Anti-Semitism? It’s Israel Stupid!
This Thursday the High Court at the Strand will hear an application for an Injunction preventing Iain Nicol and his racist friends from going ahead with a meeting of Labour’s National Kangaroo Court (NCC) on December 11th.
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Faced with an artificial and imposed deadline of 1st December, I decided that I would submit a response to the main accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against me rather than letting my case go by default. I am copying my response below but it can also be downloaded from here.
I have tried to cover the main allegations although, for reasons of time, I was unable to answer all the spurious nonsense contained in 189 pages of dross.
People will notice that one of the main charges against me is that I called the execrable ‘Labour’ MP for Liverpool Riverside, Louise Ellman, a supporter of the Israeli military’s child abuse. Apparently the truth is a ‘sensitive’ subject for the Compliance Unit.
I have two favours to ask you.
Firstly: If you haven’t yet signed the petitionto support Jackie, Marc and myself on Change.org please do so.
Secondly: If youcan afford it please support the crowdfunding appeal set up to finance this litigation and also a future defamation action against the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. The CAA labelled Palestine Expo 2017 which was held this summer as a ‘Jew-hate festival’. It attacked me as a ‘notorious anti-Semite’. It has attacked vulnerable students and other activists as anti-Semitic simply because they supported the Palestinians. We need to call a halt to this hate organisation and make it accountable for its libellous and defamatory comments.
I am prepared to take them on in a libel action but to do that I desperately need to raise the funds to do this. Will you help? So far we have raised 8% of the £25,000 minimum that is needed.
If you can afford it I ask you to dig deep in your pockets. Just a fraction of the oil wealth that the Saudi princes misspend could put this organisation out of business for good! Please donate to my crowdfunding appeal.
Below is my submission to Labour’s National Kangaroo Court.
Introduction
It is an outrage that I am facing a series of complaints and accusations by people whose identity has been kept hidden. It means that I am unable to question or cross-examine them. There is no court of law where this would be allowed. Charles I’s Star Chamber was abolished in 1641. Its successor in the Labour Party is still sitting. It is contrary to all notions of natural justice that you do not know who your accusers are. Evidence against me is redacted. The fact that the NCC are happy to go along with this charade demonstrates that it is too kind by half to call them a Kangaroo Court. The Kangaroo is an inoffensive animal.
Despite having been suspended for 20 months, itself an outrage, and 17 months having elapsed since my Investigation Hearing, I was given 4 weeks to prepare a response to a 189 page bundle, despite being notified by email whilst recovering in hospital. The practices of the NCC and its patsy of a Chair who made these rulings demonstrates that the NCC is a rubber stamp. The NCC is too gutless even to reveal their own names!
I emailed back asking for further time in view of the long wait before being charged. Despite providing medical evidence and informing them that I had care of a disabled son, my request for an adjournment was refused. No reason was given. The refusal of the Chair of the NCC to agree to a postponement demonstrates that for this miserable cipher for McNicol, the hearing of these charges is a mere formality. A verdict has already been reached.
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If anyone wants to understand what my expulsion from the Labour Party is about, they only need to read the report above. Iain McNicol was the hero of the Labour Friends of Israel [LFI] fringe meeting at Conference. LFI’s platform included Mark Regev, Israel’s Ambassador and a former spokesman for Netanyahu. In which role he was an apologist for war crimes, including the machine gunning of 4 Palestinian children on the Gaza beach. This is what the fight against ‘anti-Semitism’ involves.
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| 4 young children were machine gunned to death by an Israeli fighter plan - Israel's investigation found it was a 'tragic accident' |
My proposed expulsion from the Labour Party has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with anti-Zionist and opposition to Israel, the world’s only Apartheid state.When I first became politically active in 1970 it was in opposition to the campaign against the South African Springbok tour of Britain. It is ironic that I am now being penalised by the Labour Party for opposing the world’s only remaining Apartheid state.
On November 28thMandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, after a visit to the West Bank was reportedas saying that “Israel is the worst apartheid regime... Palestinians are being subjected to the worst version of apartheid.” It is in defence of this regime that the NEC is seeking to expel Jackie Walker and me as it tried to do with Professor Moshe Machover recently.
Jewish anti-Zionists are seen by Zionism in exactly the same way as White opponents of South African Apartheid were seen: traitors to kith and kin. It is a matter of deep shame that the NEC has allowed Labour’s unelected Compliance Unit under McNicol to do the bidding of Israel’s racist supporters in the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM] and LFI.
Just this week comes news of two more examples of openly racist legislation in Israel. First a proposal to triple the level of fees for non-Jewish residents ie. Palestinians of the West Bank who want to gain access to Israel’s High Court in order to prevent the theft of their land. Secondly an amendmentto the Jewish Nation State Bill will entrench make lawful the establishment of Jewish only towns and villages. The legal fiction of ‘separate but equal’ i.e. segregation was outlawed in the USA in 1954 in Brown v The Board of Education which declared that separate was inherently unequal. In Israel segregation is alive and kicking.
My expulsion is being proposed because I have criticised the Jewish Labour Movement which describes the Israeli Labour Party [ILP] as its ‘sister party’. Yet there is no difference between Likud and the ILP when it comes to anti-Arab racism. The ILP's previous leader Isaac Herzog declaredthat his nightmarewas waking up to find that Israel had a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian Knesset members. Herzog also declared that he wanted to dispel the false impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers’ Herzog slammed for remark about ‘Arab lovers’. Imagine that someone said that their nightmare was to wake up and find Britain had a Jewish Prime Minister or that the Labour Party was not a ‘Jew lovers’ party. These terms used to be part of the discourse of the National Front and BNP.
The present leader of the ILP, Avi Gabbay is even worse, criticising Netanyahu for not being draconian enough with African refugees from Sudan and Eritrea. According to Zehava Gal-On, the leader of Meretz, Gabbay had “forgotten what it means to be a human being."Party Leader Gabbay Forces Zionist Union To Back Expulsion Of Migrants.
Background
I was suspended on March 18th 2016 for comments I was alleged to have made. No detail was provided as to the nature of these comments and my requests for information went unanswered. It is telling that none of the charges against me relate to comments made before I was suspended. In other words I was targeted first and then a search was made for evidence.
On April 2nd The Times and Telegraph both ran stories concerning my suspension: ‘Labour welcomes back blogger who compares Israelis to Nazis’ and ‘Corbyn told to ‘exorcise’ anti-Semitism in his party.’ [TG1] When threatened with a libel action both papers backed down. A point that the NCC might want to consider! [TG2]
There can be no doubt that the leaks came from the Compliance Unit. The Telegraph article spoke of: ‘'Evidence compiled by Labour's compliance unit when Mr Greenstein attempted to join the party last summer, seen by The Telegraph.’ (my emphasis)
When I complained, McNicol wrote back deploring the ‘unwarranted attack on a hardworking and diligent member of the Compliance Unit’. Quite understandably he refused to investigate the leak because there’s little point in investigating what you already know.
The Chakrabarti Report which Jeremy Corbyn commissioned in April 2016 (and which has disappeared from the Labour Party’s web site) was quite explicit:
It is completely unfair, unacceptable and a breach of Data Protection law that anyone should have found out about being the subject to an investigation or their suspension by way of the media and indeed that leaks, briefing or other publicity should so often have accompanied a suspension pending investigation. [p.17]
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Yet Jane Shaw, Secretary to the NCC, had the gall to write to me: ‘‘The Party never discusses matters relating to individual members with third parties.’ [email 22.11.17.] There is a culture of lying and dishonesty amongst Labour’s bureaucracy. Like a fish, an organisation rots from the head down.
