If those who complain of ‘anti-Semitism’ could spend a day in Gaza as guests of the ‘Jewish State’ they would then understand what oppression means
Rachel Barker is filmed on Newsnight describing Corbyn as a 'monster'
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| Izzy Lenga and Rachel Barker, signatories to the Zionist Open Letter complaining that Labour isn't prepared to allow antisemitism to be used as a weapon against the Palestinians - the slogan on their shirt was 'Shitlord' - I decided that the time is gone when Zionists lord it over people |
There has been a campaign in the Tory press and the Guardian against Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct. [Nick Cohen, Why has Labour run the risk of alienating progressive Jews?] Their objection to the Code is that it does not embrace all of the bogus International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. [IHRA] The real problem however is that the Code embraces any of it. [Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct – Be careful of what you wish for]
As part of this campaign there was an open letterfrom 18 members of Young Labour in Barnet, many of whom are also members of the Jewish Labour Movement [JLM]. They complained bitterly about the new Anti-Semitism Code. In their letter they say that ‘We are socialists, and will always standing with our oppressed comrades in solidarity.’
For a moment I was genuinely perplexed. How can these 18 signatories reconcile support for the JLM, which describes itself as the ‘sister party’ of the Israeli Labour Party with solidarity for ‘oppressed comrades.’ Surely they don’t mean the 40,000 Black refugees in Israel whom Netanyahu is trying to deport because they are neither Jewish nor white? Are they unaware that the Israeli Labour Party supports Netanyahu’s efforts to deport them? [Labor Party's Support of Deportation, Imprisonment of Asylum Seekers]
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| Barnet Young Labour is fully signed up to Progress Labour - it must have stuck in their craw to even used the term 'comrades' in their open letter |
Nor is this simply because of the new right wing leader of the ILP, Avi Gabbay. Previous leader Isaac Herzog was also hostileto the refugees arguing that “The infiltrators took Israeli Arab jobs.” which was of course the racist lie historically used to oppose Jewish immigration into Britain (note he also called them ‘infiltrators’ which is what Palestinian refugees who had been expelled in 1948 were called when they tried to return. Thousands of these ‘infiltrators’were shot on sight by Israeli Labour governments when trying to return to Israel in the 1950’s. This is the same ILP which expelled ¾ million Palestinians in 1948.
Herzog was also no slouch when it came to racism. He declared that his nightmare was to wake up to find that Israel had a Palestinian Prime Minister and 61 Palestinian Members of Israel’s Knesset. [Who needs the Right when we have Isaac Herzog?] Herzog also emphasised that he wanted to dispel the false impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers’ [Herzog slammed for remark about ‘Arab lovers’] It is little wonder that Naftali Bennett, leader of the semi-fascist Jewish Home party nonetheless welcomedHerzog’s appointment as Chair of the Jewish Agency, one of the main instruments of apartheid in Israel.
If our 18 ‘socialists’ who claim they are in solidarity with the oppressed don’t understand the import of this remark, then let me remind them. It was not so long ago when British fascists accused people of being ‘Jew lovers’. That these 18 signatories can be associated with the racist ILP throws their claims of solidarity with the oppressed into doubt.
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| Josh Newmark - one of the signatories |
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| The collected wisdom of another signatory Josh Newmark (son of Jeremy?) - the idiot fails to understand that most Jews in the 30's were part of the left unlike today but to be fair most British Jews are far more liberal on Israel than the signatories to this letter |
The 18 signatories call themselves ‘a group of young, grassroots, enthusiastic activists in Barnet’. It would be truer to say that they are drawn, without exception, from the anti-Corbyn Right of the Labour Party.
Their primary complaint is that the Labour Party hasn’t adopted the IHRA, whose sole purpose is to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Anti-Semitism is not a mystery. You can look it up in the Oxford English Dictionary - ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’.
If you ask most people what anti-Semitism is they will answer that it is someone who doesn’t like Jews and they would be right. Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with opposition to Zionism or Israel.
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| It is strange how those papers which employed Katie Hopkins are so concerned about 'antisemitism' - Katie Hopkins was a guest at the annual dinner of Britain's Zionist Federation |
These young Labour racists aren’t genuinely concerned with anti-Semitism. You are unlikely to find them on the demonstrations against Donald Trump today, still less protesting about the demolition of Palestinian villages by the ‘Jewish’ state or any of the other atrocities carried out by the world’s only Apartheid state (in the name of Jews). This is the same Trump who leads the most anti-Semitic Administration in US history, which employed an open neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka as his ‘anti-terrorism’ adviser to say nothing of other white supremacists. Dana Millbank and others noted that Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody which didn’t stop Israeli Labor leader Herzog effusively welcomingTrump’s election.
