Professor Moshe Machover Israeli Anti-Zionist Expelled from Labour today for ‘anti-Semitism’

Imagine if Labour had expelled White anti-racist South Africans at the behest of the Apartheid regime

Moshe Machover

Moshe's expulsion letter

Imagine if, during the Apartheid era, White South Africa exiles opposed to the Apartheid regime had been expelled from the Labour Party for ‘racism’ against Whites. Crazy? Imagine there had been a Labour Friends of (White) South Africa which had demanded the expulsion of these ‘anti-White’ racists. Even more ludicrous. Well that is exactly the situation in the Labour Party today.

Israel has two organisations working inside or alongside the Labour Party seeking to subvert its democracy. As we saw from the Al Jazeera programme The Lobby the Israeli Embassy, headed by its war criminal Ambassador Mark Regev, has deliberately sought to interfere in and destabilise the party alongside creatures such as Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement. The South Africans tried this kind of thing but with less success.

Labour's witch hunting General Secretary Iain McNicol who Corbyn has failed to move against yet

The aim of the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour Friends of Israel is to help in the overthrow of Jeremy Corbyn who, despite his appeasement of the Israel Lobby, is seen as a dire and mortal threat. His speech to Conference in which he spoke of support of the Palestinians and opposition to the settlements and the siege of Gaza will have won him no plaudits amongst the Zionists.

The Right in the Labour Party, love Israel’s ethnic cleansing state because it is an essential part of the alliance with the United States. Tom Watson and Luke Akehurst are prepared to turn a blind eye to any war crime, any human rights violation, any act of racism however vile because Israel is the United State’s watchdog in the area.

Not once, ever, has Watson, Wes Streeting, John Mann or any of the cacophony of Zionists who bleat about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party once expressed any indignation about Israel’s gaoling and shackling of Palestinian children as young as 12. The beating and torture of children (Jewish children of course operate under a similar regime to this country). Not one protest about the demolition of Palestinian homes, villages or the endemic discrimination in the ‘Jewish’ state. The real racism in the Labour Party is that of the Right and in that I include Labour Friends of Israel supporter, Emily Thornberry.

That is what the whole contrived ‘anti-Semitism’ nonsense is about. In much the same way as Tom Watson et al. are happy to support Israel’s ally in the region, Saudi Arabia in its genocidal war against Yemen.

The Zionist paper which welcomed the Nuremberg Laws

This article is a translation from the Zionist Federation of Germany's paper, Judische Rundschau of 17.9.35., two days after the Nuremberg Laws were announced. This article comes from the site of the Israeli holocaust propaganda museum, Yad Vashem but mentioning it is anti-semitic!

Thornberry tried to mollify Labour Friends of Israel at its fringe meeting by explaining Corbyn’s absence as they shouted ‘where is he’ as if beckoning a naughty school boy. Unfortunately her explanation, that he was working on his big speech, was somewhat contradicted by pictures of him having a jolly time at the Daily Mirror reception!

The last base of the Right in the Labour Party is amongst its civil service and staff. In particular its General Secretary Iain McNicol and the Compliance Unit under John Stolliday. Iain McNicol, the General Secretary of the Labour Party and the Witch-finder General is something of a hero to Labour Friends of Israel and quite rightly so. He was greeted with a rapturous reception by the LFI meeting. [see Ian McNicol Receives the Warmest Welcome of Anyone at Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel Meeting]

I have been suspended for 18 months and now my comrade and friend Moshe Machover, the founder of Matzpen, the Socialist Organisation in Israel has been expelled. Just like that, without even a hearing or the opportunity to answer the charges levelled against him. Expelled at the whim of a petty Blairite apparatchik, someone who would have been at home rooting out communists in the McCarthy era or fingering the enemies of Stalin. A cipher who goes by the title of Head of Disputes, one Sam Matthews. Matthews department even has an Orwellian title since its main role is to cause disputes!

Moshe at the lectern

Now that the Left and Corbyn have a majority on the National Executive Committee there is no excuse not to demand that this expulsion is reversed and Moshe and all other people expelled reinstated. This is a matter of principle. If Corbyn has any bottle he will finally put an end to this nonsense.

The other accusation levelled against Moshe is that he writes for and ‘associates with’the Communist Party of Great Britain. Well so do I. I have written for Weekly Worker for over a decade but neither Moshe nor I are members of the CPGB. Since when is it an expulsion offence to write articles for or speak at the conferences of other organisations?

What we are seeing is a rerun by the descendants of McCarthyism of the old question that the House of UnAmerican Activities used to ask ‘are you or have you ever been associated with ...’.

Moshe, who is over 80 years old, is a veteran Israeli anti-Zionist. He has inspired a generation of Jewish and non-Jewish anti-Zionists. I first became an anti-Zionist as a consequence of reading his joint article with Haim Hanegbi and Akiva Orr back in 1970, The Class Nature of Israeli Society. The idea that Machover, a Marxist, is ‘anti-Semitic’ is for the birds. Unlike his Zionist detractors he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.

By coincidence it was only last night that I posted on my blog the article that led to Moshe’s expulsion. Saying the unsayable about Zionist Support for the 1935 Nuremberg Laws & Nazi favouritism of German Zionism. Today we learnt that Moshe Machover has been expelled. The reason, as ludicrous as it can be in the Orwellian world of Labour’s witch hunters, is ‘anti-Semitism’. As the subtitle of my blog post said ‘It might be true but it’s anti-Semitic to say it!’