On May 30thI had an Investigation Hearing where I was presented with a variety of clips, tweets etc. What I was being interrogated about were my views on Israel and Zionism. I was accused e.g. of equating Israel’s marriage laws to those of the Nuremburg Laws. This was deemed to be anti-Semitic. As I explained in a letter to The Telegraph, this comparison was first made by Hannah Arendt, herself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany in her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’. It is a fact that Jews and non-Jews cannot marry in Israel unless the Jewish person converts to another religion. In Israel there is, quite deliberately, no secular marriage because they want to prevent Jewish-Arab marriages. In a society based on racial supremacy, it is important to prevent such relationships, hence why a book depicting relationship between an Israeli Jewish and Arab teenager, Borderlife, was banned from the high-school syllabus by the Education Ministry.
I was also quizzed about having said that Israel was waiting for the survivors of the Holocaust to die in order that it could save paying them welfare benefits. I pointed out to Harry Gregson [HG] that Ha’aretz had printed an article ‘Israel is waiting for its Holocaust survivors to die’ The transcript of the Investigation interview can be read here. Thise is an actual transcript unlike the notes of HG which can be found on pp. 31-35. Since the Labour Party produced them for the court hearing there is no reason why they are not in the bundle.
Procedural Pretexts and Excuses
This hearing is being held according to Appendix 6 of the Labour Party’s Rules Procedural Guidelines in disciplinary cases brought before the NCC. In an email of 21stNovember I explained that these rules are not binding. Appendix 6 does not even form part of the Party’s rules. [paragraph 2, Appendix 6] They are merely advisory and should be read alongside for example the Report of the Chakrabarti Report [CR].
Section 6(D)(i) of Appendix 6 states that complaints about the process leading up to bringing charges will ‘not be entertained by the NCC or panel thereof unless it is material or relevant to the consideration of the evidence to be used by the presenter in support of the charges.’ My complaints of a 17 month delay are clearly material and relevant to the consideration of the evidence, especially in the light of Chakrabarti’s recommendations.
The reliance on the timetable of ‘about 6 weeks’ in Appendix 6.5.B.ishould be seen in the light of Chakrabarti and basic principles of natural justice. In any event November 5th, when I signed for the Bundle, to December 11th is 5 not 6 weeks as a matter of simple arithmetic.
In an email of 20th November Ms Shaw accepted that the bundle and papers were only ‘technically sent’within the guideline at appendix 6.5.B.i, and she also admitted that I was ‘given less than a full six weeks’ notice of the hearing’. Having accepted that I was given less than the requisite time it is outrageous that my request for a postponement has been refused. Clearly it raises the question of bias.
Section 5 of the CR notes ‘a lack of clarity and confidence in current disciplinary procedures from all sides of the Party, including on the part of those who have complained and been complained against.’ Is it any wonder?
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is the pretext for the charges. Accusations of ‘Anti-Semitism’ are the stock-in-trade of the Zionist movement and Israel’s supporters. Understandably it is difficult to defend the demolition of Palestinian homes and houses, ongoing colonisation, the routine use of torture including against children. It is much easier to cry ‘anti-Semitism’.
For most of my adult life I have been an active anti-fascist. I was a founder member of Brighton and Hove Anti-fascist Committee, Secretary of the local Anti-Nazi League, an Executive Committee member of Anti-Fascist Action nationally and I’ve written the only book on the fight against fascism in Brighton and on the South Coast. (reviewed here).
My crime is that I’m not prepared to turn a blind eye to the racism of Zionism and Israeli Apartheid. If you are an anti-racist you cannot excuse Israel’s racism simply because it is carried out in the name of Jewish people. It is those who have brought these accusations and charges who are the racists. The NCC’s Chair has already demonstrated by their actions that they are in full agreement with those who have launched Labour’s witch hunt.
Zionism and anti-Semitism
HG asked me about my assertion that there was collaboration between the Zionist movement and the Nazis and that the Zionist movement was hostile to rescuing Jews to places other than Palestine. I cited the memo of David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister to Mapai of 9th December 1938 in the wake of the Kindertransport of 10,000 Jewish children from Greater Germany to Britain after Krystalnacht: It is can be found for example in Ben Gurion’s official biography by Shabtai Teveth, The Burning Ground1886-1948, p.855.
‘‘If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.’]
This was Zionism’s racist logic. The Jewish State is of greater importance than the Jews. HG chose not to pursue this and I notice that it has been entirely dropped from the charges. Despite the hue and cry about Ken Livingstone ’s ‘anti-Semitism’ the Compliance Unit is unwilling to pursue the matter because it is well documented unlike the vast majority of Jews, the Zionist movementdid collaborate willingly and not when it was under duress.
Of course the victors in any war write its history and Zionism has attempted to rewrite its history erasing its role as a movement of collaboration. The facts however have a habit of asserting themselves regardless. Hence why between 1954 and 1958 Israel was gripped by the Kasztner trial involving the leader of Hungarian Zionism whose collaboration with Eichmann led to the death of nearly ½ million Hungarian Jews. When he was found guilty (it was a libel trial) the second Israeli government of Moshe Sharrett collapsed in 1955. As Yigal Elam, an Israeli historian observed:
‘From the very first moment it (Zionism) gave up all considerations connected with the situation of the Jewish people in the diaspora, except in so far as they contributed to the Zionist enterprise... when the demonstrations and protest actions against the Nazi regime of terror reached their climax, the voice of Zionism was not to be heard.’ [Introduction to Zionist History, Tel Aviv 1972, pp. 113, 122. Hebrew]
It is quite understandable that the NCC does not seek to pursue these questions with me!
HG also asked me about my remark that Zionism is a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. This charge too has disappeared from the charge sheet and again it is not difficult to understand why. I cited as an example the quotation from Israel’s first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosenbluth, that ‘‘Palestine is an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin.’ A comment which, if you did not know the author, you would assume came from a Nazi. In fact it can be found in an article Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’ (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism, No. 4, Autumn 1983.
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| If Israel were to admit non-Jewish refugees they would threaten Israel's identity |
There are those misguided souls in the Labour Party who genuinely believe that Zionism stands opposed to anti-Semitism, that its concern is genuine rather than a pretext for wielding it as a weapon against their opponents. I hate to disabuse such innocents. Zionism began from the belief that anti-Semitism was inherent in non-Jewish society. Indeed it held it to be justified because it was the Jewish situation that was anomalous. Zionism had no principled disagreement with racial nationalism. Hence why, today, Israel refuses to accept African refugees, since they threaten Israel’s Jewish identity. As Yigal Elam wrote:
‘Zionism did not consider anti-Semitism an abnormal, absurd, perverse or marginal phenomenon. Zionism considered anti-Semitism a fact of nature, a standard constant, the norm in the relationship of the non-Jews to the presence of Jews in their midst..., Zionism considered anti-Semitism a normal, almost rational reaction of the gentiles to the abnormal, absurd and perverse situation of the Jewish people in the diaspora.’ [Ot, organ of the Israeli Labour Party Ma’arakh no. 2,Tel Aviv 1967.
