Confronted with the False Anti-Semitism Campaign Momentum was Paralysed like a Rabbit in the Headlights of a Car
When the General Election was called last year I was one of the few people to predict that Corbyn could either win or achieve a hung parliament. This was at a time when the Tories were ahead by up to 24% in the polls. On 20th April I posted a blog Labour Can Win if Corbyn is Bold – the Key Issue is Poverty and the Transfer of Wealth. On 3rd June I wrote Is Labour on the threshold of victory? the subtitle of which read ‘No one has been more disappointed with the success of Labour’s campaign than the Labour Right and Zionist Jewish Labour Movement.’
I even went into a betting shop for the first time in my life and placed a £20 bet that Labour would win between 250 and 275 seats! This was at a time when that sage Nick Cohen wrote ‘Will there be 150, 125, 100 Labour MPs by the end of the flaying? My advice is to think of a number then halve it.’ Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn
I will therefore make another prediction. What we have seen in the past 6 weeks, the revitalised ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is just the beginning. It is a weapon that is continually being refashioned. As long as Corbyn accepts that there is ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party, and by that I don’t mean that the occasional individual makes a dodgy remark but that there is a systemic problem, his ‘pockets of anti-Semitism’ then he will be at the perpetual mercy of those whose real object is his removal.
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| Jewish Labour Movement Councillor Adam Langlaben, an arch Zionist, was knocked out by his own 'antisemitism' campaign and went down to defeat in West Hendon |
Chuka Ummuna and the Labour Right did their best to damage Labour's prospects in the local elections. There is no doubt that they had some success, not least in London. It is understandable that people want to spin the local election results and put them in the best possible light but we should be honest and admit that they weren't as good as they should have been.
Ironically the Labour Right's greatest success in Barnet, where Labour was prevented from taking control of the Council, knocked out Labour's Zionist councillors in the form of the Jewish Labour Movement's Adam Langlabe and friends in West Hendon. In a classic display of Chutpzh Langlabe complained that voters were seeing Labour as anti-semitic oblivious of his own role in such a perception.
Unless Corbyn begins fighting back against the Zionist lobby he will never become Prime Minister. It is worse than useless, when supporters of Israel say that Labour is riddled with anti-Semitism to say that he is a militant opponent of it. They are talking about two different things. Corbyn means hatred of Jews when he talks about anti-Semitism. Jonathan Arkush and the Zionists mean hatred of Israeli Apartheid and Zionism. That is why, after their recent talks, Arkush expressed his dissatisfaction because Corbyn couldn’t agree to his simple requests.
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| The false antisemitism campaign is succeeding in stopping support for the Palestinians |
The Zionists wanted‘a swift resolution of party disciplinary cases such as that of Ken Livingstone and Labour adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.’ Livingstone stated that Hitler supported Zionism. Whether he was right or wrong is immaterial. The fact is that he spoke about Zionism not Jews or Judaism. Unless you believe that Jews and Zionism are synonymous then the attack on Ken makes no sense and if you do believe that Jews and Zionism are the same thing then of course anti-Semitism equals anti-Zionism. It is also an anti-Semitic statement!
This simple piece of logic entirely has entirely escaped Corbyn or his advisers. Likewise the demand that Jackie Walker be expelled is so obviously on account of her anti-Zionism. Even stranger is their demand for the full IHRA definition of anti-Semitism when there is a very simple 21 word definition of anti-Semitism from Dr Brian Klug:
antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.
The full IHRA definition, including 11 examples, comes to 450 words. Why? Because it spends most of its time conflating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Thus anyone who says the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign isn’t about Israel and Zionism is either a liar or a fool or both.
As Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote‘the IHRA definition offers encouragement to pro-Israel militants whose targets for abuse and disruption in London have recently included the leading American scholar and critic of Israel Richard Falk’ and described how the definition ‘gives respectability and encouragement to forms of intolerance which are themselves contrary to law, and higher education institutions in particular need to be aware of this.’
The greatest historian of the post-war era was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, Eric Hobsbawm, who was also the Communist Party’s main historian. Works such as Industry and Empire, The Age of Revolution andThe Age of Capital are classics. In 1978 Hobsbawm wrote an essay ‘The Forward March of Labour Halted’which was the ideological underpinning first of Eurocommunism and then the Blair era.