Now if these 18 young racists were genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism then they would want to keep as wide a berth as possible from Israel since most anti-Semitism in this country occurs because some people take Israel’s claims that it is a Jewish state at face value and then unfortunately blame Jews for its actions. The IHRA itself consists of 38 words,
“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
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| Having proudly fought against the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany the Daily Mail is well placed to oppose 'anti-semitism' |
It is also backed up by 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’. It is these 11 illustrations that most concern our Young Labour racists. The above definition is clear as mud. What is a certain perception? Is anti-Semitism just a perception? If it may be expressed as hatred towards Jews what else may it be expressed as? Why mention of non-Jews? Why include Jewish community institutions? What are rhetorical manifestations?
Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal judge who is also Jewish wrote that the IHRA definition ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’
The reactionary editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, also attacked the Labour Party’s Anti-Semitism Guidelines but he was at least more honest than these ‘progressive’ young racists. His complaint was that ‘Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’
That is the problem. These privileged young racists aren’t in the slightest concerned about things like the demonstrations against Donald Trump. After all Trump is more popularin Israel than anywhere on Earth. [JPost Poll: Skyrocketing support for Trump among Israelis] However he is not popular amongst American Jews.[Poll: 77% of American Jews have unfavorable view of Trump]
Can you imagine? The man who refusedto condemn the neo-Nazis and white supremacists at Charlottesville, who separates children from their parents at the border with Mexico, who intends to appoint a Supreme Court Judge who will make abortion illegal is wildly popular in Israel?
The Times of Israel informsus that ‘Of the 134 countries surveyed about approval of the US president, only four showed an uptick of 10 percentage points or more: Israel, Belarus, Macedonia and Liberia.’. Trump had a 67% approval rating among Israelis. And why not? Israel can kill unarmed Palestinians, demolish their homes and imprison their children without a word of criticism.
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| The Sun is always a willing partner in the fight against 'antisemitism' |
And what about ‘the issue of antisemitism’ that these 18 Young Racists are concerned about? Is that the same ‘anti-Semitism’ that the Sun and the Mail also oppose? The same papers that employed Katie Hopkins and Richard Littlejohn are apparently concerned about anti-Semitism!
The Daily Mail reported on 18th April 2018 about ‘Women MPs who shamed Corbyn with devastating accounts of Labour anti-Semitism are accused of 'betrayal' and LIES by his supporters’. Is thisthe same Daily Mail, which on August 20, 1938 reported that ‘The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage . . . (it is) a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed.” Or we can go back to the beginning of the 19th century to the Jews fleeing from Russian pogroms:
‘The rest were Jews. . .They fought and jostled for the foremost places at the gangways. . .When the Relief Committee passed by they hid their gold and fawned and whined, and, in broken English, asked for money for their train fare.” Daily Mail, February 3, 1900
The ‘liberal’ Observer, which today is the Guardian’s sister paper, has also run with the bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative. On 31st July 1938 it reported, a few months before Kristallnacht:
‘“A typically baffling illustration of the difficulty is the fact that Britain now has more Jews than Germany ever had. If a further accretion of, say, 100,000 of them come into the country, how could the danger be averted of an anti-Jewish feeling here?” July 31, 1938 [See Anna Karpf’s excellent We've been here before]
The Observer dressed up its anti immigrant prejudices in a fake concern for the growth in anti-Semitism. Not too dissimilar from Labour’s 18 Young Racists. But let us concentrate on the arguments, such as they are from these young racists: They are apparently:
‘horrified at the victim-blaming, bigotry, and incompetence that has been all too characteristic of the approach towards dealing with antisemitism. This has been most recently expressed through the NEC’s incomprehensible decision to abandon the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is in use throughout thousands of British institutions and across 31 countries, in favour of a watered-down definition. Under the NEC definition, the antisemitic trope of alleging that Jews, by virtue of their identity, have their loyalties primarily to the State of Israel, is being deemed acceptable. Furthermore, the assertion that the intent of the perpetrator is most important gives a get-out-of-jail-free card to antisemites, and disregards the Macpherson principle, which Labour uses to arbitrate on allegations of prejudice towards every other group within our movement.