Theodor Herzl, the founding father of political Zionism, wrote at the time of the Dreyfus Affair that:
‘In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.’ [Diaries, p.6, Ed, Ralph Patai]
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| Yair Netanyahu's cartoon was redolent of traditional anti-Semitic conspiracy theories |
Today the Zionist movement everywhere is in an alliance with the Right and the far-Right. Labour Zionism only exists in any strength today outside Israel. In Israel itself, as it moves ever further to the right it is a marginal movement. Virtually every far-Right party in Europe sees Israel as a bulwark against Islam and Muslims. France’s Le Pen, Geert Wilders in The Netherlands, Herr Strache’s Freedom Party in Austria, Alternatives for Germany (AfD) and of course our own BNP, Britain First and EDL. In the USA the White Supremacists around Breitbart are enthusiastic about Israel and their CEO, Steve Bannon was the guest of honourat the recent gala dinner of the Zionist Organisation of America! The idea that socialists have anything in common with Zionism is a sign of the political and ideological decay of social democracy, a decay which the NCC represents. It is a legacy of the New Labour and Blair era.
The Charges
The charges are divided into 3 parts but I will take them in specific categories. Bearing in mind that because of the lack of time I have been afforded I can only respond to a selection.
Social Media Posts/Twitter
The monitoring of social media posts by the Compliance Unit and their acolytes is not a neutral exercise. It became notorious when Jeremy Corbyn was challenged by Owen Smith when Labour Party staff pro-actively search Twitter feeds of thousands of members in order to deprive them of a vote. This exercise was conducted exclusively against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. Some of the more notorious cases included Ronnie Draper, President of the Bakers Union and the woman suspended for saying that she liked the ‘fucking Foo Fighters.’
This exercise was wholly corrupt and if this had been a local authority election then Iain McNicol and the Compliance Unit would have been arrested for corrupt electoral practices.
This legacy still persists. Abusive posts by supporters of the Right and Progress are routinely ignored. I have three times made a complaint to McNicol about a comment on the Facebook page of Warren Morgan, leader of Brighton and Hove Council. Having sent a letter to McNicol accusing Labour’s conference of ‘anti-Semitism’, former Brighton councillor Craig Turton then posted the above tweet. In other words the indignation over social media posts is highly selective and partisan.
I am not going to spend any time over what are considered offensive social media posts, for anumber of reasons:
i. Social media comments are here today and gone tomorrow. There are no posts of mine which are in any way anti-Semitic. Any suggestion to the contrary is a lie and defamatory. Being abusive to those who are abusive to me is no business of the Compliance Unit. Abusive posts by the Right, such as those by Turton, Warren Morgan and @LabourAgainstAS are routinely ignored as are posts by e.g. Emma Picken.
ii. The Information Commissioner has already ruled that the use by Labour’s Torquemadas of people’s social media postings breaches the Data Protection Act.
iii. Many of the posts are untraceable and it is therefore impossible to discern the context.
iv. I have, like many others, been the subject of quite vile and abusive tweets. To highlight my response without the initial tweets is plainly dishonest. I enclose a sheet consisting of 6 pages of such tweets including those wishing I and my family had died in Auschwitz. [TG3]
v. Some tweets are in response to Labour councillors who publicly announced they had joined the JLM. I therefore posted to them reminders about things like the demolition of Bedouin villages in Israel or the fact that the ILP supports the deportation of asylum seekers. This is part of a vigorous political debate. Supporters of racism rarely like to be called out.
vi. The comment, from the non-Jewish Councillor Caroline ‘Poison’ Penn ‘Do you have a problem with Jewish people, Tony?’ is an example of the abuse I refer to (p.18) If the Compliance Unit doesn’t understand why this is racist they are even more stupid than I’ve given them credit for.
vii. The Compliance Unit seems to have a problem with my pointing out that Israel’s Culture Minister, Miri Regev, called refugees ‘cancer’ before apologising to cancer victims for comparing them with refugees. (p.19) What is the objection of the Compliance racists to this?
viii. There is a larger point to be made. What kind of party allows its unelected paid staff to monitor its membership? If there is evidence of overt racism, including anti-Semitism that should be dealt with, although disciplinary measures should be a last resort, but that was not the point of such monitoring. It has been a factional tool used by the dessicated bureaucrats of Southside.
The Question of Zio
Points 5-9, 16 and possibly other paragraphs are taken up with the question of ‘Zio’. I have used this on Twitter as a shorthand for Zionist given its previous 140 character limit.
However I defend the use of this term. It is not a ‘racist epithet’ or in any way racist. Yes it is used perjoratively and why not? Zionism is a racist, settler colonial movement. How would the Panel have me use it? In a complimentary way?
Far from ‘Zio’ being anti-Semitic it is those who assert it is racist who are being anti-Semitic. Zio is short for Zionist in exactly the same way as ‘fash’ is short for fascist or commie is short for communist etc. They may all be used in a perjorative sense but they aren’t racist. ‘Zio’ is only racist if Zionist and Jew are synonymous. Now to fascists and anti-Semites Jew and Zionist are interchangeable. To Zionists they are also interchangeable, but historically most Jews weren’t Zionists and most Zionists weren’t Jewish. Many anti-Semites were and are Zionists, for example Arthur Balfour and Richard Spencer, because if you believe Jews should not live in the diaspora you are either an anti-Semite or a Zionist. In the USA the largest number of Zionists are Christian fundamentalists like Pastor John Hagee, who is a notorious anti-Semite. However he is also President of Christians United for Israel. Hagee who was defended by the Zionist movement in the US became famous when John McCain was forced to disavow him in the Presidential campaign against Obama because hepreachesthat Hitler as an agent of god sent to drive the Jews to Israel. Yet another example of an anti-Semite who was also a Zionist.
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| A racist and Islamaphobic tweet - Compliance Unit took exception to my response |
Yes Chakrabarti recommended that Zio should not be used however it is noticeable that those who quote Chakrabarti over ‘Zio’ are content to ignore her recommendations concerning procedure. Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue so I am not surprised!
John Mann MP
According to Nos. 13- 15 exception is taken to my description of John Mann as ‘addicted to Murder and racism’ on a public forum (I’m not sure which one since whoever compiled the bundle hasn’t come to terms with the concept of page number referencing). This is not only ‘potentially defamatory but grossly detrimental and/or prejudicial to the Party.’
Utter nonsense. Mann has made a living out of ‘anti-Semitism’. This is the same John Mann who staged a media confrontation with Ken Livingstone, accusing him of being a ‘Hitler supporter’ on the basis of a factual statement about Nazi support for Zionism. It was Mann’s behaviour that brought the Labour Party into disrepute.
Mann comparedNaz Shah to Adolph Eichmann and in the middle of the first leadership election he penned An open letter to Jeremy Corbyn on child abuse, exploiting the serious issue of child abuse for factional advantage. Nothing I could say about this disgusting rent-a-mouth could compare with what he himself says.
Mann’s ‘concern’ with ‘anti-Semitism’ has more to do with his right-wing pro-imperialist politics than racism. It is noticeable that Mann has never spoken out about asylum seekers, refugees, deaths of Black teenagers in prison or Islamaphobia. What concerns him is criticism of Israel. Mann has repeatedly stoked the fires of the false anti-Semitism campaign and it was this that damaged the Labour Party. This campaign has been directed almost exclusively against supporters of the Palestinians. Mann launched a vitriolic campaign against a 90 year old Jewish doctor from Gateshead, Dr Glatt, who had the temerity to criticise him. Mann was forcedby my blog into take his lying Facebook posts down.
If what I said about Mann was defamatory then he has a very simple option. Sue me for libel, bearing in mind that the truth is an absolute defence and Mann might lose some of his ill-gotten gains. One thing is for certain. My comments are no business of McNicol’s puppets.