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| The demonstration in the summer of 2016 called by Momentum to defend Corbyn against an attempted coup this time Momentum or rather Lansman chose to be absent |
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| The Zionist Demonstration - Harry Markham, a Jewish fascist is in the bottom right with the hat |
It posited the idea that the class struggle was outdated and counter-productive and that the working class itself had all but disappeared. Critiques include that by Ralph Miliband and Carlin & Ian Birchall [Kinnock’s favourite Marxist - Eric Hobsbawm and the working class].
To Hobbsbawm 1978, the fag end of the Callaghan government, was a crucial time just before the onset of Thatcherism. Likewise the local elections which we have just had are also a crucial time in the Corbyn movement. If we don’t learn the lessons of what happened in the past 6 weeks then we should not be surprised at the consequences, Corbyn’s removal included.
Ever since Corbyn was elected as Labour leader in September 2015, the Right has made it clear that he is unacceptable at any price and in any form. This should not be a surprise. The United States spends hundreds of millions on the CIA and its Intelligence agencies. Their purpose is to keep the world safe for US interests. You can imagine their shock when one of Britain’s leading left-wing politicians, anti-NATO, anti-Triden, anti-US interference in the Middle East was elected as leader of Britain’s second largest party.
The idea that the CIA and Defence Intelligence Agency and other spooks, in co‑ordination with their Israeli allies would seek to do something about it, seems eminently reasonable to me. After all the CIA are not paid good money for nothing. Our own MI6 have a Domestic Subversion section, they and the Special Branch and other special units sent people into environmental and other radical groups why not interfere in the Labour Party?
I have no doubt that the sudden upsurge in propaganda about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party was a state sponsored campaign, placed in friendly newspapers like the Daily Mailand of course the Jewish Chronicle. We know for a fact that Ruth Smeeth is a US asset because Wikileaksgot hold of US cables.
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| Ruth Smeeth - an agent of influence |
At first the Labour Right, who were entrusted to run this campaign, were inclined to challenge him head on. There was Hilary Benn’s treachery with the staged resignations from the Shadow Cabinet in Summer 2016 and the head to head challenge from first Angela Eagle and then Owen Smith. Momentum rose to the occasion, with a demonstration on College Green outside the House of Commons as 172 Labour MPs, treated to the soaring rhetoric of the Welsh Windbag (Neil Kinnock) tried, in Dianne Abbot’s words, to ‘break the man’. I went up with my son Tom, a young Corbynite and the atmosphere was heady.
Contrast this with today and the reactionary ‘Enough is enough’ demonstration under the auspices of the Board of Deputies. This is an openly Zionist organisation led by right-wing Tory Jonathan Arkush who welcomedDonald Trump and the anti-Semitic alt-Right to power in America.
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| At the Battle of Cable Street as Jewish workers confronted the fascists the Zionists and the Board of Deputies told Jews to stay indoors and keep their heads down |
This was billed as an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration but if it was then it is the first time that the sectarian homophobic bigots of the DUP have attended such a demonstration! Not only the DUP but that well known anti-racist Norman Tebbit, Margaret Thatcher’s ‘semi-trained polecat’ was also in attendance. It is fortunate that didn’t devise a Jewish version of his notorious ‘cricket test’. Indeed it was the first anti-racist demonstration that the Board has organised. In 1936 when the fascists tried to march through Jewish East End of London, the Board was vociferously opposed to any counter demonstration. Stay inside they advised and ignore the fash. Thousands of Jewish demonstrators ignored them and successfully stopped the fascists in conjunction with non-Jewish dockers in the Battle of Cable Street.
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| Friend of the fascists Jonathan Hoffman is also against 'antisemitism' |
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| Jonathan Hoffman (left) with Paul Besser, former Intelligence Officer of Britain Firs |
The main chant at the Zionist demonstration, which included openly fascist Zionists such as Harry Markham and Jonathan Hoffman – was ‘Jeremy is a racist’. The demonstration was also attended by numerous other Tory and Labour Right MPs. Yet where was Momentum this time? Completely absent. Jon Lansman’s refusal to mobilise any opposition to this anti-Corbyn demonstration was nothing less than an act of treachery.
This demonstration was a reaction to the synthetic furoreover a 6 year old mural, long erased, which Corbyn had defended on free speech grounds. It was claimed that it was anti-Semitic but on any objective viewing it depicted bankers not Jews, dining on the back of Black sweated labour. It was anti-banker not anti-Jewish and only two of the six bankers were Jewish.