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| Jack Lubner - one of the signatories |
Let us take these points in order:
The IHRA has been approved by 31 governments not countries including the anti-Semitic governments of Poland and Hungary and the far-Right governments of Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and now Austria and Italy. Today’s European far- Right is like Trump. It loves Israel and Zionism even if it doesn’t care for Jews. That is why neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, the founder of the Alt-Right, declares that he is a White Zionist. After all, if you are a racist, what is there not to like about Israel? The fact that racist states endorse a definition of anti-Semitism is hardly an argument in favour of the IHRA. In America this quandary has caused heartache amongst liberal Zionists and the Jewish Forward.See for example Naomi Zeveloff’s How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time
The second argument of these 18 racists is that they are concerned that
‘Under the NEC definition the antisemitic trope of alleging that Jews, by virtue of their identity, have their loyalties primarily to the State of Israel, is being deemed acceptable.’
This isn’t true. In any event the OED definition of anti-Semitism would cope quite adequately with this ‘trope’ (Zionists love this word, possibly because it rhymes with ‘dope’).
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| The JLM returning favours to Peter Kyle, Labour's Tory MP for Hove - Jeremy Newmark, who later left the JLM under a cloud is on the far left with current Chair of the JLM war criminal Ivor Caplin and Ella Rose, Director of JLM and a free transfer from the Israeli Embassy is 4th from the left |
This is also their most dishonest and disingenuous argument. Jews are being accused of loyalty to Israel. At this very moment the Jewish Nation State Bill is going through the Knesset which will officially make Israel the nation state of the Jewish people and officially an apartheid state. Although Israel has always called itself a Jewish State the current bill will make all that was previously implicit explicit. See e.g. article by Mordechai Kremnitzerin Ha’aretz ‘Nation-state Bill Heralds the End of Israel as a Jewish, Democratic State’’
Kremnitzer is wrong. Israel has never been Jewish and democratic. The term is an oxymoron. It’s like being half pregnant. But now there is no doubt. Israel will officially be a state, not of its citizens but allJews, wherever they live. This Bill will remove Arabic as Israel’s second language (this was only ever theoretical). It will allow Jewish only towns and communities to be explicitly allowed (previously they existed in a legal grey zone). That is why Abed Azab writes in Ha’aretz to welcome this Act which will do away with Zionist hypocrisy. [As an Arab, I Support Israel's Jewish Nation-state Bill]
Many of the signatories of the open letterare members of the JLM. The JLM is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation [WZO], whose official platform is the Jerusalem Programmewhich speaks of ‘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’
In other words it claims that everyJewish person is equally a part of the same nation of which Israel is the national embodiment. In other words British Jews are members of the same nation as Indian and French Jews and thus loyal to Israel.
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| Luisa Attfield and other signatories campaign for the notoriously corrupt Joan Ryan MP |
Clearly it’s not anti-Semites in the Labour Party but the WZO which claims that British Jews are responsible for the actions of Israel. You can’t be a member of 2 nations simultaneously. What it is really saying is that Jews are not members of the nations amongst whom they live. That is why historically Zionism and anti-Semitism had so much in common. It is why the Zionists in Germany welcomed the 1935 Nuremburg Laws which stripped German Jews of their citizenship. German Zionists had never accepted that Jews were part of the German nation.
In Israel there is no Israeli nationality. There is a Jewish nationality, which is the nationality of the oppressor and then there are about 130 other nationalities. It isn’t Labour anti-Semites who are questioning Jewish loyalty to Britain but the very organisation, the JLM, of which most of them are members.
That is why one of the most common forms of abuse that I and other Jewish anti-Zionists receive is being called a ‘traitor’ – because by rejecting Zionism and Israel we are not being loyal. It is Zionism not the Labour Party which demands a dual loyalty of British Jews. Indeed it is worse than that.
Less than 5 years ago, representatives of Israel’s government distributed a survey to American Jews asking where their loyalties would lie in the event of a crisis in relations between the United States and Israel! Israel Asks U.S. Jews, Israelis: Where Do Your Loyalties Lie? If these 18 young racists are seriously worried that their loyalty to Britain is being questioned, I suggest that they resign from the JLM!
