to know how a comment such as that can be a mistake.  The mistake was in not muting herself.

No one bears a greater responsibility on the Left for the suspension and pending expulsion of Corbyn than John McDonnell, who leapt to the defence of Margaret Hodge who should have been expelled - McDonnell scabbed throughout

If Corbyn is now be expelled by the same fast track procedures that Corbyn himself introduced then it will be a sort of justice.  He will understand just what injustices were done to hundreds of ordinary members. He is a fool who built the scaffold that may be used to hang him with.  Nonetheless we should support him because his proposed expulsion is a dagger aimed at the heart of the left. What is need is a vigorous campaign of non-compliance with David Evan’s dictats within the Labour Party.

What will but utterly useless is to think that mild pressure on Starmer will persuade him against expelling Corbyn.

All socialists welcome to attend.  Joining details below:

Tony Greenstein

Join Zoom Meeting

https://tinyurl.com/yxf3dkg5

Passcode: 630177

High Court Judgment exonerating the McCarthyist Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is based on Judge Nicklin’s racist decision that anti-Semitism is a matter of opinion not fact

In the summer of 2014 Israel launched an attack on Gaza. According to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs 2,251 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed. US fighter jets were used to strafe and bomb refugee camps and peoples’ homes. The ‘terrorists’ that Israel was fighting included 551 dead children. The war was supportedby 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!’

The reaction of people in Britain and the West was overwhelmingly hostile to a ‘war’ that was so one-sided and disproportionate. The Israelis lost about 70 killed, nearly all of whom were military personnel. A demonstration of 150,000 took to the streets in London.

The Board of Deputies tried to hold a national demonstration in support of the slaughter in Gaza but managed to attract only 4,000 people according to police estimates. Most Jews in Britain weren’t keen on being seen to side with genocidal massacres.

This was the context in which the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism came on the scene. In August 2014, whilst the slaughter of Palestinians was still going on, the CAA held a demonstrationagainst ‘anti-Semitism’. What was this ‘anti-Semitism’? Opposition to Israel’s campaign of mass murder.

With the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party the CAA began focusing on attacking Corbyn and and the left leadership of the Labour Party. One of its first targets was the Jewish MP, himself a Zionist, Gerald Kaufman. During a previous Israeli attack on Gaza, Cast Lead, in 2008-9 Kaufman had famously compared the Israeli blitzkrieg to the Nazi attacks on Jews. He declared, in a speech in Parliament

‘"My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza.

"The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploits the continuing guilt from gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians."

When Kaufman made a comment about ‘Jewish money’ from Conservative Friends of Israel being responsible for the Tories’ unflinching support of Israel, the CAA targeted him with no less than 32 articles. They waged a nasty spiteful campaign and when Kaufman died they printed a vindictive and malicious obituary Sir Gerald Kaufman MP’s words have left a rotting stain on our institutions.  ‘Have They No Shame?’ I wrote. ‘Whilst his body is still warm – Fake ‘Anti-Semitism’ Charity Continues to Defame Gerald Kaufmann's Memory’.

My words were reminiscent of the fateful words of US Army Attorney Joseph Welch to Joseph McCarthy at the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations. ‘Have you no sense of decency.’ The same can be said of the CAA.

As I became aware of the nefarious activities of this McCarthyist organisation I investigated further and in April 2016 I wrote ‘EXCLUSIVE - Lifting the Lid on the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’.  On February 6 2017 I submitted a complaint to the Charity Commission that the CAA was a bogus charity and should be deregistered. Shortly after I launched a petition on Change.org asking people to support my campaign to deregister the CAA. The CAA was clearly a political organisation and by pretending to be a charity it was defrauding the taxpayer.  I wanted to make an honest person of it!

The CAA reacted by threateningChange.org with the possibility of legal action if they didn’t take the petition down. Since Change.org was based in the United States this was highly unlikely.  I submitted a lengthy response to the CAA and Change.org refused to take the petition down. See VICTORY as the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Fails to Intimidate Change.org into Taking Down Petition.  To date the petitionhas over 8,500 signatures (please sign if you haven’t already).

Almost immediately after this, the CAA responded by calling me a ‘notorious anti-Semite’and referring to minor convictions, 30+ years old. In February 2018, just before the one year time limit was due to expire, I launched an action in the High Court for defamation. A year later, on February 15 2019 Nicklin J decided, at an interim hearing, that the statements (there were 5 articles) that I was a notorious anti-Semite, was a statement of opinion not fact.

Under the Defamation Act 2013 there are two principal defences to libel – truth or honest opinion. You can either claim that what you said was true (under section 2) or that it was a statement of ‘honest opinion’ (section 3).  You might imagine that the CAA were confident enough in their belief that I was a ‘notorious anti-Semite’ to defend their articles on the basis that it was true.

However you would be wrong.  They chose instead the ‘honest opinion’ defence because it didn’t matter whether what they said was true, all that was necessary was to show that they were honest persons. Or rather it was up to me to prove that they were dishonest and malicious. In other words the burden of proof was reversed.

You might find this surprising given the welter of accusations in recent times of ‘anti-Semitism’ Surely given the flood of accusations, the Zionists would have no difficulty in proving that us anti-Zionists were anti-Semitic?  Not a bit of it. When push comes to shove Zionists are extremely reluctant to prove the truth of their allegations.

In fact they are a bit like Donald Trump with his allegations of ballot rigging and fraud. The more allegations he makes the less evidence there is. So too with the fake 'antisemitism' campaign.

In the Labour Party where these allegations are made regularly one of the most remarkable features of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is that there are no victims.  Given that British Jews are said to have been terrorised by this campaign you might imagine that the broken victims of anti-Semitism might be everywhere.  In fact they are nowhere. There are no victims, which is another reason why it is possible to say that there is no such phenomenon as Labour anti-Semitism.

In the initial stages I sought help to launch the action from the Bar Pro Bono Unit, which is now called Advocate. I also launched a crowd funding appeal without which it would have been impossible to continue the litigation. I estimate that nearly a thousand people have contribute to my appeal and for that I am extremely grateful.

At the end of October, in a ghostly, almost deserted Royal Courts of Justice because of the coronavirus pandemic, Justice Tipples heard an application by the CAA to strike out my claim because, under Part 24 of what is called the Civil Procedure Rules, my application had no prospects of success. Last Friday the judgement was issued upholding the CAA’s application.

What follows is an analysis of Tipples judgement and my own comments on it. It is based on my witness statement.

Why the High Court’s Decision to Strike-Out My Claim Against the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism was itself a part of the Fake Antisemitism Campaign

The decisionof Tipples J to strike out my libel claim against the Campaign Against Anti-Semitismwas based on the ruling of Nicklin J last year that anti-Semitism is a matter of opinion not fact. This ruling, if nothing else, proves that the judiciary is institutionally racist. 

It represents a trivialisation and dismissal of racism. Racism is objective not subjective, a fact not an opinion, a reality not an illusion. Tell anyone who is the victim of a racist attack or racial harassment that what they experienced is subjective. Of course to a conservative judiciary racism probably is just a matter of opinion.

The CAA, a Zionist organisation masquerading as a charity, claimed that their avoidance of a full trial was ‘humiliating’ to me. I feel anger not humiliation that the High Court gives carte blanche to an organisation whose only purpose is closing down free speech. The CAA was established with one purpose and one purpose only. To paint supporters of the Palestinians and anti-Zionists as anti-Semitic. It has no other purpose. My only regret is that I have let down the hundreds of anti-racists who funded my action.

Despite being limited by Nicklin’s judgment, which was entirely devoid of any reasoning, Tipples decision was nonetheless a text-book lesson in how the judiciary can twist, distort and simply ignore any evidence that runs contrary to their own Establishment prejudices.  In particular Tipples determination to ignore ‘similar fact evidence’  unfavourable to the CAA.

Shrine to mass murderer Baruch Goldstein in Kiryat Arba settlement

i.              I stated that the chant by far-Right settlers,‘Am Yisrael Chai’ (long live Israel) is equivalent to ‘heil Hitler’. Tipples equated this (para. 26) with comparing all Israelis to Nazis. What I actually said was in the context of Israeli settlers supporting Baruch Goldstein, a fellow settler who murdered 29 Palestinians and injured 125 who were worshipping in the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron. Tipples said that ‘the context or the additional facts that the claimant wishes to rely on are irrelevant in relation to honest opinion defence.’According to this batty decision any evidence demonstrating that honesty is not something one normally associates with the CAA, was ruled out a priori.

As a matter of logic if I had said all Israelis are comparable to Nazis then that is not anti-Semitic.  It’s wrong but being wrong is not the same as anti-Semitism, a point her ladyship clearly didn’t understand.

ii.           Another example of evidence that Tipples ignored related to Jackie Walker, who the CAA has attacked 132 times on its web site. In one post, which they deleted when they realised their mistake, the CAA attacked Jackie for saying that Hitler wasn’t responsible for the Holocaust and that the Holocaust might be justified. What Jackie had actually done was to repeat a quotefrom David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister:

Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country.... There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

The CAA were unaware that this quote was from Ben Gurion not Walker. This quotation first appeared in a book by Nahum Goldman, The Jewish Paradox. Despite being a former President of the World Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organisation, it is clear that the CAA had never heard of Goldman. And why should they? Most Zionists are completely ignorant of the history of their own movement. The only thing they know about is the latest Israeli hasbara (propaganda).

The CAA saw the words Hitler and Auschwitz, and using their bastardised version of the IHRAput 2 and 2 together and got 6. Clearly if the CAA could twist a quote of Ben Gurion into that of a holocaust denier they are capable of distorting and twisting anything, which is exactly what they have been doing throughout their miserable existence. But the blinkered Tipples preferred to turn a blind eye. In her judgment no mention was made of this example of how the CAA can turn the most innocuous statement into anti-Semitism.

It demonstrated that the CAA deliberately smears and lies about anyone who is critical of Zionism or Israel. Tipples refused to accept anything that was probative of the CAA or questioned their honesty.

iii.        Another example was when Tipples found (para 41), in respect of a letterto the Guardian, in which I was the lead signatory, that

‘an honest person clearly could express the opinion on 26 February 2017... that the claimant had lied when he claimed in The Guardian newspaper that the IDA definition prevents criticism of Israel.’