As for the allegation that using a public forum I have caused gross detriment or prejudice to the Party. Prove it! This is another McCarthyite lie. An assortment of petty censors who, lacking any substantive argument, rely on the catch-all charge of a detriment which is impossible to prove or deny. According to these useless apparatchiks, freedom of speech too is detrimental. One shudders to think how the radical pamphleteers, the Cobdens, Brights, Wilkes and Paines, would have fared under the police state censors of the Compliance Unit. The Compliance Unit stands in the tradition of the Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins. They would have been in their element in Salem.
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| Louise Ellman - MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv South |
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| According to Louise Ellman this is a dangerous Palestinian terrorist |
In Numbers 24-26 I am taken to task for criticising the MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv, Louise Ellman. Great exception is taken to my description of her, ‘on a public forum’ as ‘a supporter of Israeli child abuse – night time arrests, beatings and incarceration of Palestinian children.’ My accusers dare not say whether I am correct though. Instead these pathetic dissemblers revert to the old McCarthyite generalities of causing prejudice and ‘gross detriment to the Party.’
If telling the truth about the execrable Ellman has caused detriment then the answer is to remove her and allow her constituency to find a socialist MP to replace her.
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| Palestinian child terrorist poses threat to Israeli peace keepers |
If what I have written is true then considerations of detriment, gross or otherwise, fall away. See for example Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv NorthandLouise Ellman MP is a Racist Supporter of Child Abuse of Palestinian Children
On 6th January 2016 there was a debate in the House of Commons on Child Prisoners and Detainees: Occupied Palestinian Territories introduced by Sarah Champion. Champion described how, in June 2012, a delegation of British lawyers published a report on children held in Israeli military custody. The Report found that Israel was in breach of 6 of its legal obligations under the UN Convention on the rights of the child and 2 obligations under the 4th Geneva convention. The report concluded that if the allegations of abuse were true, Israel would also be in breach of the absolute prohibition against cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, in other words torture against children, which is a war crime.
Ms Champion explained that 8 months after the UK report was published, UNICEF released its own assessment of the military detention system for children. After reviewing over 400 sworn affidavits from children detained in a system that allows the prosecution of 12-year-olds in military courts, UNICEF concluded that:
“the ill-treatment of children who come in contact with the military detention system appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalized throughout the process, from the moment of arrest until the child’s prosecution and eventual conviction and sentencing”.
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| This is what Louise Ellman is defending |
In February 2015 UNICEF updated its report and noted that allegations of ‘ill-treatment of children during arrest, transfer, interrogation and detention have not significantly decreased in 2013 and 2014”. Amongst the issues that British officials raised, were ‘the use of painful plastic ties to restrain children, arresting children in the middle of the night in terrifying military raids, and the mandatory use of audiovisual recording of all interrogations.’
Paula Sherriff MP for Dewsbury,who had visited the West Bank with Ms Champion in September 2015 asked a most relevant question:
Does my hon. Friend share my concern at the significant disparity between treatment of Palestinian and Israeli young people, including lack of legal representation and parental support, allegations of widespread abuse and having to sign confessions in Hebrew...’?
To put it bluntly, why are Jewish children and Palestinian children are treated differently? This is quintessentially racist. Why do Jewish children from the settlements have a parent or legal advisor with them at all times? Why are Jewish children rarely if ever incarcerated? Why are Palestinian children forced to sign confessions in a language they don’t understand?
Sara Champion responded that ‘The disparity between the two legal systems includes, for example, a maximum period of detention without charge of 40 days for an Israeli child and 188 days for a Palestinian child.’ The late Jo Cox MP also contributed to the debate:
‘I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She will be aware that evidence from Military Court Watch suggests that 65% of children continue to report being arrested at night in what are described as terrifying raids by the military. Will she comment on that worrying fact?’
Louise Ellman made 3 contributions on behalf of the Israeli military and the JLM, of which she is Vice-President: Ellman (and Ian Austin) were determined to defend Israel’s military. Every excuse for torture, the beating of children, the night-time arrest of children, who are blindfolded and handcuffed in painful plastic cuffs, was made by them.
Ellman repeated Israeli army propaganda. An army whose statements have repeatedly been show to be fabricated such that the Israeli human rights NGO B’tselem no longer cooperates with them. Its soldiers have brutally attacked cameramen, murdered wounded prisoners and physically attacked children in broad daylight. Ellman appears to be more the MP for Tel Aviv than for Liverpool Riverside. In her first contribution she stated that
‘the context in which these situations occur is an organised campaign conducted by the Palestinian authorities of incitement, to try to provoke young Palestinians to carry out acts of violence towards other civilians, some of which result in death, including the death of young children?’
This is a lie. The Palestinian Authority is considered by most Palestinians to be a Quisling authority which works openly in coordination with Israel’s army.
What Ellman was really saying is that the Palestinians would be perfectly happy living under military occupation but for the ‘incitement’ of ‘young Palestinians’. For Ellman it is not Israel’s 50 year long military occupation that causes Palestinian resistance but ‘incitement’. Presumably Palestinians just love seeing their land confiscated, their houses demolished and their economic prospects blighted. This is a colonial fiction. Would the French have been happy with the Nazi occupiers but for the Resistance? The violence of the Occupier is transferred by Ellman onto the Palestinians. Ellman continued:
‘I note my hon. Friend’s comments that a child should not be detained, and I assume that she means in any circumstances. Suppose a child was involved in an act of violence that resulted in the deaths of other human beings. That is what has happened with young Palestinians throwing stones—people have been killed. In those circumstances, surely she thinks that there should be detention.’
Ellman doesn’t condemn Israel’s military because in her eyes, the occupation is legitimate and the Military are merely agents of law and order. In a third contribution Ellman asked:
‘Does my hon. Friend really believe that the solution to this horrendous conflict between two peoples—the Israeli and the Palestinian people—can be found by encouraging individual child Palestinians to commit acts of violence against other human beings?’
Ellman’s is the voice of the colonialist. For her Palestinian children are the guilty ones and Israel’s military are innocent. Ellman’s assertions lack even the slightest evidence. Ellman is an echo chamber for Israel’s military. The torture and beatings by an army which refuses to record its interrogations and which refuses access by lawyers or parents to their children, is acceptable. Nothing I could say about this wretch of a woman could be strong enough.
What the racists from the Compliance Unit means when they speak of ‘the sensitivity of the subject matter, obvious care needs to be taken when discussing the issue’ (No: 25) is that we should turn a blind eye to Israel’s human rights abuses and not call out Israel’s war crimes.
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| The owner of the Daily Mail's thoughts on the Nazi regime in the 1930's |
Of course there are precedents. In the 1930’s when the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany was in full swing (the Zionists excepted) Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail wrote in Nazi Youth in Control [Daily News 4.9.33] that:
They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call 'Nazi atrocities,' which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for him self, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence.’
The Israeli Labour Party
In Points 28 and 29 my assertion that the JLM (not Labour Party members) were ‘holding hands with Israeli Labour ethnic cleansers’ ‘is not an acceptable way of engaging in political debate’. In a repetition of the same stale formula, because apparatchiks love repetitious formula because it saves them from thinking, ‘doing so on a public forum has further prejudiced and/or caused gross detriment to the Party.’ Telling the truth according to these mendacious pen pushers is to cause detriment or prejudice.
It is a matter of fact that the ILP is and always has been a party of ethnic cleansing. From the 1920’s when it picketed out Jewish employers who employed Arabs, they called it ‘Jewish Labour’ to 1947-8 when it organised the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians. Of course in 1944 the Labour Party’s own manifesto supported the ‘transfer’ of the Palestinians – ‘let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in.’