Over the summer Moshe and me gave a joint talk at the CPGB's Communist University - grounds for our expulsions

Moshe explained in his article for Labour Party Marxists that far from opposing anti-Semitism, Zionism has always accepted if not welcomed it as a means of separating out Jews from non-Jews. Zionism begins from an acceptance of the anti-Semitic idea that Jews cannot live in non-Jewish society. That is why Israel was established. In the Nazi era the Zionist movement far from opposing the Nazis sought to cut deals with them. They actually welcomed the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped German Jews of citizenship and Machover’s article quoted directly from the translation of an article in the German Zionist paper Judische Rundschau which can be found on the site of the Zionist Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem. Of course the Zionists didn’t know at the time (1935) that Nazism would change from expulsion and separation to genocide, though many Jews had premonitions of this, as did Trotsky. Today we know better. Genocide is the accompaniment of any movement for expulsion as Burma is showing us at the moment.

Moshe Machover has been expelled for telling the truth. The truth is, apparently anti-Semitic and no one must draw any attention to what the Zionist actual role was when anti-Semitism was not some contrived fantasy. Today when there is virtually no anti-Semitism the Zionists create fake anti-Semitism in order to attack their opponents.

Moshe’s article was classified as ‘anti-Semitic’ under the Zionists' International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism that Corbyn adopted in yet another attempt to appease the Right. Despite being told that Labour had only adopted the introduction to it and not the examples, it is clear that Labour's witch hunting bureaucracy has adopted the definition wholesale.

We can see how the IHRA is being used, not to combat anti-Semitism but to combat anti-Zionist. Indeed the main victim of the IHRA are Jews!

The IHRA is almost the same as the discredited Working Definition on Anti-Semitism that was abandoned by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency in 2013. The Working Definition was drawn up by the Zionist American Jewish Committee. It consists of a vague and open ended definition

‘Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.’

This was followed by 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which are concerned with Israel. Thus it is clear that the purpose of the definition is not to clarify what antisemitism means but to conflate antiZionism with anti-Semitism. As Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge wrote in his article Defining Anti-Semitism in May's edition of London Review of Books, the IHRA

'fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite. ‘A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred’ invites a string of questions. Is anti-Semitism solely a matter of perception? What about discriminatory practices and policies? What about perceptions of Jews that are expressed otherwise than as hatred?

These gaps are unlikely to be accidental. Their effect, whether or not it is their purpose, is to permit perceptions of Jews which fall short of expressions of racial hostility to be stigmatised as anti-Semitic.

The example that Moshe seems to have fallen foul of is the one that says ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ might be anti-Semitic. In fact Moshe was writing about the historic position and policy of the Zionist movement vs the Nazis, but anything that mentions the Nazis in connection with Israel is good enough.

The example that Moshe seems to have fallen foul of is the one that says ‘Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ might be anti-Semitic. In fact Moshe was writing about the historic position and policy of the Zionist movement vs the Nazis, but anything that mentions the Nazis in connection with Israel is good enough.

Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ is ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination (e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour).’ In other words it accepts that Jews are a nation, a postulate that previously only anti-Semites used to believe in. There follows a sentence which bears no logical relationship to it, claiming that Israel is a racist endeavour. Quite why refusing to accept the right of Jews to self-determination has any bearing on anti-Semitism is bizarre. What connection that has with the fact, because it is a fact, that Israel is a racist state is incomprehensible. These are two sentences strung together in a non sequitur.

But anything is good for an alliance of states, including the anti-Semitic governments of Poland and Hungary, which are also avidly pro-Zionist and pro-Israel.

The purpose of the IHRA definition self-evidently has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with preventing criticism of Zionism.

PSC and Free Speech on Israel obtained a a coruscating Opinion of the IHRA by Hugh Tomlinson QC which is worth reading as is the article Defining Anti-Semitism in London Review of Books by Sedley, who is himself Jewish. Both Tomlinson and Sedley criticise the definition as a whole but the more liberal and defeatist elements in the Palestine solidarity movement such as Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Jewish Voice for Labour believe that you can accept the first part of the definition without the second part. This is fundamentally mistaken. A fish is rotten from the head down.

Moshe’s reaction to the latest outrage from the witch hunters was: ‘I have just been expelled from the Labour Party – for telling the truth, which is falsely and maliciously described as “antisemitic”.’

We should not be disheartened by what has happened. On the contrary it is a sign of the weakness of the Labour Right. After a conference where their political weaknesses became all too apparent, with the successful Free Speech on Israel and Jewish Voices for Labour meetings, coupled with the rapturous reception for two Jewish anti-Zionist speakers and then the applause for Jeremy Corbyn’s mention of Palestine, which was the loudest of any part of his speech, it is clear that the Zionists have not won any friends in the Labour Party. Their only friends of McNicol and people like the witch hunting liar who is leader of Brighton and Hove Labour Council, Warren Morgan.

Suspended members of the Labour Party are therefore planning a fightback and the first meeting of a new Labour Against the Witchhunt meeting is planned for October 21^st, 12.00 pm at the Calthorpe Arms in Kings Cross Road.

Tony Greenstein