Firstly there is no such thing as the IDA (International Definition of Anti-Semitism ). Bad as it is, the IHRA has two preceding paragraphs preceding the 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which define anti-Semitism in terms of Israel. They read:

The CAA has nothing to say about tabloid antisemitism attacking George Soros

Manifestations (of anti-Semitism) might include the targeting of the state of Israel.... However, criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic....Contemporary examples of antisemitism... could, taking into account the overall context, include... 

The CAA when branding someone as an anti-Semite deliberately strips out any context and takes any superficial breach of the 11 illustrations as proof of 'anti-Semitism'. Professor Ze’ev Sternhell for example, who was a child survivor of the holocaust, wrote an articlein Ha’aretz titled In Israel, Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism. To the Zionist McCarthyists of the CAA, even a holocaust survivor is anti-Semitic yet the blinkered Tipples saw nothing wrong in this.  

Nor did our letter to the Guardian claim that the IHRA definition prevented criticism of Israel. What we said was that the IHRA was ‘designed to silence public debate on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.’ Clearly the distinction between the 2 statements above was too subtle for Tipples.

This letterwas signed by 62 people including 3 Jewish Professors. Over half the signatories were Jewish. Presumably they too were liars.

The IHRA states that it is anti-Semitic to ‘require of Israel behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ But Israel is not democratic. It is an ethno-nationalist Jewish state. In the West Bank there are 2 systems of law – one for Jews and military law for Palestinians. That is normally known as Apartheid.

Palestinians living in Israel are tolerated guests in a state that says they have no national rights. In the words of Benjamin Netanyahu

‘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.

That is why Israel actively pursues a policy of ‘Judaisation’ of the Galilee, Jerusalem and the Negev, i.e. reducing the concentration of Arabs in the Galilee, Jerusalem and the Negev and surrounding them with Jewish communities (most Israelis live in Jewish only communities).

What we said in the letter was no different to what numerous people have said. Is the idiot Judge Tipples saying that an honest person could brand all of them anti-Semitic?

People such as the renowned human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC who describedhow the

‘looseness of the definition is liable to chill legitimate criticisms of the state of Israel and coverage of human rights abuses’.

Or Hugh Tomlinson QC who stated that the IHRA has ‘a potential chilling effect on public bodies’.

Not forgetting the Jewish former Court of Appeal judge, Sir Stephen Sedley.  According to Tipples he too must be a liar for stating, in an articleabout the IHRA that

‘Endeavours to conflate the two [anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism] by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new.’

Even the person who drafted the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, claimed in testimony to the US Congress, that the CAA’s targeting of a Jewish lecturer, Rachel Gould, for writing an articleBeyond Anti-Semitism’ was 'egregious'. The CAA called on Bristol University to dismiss her. Stern described their behaviour as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like’. Clearly Tipples believes that targeting academics for writing articles that fail their contrived ‘anti-Semitism’ test are the actions of honest people. Tipples has a strange definition of honesty.

iv.        Gideon Falter, Chairman of the CAA stated, in his witness statement, that ‘Mr Greenstein is seeking to shut down the CAA’ in reference to my complaint to the Charity Commission. This was a clear and obvious lie. In my own witness statement I said that:

I merely wish to give it the same rights as any other political organisation, including the opportunity to pay its taxes. It is fraudulent to hide behind a charity’s tax shield when you are a political group.

Clearly Tipples thinks nothing of tax avoidance, despite it being, theoretically at least, a crime.

v.           Gideon Falter alleged that I lied in my complaint to the Charity Commission claiming:

On a date unknown, the Claimant told the Charity Commission that the CAA was not concerned with fascist groups who were Holocaust deniers.

I said no such thing. What I did say was that:

The CAA might be expected to concentrate on the far-Right and holocaust deniers if it was genuinely concerned about anti--Semitism. Instead it focuses almost solely on the Labour Party and to a lesser extent on the Lib Dems (my emphasis)

I followed this up on 10^th February writing:

the CAA is not a charitable organisation. It is a political group masquerading as a charity, whose primary purpose is to libel and label critics of Israel and Zionism as anti-Semitic. It devotes most of its time to making false and damaging accusations against anyone who is supportive of the Palestinians and opposed to Zionism. Its web site is dominatedby articles and allegations to this effect.... 

vi.        The CAA waged a war against Corbyn contrary to Charity Commission rules about Charities remaining party politically independent, for example their call on July 22^nd for Corbyn’s suspension (which Starmer has been only too happy to grant). 

vii.     I described how the CAA is not interested in calling out the anti-Semitism of supporters of Israel or Zionism giving Boris Johnson and his novel 72 Virgins as a specific example. Johnson claimedthat it is a ‘Jewish cabal who run the American media complex’ and that Jewish media moguls in Russia ran the TV stations and were engaged in ‘some kind of fiddling of the (election) figures.’ 

       There are numerous other examples. For example they not only say nothing about Zionist figures like Jonathan Hoffman who openly work with fascists and racists, as long as they support Israel, but they themselves work with these elements.  The CAA have nothing on their website which even mentions Tommy Robinson. I also provided as exhibits, photographs of the CAA’s Investigative Officer Steven Silverman in the company of Daniel Thomas, Robinson’s bodyguard.

The CAA said nothing about Jacob Rees-Mogg’s retweet of Alice Weidel, the Leader of Germany’s far-Right AfD whose former leader Frauke Petry’s call for refugee boats to be sunk led to its expulsion from the European Conservative & Reform Group in the European Parliament. AfD members also march regularly alongside neo-Nazis. There is just one mention of Rees-Mogg on D’s web site and that is in an article attacking Ken Livingstone! It is a party full of holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis but it also ardently pro-Israel. 

Even the Jewish Chronicle had an articleJacob Rees-Mogg faces fury over 'disgraceful' promotion of 'antisemitic' German party. The CAA also failed to mention what Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History at UCL, described as ‘an expressly antisemitic sentiment’, again by Rees-Mogg, who described two Jewish Conservatives, Oliver Letwin and John Bercow as  “Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves.” The Illuminati are at the centre of many anti-Semitic theories.

viii.  Tipples found that calling or comparing Jews or Zionists to Nazis anti-Semitic despite my giving a host of examples as to why this is not so.  She chose not to refer at any stage to my rebuttal and accepted, on the basis of blatant misquoting, the CAA’s assertions. For example

a.                      Rabbi Dov Lior, the settlers Chief Rabbi said that ‘a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives.’

b.                     Eli Dahan, Israel’s former Deputy Defence Minister said of the Palestinians that ‘To me, they are like animals, they aren’t human.’ explainingthat ‘“A Jew always has a much higher soul than a gentile, even if he is a homosexual,”

c.                      In 2016 an Israeli soldier Elor Azaria shot a captive prisoner dead. A demonstration in his support was held in Tel Aviv where a crowd of thousands chanted‘Death to the Arabs’. A banner ‘Kill them all’ was held high amongst the demonstrators. Another banner proclaimed‘My honour is my loyalty’, the slogan of the Nazi SS.

d.                     Military Chief Rabbi Rontzki in 2008 gave soldiers preparing to enter Gaza a booklet implying that all Palestinians are their mortal enemies and that cruelty is sometimes a “good attribute".

e.                      Rabbis Kastiel and Radler, who teach at the Eli pre-military academy told their students that ‘Hitler was right’ although ‘he was on the wrong side, meaning against the Jews’. Radler also stated that ‘the Holocaust was a divine punishment designed to make the Jewish people leave the diaspora...’

f.                       When Israeli mobs chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ how is that different from the chant ‘Death to the Jews’ in pre-war Germany?

g.                      Israeli politicians repeatedly invoke the Holocaust. For example Menachem Begin, Prime Minister of Israel, described Yasser Arafat of the PLO, during the siege of Beirut in 1982, as ‘Hitler in his bunker.’ Matan Vilnai, a former Deputy Defence Minister, declared that the people of Gaza ‘will bring upon themselves a bigger Shoah...’

                     If I had said that what Israel was doing was the same as the Nazis then that would clearly be wrong but not anti-Semitic.

h.                        Until Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, in June 1941, the Nazi policy towards the Jews had been expulsion not genocide. That is certainly comparable to Israeli policy.

i.                        Yair Golan, Deputy Chief of Staff, compared Israel today to Nazi Germany pre-1939 and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak endorsed his comments.

j.                     Daniel Blatman, a Professor of Holocaust Studies compared Israel’s deportation of Black refugees to the West’s refusal to admit Jewish refugees during the Nazi era and developments in Israel to those which led to the Nuremberg Laws. Supreme Court President Esther Hayut invoked the Nazi period while Dr Ofer Cassif, a Hebrew University politics professor compared Israel to Nazi Germany and called the Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked a ‘a filthy neo-Nazi.’ Are all of these anti-Semites?

k.                The CAA suggested that my description of Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger as ‘MPs for Tel Aviv’ is ‘a naked anti-Semitic trope.’ Perhaps I was being anti-Semitic when I accusedthe non-Jewish Joan Ryan of being the MP for Jerusalem Central? Was it racist for people to describeJohn Carlisle, Conservative MP for Luton North and a supporter of South African Apartheid as the MP for Bloemfontein West, Jerusalem?