Benny Morris, a Zionist historian goes on to quote the Labour Zionist Director of the Jewish National Fund, Joseph Weitz, quoting from his Diary of 20th December 1940: [Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p.54, Cambridge University Press]
There is no way but to transfer the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps a few.... There is no other solution.”
The immediate past leader of the ILP Isaac Herzog declared that his nightmare was waking up to find that Israel had a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian Members of Israel’s Knesset (Parliament). Who needs the Right when we have Isaac Herzog? Herzog also declared that he wanted to dispel the false impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers’ Herzog slammed for remark about ‘Arab lovers’
Imagine if someone in Britain had said that their nightmare was waking up to a Jewish Prime Minister? Or if people talked of ‘Jew lovers’. Anti-fascists used to get accused by the neo-Nazi National Front of being ‘nigger lovers’. Herzog's rhetoric however goes virtually unnoticed in a country where Prime Minister Netanyahu talks about Arabs outside Israel being ‘wild beasts’ Netanyahu plans fence around Israel to protect it from 'wild beasts'
Herzog has recently been replaced as leader by Avi Gabbay who is, if anything to the racist Right of Herzog. He declared that“We will not sit in the same government as the Joint List I don’t see any [connection] between us.” The Joint List is the 3rd largest group in the Knesset. It comprises 3 different parties including nationalist Balad and the Communist Party. Gabbay has not however ruled out being in coalition with the far Right Habayit HaYehudi and Yisrael Beteinu, both parties that support transfer i.e. ethnic cleansing.
Ofer Aderet reported in Ha’aretz 17.11.17 that the Israeli Labour Prime Minister at the time of the 1967 War, Levi Eshkol stated, in respect of the newly conquered territory of Gaza:
“Perhaps if we don’t give them enough water they won’t have a choice, because the orchards will yellow and wither.” He also wrote that “I want them all to go, even if they go to the moon”, he said.
The JLM describes itself as the ‘Sister Party of the ILP. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to say that it is ‘holding hands with the ethnic cleansers of the ILP’. Telling the truth to those who are prosecuting charges against me seems to be a crime!
In Charge Numbers: 37 and 38 it appears to be an offence to call for the disaffiliation of the JLM and likewise for calling on Jeremy Corbyn to dissociate himself from LFI. No explanation is provided for why these are highlighted.
Israel is a racist, settler colonial state– Charge 36
No explanation is provided as to why objection is taken to this heading. Perhaps the Compliance McCarthyites think it is self-evident? Perhaps this is a form of post-modern racism whereby since everything is relative, the truth can also be a crime.
This is an excellent example of the contempt for critical and radical thought of Labour’s small minded apparatchiks. This showed itself in the (rescinded) expulsion of Professor Moshe Machover. Free speech and open political debate are frowned upon unless confined within strict parameters and defined by acceptable cliches. You must not speak the truth, least of all to power. These useless bureaucrats are even incapable of the most simple indexation. Instead of referring to page 99, they say ‘See Tab 7’ wherever and whatever that is.
There is a subtitle to the post to which they take exception. 2 Palestinian Israelis killed as Bedouin village is destroyed to make way for a Jewish town. Zionism is a settler–colonial movement. In its early years it openly called itself a colonising movement. It established (Jewish only) settlements. Was it racist? Was there any colonial movement that wasn’t racist?
The question is whether Israel is a settler colonial state today. If so it must be racist. In January an ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin village in Israel’s Negev desert was demolished at dawn with dozens of heavily armed Israeli Police in attendance. They shot a Palestinian, a teacher, dead. No Jewish demonstrator, no matter how violent has ever been killed nor have the Police ever opened fire on a Jewish demonstration. Racism? Perish the thought.
Half the Arab villages in Israel are unrecognised, they have no right to be there. They are liable to instant demolition. They are not connected to water, electricity or sewerage etc.
Umm al-Hiran was established in 1956. The Negev is 98% empty but the Zionist authorities decided to build a Jewish-only town on top of the village, not besides it. No Jewish village has ever been demolished. No Jewish village is unrecognised. Not one new Arab village or town has been created since 1948, even though their population has increased 10 fold.
So was the demolition of Umm al-Hiran the act of a racist, settler colonial state? The answer should be obvious to all but the racists who are seeking to expel me.
Bizarre
Charges Numbers 43-45 are truly bewildering and an example of the McCarthyite mentality. Free speech, open debate, critical thinking – all of these are anathema to the tiny closed minds of Compliance and those on the NCC Panel who are willing to do their bidding.
In number Charge No: 43 I state that Gerald Kaufman’s speech to the House of Commons on January 15 2009
“was unforgivable (to the Zionists) because we must not compare Israel to Nazi Germany. Only Zionists may use the Holocaust to defend their bastard state of racial supremacy.”
I stand by every word. What possible reason is there for this to form part of the disciplinary charges against me? Kaufman’s speech will go down as one of the great parliamentary speeches. During Operation Cast Lead, which killed 1400 Palestinian civilians he declared:
My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.
Charge 44 says that on 4th March 2017 I posted a blog entitled ‘The abuse of Anti-Semitism to silence free speech on Israel.’ Yes, there has been an outrageous attempt to use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a means of silencing debate on Zionism and Palestine. This is what this hearing is about! That is what I believe? Is that verboten? Do the members of the NCC wish to see an internal equivalent of a police state regime? Do members of the NCC find it so difficult to comprehend that there has been a media campaign aimed at creating an atmosphere whereby it is taken for granted that anti-Semitism is prevalent in the Labour Party, despite the lack of any evidence? That after all is why the main targets of McNicol’s witch hunters are Jewish!
An interview with Avi Shlaim, an Israeli Professor of International Relations at St. Anthony’s College, Oxford is instructive.
‘Anti-Semitism is not a real phenomenon within the Labour Party or any of the other major political parties. There are anti-Semitic incidents but they are usually related to Israel’s behaviour, Israeli brutality. So every time there is an Israeli attack on Gaza and there have been 3 in the last 7 years there is a rise in anti-Semitic episodes and incidents in Britain. Fundamentally Israel and the Israeli propaganda machine and Israel’s friends in England and the Israel lobby in Britain deliberately confuse or conflate, and I stress they do it deliberately, anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Anti-Zionism is nothing to do with Jews. Anti-Semitism is hatred of the Jews as Jews. Anti-Zionism is opposition to Israel as a colonial power and as an exclusive Jewish state.’
That should be clear, even to the dimmest member of Compliance or the NCC. In Charge 45 exception is taken to my statement that ‘What we have seen is an exercise in state-sponsored destabilization of the Party and we are also witnessing wholesale attack on the Palestine Solidarity movement using the weapon of ‘anti-Semitism’.
I should have added what we are also seeing is a whole attack on free speech in the Labour Party by police-state democrats (as the supporters of Hubert Humphrey were termed). At the behest of the Israel lobby, the Compliance Unit and McNicol have given warning that debate in the Labour Party is only allowed within strict confines. They wish to import the censorship and ‘gag orders’ so beloved of the Israeli state. It will be for others to decide whether or not they will be allowed to get away with it as I have no illusions in the NCC’s tame lapdogs.