This was the pretext for the insertion into the election campaign of the false ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative. Remember that this weapon has been wielded even before Corbyn was elected in the summer of 2015 when it was alleged he associated with a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. It was false but rumours have a habit of sticking. The most dedicated anti-racist Labour MP, a man who was arrestedoutside the South Africa High Commission in Trafalgar Square in the days of Apartheid was now being called a racist.
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| Jess Phillips - one of the lynch mob that accompanied liar Ruth Smeeth MP to Marc Wadsworth's hearing |
In the 2½ years since we have had a non-stop diet of ‘anti-Semitism’. Labour Against Anti-Semitism and other right-wing trolls, many not even in Labour, have run with malicious and false allegations against Labour members. Meanwhile coincidentally nearly all the victims have been people who have been Jewish, Black and anti-racist – Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Cyril Chilson. It is obvious to anyone who isn’t brain dead that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is not about anti-Semitism.
Jackie Walker was secretly taped at a ‘training event’ run by the Jewish Labour Movement. Shortly after she was suspended for saying that groups other than Jews should be included in Holocaust Memorial Day and that she hadn’t come across a definition of anti-Semitism that she could work with. This was the cue for Lansman to have Jackie removed as Momentum Vice-Chair. Shortly afterwards Jackie was suspended. Cyril, Marc and I have since been expelled. When I remarked that having the JLM take a training session on antiracism was like Nick Griffin of the BNP lecturing on multi-culturalism the JLM complained!
The Jewish Labour Movement by its own admission is the ‘sister party’ of the Israeli Labour Party, an openly racist party that supportsNetanyahu’s attempts to deport 40,000 Black African refugees from the country because they are Black and not Jewish. [See The violent roots of Israel's Labor party]
The Zionists react angrily to any suggestion that their concerns about ‘anti-Semitism’ have anything to do with Israel. It’s all about Jew hatred but when you read what they say it is clear that they are congenital liars incapable of differentiating between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. In their Open Letter to Corbyn, Arkush and Goldstein stated that:
“Again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with anti-Semites rather than Jews. At best, this derives from the far left’s obsessive hatred of Zionism, Zionists and Israel. At worst, it suggests a conspiratorial worldview in which mainstream Jewish communities are believed to be a hostile entity, a class enemy.”
They couldn’t help themselves. ‘Anti-Semitism’ was about the ‘far left’s obsessive hatred of Zionism, Zionists and Israel.’ If there were any doubt then Arkush put it to bed when he described Jewdas, a group of Jewish anarchists, as a ‘source of virulent anti-Semitism’.
That is why the decision of Corbyn to accept that Labour has ‘pockets of anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party is so stupid. It accepts the false anti-Semitism allegations of Israel’s supporters as genuine. When the whole of the right-wing press, the same press that attacks George Soros as a ‘puppet master’, an anti-Semitic stereotype if any were, is going full on with the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative then it is absurd for Labour to throwaway its defences.
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| Lucianer Berger ex of Israeli dirty tricks |
The fact is that the Labour Party is not full of anti-Semites. What occasionally happens is that someone tweets something which proceeds from the basis that Jews are responsible for the plight and oppression of the Palestinians. This is not surprising given that Israel calls itself a Jewish state. This is not racial anti-Semitism but mistaken language.
What we saw in the election was a determined campaign by right-wing MPs to use the anti-Semitism weapon to attack Corbyn and in the process damage Labour’s chances in the local elections. When the Tories staged their debate on anti-Semitism it gave the chance to Labour’s right-wing traitors – Smeeth, Luciana Berger and John Mann – to attack their own leader. The fact is that these creatures would prefer Labour to lose to the Tories because their main goal is to be rid of Corbyn and if means getting the Tories to help then so be it.
Chuka Ummuna has been waging a one man war against Corbyn over the anti-Semitism. Here is an MP, who is nominally Black who has next to nothing to say about the Windrush scandal. It is incredible. Anti-Semitism is not a form of state racism, anti-Black and Muslim racism is.
Jewish people aren’t being hauled out of their beds and put on the next plane out of the country. Jews aren’t being denied hospital treatment or benefits or facing Home Office vans telling them to go home. Jews don’t face deaths in custody or synagogues being firebombed or worshippers run over outside the synagogue. These are the experience of Black and Muslim people.