Bob Blackman MP - a Bigot for all Seasons

l.                   I also provided evidence that in 2018 Falter had attended a Hindu nationalist meeting at the House of Commons called by Tory MP Bob Blackman, a well known Islamaphobe. Falter was reported as ‘assuring the meeting that he and his supporters would do all they could to help eradicate the ‘duty’ on the government to make Caste an aspect of race’. There is a certain logic in a racist Zionist supporting racist Hindus in India as represented by the BJP Government of Narendra Modi. Taking a leaf out of the Zionist book, Hindu chauvinists in this country have coined the term 'Hinduphobia'. Opponents of India's military rule in Kashmir are really motivated by hate of Hindus just a opponents of Israel are motivated by 'antisemitism'.  It having nothing to do with torture, administrative detention, land theft etc.

m.                 Falter described the comments of a Zionist, George Yusuf on Twitter saying ‘shame your family survived world can do without cunts line (sic) you’. as an ‘unseemly exchange’. thus demonstrating that Zionist anti-Semitism is of no concern to the CAA.

n.                 Gideon Falter has form when it comes to making false allegations. He reported Rowan Laxton, a senior civil servant, to the Police for shouting at a TV screen ‘fucking Jews’. Laxton was convicted at first instance but cleared on appeal at Southwark Crown Court. Laxton is currently British High Commissioner to Cameroon.

o.                     On 20 February 2017 D published an article headlined Expel Malaka Shwaik’. All the black arts were used to portray Malaka, a student at Exeter University from Gaza, as a she-devil. The CAA accused Shwaik of being ‘a terrorist-supporting antisemite’. It was of course a lie.

p.                     Malaka spoke at a demonstration called in protest at a spate of anti-Semitic incidents on campus suggesting that D’s allegation were false. The CAA used the opportunity to  mock Exeter students ‘They did naturally what comes to them...’ 

q.                  These allegations against Malaka were widely reported. She was cleared after an investigation of the CAA’s allegations by the Students’ Guild at Exeter University.

r.                       Whilst the Daily Mail, Daily Express and Devon Liveaccepted the findings of the Guild investigation, apologised and retracted their allegations, D brazened it out.

s.                    The CAA has engaged in a deliberate policy of fear mongering amongst British Jews. In 2015 D produced a Report which concluded that 45% of British people hold anti-Semitic views. The Institute of Jewish Policy Research said of D’s claim that the majority of British Jews considered antisemitism today an echo of the 1930s that it “verges into irresponsible territory – it is an incendiary finding, and there is simply no way to ascertain whether or not it is accurate.’ It also claimed that Report was ‘littered with flaws”.  Anshel Pfeffer in Ha’aretz was even blunter.

Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in media, academia, professions.... To compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.

Ardent Zionist ex-Chair Conservative Friends of Israel Lord Pickles - defended Tory link up with fascist and antisemitic groups in European parliament

t.                     The Jewish Chronicle’s Survation poll poured scorn on D’s ‘findings’ that over half the British Jewish population were thinking of leaving. Some 88% of British Jews stated that they had no intention of emigrating.

u.                     The CAA is also a deeply Islamaphobic organisation which sheds light on its claim to honesty. In 2016 D brought out a Report‘British Muslims and Anti-Semitism’. It spoke of how:

the gradual build up of understanding and friendship between Britain’s Jews and Muslims has been utterly eclipsed by growing antisemitism amongst British Muslims. On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews...’ 

v.                    This claim is not only a racist generalisation but a deliberate attempt to stir up divisions between Jews and Muslims.

w.                     On the cover of D’s Report was a picture of a Black person holding a poster with the slogan ‘Free Gaza – Hitler You Were Right’. I have been on dozens of Palestine solidarity demonstrations and have never seen anything remotely similar. This photograph can only have been intended to infer that such views are the norm amongst Muslims.

x.                     The CAA produced a graphic ‘Profile of British Muslim Anti-Semitism’. If a similar drawing of a typical Jewish male had been printed by Muslims then Falter  would be the first to cry ‘anti-Semitism’. 4 years on and the CAA is still using the same ‘Hitler’ poster:

y.                      Perhaps most remarkable of all.  It seems that most of Britain’s anti-Semites are Jewish! In my witness statement I listed just a few of the CAA’s targets such as Moshe Machover, Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi, Rachel Gould, Mike Cushman, Gerald Kaufman, Glynn Secker and Jenny Manson. This is a phenomenon that has never been known before.  Only cynics however would claim that it had anything to do with the fact that the above are Jewish anti-Zionists!

z.                  But when it comes to racism there is no better example than Gideon Falter. He is Vice Chairman of the Jewish National Fund, a body which owns and controls 93% of the land of Israel.  This is land which bars non-Jews from accessing it.  Not only that but Jews who lease land from the JNF are forbidden, on penalty of a fine and eventual termination of the lease, from employing non-Jews?  Just imagine that a lease in Britain made the same stipulation concerning Jews.  Then the CAA could, for once, rightly claim anti-Semitism.

All of this and more the myopic Tipples preferred not to see.  In her opinion the CAA in the form of Gideon Falter, was an honest person. 

I gave multiple examples of the deep racism of the CAA and Pickles deliberately chose to ignore them.  One can only assume that she thinks that being a racist and an honest person are perfectly compatible. This in itself demonstrates that the judgment of Tipples, like that of Nicklin, is also fundamentally racist and Zionist.

The question, of which today's US Supreme Court is an example, is who judges the judges?

I will be applying for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeal. We shall see if they are willing to upset Tipples. Below are some of my previous posts concerning the CAA.

Tony Greenstein

EXCLUSIVE: The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Accuses Jackie Walker of Holocaust Denial

5,000 people have called on the Charity Commission to Deregister the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism – let’s make it 10,000 by next week

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is a Campaign of Political Terrorism

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Over 5,000 people Sign a Petition saying the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism should not be a charity

Fake Zionist ‘charity’ Campaign Against Anti-Semitism targets female Palestinian student from Gaza

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Fake Charity ‘Campaign Against “AntiSemitism” ’ Attacks Tony Greenstein - Author of Petition to Charity Commission

Bogus Zionist ‘Charity’ Attacks Labour Candidates as ‘Anti-Semitic’

The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Smears Veteran Israeli Anti-Zionist Professor Moshe Machover

Libel Crowdfunding Appeal to Stop the Campaign Against Antisemitism's Defamatory Attacks Reaches 20%

A Crowdfunding Appeal to sue the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism for Defamation

Fake Charity 'Campaign Against Anti-Semitism' Runs Scared that it will lose its 'Charitable' Tax Advantages

The Campaign Against ‘Anti-Semitism’ Assemble a Representative Section of Racists & Reactionaries

Campaign Against Antisemitism is a campaign against Palestinians

It’s been a busy couple of weeks –well attended Zoom meetings and the usual Zionist Campaigns Against Free Speech

Reinstate Jeremy Corbyn! End the witch hunt! Saturday October 31 2020

What is Zionism  -Tony Greenstein and Moshe Machover -  Monday November 5^th

Brighton & Hove LLA Meeting Reinstate Corbyn Friday 6 11 20

The Campaign to Topple Jeremy Corbyn: A webinar hosted by Miko Peled Monday November 9^th 2020

Labour anti-Zionist Moshe Machover says he is ‘proud’ to share platform with those accused of antisemitism - Jewish Chronicle 9^th November 2020

See below Open letter to the Labour leader, Labour Disputes and Labour Legal Queries

One of the few good things about the lockdown is the number of meetings that have sprung up on-line with large audiences. Even better the Zionist lobby can do nothing about them.

I have taken part in four meetings in the past 2 weeks, beginning with a Brighton and Hove LAW meetingon 31^st October calling for an End to the Suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and the Witchhunt.  Speakers including Chris Williamson, the former MP for Derby North and 3 of the most prominent victims of the witchhunt – Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and myself.

This was followed by What is Zionism, with Moshe Machover and myself explaining the background to this reactionary movement of Jewish supremacy so beloved of anti-Semites. Chris Williamson chaired the discussion with Tina Werkman. 

Moshe threw out a challenge, which the Jewish Chronicle reported. In an Open Letter in Weekly Worker Machover reminded Keir Starmer, that in October 2017 he was expelled from the Labour Party and reinstated less than a month later, after a deluge of protests. Machover pointed to the fact that he denies that there is an anti-Semitism problem in the Labour Party and asked Starmer what he is going to do about it and whether his views are incompatible with membership of the Labour Party since he is classed as a ‘denialist’!  

‘Denialism’ which Corbyn repeated like a hypnotised parrott, holds that if you deny that there is a problem of Labour anti-Semitism then you are also anti-Semitic! Which is like saying if you plead not guilty in court then that is proof of your guilt?

‘Denialism’ is what those who conducted the witch trials in Salem, New England in the 17^thCentury subscribed to. As Elizabeth Reis wrote:

“During examinations, accused women were damned if they did and damned if they did not. If they confessed to witchcraft charges, their admissions would prove the cases against them; if they denied the charges, their very intractability, construed as the refusal to admit to sin more generally, might mark them as sinners and hence allies of the devil.”

The only women who were hanged at Salem were those who denied their guilt. This is the pathetic nonsense that Corbyn and Formby signed up to. Just as Corbyn pushed through the fast track expulsion procedures that has meant that hundreds of people expelled haven’t even had a hearing. Now Corbyn himself may fall victim to it.

On Friday 6^th November Brighton & Hove Labour Left Alliance organised a local meeting against the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn. Howard Beckett, Assistant Secretary-General of UNITE and an opponent of Corbyn’s suspension was due to speak. Unfortunately after the Zionists objected to him speaking alongside myself, as an expelled person, he pulled out. 

Like so many on the Labour left who oppose Corbyn’s suspension Beckett doesn’t seem to realise that bowing to the McCarthyist dictats of the Zionists and Board of Deputies also means also subscribing to the rationale for Corbyn’s suspension and probable expulsion. The fake anti-Semitism campaign, which was devised with the purpose of overthrowing Corbyn, needs to be called out not heeded. Giving comfort to its authors simply legitimates the campaign.

On November 9^th I was pleased to take part in a round table discussion hosted by Israeli Jewish anti-Zionist Miko Peled with Chris Williamson and Asa Winstanley, the London-based journalist with Electronic Intifada. We had an excellent discussion on the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign with a large audience in attendance, both on Zoom, Youtube and Facebook.

All of these meetings were well attended and subject to the usual Zionist attentions. Unfortunately for the Zionists, as they were taking place on the Internet they couldn’t engage in their usual trick, which is phoning up venues to get the meetings cancelled because of ‘anti-Semitism’ and if that doesn’t work getting people to ring them up and abuse them.

Tony Greenstein

Dear comrades

I am a member of the Labour Party, Hampstead and Kilburn CLP.

In early October 2017 I received a letter (dated October 3) from Sam Matthews, then the party’s Head of Disputes, expelling me from the party. The letter contained an insinuation that I had published an “anti-Semitic article”. This smear was not only false, but entirely gratuitous, as the reason given for my expulsion had nothing to do with the content of the article in question. That reason, however, was found to be ineffectual, and my expulsion was rescinded in a letter from the said Sam Matthews, dated October 26 2017.

I have since then demanded several times an apology for the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear; but my demands were ignored.