I cannot find Tab 7 that is referred to in Point 45 because it didn’t occur to the bureaucratic fool who compiled the bundle that page references might be helpful.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Anti-Semitism
Throughout the Bundle there are references to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. It informs the definition of anti-Semitism that I am accused of. The definition in total is 495 words. The way the IHRA is presented in the charges against me it is as if this definition was unproblematic. The impression given is that this is a consensual definition whereas nothing could be further from the truth.
Those who drew up the bundle cannot but have been aware of the controversies surrounding the IHRA. If they weren’t their ignorance is astounding. To make no reference to these controversies or the fact that the Labour Party has only adopted the short 38 word introduction to the IHRA is symptomatic of the dishonesty and deceit of my accusers.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism was adopted by the governments of 31 countries, including the anti-Semitic governments of Poland and Hungary, in May 2016.
The assembled gathered under a banner “Pray for Islamic Holocaust”whilst the crowd chanted “remove Jewry from power” (not that there are many Jews left in Poland).
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| The anti-Semitic posters in Budapest that Netanyahu was happy to excuse |
Orban and his Fidesz party have sought to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s fascist ruler between 1920 and 1944 and the author of Hungary’s war-time alliance with Nazi Germany. Horthy was quite open about the fact that he was an anti-Semite:
Just before Netanyahu set out for Hungary in July, the Israeli Ambassador in Hungary, Yossi Amrani, in response to pressure from the Hungarian Jewish community, criticised Orban for his anti-Semitic campaign against Soros. Netanyahu immediately instructed himto retract his criticism. Soros had grown up in Hungary as a child and he survived the Nazi dragnet and deportation to Auschwitz. Soros is also not a Zionist.
Soros’s major crime in the eyes of Zionism is helping to fund Israeli human rights groups. Soros also funds the liberal Free University in Budapest which has been the subject of a concerted campaign by Orban to close it down. But the anti-Semitic nature of the Hungarian regime has not prevented it from adopting the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. Why Israel and Zionism's Leaders Supports Viktor Orban's Anti-Semitic Campaign Against George Soros
According to the IHRA, anti-Semitism ‘could, taking into account the overall context, include... drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.’ The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is almost identical to the EUMC Working Definition on Anti-Semitism which was dropped by the EU's Fundamental Rights Agency in 2013.
Theresa May adopted, this ‘non-legally binding definition’ of anti-Semitism in December 2016. Jeremy Corbyn and Labour subsequently adopted the IHRA but without its 11 examples, 7 of which refer to Israel, as was confirmed by the Party’s Race and Faith Manifesto.
The IHRA definition was severely criticised by Hugh Tomlinson QC for being ‘unclear and confusing’. Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge was scathing about the IHRA in Defining Anti-Semitism. It ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ Sedley characterised the purpose of the IHRA as being to ‘permit perceptions of Jews which fall short of expressions of racial hostility to be stigmatised as anti-Semitic.’
The purpose of the IHRA is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. That is why Corbyn did not adopt the 11 examples of anti-Semitism but simply the short introduction, which is still open ended. To not explain this and to pretend that the whole IHRA had been adopted by the Labour Party is another example of the duplicity and dishonesty of my accusers.
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A Sense of Humour Failure - The case of the JLM’s Ella Rose
Ella Rose is a free transfer from the Israeli Embassy to the Jewish Labour Movement where she is now Director. She played a starring role in the Al Jazeera undercover programme, The Lobby. She came across as a petulant, foul-mouthed, potentially violent young woman. She threatened physical violence against Jackie Walker because ‘she’s like 5’2” and tiny’ and ‘’if it came to it I would win that’s all I really care about’ which is a perceptive comment on Zionism and its ideals. In the course of her musings Ms Rose stated ‘I’m a Zionist, shoot me.’ To which I responded that it was tempting.
It is noticeable that when complaints were made to McNicol he brushed them off. If it had been anyone on the left who had made these threats then they would have been suspended before you could say ‘crooked McNicol’. She was however let off with a mild reprimand.
Quite amazingly my comments are subject to Charges - Numbers 19 and 20:
19: On the 15th January 2017, in response to a Labour Party member being reported as saying “so shoot me”, Mr Greenstein stated on Facebook “Yes it is rather tempting. At least if someone does it they can say there was an open invitation”.
20. On the 17th January 2017, in response to a Labour Party member being reported as saying “so shoot me”, Mr Greenstein stated “Ella Rose, racist Director of @JewishLabour invites us to shoot her – it is tempting but…..”
Clearly the humourless scoundrel who inserted these Charges didn’t read the last ‘but’ it wasn’t a threat to murder her but a humorous commentary on this spoilt brats idea of herself as some kind of martyr.
In my court action against the McNicol under s.7(9) of the Data Protection Act, solicitor Jai Sharda, in his first witness statement (Para. 20(i)(b) wrote that the Claimant (me) ‘talks with his followers about how it is "tempting" to shoot a Jewish Labour Movement staff member for being a Zionist’ [332 - 333]. I guess there is no humour in McCarthyism.
Charge Number 3 A Humorous E-mail sent 3rdMay to Iain McNicol
Under Charge 3, I am charged with the most heinous all crimes trivialisation of the Holocaust and belittling the experience of the Holocaust victims.
Charge 3: ‘On 3rd May 2016, Mr Greenstein sent an email to the General Secretary of the Party, Iain McNicol, in which he proposed a “rule change” which would require that “all membership applications and nominations for party office or for Labour candidacies should first be submitted for approval to the Israeli embassy.”In that email he uses language reflecting the Nazi plan under Adolf Hitler to exterminate Jewish people: “If passed, it would provide a final, I mean complete, solution”:
47. repeats the above
48. In an email to Mr McNicol on the 3rd May 2016, Mr Greenstein trivialized the very serious issue of antisemitism – thereby trivialising and belittling the suffering of those who experience anti-Semitism. In doing so, Mr Greenstein acted in a way which is prejudicial and/or grossly detrimental to the Party.
49. In addition, the references to a “final solution” used language connected with the atrocities committed against Jewish people in and by Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, which is deeply offensive, provocative and highly insensitive.
On 3rdMay, shortly after having been suspended and in contemplation of a situation whereby I had been suspended without being given any reason, I decided to send a humorous email to McNicol. I freely admit that I made a terrible error in assuming that he or any of the misfits he surrounds himself with had a sense of humour. Whether that should be the subject of Labour’s disciplinary process is for the NCC to decide. Perhaps this is the one real error of judgement I have made, though whether it is an expulsion offence is doubtful.
In the witness statement of McNicol’s solicitor Jai Sharda it was recorded that ‘The Claimant (myself) also openly regards Muslims as "the route [sic] cause of our [the Party's] problems" The (sic) spelling error was not mine. As the email, which I have reproduced below makes clear, this too was an attempt at humour. A forlorn attempt I admit.
McNicol, who seems to make a virtue out of stupidity, failed to understand that what I wrote was an example of parody, a spoof or send up designed to demonstrate not only the absurdity of the false anti-Semitism witch hunt but the manipulative and sordid way in which the Holocaust is portrayed for political purposes. It is an example of irony and is completely lost on these humourless bastards.
I am of course at fault for not realising that when you are engaged in the business of ferreting out deviance, dissent or dissidence in Labour’s ranks, when your priority is to defend the world’s only apartheid state and with it the American alliance, then humour is a luxury you cannot afford. My crime is akin to imagining that there was anything humorous in the activities of Joe McCarthy or the House of UnAmerican Activities. Although the Compliance Unit is restricted in the penalties it can impose, it can’t imprison me for the contempt I have for them, it operates on exactly the same ideological wave length and with the same thought processes. Anti-Semitism is the new anti-communism. Anti-Zionist are the reds under the bed that the scum are looking for.