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| Luise Attfield - one of the signatories |
In fact is even worse than that. One of the examples of the IHRA which the authors of the open letterwant adopted in full states:
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour
Even if we ignore that this statement is a non sequitur, because you can support the right to self-determination and still believe Israel is a racist state, what the right of the Jewish people to self-determination means is that they have a right to form a state. If Israel is the nation state of all Jews, as it claims, then of course all Jews have to take responsibility for it just as British people bear responsibility for the actions of the British state unless they disavow it.
So we have the irony that the IHRA is anti-Semitic according to its own definition, viz. ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’!
These young bigots take exception to the need to demonstrate intent. They want to use a bastardised version of the MacPherson principle. At the last Labour Party Conference the JLM tried to hoodwink people into supporting a motion which would allow ‘victims’ of racial incidents to determine the guilt of their supposed attackers. In other words racism would be entirely subjective. Given that Zionists, as a matter of course accuse supporters of the Palestinians of ‘anti-Semitism’, including Jews, then every time the JLM accuses someone of ‘anti-Semitism’ they would have to be expelled. And Jewish anti-Zionists? Well they are the ‘wrong sort of Jews’ so they too would have to go.
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| Rachel Barker |
The Chakrabarti Report was very clear about this but the JLM and these young racists are determined to distort the recommendations of the MacPherson Report, which was about state racism. It is outrageous that the death of Stephen Lawrence and the Police racism that prevented the conviction of his killers for many years is being used by the supporters of Israeli Apartheid in order to defendracism.
Before these young racists talk about the ‘McPherson principle’ (which principle?) I suggest that they actually read what Chakrabarti had to say on the matter. Her Report states:
Submissions to my Inquiry reveal a level of concern and confusion (in some quarters) about the "Macpherson" definition of a racist incident. This is of course a reference to the famous Report of 1999 into the Metropolitan Police after its appalling mishandling of Stephen Lawrence's murder. The principle that an incident should be recorded as "racist" when perceived that way by a victim may indeed have some useful application outside the policing context, and even here in the world of Labour Party discipline. However the purpose of the approach is to ensure that investigators handle a complaint with particular sensitivity towards the victim. It is to suggest the seriousness with which a complaint must be handled, but in no way to determine its outcome. If I complain to the police that I have been the victim of a racist attack on the street, I should expect my complaint to be so recorded. However investigation and due process must of course then follow and it is perfectly possible that an investigator, prosecutor or magistrate will subsequently find either that no attack took place at all, or that its motivation was something other than racism. In the present context, my complaint that I have been subject to racist or other personal abuse by a fellow Party Member should be so recorded, taken seriously and handled sensitively. However it will be for the investigation and any subsequent process to determine whether my complaint was ultimately well-founded.
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| Liron Velleman - a dedicated Zionist and signatory of open letter and failed council candidate |
What these 18 young racists really want is for any accusation of ‘anti-Semitism’ by Zionists to automatically result in the expulsion of whoever is so accused. My response to that is the same as that of Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army! (Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler…’)
These young racists complain that requiring intent is a ‘get out of jail free card’. Intent or ‘mens rea’ is part of British criminal law. Except for certain offences which are called strict liability (health and safety, motoring etc.) then intent is integral to the offence. There is no reason why that should not be equally applicable to racism. Obviously if someone shouts ‘dirty Jew’ then the intent will be presumed from the act itself. Equally if someone directly discriminates against someone who is Jewish then the very act of discrimination will be evidence as to the mental element involved. All this is trite law but these young racists are engaged in an act of deception.
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| Another signatory to the Open Letter |
The intent of these young racists is clear. It is to use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon to ward off criticism of Israel. That is why they want to adopt the IRHA in its entirety. I think it is a mistake for Labour to have used it at all. As Hugh Tomlinson QC stated in an Opinion the IHRA will have ‘a potential chilling effect on public bodies’ and thus curtail freedom of speech.
In Israel the law is indeed used to curtail the freedom of speech of Arabs. Dareen Tatour, a poet, has been charged and convictedof inciting violence for publishing a poem calling for resistance. Given that Israeli Jews who call for the death of Arabs are never charged, still less convicted this is an example of the extreme racism of Israeli society.