I now have pleasure in drawing your attention to my article, ‘An immoral dilemma: The trap of Zionist propaganda’ (Journal of Palestine Studies Vol XLVII, No4, summer 2018), attached herewith; to my article ‘Messianic Zionism: the ass and the red heifer’ (Monthly ReviewFebruary 2020); and to my article, ‘Weaponising “anti-Semitism”’ (Weekly Worker April 23 2020).

Please advise me whether, in your considered opinion, public expression of the views put forward in these articles is compatible with my membership of the Labour Party. If it is not, I would respectfully ask you to point out specifically which of these views are incompatible with membership. I wish to add that I am determined to continue advocating these views.

I am writing this as an open letter, because the issues that it involves are not private, but of concern to members and supporters of the party, and indeed to the general public.

Sincerely

Moshé Machover

Robert Fisk – The Death Of A ‘Controversial’ Journalist Who Didn’t Hesitate to Challenge the ‘Competing Narratives’ of War

10th November 2020 Alerts

Robert Fisk - by Lara Marlowe

Robert Fisk (12 July 1946 – 30 October 2020) was without doubt the greatest Middle East correspondent of our age and probably of all time. It was the Independent’s good fortune to have the two finest Middle East correspondents, Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn, amongst the British press. This in itself speaks volumes about the rest of the press.

I had the good fortune to listen to Fisk speak, shortly after the outbreak of the Iraq war, at my almer mater, St. Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, which I attended from 1980-81 when Brighton Polytechnic and Sussex University, blacklisted me.

A teacher training college, its Deputy Principal was an outstanding Roman Catholic priest, Father Michael Prior who was passionate about the plight of the Palestinians and went on to found Living Stones. I happened to be the only Jewish student there but never felt disadvantaged because of that although being a PGCE student much of my time was spent out of the college.

In or around 2004 Robert Fisk had been invited to talk about the attack on Iraq by the United States and Britain and a riveting talk it was. I particularly remember his description of the ‘War on Terror’ as a war against an abstract noun. That particular phrase captured the absurdity of believing that through overwhelming military might one could overcome ‘terrorism’ without dealing with its causes.

Robert Fisk saw service in most of the world’s hotspots beginning with Ireland and covering the Balkans, the Middle East and Afghanistan.  He was originally employed by The Times but it was impossible for any fearless journalist to survive for long in Rupert Murdoch’s Empire. When an Iranian passenger airliner was shot down by the USS Vincennes over the Gulf in 1988 the Times spiked his explanation as to what had happened. 

The US had been harassing civilian aircraft in the Gulf for some time but The Times chose to carry the United States lying and exculpatory propaganda that the pilot of the airliner had been intent on a suicide mission to sink the USS Vincennes rather than the fact that it was deliberately shot down whilst posing no threat to the US ship.

What is striking is how, in the most military and politically fraught area in the world, the Middle East, the site of US imperialism’s constant wars for oil and strategic domination and its attacks on the basic rights of the people of the area, via its Saudi and Israeli protégés, coverage by the rest of the press is so appalling.

I don’t even know if the Guardian has a Middle East correspondent anymore. The paper’s coverage has been Freedlandised or as they used to say Bowdlerized. Yet in the past the Guardian too has produced brilliant Middle East correspondents. Michael Adams was the first Western reporter to break with the pro-Zionist hegemony of the press, despite being hindered at the time by his editor Alistair Hetherington, who spiked his coverage of Israel’s demolition of 3 villages in the West Bank, including the Biblical village of Emmaus, [see The Road to Emmaus: the papers of Michael Adams (1920-2005) following the 1967 War. David Hirst followed in the same tradition and Ian Black, despite disagreeing with much of his analysis, was certainly aware of the history of Zionism and what it had done to the Palestinians.

Today despite being the location of almost permanent warfare and destabilisation, from Syria to Libya to Yemen, coverage of the politics of the area and the motivation of its western actors is poor to non-existent. This was Robert Fisk’s strength.  He took the time to know the area.  He lived in Beirut for a long period. He didn’t employ stringers, local journalists who would find out the information for him and he didn’t rely on briefings from the US or Israeli military.

The most pertinent and acute article on the death of Robert Fisk, which I produce below, is that of Media Lens.which points out that almost all obituaries and tributes have used the weasel word ‘controversial’ It asks why an anti-war correspondent, someone who treated the explanations and justifications of the imperial war mongers with skepticism and disbelief, should be considered ‘controversial’ when Zionist ‘journalists’ like Jonathan Freedland are considered uncontroversial.

Well we all know the answer to that question or we should do. Freedland represents vested interests, Chatham House, the British and US Establishment. He and his ilk are simply the mouthpieces for imperialism. The Guardian and most of the press simply reflect the opinions and interests of the military-industrial complex and for that reason will never be considered controversial because they are by definition mainstream. I never tired of quoting Marx’s observation in the German Ideology that the ruling ideas in any society are those of its ruling class.

Hence why the horrific toll in the Yemen war gets so little mention and why, despite the demonisation of Saddam Hussein no one comments on the horrific human rights record of the current Iraq regime which is almost certainly worse than Saddam Hussein. Likewise why the Egyptian tyrant Sisi with his heavy toll of executions isn’t even mentioned whereas the clampdown by China in Hong Kong is all the rage. No one points out Blair’s hypocritical justification for regime change was Saddam’s appalling human rights record. Of course it was appalling but so is that of the Saudis.

The Guardian unsurprisingly has used the same description as the rest of the press, informingits readers that Fisk ‘was a controversial figure, known for his criticism of the US.’ This is a form of newspeak, ‘Controversial’ for the Guardian means challenging the United States’ hegemonic narrative. For the Guardian these days that is indeed controversial. After Biden’s  election they informedus that Joe Biden ‘will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver.’

I have to confess that I find it difficult to recall one problem that the United States has solved. It is a problem creator from Vietnam to Central/Latin America to Indonesia to the Balkans. However I accept that when your record includes supporting the Iraq War then myopia is an inevitable disability.

Fisk was bold and fearless and had nothing but contempt for the kind of ‘hotel journalism’ that most of the press indulged in during the Iraq War when reporters wrote their stories confined to their hotel rooms. He had equal contempt for ‘embedded journalists’who did their reporting whilst accompanying the military. Their perspective could not be other than from the point of view of the invaders.

The Guardian foundFisk especially ‘controversial’ because he‘tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it, provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes’ What the Guardian really means is as Media Lens commented

Whistleblowing revelations relating to OPCW and the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, while almost completely ignored by the ‘mainstream’, have overwhelmingly vindicated Fisk and made a nonsense of official claims. See Chomsky: OPCW cover-up of Syria probe is ‘shocking’ and here..

This was the alleged attack which caused Donald Trump to order a cruise missile attack on Syrian forces. It has now been shown to be entirely fake, as many of us suspected at the time.

The real beef that the Guardian and the rest of the Prostitute Press had with Fisk was that he was a genuine journalist and one who operated within the ambit of anti-imperialism, i.e. opposition to the West. This is, quite understandably baffling to the war makers.

Fisk was the same journalist who, alone, had revealedthe horrific massacre by Hafez al-Assad, the Syrian President’s father, in Hama when Syrian troops put down a rebellion by the Muslim Brotherhood with an estimated 20,000 civilian deaths. They simply razed whole neighbourhoods Israeli fashion. But this was a massacre of which the West approved and so there was little publicity given to what happened. There was no self-criticism by the Guardian or any other of the press prostitutes as to why they had not covered it at the time.

Fisk lived in Beirut during the civil war and the hostage crisis that led to the long imprisonment of Terry Waite and the death of others. Fisk had what most war reporters today don’t have and that is personal courage and commitment. He also insisted in talking to the people of the areas ravaged by imperialism rather than talking to other talking heads. These were unforgivable crimes in the eyes of those reporters who never ventured outside their hotel in the Green Zone in Baghdad, unless in the company of US military.

It is no surprise that that other great war reporter, Seymour Hirsh, who uncovered the My Lai massacre, has also been silencedover the question of false claims of Syrian use of chemical weapons. See for example New exposé by Seymour Hersh: Turkey staged gas attack to provoke US war on Syria

Robert Fisk was almost alone today in challenging the way that Western reporters have, with their use of language, become propagandists for war and imperial conquest.  Instead of talking about justice and injustice they use the term ‘competing narratives’. As if what is at stake is a different historical perspective. The occupied territories of Palestine become ‘disputed territories’.  Imagine a burglar entering your home and telling the police that he disputes the ownership of what he has stolen because his ancestors lived there a couple of thousand years ago.  Yet this is the rationale behind the theft of Palestinian land today.

Just imagine that the British press had described the demonisation of Jews in Nazi Germany, since Hitler is everyone’s enemy, as a ‘competing narrative’.  Yet that is what the Daily Mail and others in the British press did.  They doubted the severity of the persecution of the Jews and ‘understood’ that the Germans resented the domination by Jews of sections of the German economy.  But all this is forgotten now. The press also has rather a large memory hole for the things it prefers that we should forget.

So when the Americans describe their actions in the Middle East as being a war for democracy rather than a war for domination of the oil and resources, there is no pushback either by the BBC or The Guardian.

Fisk’s awareness of how language is used to sanitise violence and oppression marks him out as following in the tradition of Orwell, with his concepts of Newspeak and Double Think and it was fitting that he was awarded the Orwell Prize. A prize that has been brought into disgrace by being awarded to war propagandists such as David Aaronovitch and Suzanna Moore.

The very fact that Fisk was hated and despised by our rulers and treated with the kind of contempt with which the Guardian in particular specialises, is in itself a testimony to his achievement as a journalist. He spoke truth to power rather than defending their propaganda.

Below is the article I mentioned in Media Lens on how the fake news outlets could not let go of these resentments and envy over the reputation of one of the last genuine journalists in the employ of the British press.

Tony Greenstein

Robert Fisk – Death Of A ‘Controversial’ Journalist

Robert Fisk, the Independent’s Middle East correspondent, died on 30 October aged 74. In reviewing his life and career, the newspaper for which he worked for more than two decades wrote of their star reporter:

‘Much of what Fisk wrote was controversial…’

As John Pilger noted, in describing Fisk’s journalism as ‘controversial’ the Independent was using a ‘weasel word’.