How to make people into anti-Semites
If anyone is fooled by the Zionist assertion that being Jewish and Zionist are synonymous and is thereby tricked into making an anti-Semitic comment by virtue of associating Jews with Israel’s war crimes, then the full force of McNicol’s enforcers will be felt.
It is, when you think about it quite a clever trick. The JLM and LFI do their utmost to pretend that Israel and Jews are the same and when they criticise or attack Jews for what Israel does then they are called anti-Semitic. It is however a trick with sometimes lethal consequences.
The World Zionist Organisation’s Jerusalem Program makes it absolutely clear that Jews are a nation whose bonds with Israel are indivisible. The foundations of Zionism are:
1. The unity of the Jewish people, its bond to its historic homeland Eretz Yisrael, and the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem, its capital, in the life of the nation;
Israel is the embodiment of the ‘Jewish nation’. As Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis explained
‘Zionism is a belief in the right to Jewish self-determination in a land that has been at the centre of the Jewish world for more than 3,000 years. One can no more separate it [Zionism] from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’
The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism makes it clear that Israel is a symbol of Jewish nationhood and that ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’ is anti-Semitic. Now this sentence is a classic example of a non-sequitur and an example of the shallowness of the IHRA definition. It is useless as a means of combating anti-Semitism.
According to the IHRA Israel is the visible embodiment of the non-existent Jewish nation’s right to self-determination. However if you take the IHRA at its word and start blaming Jews for what the Israeli state, having been told the two are one and the same, then you are guilty if anti-Semitism because ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is also anti-Semitic! Thus heads you lose and tails the Zionists win.
Whatever you do you are anti-Semitic unless of course you are actually an anti-Semite and support the State of Israel. So a genuine neo-Nazi like the leader of the alt-Right Richard Spencer, who declareshe is a White Zionist or a 24 carat anti-Semite like Steve Bannon of Breitbart who told his wife that he didn’t want his twin daughters going to the Archer School for Girls because they had too many Jewish students who were ‘whiny brats’, are ok.
I completely reject the assertion in Charge 3 that my email to McNicol was anti-Semitic because I used ‘language reflecting the Nazi plan under Adolf Hitler to exterminate Jewish people’ and stated that “If passed, it would provide a final, I mean complete, solution”
I reject the mentality that associates the genocide of European Jews with a fetishisation of words. It is indeed a way of trivialising the Holocaust. The Holocaust is not a phrase that causes offence. It is also noticeable that the pen pushers of Southside elide the Holocaust into genocide of the Jews as if it didn’t encompass the Disabled and the Gypsies/Roma.
When Naz Shah MP was attacked and pilloried for posting a light-hearted joke about how much better it would be if Israel was relocated within the borders of its best friend, the United States,(the cartoon actually came from the Jewish Virtual Library) Norman Finkelstein, both of whose parents were in concentration camps wrote:
It’s doubtful these Holocaust-mongers have a clue what the deportations were, or of the horrors that attended them. I remember my late mother describing her deportation. She was in the Warsaw Ghetto. The survivors of the Ghetto Uprising, about 30,000 Jews, were deported to Maijdanek concentration camp. They were herded into railroad cars. My mother was sitting in the railroad car next to a woman who had her child. And the woman – I know it will shock you – the woman suffocated her infant child to death in front of my mother. She suffocated her child, rather than take her to where they were going. That’s what it meant to be deported. To compare that to someone posting a light-hearted, innocuous cartoon making a little joke about how Israel is in thrall to the U.S., or vice versa…it’s sick. What are they doing? Don’t they have any respect for the dead? All these desiccated Labour apparatchiks, dragging the Nazi holocaust through the mud for the sake of their petty jostling for power and position. Have they no shame?
It’s an apt phrase ‘All these desiccated Labour apparatchiks, dragging the Nazi holocaust through the mud for the sake of their petty jostling for power and position.’ These sentiments are entirely mine. The people who should hang their heads are those who brought these charges and who are willing partners in the exploitation of the Holocaust for the purpose of defending Israel’s policies of segregation and ethnic cleansing.
My email highlighted the sacralisation of words as part of the process of emptying them of their meaning. What I am protesting is the use of the Holocaust as a means of defending the racist and apartheid practices of a state that terms itself Jewish.
I was drawing attention to the Zionisation of the Holocaust which destroys any attempt to draw meaningful lessons from the Holocaust. How is it that Theresa May, who has adopted the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism in totoand who condemns Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is at the same time facilitating genocide in the Yemen through her sales of arms to the Saudi Arabian regime? How is it that no one has the temerity to point this out? She condemns the Holocaust yet enables a genocide? How is this done? Because of hypocritical bastards like McNicol, Stolliday and the Compliance Unit. That is my response to this ridiculous charge.
How is it that Israel is actively helping Saudi Arabia in the Yemen and is the best friend today of Saudi Arabia whilst it uses a Holocaust propaganda museum Yad Vashem as a staging post for far-Right politicians? Difficult questions for the Holocaust mongers and the petty party functionaries whose goal it is to ‘cleanse’ Labour of its genuine anti-racists.
What are the lessons of the Holocaust? Quite obviously that racism and fascism are human constructs that should be opposed wherever and whenever they occur. That should be a given for a socialist party. Never Again means exactly that. Never again should any people be singled out for annihilation because of their ‘race’. The Holocaust has become Zionism’s primary ideological weapon against its adversaries. We had Netanyahu try to put the blame for the Holocaust on the Mufti of Jerusalem a year ago and in the process absolve Hitler.
Zionism has reduced the Holocaust to a gauche sentimentality, devoid of any progressive political meaning. Indeed it is worse. Because of Israel’s ruthless use of the memory of the Holocaust victims, victims whom the Zionist movement abandoned during the Holocaust, the phenomenon of Holocaust denial has grown up.
There was a time when Holocaust denial was confined to a fringe neo-Nazi element who denied that which they wanted to repeat. It is clear today on social media and elsewhere, that Holocaust denial extends far beyond a neo-Nazi fringe. Why? Because Israel uses the Holocaust as a means of legitimation and to justify its war crimes. Some fools believe that if they deny the Holocaust then they have removed Israel’s legitimacy. What they don’t understand is that Israel’s illegitimacy arises from its existence as a racist, settler colonial state independently of the Holocaust. Since the Holocaust is a fact, denying it merely reinforces and strengthens the Israeli state. To paraphrase Bebel, it is the anti-Zionism of fools. But the primary responsibility for the spread of Holocaust denial ideas rests with not only Zionism but the processes of sanctification and instrumentalisation of the Holocaust of which McNicol, the Compliance Unit and the NCC are a part.
Each year, Israel takes thousands of school children to Auschwitz. Not to imbue them with the values of anti-racism and anti-fascism, not in order that they better understand what happens when the other is demonised and rendered inhuman, but in order to cement and reinforce the values of nationalism. ‘Never again’ to Zionism means never again to the Jews. It has no anti-racist meaning. After all how can a society in which segregation is rigidly enforced, where Arabs cannot live in 93% of the land, where education is segregated, where there is an ongoing fear of miscegenation, i.e. intermarriage between Jew and non-Jew, be considered to have absorbed the lessons of the Holocaust?