Anti-Semitism is largely confined to social media. No one has died from a tweet or a Facebook post yet Chuka Ummuna has virtually nothing to say about Windrush. In the Independentless than two weeks before the elections, he writes an article attacking Labour over ‘anti-Semitism’ whilst at the same time playing down the vicious state racism of the Windrush Affair which has seen Black citizens in this country for 70 years deported.
Ummuna wrote that ‘We can’t attack the racism that may lie behind the Tories’ mistreatment of the Windrush generation when we don’t get our own house in order on hate’. Note that ‘racism may lie behind the Tories’ mistreatment’. He isn’t even certain whether the ‘hostile environment’ policy of the Tories is racist and he describes denying cancer treatment to someone as ‘mistreatment’ rather than say racist abuse. You couldn get much gentler but then Chuka Ummuna was among those Labour MPs who abstained, i.e. supported the Government’s 2014 Immigration Act.
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| John Mann- rent a mouth MP demonstrates that he is a racist bigot whose concerns about antisemitism are entirely bogus |
John Mann, the rent-a-mouth MP for Bassetlaw should also be called out over his attacks on Corbyn. In his speech in the Tories ‘anti-Semitism’ debate he allegedthat Momentum had something to do with his wife being sent a dead bird in 2012, three years before it was even formed! This is an MP who produced a legal guide to Anti-Social Behaviour which has sections on the various forms of ASB including ‘‘loitering by youths’, ‘graffiti’, ‘neighbours from hell’, ‘alcohol’ – and ‘travellers’.
In the section on ‘Travellers’, there is a big, bold strapline “the Police have powers to remove any gypsies and travellers” (sic). In other words Mann’s concern with anti-Semitism contrasts with his being a racist bigot when it comes to the Roma who were also the victims of the Holocaust.
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| Lansman's Momentum is similar to the Mountain troll in Harry Potter's The Sorcerer's Stone - brawn without brain |
Momentum resembles nothing so much as the Mountain Troll in Harry Potter’s The Sorcerer’s Stone. It is 40,000 strong and yet politically it is almost completely ineffective and inarticulate. In its statementon anti-Semitism, after having maintained radio silence for two weeks, it spoke of the
‘numerous cases of antisemitism in the Labour Party and the Party’s failure to date to deal with them in a sufficiently decisive, swift and transparent manner’ and that ‘accusations of antisemitism should not and cannot be dismissed simply as right wing smears nor as the result of conspiracies.
When the main, apparently left-wing pro-Corbyn group accepts the bogus narrative of ‘anti-Semitism’ then it is clear that politically the pro-Corbyn movement is weak. Whereas the Right are weak numerically they are politically coherent and also have the advantage of having the most MPs and councillors.
Momentum rode the crest of a wave at the last general election but this time it was different. The Right controlled the narrative and Corbyn was unable to break out of the enclosure. So when Momentum pushed hundreds of people into for example Wandsworth they didn’t get the massive swings they expected. Indeed they may have been counter-productive. Momentum has been seduced by the myths of its own achievements last June just as New Labour believed that its ability to spin would enable it to perform magic too.
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| Roma child in the hands of a Nazi soldier |
It doesn't matter whether Momentum is 40,000 or 100,000 strong if politically it is at the mercy of Lansman's whims. Its lack of any democracy is crippling it. It is incapable of responding to the attacks of the Right in any co-ordinated and sophisticated way. Lansman's Zionist leanings are crippling it.
For example we face a situation where 60+ Labour MPs, led by John Mann and Chuka Ummuna, Smeeth and Berger are making it crystal clear that they will not, under any circumstances support Corbyn for Prime Minister if he were in a position to form a government. One way or another these Labour-Tory rats have to be removed. The easiest way would be through the removal of the whip, however if Corbyn is ever to be Prime Minister they have to go.
There is a need not only to reject the false anti-Semitism narrative but to reject a witchhunt which is increasing and which is focusing on opponents of Zionism not anti-Semites but to build Labour Against the Witchhunt and similar initiatives. At the moment the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative is also ensuring that people are afraid to come out openly in support of the Palestinians and against Zionism. The false anti-Semitism campaign is important Israeli ‘democracy’ into the Labour Party.
Above all we need to say that the days of the Labour Friends of Israel and JLM are over. What other party allows a foreign party to affiliate to it. We didn’t have a Labour Friends of South Africa during the days of Apartheid and we don’t need a Labour Friends of Israeli Apartheid either.
Tony Greenstein