The Washington Post published a piece titled:

‘Robert Fisk, daring but controversial British war correspondent and author, dies at 74’

Al Jazeera’s piece was subtitled:

‘The Independent newspaper confirms its acclaimed and controversial journalist died following a short illness.’

A piece in Le Monde was titled:

‘La mort de Robert Fisk, grand reporter au Moyen-Orient et personnage controversé’ (Christophe Ayad, Le Monde, 4 November 2020)

The trend is clear. When The Times subjected Fisk to one of its full-on hit pieces in April 2018, it wrote: ‘Fisk is no stranger to controversy.’

So why do‘mainstream’ commentators feel obliged to red-flag Fisk’s journalism with ‘controversial’in this way, and why is it a ‘weasel word’?

Andrew Marr - the BBC's execrable Tory war monger

Consider that the likes of the BBC’s Andrew Marr, the Guardian’s Martin Chulov and The Times’ David Aaronovitch, and numerous others, will never be described as ‘controversial’, despite their highly controversial, in fact outrageous, warmongering bias.

Marr is not labelled ‘controversial’ for supporting a ground invasion of Serbia in 1999:

‘I want to put the Macbeth option: which is that we’re so steeped in blood we should go further. If we really believe Milosevic is this bad, dangerous and destabilising figure we must ratchet this up much further. We should now be saying that we intend to put in ground troops.’ (Marr, ‘Do we give war a chance?’, The Observer, 18 April 1999)

Was that ‘controversial’? How about this?

Was it ‘controversial’ for the Guardian to write this of the country that has relentlessly waged war and supported tyranny around the world since 1945:

‘Joe Biden looks to have done enough to win the White House… He will have to reassert America’s role as the global problem-solver.’(Our emphasis)?

Was it ‘controversial’ for the supposedly impartial global news agency, Associated Press, to write this of the United States:

‘For decades, the U.S. has been an advocate for democracy abroad, using diplomatic pressure and even direct military intervention in the name of spreading the principles of a pluralistic system with a free and fair vote for political leaders’?

An awesome level of gullibility is required to believe that the direct military ‘interventions’ (wars) in oil-rich Iraq and Libya were about spreading pluralistic principles. Whether or not Iraqis have had ‘a free and fair vote’ since 2003 is a matter of complete indifference to Western politics and journalism.

It turns out that the term ‘controversial’ is only applied in corporate media to political writers and leaders deemed ‘controversial’ by elite interests.

This was unwittingly made clear by the big brains at the BBC who noted that Fisk ‘drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’. If Fisk had drawn ‘controversy’ from China, Iran or North Korea, the ‘weasel word’ would not have appeared in the Beeb’s analysis.

A second piece in the Independent also allowed us to read between the letters that make up ‘controversial’:

‘Often writing and speaking of his pity for the people he saw being killed at the same time as becoming a forthright critic of the US and Israel. His writing could be controversial – such as his later reporting on Syria…’ (Our emphasis)

Fisk is not alone, of course. The BBC controversially echoed numerous other media in describing Hugo Chavez as ‘Venezuela’s… controversial president’.

If Chavez was ‘controversial’, which national leader is not? Should they all be described as ‘controversial’? By the way, Biden very controversially described Chavez’ successor Nicolas Maduro as a ‘tyrant’, adding:

‘I was among the first Democratic foreign policy voices to recognize Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s legitimate leader and to call for Maduro to resign.’ (See here for more on Biden’s grim record.)

As we have discussed, these were deeply embarrassing propaganda claims in pursuit of regime change. Even the BBC was eventually forced to give up the pretence that Guaidó was ‘interim leader’, reverting to the title ‘opposition leader’.

Although Obama bombed seven Muslim countries from 2009 to 2017, all but destroying Libya, the BBC would, of course, never refer to ‘America’s controversial president, Barack Obama’, or even to ‘America’s controversial president, George W. Bush’. Specific Bush policies might be described as ‘controversial’, but the term would never be applied as a broad brush description of who he is.

In corporate media newspeak, ‘controversial’can actually be translated as ‘offensive to power’. The term is intended as a scare word to warn readers that the labelled person is ‘dodgy’, ‘suspect’: ‘Handle with care!’ The journalist is also signalling to his or her editors and other colleagues: ‘I’m not one of “them”!’

The same effect can be achieved by praising establishment figures. Peter Oborne did not cover himself in glory by tweeting:

‘Tony Blair has emerged as probably the most authoritative and persuasive voice during the Covid crisis.’

As we noted:

‘If it was some other leader of some other country who had waged an illegal war of aggression killing one million people, Oborne might not have sent this.’

Journalists and leaders who serve power, including ‘Teflon Tony’, somehow retain fundamental ‘respectability’, are welcomed by elite media and the powers that be. (For completists interested in this subliminal misuse of language, the same use is made of the term ‘narcissist’: Julian Assange, Russell Brand, George Galloway, Glenn Greenwald, Seumas Milne, John Pilger, Edward Snowden, Hugo Chavez, and – alas! – us at Media Lens, have all been repeatedly accused of ‘narcissism’. Recently, Andrew Rawnsley wrote of the almost comically humble and selfless Jeremy Corbyn:

‘Many things have been said about his character over the years, but one thing has not been said enough: he is a narcissist.’

An unwitting, backhanded compliment from the Observer’s great warmonger. (See our book ‘Propaganda Blitz’ for more discussion on ‘narcissism’, Pluto Press, 2018, pp.54-55)

‘How Do They Get Away With These Lies?

In 2004, at a time when all of US-UK journalism was celebrating the ‘transfer of sovereignty’ from the forces still occupying Iraq and stealing its oil, Fisk was a rare voice mocking the charade:

‘Alice in Wonderland could not have improved on this. The looking-glass reflects all the way from Baghdad to Washington… Those of us who put quotation marks around “liberation” in 2003 should now put quotation marks around “sovereignty”.’ (Fisk, ‘The handover: Restoration of Iraqi sovereignty – or Alice in Wonderland?’ The Independent, 29 June 2004)

In 2014, after Tony Blair made one of his frequent attempts to exonerate himself in relation to Iraq while calling for more violence to bomb Syria better, the Guardian editors performed painful contortions in declaring Blair’s analysis ‘thoughtful’ if ‘wrong-headed’. Fisk’s response to Blair was different:

‘How do they get away with these lies?’

Fisk was also a virtual lone ‘mainstream’ voice contesting the US-UK’s audacious, well-funded attempts to re-run their Iraq ‘weapons of mass destruction’ scam in Syria:

‘Washington’s excuse for its new Middle East adventure – that it must arm Assad’s enemies because the Damascus regime has used sarin gas against them – convinces no-one in the Middle East. Final proof of the use of gas by either side in Syria remains almost as nebulous as President George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam’s Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.’

For this, as the obituaries make unsubtly clear, Fisk was never forgiven.

An obituary in The Times commented on Fisk:

‘While he was an outstandingly poetic writer, he developed an emotional obsession with the plight of the Palestinian people and a visceral dislike of the Israeli government and its allies, especially America. In the jargon of news reporting he “went native”, unable to provide a dispassionate account of events and their context.’ (‘Robert Fisk: Obituaries – Trenchant yet lyrical foreign correspondent who interviewed Osama bin Laden three times and was often accused of “going native”‘, The Times, 3 Nov 2020)

Given the appalling racism and ethnic cleansing faced by the Palestinian people, the reference to Fisk ‘going native’ was a grotesque observation.

The Times noted, of course, that Fisk ‘remained no stranger to controversy’. It asked us to believe that ‘critics poured cold water on Fisk’s writing’, although ‘awards committees did not’. In translation: Fisk was subjected to exactly the kind of ugly propaganda smears from ‘critics’ contained in The Times’ obituary.

The comments are no great surprise, given the honesty with which Fisk described his departure from The Times to join the Independent in 1989:

‘The end came for me when I flew to Dubai in 1988 after the USS Vincennes [a US Navy guided missile cruiser] had shot down an Iranian passenger airliner over the Gulf. Within 24 hours, I had spoken to the British air traffic controllers at Dubai, discovered that US ships had routinely been threatening British Airways airliners, and that the crew of the Vincennes appeared to have panicked. The foreign desk told me the report was up for the page-one splash. I warned them that American “leaks” that the IranAir pilot was trying to suicide-crash his aircraft on to the Vincennes were rubbish. They agreed.

‘Next day, my report appeared with all criticism of the Americans deleted, with all my sources ignored. The Times even carried an editorial suggesting the pilot was indeed a suicider. A subsequent US official report and accounts by US naval officers subsequently proved my dispatch correct. Except that Times readers were not allowed to see it.’

Fisk said that he believed Murdoch did not personally intervene. However:

‘He didn’t need to. He had turned The Times into a tame, pro-Tory, pro-Israeli paper shorn of all editorial independence.’

Echoing virtually every other obituary, the Guardian commented that Fisk ‘tended to absolve the Assad regime of some of the worst crimes credited to it’, which had ‘provoked a backlash, even among his anti-imperialist acolytes’.

It is ironic that the Guardian should highlight Fisk’s supposed tendency to ‘absolve’ Syria of ‘the worst crimes credited to it’. Whistleblowing revelations relating to OPCW and the alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria, while almost completely ignored by the ‘mainstream’, have overwhelmingly vindicated Fisk and made a nonsense of official claims. See recent comments here from Noam Chomsky, and excellent in-depth analysis here.

The Guardian naturally deployed the ‘weasel word’ in noting‘all the controversy generated by his later commentary on the evils of western, and specifically US, involvement in the Middle East’. This was followed by a distorted version of ‘balance’:

‘Some of Fisk’s most ardent admirers have suggested that to describe his journalism as controversial is a vulgar slight.’

Some people might think so, but only ‘ardent admirers’, ‘acolytes’ – themselves controversial narcissists.

Who knows where this unsubtle red-flagging of Fisk’s journalism as ‘controversial’ would have ended? The intent behind ‘mainstream’ propaganda, particularly on Fisk’s Syria reporting, has increasingly been to suggest that Fisk was morally tainted; that he got it badly, shamefully wrong. Flitting like barely-glimpsed bats at the back of the readers mind are supposed to be terms like ‘Assad apologist’, ‘genocide denial’. Not Holocaust denial exactly, but a shameful mutation of the same moral blindness.