In the words of Professor Idith Zertal, a historian at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University
‘By means of Auschwitz... Israel rendered itself immune to criticism and impervious to a rational dialogue with the world around her... Israel because of its wholesale and out-of-context use of the Holocaust, became a prime example of devaluation of the meaning and enormity of the Holocaust.’[Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood, CUP, 2011]
I realise that both the NCC and my accusers are unlikely to understand the above. For imperialism and the Labour Right, the Holocaust is a simple tale, depoliticised with a fairy story ending of the founding of Israel. That is the myth that Zionism propagates and people like me are here to undermine.
It is not my parody of the fetishisation of words associated with the Holocaust, such as Final Solution, Transportation etc. which are anti-Semitic it is the use of the Holocaust in order to justify a regime of racial segregation, discrimination and ethnic cleansing, combined with a vicious regime of military law. It is that which makes a mockery of the Holocaust victims and it is my accusers who are the real anti-Semites. J’Accuse.
This is not just my view or even that of a distinguished scholar such as Edith Zertal. In Israel there is a growing recognition, amongst an enlightened minority, of the racist and nationalist use to which the Holocaust is put. There has been a move by the more liberal Israeli schools, which cater for the richest Israeli students, to stop these trips to Auschwitz. As Time magazine reported: Leading Israeli Principal Warns Annual Trip to Concentration Camps Fuel Extreme Nationalism
‘a prestigious and historic Israeli school, the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium... announced it is breaking with the tradition....
The school’s principal Zeev Dagani says he has stopped the trips because of their cost and a concern that it exacerbates nationalistic sentiments in youths, months before the students embark on compulsory service in the Israeli military.
“In recent years, the journey has increasingly overlapped with the current regime and atmosphere in Israel, which revolves around fear and hatred for the other,” Dagani told Israeli daily Haaretz. He warned that “the popular atmosphere here today is all about the delegitimization of the other and nationalistic sentiments” – and that such trips can then “serve these trends.” See also Why Israelis Are Refusing to Send Their Kids on School Trips to AuschwitzHa’aretz 5.5.16.
Of course to McNicol and his cohorts, the crimes committed against the Palestinians are illusory. Israel is the equivalent of Reagan’s Shining City on the Hill. It can do no wrong, after all it is the only democracy in the Middle East. Every time it commits another series of war crimes or mass murder it is in ‘self defence’. The laughable proposition that a nuclear superpower, armed to the teeth with American weaponry is somehow fearful for its existence is itself a product of the siege mentality common to all settler colonial states.
I stand by my email below 100%. Its purpose was to bring the issue of how Zionism and Israel use and manipulate the Holocaust for ideological political purposes. I referred earlier to the Ha’aretz article Israel Is Waiting for Its Holocaust Survivors to Die. Israel’s use of the Holocaust as an ideological weapon is inverse proportion to its concern for the actual victims of the Holocaust. This doesn’t sit easily with the Labour Right’s adoration of Israel. Israel is, as the Prince of Darkness Peter Mandelson and others have said, a political litmus test for New Labour. Why? Because Israel is the embodiment of the special relationship with the United States.
A good comrade of mine (pardon the unBlairish language) has suggested that the following rule change should be submitted to the next party conference. If passed it would enable a final, I mean complete, solution sorry satisfactory outcome to be reached in regard to the present impasse regarding anti-Semitism.
I realise that it will probably involve a severe reduction in the number of Muslims allowed into the party, because we all know that they are the root cause of our problems, but I hope that you will agree that allowing the Israeli embassy to vet all applications to the Party, both current, future and past, would resolve all our problems.
Yours in solidarity,
Tony Greenstein
Rule Change Proposal Re Membership Applications to Labour Party
To avoid any further unpleasantness Labour should agree a rule change that all membership applications and all nominations for party office or for Labour candidacies should first be submitted for approval to the Israeli Embassy....
Any objections can be disregarded as obviously coming from anti-Semites. Have we not been told that the Macpherson report means that racism can only be defined by the victims, and that Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people, so that attacking Israel’s legitimacy is necessarily antisemitic? Then who better to define antisemitism than the government of the Jewish nation? Those who doubt this have by definition outed themselves as antisemites.
All tweets and Facebook comments of party members should be scrutinised so that the party can be cleansed of those who during the siege of Gaza may have been guilty of hate speech by denouncing Comrade Regev ... in such antisemitic terms as ‘two face lying zio hack’, Israel’s answer to Comical Ali’, a shameless apologist for mass murder’, ‘PR man for war criminals’ and other vulgar abuse unbefitting a responsible party of government.
Campaign Against Anti-Semitism
The Charge sheet against me also quotes from the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (Impact No. 50, p. 6 and pp. 172, 173, 175) and its bogus polls. These polls by the CAA have about as much validity as the polls which McNicol and co. were relying on before June 8th which said that Jeremy Corbyn would lose votes for Labour. One might have hoped that even the more stupid members of the Compliance Unit would have learnt something.
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The CAA is viciously hostile to the Labour Party. A search on their web site for ‘Racist Labour’ turns up 64 results. A search on ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ turns up 107 results none of them flattering. Indeed they made a complaint was made to McNicol that Corbyn was anti-Semitic!
But what about their polls? Even if they are a nasty far-Right Zionist organisation determined to tarnish any form of Palestine solidarity with the brush of ‘anti-Semitism’ perhaps their polls are sound? Unfortunately not. They are a highly political organisation determined to stir up discord between Jews and Muslims and whose primary purpose is to create the impression of a wave of anti-Semitism in Britain as part of the Zionist agenda of promoting Aliyah (emigration of Jews to Israel).
Jonathan Boyd, executive director of the respected Institute for Jewish Policy Research dismissed the CAA’s survey of British Jewish opinion as having ‘little, if any, methodological credibility’. He also characterised the CAA’s presentation of the YouGov poll as ‘deeply flawed’. In a detailed critique, the JPR found the CAA’s survey to be ‘littered with flaws’ and ‘irresponsible’. Coming from the IJRP these are very strong criticisms. Due to ‘quite basic methodological flaws and weaknesses’, its poll of British Jews had ‘very limited capacity’ to assess the representativeness of its sample. In its poll it had absurdly claimed that ‘Almost half of Britons hold antisemitic view, poll suggests‘, Guardian 14 January, 2015).
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| The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism's Racist Poster - Imagine if 'Jewish Islamaphobia' had been substituted for 'Muslim Anti-semitism' |
It is no surprise that those seeking to expel me are attracted to the CAA like a dog to its own vomit. A cursory glance at their site demonstrates they are a viciously racist, Islamaphobic organisation. This delightful cartoon is in their publicationBritish Muslims and Anti-Semitism. I have posted on my blog extensive articles on the CAA. Given the attention paid to my blog it must be assumed that those who decided to quote from the CAA did so knowingly. This is another example of my accusers’ racism. It is they not me who should be should be expelled from the Labour Party. Or is the only focus on bogus ‘anti-Semitism’?
Still I guess that McNicol’s racist sleuths have done better than Harry Gregson. During his investigation he quoted from one Paul Bogdanor’s attack on me. A vicious anti-communist Bogdanor is a contributor to David Horowitz’s Frontpagemag.com. This delightful site is on the list of the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a hate organisation. It boasts Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch as well as the virulent racist Trump supporter Pamela Geller. Both Spencer and Geller are banned from entering Britain but that didn’t stop Gregson including them in the witchhunter’s family. When you swim in a sewer you cannot help but getting covered in shit.
If this response is rushed and it doesn’t cover all the allegations it is because the Chair of the NCC decided in his wisdom that I should not have adequate time to respond to a bundle of documents and charges that had accumulated over 17 months.
I hope that members have pleasant reading!
Tony Greenstein
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