Another rare, excellent ‘mainstream’ journalist, Patrick Cockburn, dispensed with the herdthink, copycat smears, and captured the truth of a journalist who was

‘a meticulous and highly-informed reporter, one who responded sceptically – and rigorously investigated – the partisan claims of all parties, be they gunmen, army officers or government officials’.

Cockburn added:

‘He took nothing for granted and was often openly contemptuous of those who did. He did not invent the old journalist saying “never believe anything until it is officially denied” but he was inclined to agree with its sceptical message. He was suspicious of journalists who cultivated diplomats and “official sources” that could not be named and whose veracity we are invited to take on trust.’

This explains exactly why Fisk was and is viewed as ‘controversial’; a word that did not appear in Cockburn’s summing up.

The Invisible Tweets

A storm had been made to brew around Fisk’s reputation in recent years. But it had not yet reached the Category 5 propaganda hurricane that engulfed Jeremy Corbyn who, like Fisk, ‘drew controversy for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’.

Corbyn was not just accused of anti-semitism and Holocaust denial; he was accused of being a de facto Nazi who ‘wants to reopen Auschwitz’. These claims were baseless and insane, but not ‘controversial’.

By contrast, we discovered what is deemed ‘controversial’ on Twitter on November 3. That day, we tried three times to tweet a link to a Red Pepper article by Lynne Segal as she ‘looks back on her experience of 40 years as a party member in [Corbyn’s] constituency’. We tweeted a screenshot of this important passage from Segal’s excellent piece:

‘Right now, along with the many other Jewish activists I know in Islington North, I am simply devastated that this process has climaxed in the suspension of our cherished MP, and former leader. It’s so hard to accept that I must repeat again what every Jewish member I know in Islington North has frequently confirmed and it is we who actually know and regularly meet with Jeremy Corbyn – unlike most of critics. What we can confirm is that as Jews in North Islington we have always felt more than safe, more than welcome, unfailingly supported, in everything we do in the borough, and the Party. As it happens, we often feel this all the more strongly as Jews, knowing that ­– unlike Corbyn – so many who choose to speak in our name completely disrespect our commitment to antisemitism and racism of all kinds in struggles for a better world, including the vital struggle for Palestinian rights.’

We also tweeted a screenshot of this passage:

‘So, let me provide a few pertinent facts. Over the years, Corbyn has had mutually supportive relations with the practising Jewish community in Islington, attending Shabbat dinners with the orthodox Chabad Rabbi, Mendy Korer, and attending numerous other official Jewish events in North London. Against some local resistance, Corbyn promoted the installation of a plaque on a demolished synagogue site in 2015 to celebrate Jewish life in the borough. Unlike most of his critics in Westminster, Corbyn unfailingly turned up to vote for motions addressing anti-Semitism in Parliament, just as he worked tirelessly against racism on every front.’

This is extremely powerful, credible evidence exposing the claims against Corbyn, not just as a sham, but as a monstrous reversal of the truth.

We know what our readers like and we know how they will likely react to our tweets, so we were surprised that the two tweeted screenshots did not immediately pick up a few likes and retweets. In fact, after four hours, they had not been liked or retweeted by anyone. We tried tweeting the screenshots again, and again they received no likes or retweets. We checked with friends and it became clear that while these tweets were visible to us, they had been secretly rendered invisible to everyone else by Twitter without us knowing. Unlike the smears unleashed on Corbyn for five years, our words had been banished because they were deemed ‘controversial’ by a giant, profit-maximising tech corporation. And we are not alone; we discovered that independent journalist Glenn Greenwald had earlier tweeted:

‘I posted this tweet 3 times and all 3 times it just won’t appear in my time-line, allowing nobody to see it. Genuinely confused. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?’

No surprise, Greenwald is also ‘controversial’, having, like Fisk, Corbyn and us, attracted ‘controversy’ ‘for his sharp criticism of the US and Israel, and of Western foreign policy’.

On Twitter, in response to corporate media censoring Donald Trump, science writer Marcus Chown commented:

‘This is what we DESPERATELY need in the UK. We need our media to interrupt speeches by Johnson and others and point out to viewers their lies. Retweet if you would like to seee [sic] this happen.’

If giant, profit-maximising, advertiser-dependent corporate media decide it is their job and right to censor political leaders like Trump and Johnson, they will have no qualms at all about censoring you, us, and everyone else. Is that what we want? What on earth qualifies Big Business as an arbiter of Truth?

DE

The Mideast reporting giant Robert Fisk covered Israel/Palestine with courage and passion

By James NorthNovember 2, 2020Mondoweiss

Robert Fisk was the best known English-language Middle East correspondent of a generation, and his death over the weekend at the age of 74 has prompted an outpouring of praise — along with some criticism.

The obituaries are citing his decades of work, mainly for the British Independent, and his two gigantic books: Pity the Nation (1990) and The Great War for Civilisation (2005), which are based on first-hand reporting from nearly every flashpoint in the Mideast since the mid-1970s. Fisk was there during the civil war in Lebanon, the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and much more. He did unforgettable on-the-spot dispatches after the Sabra and Shatila massacres in Beirut in 1982, when the Israeli army stood by as Lebanese Christian militiamen slaughtered somewhere between 460 and 3,500 Palestinian refugees.

Robert Fisk’s decades of reporting on Israel/Palestine were especially valuable, contrasted with most mainstream U.S. media. Much of this coverage can be found in The Great War for Civilisation. He raised doubts about the 1993 Oslo “peace agreement” right from the start, asking ordinary skeptical Palestinians for their opinion instead of relying exclusively on high-level diplomats. He went to Israeli Jewish “settlements” in the West Bank, and did not cover up the hard, anti-Palestinian views he found there.

Fisk also interviewed the kind of Israelis who doappear in the U.S. mainstream, but he warned they aren’t representative:

. . . Dedi Zucker, a liberal member of the Knesset and leader of the Civil Rights Movement is very much in a minority; he is the sort of man — broad-minded, bespectacled, academic in appearance — whom visitors to Israel seek out to hear what they want to hear.

Robert Fisk also dissected the chronic bias, in language and interpretation, that has become so much a part of the mainstream reporting from Israel/Palestine that we often no longer even notice it:

When Palestinians murder Israelis, we regard them as evil men. When Israelis slaughter Palestinians, America and other Western nations find it expedient to regard these crimes as tragedies, misunderstandings or the work of individual madmen. Palestinians — in the generic, all-embracing sense of the word — are held to account for these deeds. Israel is not.

Fisk’s reporting in other parts of the Mideast has raised some doubts about his accuracy. Hugh Pope, also a distinguished Mideast journalist who is now with the International Crisis Group, a decade ago briefly listed some of Fisk’s distortions. Pope, in his own fascinating memoir Dining With Al Qaeda, says that other reporters had a word for it: “Fiskery.” Pope explained:

. . . the essential thrust of the story, and the political message behind it, might well be true, or, from the author’s point of view, illustrate a higher truth. But the details, quotes, witnesses, and even whole battles could be embellished to make the story fly, preferably onto the front page.

Pope suggests there may be extenuating circumstances that explain Fisk’s exaggerations. Western reporting that follows narrow mainstream conventions is dry, clinical — and in the end, arguably inaccurate in its own way. Pope continued:

Fisk’s writing, more than almost anyone else’s, manages to step around the cautious conventions of Middle Eastern reporting and drive home at an emotional level the injustices of the dictators and the cruel side of U.S. policies.

Huge Pope’s complicated view continues after Fisk’s death. The Twitter timeline is reproducing Pope’s skeptical view of Fisk’s accuracy. To which Pope responds:

What you say about a fact deficit is true. But Fisk excelled at communicating the injustice of Western policies, the horror of war and the pain felt by its victims.

Journalism and ‘the words of power’

Al Jazeera, 25 May 2010

The relationship between power and the media is about semantics, Robert Fisk told The Al Jazeera Forum in 2010.

25 May 2010

Editor’s Note: Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent of The Independent, died on Friday at the age of 74. During his decades-long career, he covered key international events including the Lebanese civil war, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian revolution, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, conflicts in the Balkans and the Arab Spring.

As a regular contributor to Al Jazeera, he addressed the fifth annual Al Jazeera Forum on May 23, 2010 with a keynote speech in which he argued that journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Power and the media are not just about cosy relationships between journalists and political leaders, between editors and presidents. They are not just about the parasitic-osmotic relationship between supposedly honourable reporters and the nexus of power that runs between White House and state department and Pentagon, between Downing Street and the foreign office and the ministry of defence. In the western context, power and the media is about words – and the use of words.

It is about semantics.

It is about the employment of phrases and clauses and their origins. And it is about the misuse of history; and about our ignorance of history.

More and more today, we journalists have become prisoners of the language of power.

Is this because we no longer care about linguistics? Is this because lap-tops ‘correct’  our spelling, ‘trim’ our grammar so that our sentences so often turn out to be identical to those of our rulers? Is this why newspaper editorials today often sound like political speeches?

Let me show you what I mean.

For two decades now, the US and British – and Israeli and Palestinian – leaderships have used the words ‘peace process’ to define the hopeless, inadequate, dishonourable agreement that allowed the US and Israel to dominate whatever slivers of land would be given to an occupied people.

I first queried this expression, and its provenance, at the time of Oslo – although how easily we forget that the secret surrenders at Oslo were themselves a conspiracy without any legal basis. Poor old Oslo, I always think! What did Oslo ever do to deserve this? It was the White House agreement that sealed this preposterous and dubious treaty – in which refugees, borders, Israeli colonies – even timetables – were to be delayed until they could no longer be negotiated.

And how easily we forget the White House lawn – though, yes, we remember the images – upon which it was Clinton who quoted from the Qur’an, and Arafat who chose to say: “Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. President.” And what did we call this nonsense afterwards? Yes, it was ‘a moment of history’! Was it? Was it so?

Do you remember what Arafat called it? “The peace of the brave.” But I don’t remember any of us pointing out that “the peace of the brave” was used originally by General de Gaulle about the end of the Algerian war. The French lost the war in Algeria. We did not spot this extraordinary irony.

Same again today. We western journalists – used yet again by our masters – have been reporting our jolly generals in Afghanistan as saying that their war can only be won with a “hearts and minds” campaign. No-one asked them the obvious question:  Wasn’t this the very same phrase used about Vietnamese civilians in the Vietnam war? And didn’t we – didn’t the West – lose the war in Vietnam?

Yet now we western journalists are actually using – about Afghanistan – the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ in our reports as if it is a new dictionary definition rather than a symbol of defeat for the second time in four decades, in some cases used by the very same soldiers who peddled this nonsense – at a younger age – in Vietnam.

Just look at the individual words which we have recently co-opted from the US military.

When we westerners find that ‘our’ enemies – al-Qaeda, for example, or the Taliban -have set off more bombs and staged more attacks than usual, we call it ‘a spike in violence’. Ah yes, a ‘spike’!

A ‘spike’ in violence, ladies and gentlemen is a word first used, according to my files, by a brigadier general in the Baghdad Green Zone in 2004. Yet now we use that phrase, we extemporise on it, we relay it on the air as our phrase. We are using, quite literally, an expression created for us by the Pentagon. A spike, of course, goes sharply up, then sharply downwards. A ‘spike’ therefore avoids the ominous use of the words ‘increase in violence’ – for an increase, ladies and gentlemen, might not go down again afterwards.

Now again, when US generals refer to a sudden increase in their forces for an assault on Fallujah or central Baghdad or Kandahar – a mass movement of soldiers brought into Muslim countries by the tens of thousands – they call this a ‘surge’. And a surge, like a tsunami, or any other natural phenomena, can be devastating in its effects.  What these ‘surges’ really are – to use the real words of serious journalism – are reinforcements. And reinforcements are sent to wars when armies are losing those wars. But our television and newspaper boys and girls are still talking about ‘surges’ without any attribution at all! The Pentagon wins again.

Meanwhile the ‘peace process’ collapsed. Therefore our leaders – or ‘key players’ as we like to call them – tried to make it work again. Therefore the process had to be put ‘back on track’. It was a railway train, you see. The carriages had come off the line. So the train had to be put ‘back on track’. The Clinton administration first used this phrase, then the Israelis, then the BBC.

But there was a problem when the ‘peace process’ had been put ‘back on track’ – and still came off the line. So we produced a ‘road map’– run by a Quartet and led by our old Friend of God, Tony Blair, who – in an obscenity of history – we now refer to as a ‘peace envoy’.

But the ‘road map’ isn’t working. And now, I notice, the old ‘peace process’ is back in our newspapers and on our television screens. And two days ago, on CNN, one of those boring old fogies that the TV boys and girls call ‘experts’– I’ll come back to them in a moment – told us again that the ‘peace process’ was being put ‘back on track’ because of the opening of ‘indirect talks’ between Israelis and Palestinians.

Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t just about clichés – this is preposterous journalism. There is no battle between power and the media. Through language, we have become them.

Maybe one problem is that we no longer think for ourselves because we no longer read books. The Arabs still read books – I’m not talking here about Arab illiteracy rates – but I’m not sure that we in the West still read books. I often dictate messages over the phone and find I have to spend ten minutes to repeat to someone’s secretary a mere hundred words. They don’t know how to spell.

I was on a plane the other day, from Paris to Beirut – the flying time is about three hours and 45 minutes – and the woman next to me was reading a French book about the history of the Second World War. And she was turning the page every few seconds. She had finished the book before we reached Beirut! And I suddenly realised she wasn’t reading the book – she was surfing the pages! She had lost the ability to what I call ‘deep read’. Is this one of our problems as journalists, I wonder, that we no longer ‘deep read’? We merely use the first words that come to hand …

Let me show you another piece of media cowardice that makes my 63-year-old teeth grind together after 34 years of eating humus and tahina in the Middle East.

We are told, in so many analysis features, that what we have to deal with in the Middle East are ‘competing narratives’. How very cosy. There’s no justice, no injustice, just a couple of people who tell different history stories. ‘Competing narratives’ now regularly pop up in the British press. The phrase is a species – or sub-species – of the false language of anthropology. It deletes the possibility that one group of people – in the Middle East, for example – are occupied, while another group of people are doing the occupying. Again, no justice, no injustice, no oppression or oppressing, just some friendly ‘competing narratives’, a football match, if you like, a level playing field because the two sides are – are they not – ‘in competition’. It’s two sides in a football match. And two sides have to be given equal time in every story.

So an ‘occupation’ can become a ‘dispute’. Thus a ‘wall’ becomes a ‘fence’ or a ‘security barrier’. Thus Israeli colonisation of Arab land contrary to all international law becomes ‘settlements’ or ‘outposts’ or ‘Jewish neighbourhoods’.

You will not be surprised to know that it was Colin Powell, in his starring, powerless appearance as secretary of state to George W. Bush, who told US diplomats in the Middle East to refer to occupied Palestinian land as ‘disputed land’ – and that was good enough for most of the American media.

So watch out for ‘competing narratives’, ladies and gentlemen. There are no ‘competing narratives’, of course, between the US military and the Taliban. When there are, however, you’ll know the West has lost.

But I’ll give you a lovely, personal example of how ‘competing narratives’ come undone. Last month, I gave a lecture in Toronto to mark the 95th anniversary of the 1915 Armenian genocide, the deliberate mass murder of one and a half million Armenian Christians by the Ottoman Turkish army and militia. Before my talk, I was interviewed on Canadian Television, CTV, which also owns the TorontoGlobeandMail newspaper. And from the start, I could see that the interviewer had a problem. Canada has a large Armenian community. But Toronto also has a large Turkish community. And the Turks, as the Globe and Mail always tell us, “hotly dispute” that this was a genocide. So the interviewer called the genocide “deadly massacres”.

Of course, I spotted her specific problem straight away. She could not call the massacres a ‘genocide’, because the Turkish community would be outraged. But equally, she sensed that ‘massacres’ on its own – especially with the gruesome studio background photographs of dead Armenians – was not quite up to defining a million and a half murdered human beings. Hence the ‘deadly massacres’. How odd!!! If there are ‘deadly’ massacres, are there some massacres which are not ‘deadly’, from which the victims walk away alive? It was a ludicrous tautology.

In the end, I told this little tale of journalistic cowardice to my Armenian audience, among whom were sitting CTV executives. Within an hour of my ending, my Armenian host received an SMS about me from a CTV reporter. “Shitting on CTV was way out of line,” the reporter complained. I doubted, personally, if the word ‘shitting’ would find its way onto CTV. But then, neither does ‘genocide’. I’m afraid ‘competing narratives’ had just exploded.

Yet the use of the language of power – of its beacon-words and its beacon-phrases -goes on among us still. How many times have I heard western reporters talking about ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan? They are referring, of course, to the various Arab groups supposedly helping the Taliban. We heard the same story from Iraq.  Saudis, Jordanians, Palestinian, Chechen fighters, of course. The generals called them ‘foreign fighters’. And then immediately we western reporters did the same. Calling them ‘foreign fighters’ meant they were an invading force. But not once – ever – have I heard a mainstream western television station refer to the fact that there are at least 150,000 ‘foreign fighters’ in Afghanistan. And that most of them, ladies and gentlemen, are in American or other Nato uniforms!

Similarly, the pernicious phrase ‘Af-Pak’ – as racist as it is politically dishonest – is now used by reporters when it originally was a creation of the US state department, on the day that Richard Holbrooke was appointed special US representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the phrase avoided the use of the word ‘India’ whose influence in Afghanistan and whose presence in Afghanistan, is a vital part of the story. Furthermore, ‘Af-Pak’ – by deleting India – effectively deleted the whole Kashmir crisis from the conflict in south-east Asia. It thus deprived Pakistan of any say in US local policy on Kashmir – after all, Holbrooke was made the ‘Af-Pak’ envoy, specifically forbidden from discussing Kashmir. Thus the phrase ‘Af-Pak’, which totally deletes the tragedy of Kashmir – too many ‘competing narratives’, perhaps? – means that when we journalists use the same phrase, ‘Af-Pak’, which was surely created for us journalists, we are doing the state department’s work.

Now let’s look at history. Our leaders love history. Most of all, they love the Second World War. In 2003, George W. Bush thought he was Churchill as well as George W. Bush. True, Bush had spent the Vietnam war protecting the skies of Texas from the Vietcong. But now, in 2003, he was standing up to the ‘appeasers’ who did not want a war with Saddam who was, of course, ‘the Hitler of the Tigris’. The appeasers were the British who did not want to fight Nazi Germany in 1938. Blair, of course, also tried on Churchill’s waistcoat and jacket for size. No ‘appeaser’ he. America was Britain’s oldest ally, he proclaimed – and both Bush and Blair reminded journalists that the US had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Britain in her hour of need in 1940.

But none of this was true.

Britain’s old ally was not the United States. It was Portugal, a neutral fascist state during World War Two. Only my own newspaper, The Independent, picked this up.

Nor did America fight alongside Britain in her hour of need in 1940, when Hitler threatened invasion and the German air force blitzed London. No, in 1940 America was enjoying a very profitable period of neutrality – and did not join Britain in the war until Japan attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbour in December of 1941.

Ouch!

Back in 1956, I read the other day, Eden called Nasser the ‘Mussolini of the Nile’. A bad mistake. Nasser was loved by the Arabs, not hated as Mussolini was by the majority of Africans, especially the Arab Libyans. The Mussolini parallel was not challenged or questioned by the British press. And we all know what happened at Suez in 1956.

Yes, when it comes to history, we journalists really do let the presidents and prime ministers take us for a ride.

Today, as foreigners try to take food and fuel by sea to the hungry Palestinians of Gaza, we journalists should be reminding our viewers and listeners of a long-ago day when America and Britain went to the aid of a surrounded people, bringing food and fuel – our own servicemen dying as they did so – to help a starving population. That population had been surrounded by a fence erected by a brutal army which wished to starve the people into submission. The army was Russian. The city was Berlin. The wall was to come later. The people had been our enemies only three years earlier. Yet we flew the Berlin airlift to save them. Now look at Gaza today. Which western journalist – and we love historical parallels – has even mentioned 1948 Berlin in the context of Gaza?

Look at more recent times. Saddam had ‘weapons of mass destruction’– you can fit ‘WMD’ into a headline – but of course, he didn’t, and the American press went through embarrassing bouts of self-condemnation afterwards. How could it have been so misled, the New York Times asked itself? It had not, the paper concluded, challenged the Bush administration enough.

And now the very same paper is softly – very softly – banging the drums for war in Iran. Iran is working on WMD. And after the war, if there is a war, more self-condemnation, no doubt, if there are no nuclear weapons projects.

Yet the most dangerous side of our new semantic war, our use of the words of power – though it is not a war since we have largely surrendered – is that it isolates us from our viewers and readers. They are not stupid. They understand words, in many cases – I fear – better than we do. History, too. They know that we are drowning our vocabulary with the language of generals and presidents, from the so-called elites, from the arrogance of the Brookings Institute experts, or those of the Rand Corporation or what I call the ‘TINK THANKS’. Thus we have become part of this language.

Here, for example, are some of the danger words:

· POWER PLAYERS

· ACTIVISM

· NON-STATE ACTORS

· KEY PLAYERS

· GEOSTRATEGIC PLAYERS

· NARRATIVES

· EXTERNAL PLAYERS

· PEACE PROCESS

· MEANINGFUL SOLUTIONS

· AF-PAK

· CHANGE AGENTS (whatever these sinister creatures are).

I am not a regular critic of Al Jazeera. It gives me the freedom to speak on air. Only a few years ago, when Wadah Khanfar (now Director General of Al Jazeera) was Al Jazeera’s man in Baghdad, the US military began a slanderous campaign against Wadah’s bureau, claiming – untruthfully – that Al Jazeera was in league with al-Qaeda because they were receiving videotapes of attacks on US forces. I went to Fallujah to check this out. Wadah was 100 per cent correct. Al-Qaeda was handing in their ambush footage without any warning, pushing it through office letter-boxes. The Americans were lying.

Wadah is, of course, wondering what is coming next.

Well, I have to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that all those ‘danger words’ I have just read out to you – from KEY PLAYERS to NARRATIVES to PEACE PROCESS to AF-PAK – all occur in the nine-page Al Jazeera programme for this very forum.

I’m not condemning Al Jazeera for this, ladies and gentlemen. Because this vocabulary is not adopted through political connivance. It is an infection that we all suffer from – I’ve used ‘peace process’ a few times myself, though with quotation marks which you can’t use on television – but yes, it’s a contagion.

And when we use these words, we become one with the power and the elites which rule our world without fear of challenge from the media. Al Jazeera has done more than any television network I know to challenge authority, both in the Middle East and in the West. (And I am not using ‘challenge’ in the sense of ‘problem’, as in ‘”I face many challenges,” says General McCrystal.’)

How do we escape this disease? Watch out for the spell-checkers in our lap-tops, the sub-editor’s dreams of one-syllable words, stop using Wikipedia. And read books – real books, with paper pages, which means deep reading. History books, especially.

Al Jazeera is giving good coverage to the flotilla – the convoy of boats setting off for Gaza. I don’t think they are a bunch of anti-Israelis. I think the international convoy is on its way because people aboard these ships – from all over the world – are trying to do what our supposedly humanitarian leaders have failed to do. They are bringing food and fuel and hospital equipment to those who suffer. In any other context, the Obamas and the Sarkozys and the Camerons would be competing to land US Marines and the Royal Navy and French forces with humanitarian aid – as Clinton did in Somalia. Didn’t the God-like Blair believe in humanitarian ‘intervention’ in Kosovo and Sierra Leone?

In normal circumstances, Blair might even have put a foot over the border.

But no. We dare not offend the Israelis. And so ordinary people are trying to do what their leaders have culpably failed to do. Their leaders have failed them.

Have the media? Are we showing documentary footage of the Berlin airlift today? Or of Clinton’s attempt to rescue the starving people of Somalia, of Blair’s humanitarian ‘intervention’ in the Balkans, just to remind our viewers and readers – and the people on those boats – that this is about hypocrisy on a massive scale?

The hell we are! We prefer ‘competing narratives’. Few politicians want the Gaza voyage to reach its destination – be its end successful, farcical or tragic. We believe in the ‘peace process’, the ‘road map’. Keep the ‘fence’ around the Palestinians. Let the ‘key players’ sort it out.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not your ‘key speaker’ this morning.

I am your guest, and I thank you for your patience in listening to me.

Source : Al Jazeera

Robert Fisk wasn’t only a magnificent journalist, but a ‘historian of the present’ who illuminated the world

My friend did not invent the old journalistic saying ‘never believe anything until it is officially denied’ but he was highly sceptical of government sources, writes Patrick Cockburn

Independent, Tuesday 03 November 2020 11:54

I first met Robert in Belfast in 1972 at the height of the Troubles when he was the correspondent for The Times and I was writing a PhD on Irish history at Queen’s University.

I was also taking my first tentative steps as a journalist, while he was swiftly establishing a reputation as a meticulous and highly-informed reporter, one who responded sceptically – and rigorously investigated - the partisan claims of all parties, be they gunmen, army officers or government officials.

Our careers moved in parallel directions because we were interested in the same sort of stories. We both went to Beirut in the mid-1970s to write about the Lebanese Civil War and the Israeli invasions. We often reported the same grim events, such as the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-backed Christian militiamen in 1982, but we did not usually travel together because, aside from the fact that Robert usually liked to work alone, we wrote for competing newspapers.

When we did travel together during the wars, I was always impressed by Robert’s willingness to take risks, but to do so without bravado, making sure we had the right driver and the car had petrol that had not been watered down. One reason he had so many journalistic scoops - such as finding out about the massacre of 20,000 people in Hama by Hafez al-Assad in Syria in 1982 - was that he was an untiring traveller. One friend recalls that:

“He was the only person I’ll ever know who could, almost effortlessly, make up limericks about the south Lebanese villages, while he was driving through them.”

Yet there was a deadly serious reason why he was visiting those villages. When I was a correspondent in Jerusalem in the 1990s, they were the repeated target for Israeli airstrikes, which the Israeli military would declare were solely directed at “terrorists” and, if there were any dead and wounded, they were invariably described as gunmen who deserved their fate. Almost nobody checked if this was true - except Robert, who would drive to these same shattered villages and report in graphic detail about the dead bodies of men, women and children, and interview the survivors.  

Robert was suited to Beirut with its free and somewhat anarchic atmosphere, a place always on edge and with people - Lebanese, Palestinian, exiles of all sorts - who were born survivors, though sometimes the odds against them were too great. Robert had a natural sympathy for their sufferings and a rage against those who inflicted them. His sympathy was not confined to present-day victims: for decades he wrote about the Armenian genocide, carried out by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War. He would publicise diaries and documents about the mass slaughter of the Armenians, stories which other correspondents felt it could be better left to the historians.

But Robert was more than a journalist cataloguing present-day developments and woes. He was a historian as well as a reporter who wrote, among many other books, The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East. I never finished my PhD in Belfast because the violence became too intense for academic work, but Robert did get his doctorate from Trinity college for his thesis on Irish neutrality in the Second World War. My point is that Robert was more than a person who covered “the news”, since his journalism – for all his scoops and revelations – had such depth because he was, in many respects, “a historian of the present”.

He was also, of course, a magnificent reporter who bubbled with nervous energy, often shifting his weight from one foot to the other, notebook in his hand, as he questioned people and probed into what had really occurred. He took nothing for granted and was often openly contemptuous of those who did. He did not invent the old journalist saying “never believe anything until it is officially denied” but he was inclined to agree with its sceptical message. He was suspicious of journalists who cultivated diplomats and “official sources” that could not be named and whose veracity we are invited to take on trust.

Some have responded to his criticism with baffled resentment: during the US-led counter-invasion of Kuwait in 1991, one embedded American journalist complained that Robert was unfairly reporting on events, knowledge of which should have been confined to an officially sanctioned “pool” of correspondents. Another American journalist based in London in the early 1980s once said to me that Robert was a magnificent writer and reporter, but the American had been struck by the number of his colleagues who grimaced at Robert’s name. “I have thought about this,” he told me, “and I think that 80 per cent of the reason for this is pure envy on their part.”

We saw more of each other after we both joined The Independent, Robert in 1989 and myself in 1990, on the eve of the first Gulf War. I was mostly in Iraqduring the fighting and Robert was in Kuwait. Twelve years later we met in Baghdad after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and drove out together over land across the desert to Jordan. I recall that we were stopped for a long time on the Jordanian side of the border because Robert had secured, from the wreckage of some police station, in Basra in southern Iraq, a file of laudatory poems written to Saddam’s ferocious police chief in the city by his underlings on the occasion of his birthday. Some of the Jordanian officials thought that these craven offerings were hilarious, but others found the documents mysterious and kept us waiting for hours at the bleak border post while they waited for official permission to let us cross.

As we grew older, we grew closer. We had similar doubts about the beneficial outcome of the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, having seen similar optimism about the invasion of Iraq in 2003 produce a paroxysm of violence. Neither of us believed that Bashar al-Assad and his regime was going to fall, at a time when this was conventional wisdom among politicians and in the media. To suggest anything to the contrary got one immediately targeted as a supporter of Assad. The sensible course was to ignore these diatribes and Robert and I used to counsel each other not to overreact and thereby give legs to some crudely mendacious tales.

Over the last 15 years we talked almost once a week about everything from the state of the world to the state of ourselves, supplementing phone calls with periodic emails. A life spent describing crises and wars made him more philosophical about the coronavirus pandemic than those with less direct experience of calamities. In one of the last emails I received from him, he wrote that

“Covid-19, unless it suddenly turns into a tiger, will be seen as just another risk to human life – like car crashes, cancer, war, etc. Human’s don’t necessarily fight disease, injustice and sorrow. They just survive and bash on regardless.”

Journalist was reportedly admitted to hospital after suffering a suspected strokeGuardian 1.11.20.

Robert Fisk, veteran Middle East correspondent, dies aged 74

Robert Fisk doubts Syria sanctions will work

 Robert Fisk remembers ‘Hama massacre’

Fisk: New world in Middle East

Highly regarded, controversial foreign correspondent had long relationship with Ireland Irish Times 1 November 2020

Book Review –

O Daughter of Babylon – Journey of an Iraqi Patriot and What Chilcot  Didn’t Say