We should reject the accusations of these young racists. Israel calls itself a Jewish State. It claims it is a state of all Jews and Netanyahu claimsto be the representative of world Jewry. It is therefore incumbent upon Jews in the diaspora to say ‘not in my name’.I have yet to hear any of these young racists, most of whom are Jewish, speak out. In the West Bank they are about to demolish the village of Khan al-Ahmar to make way for Jewish settlements. It is what Apartheid South Africa did. We imposed sanctions on South Africa do these young racists support us doing the same? In Israeli hospitals there are segregated wardsfor Jewish and Arab women. Do our young racists condemn this and similar practices in universities?
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| For reasons unknown I have been blocked by Izzy - you can't win them all |
I have referred to the signatories of the Open Letter as racists, not as a term of abuse but because that is what they are. Jewish people in this society are White and are privileged. Jews do not suffer from fascist violence . We are not subject to Police racism, deaths in custody, deportation back to ‘where we came from’ as per the Windrush scandal nor do Jews suffer from economic discrimination. In short Jews are not victims and therefore they have no right to ‘define their oppression’ because they are not oppressed. What they really mean is that the oppressor should be allowed to define themselves as oppressed. Their Open Letter is an exercise in sophistry aimed at supporting the Apartheid State of Israel.
These young racists are not the innocents abroad that they claim. They have a Facebook pagefrom where their racist bile is distributed. They are heavily involved in the Labour Right.
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| Rachel Megan Barker |
Rachel Barker, the LGBT Officer of Barnet Young Labour and Hendon CLP and former council candidate is a vicious anti-Corbyn right-winger as the video of her distributing ‘Saving Labour’ leaflets demonstrates. Ms Barker helped in processing information leading to the suspension of Labour members with Joanna Baxter, when she was on Labour’s NEC. This was when Owen Smith was challenging Corbyn for the leadership. She let people know that the horrifically right-wing Baxter was too soft on people. She would have had suspended anyone with even a trace of a suspicion that they were voting for Corbyn.
Barker calls Jeremy Corbyn ‘horrendous’ ‘appalling’ and says of removing Corbyn ‘it’s like chopping the head off a monster’ She is known locally as Miss Eyebrows, because they are tattooed on. Her brother is Tom Barker an E.C officer on Barnet Young Labour. Her Dad is Hendon CLP Secretary and her mother is also very active.
Dora Hirsh is the daughter of David Hirsh, a sociologist from Goldsmith College, who formed Engage in order to unsuccessfully fight the Boycott of Israeli Universities.
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| It is hard to disagree with this assessment of Izzy Lenga |
Another signatory is Izzy Lenga who was very active as part of UJS in NUS and was Vice President from April 2017. Fortunately she was defeatedthis year!
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| Nesil Caliskan |
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| Eda Caz |
Another person associated with this group is Eda Cazimoğlu who is standing for Labour’s NEC. Cazimoglu is the younger sister of the leader of Enfield council Nesil Caliskan. An article Report reveals Enfield selection fiasco details the scandal around the selection of council candidates in Enfield. Joan Ryan who is Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and the local MP plays one ethnic group against another e.g. Turks against Kurds etc. The whole Cazimoglu family seem to work for Joan Ryan, I understand one of them is her PA or Secretary.
According to Guido FawkesAlev Cazimoglu, ‘close ally of expenses piggy candidate hopeful Joan Ryan’, was suspended from the party’s candidates panel. Tim Leaver accusing Cazimoglu of “financial inducements or inducements in kind offered to attempt to secure support” and “interfering with or putting under duress a member in regard to how they vote.”
The allegations involved Cazimoglu and Ryan plotting to ferry an elderly resident to a selection meeting and telling her which way to vote. See also the Morning Star’s Labour right seeking to take over in Enfield, left councillors sayon further skullduggery involving Nesil Caliskan née Cazimoglu who was seeking to becoming the new Leader of the Council through various underhand means, fair or foul (mostly the latter). Needless to say the hopelessly corrupt Joan Ryan, MP for Enfield South and Tel Aviv South was up to her neck in all of this.
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| Velleman with Ella Rose, Barker and others in their efforts to retain Langleben's Council seat - he came bottom of the 3 Labour candidates and lost, having convinced sufficient Jewish electors that he stood for an anti-semitic party they refused to vote for him! |
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| Velleman with Mark Regev, Israeli Ambassador to Britain and a war criminal in his own right - Israel's Lord Haw Haw |
Liron Velleman is another signatory and a former activist with the Israeli funded Union of Jewish Students. His Twitter page has a photo of his involvement in the election campaign for Peter Kyle, MP for Hove, an active member of Progress, a racist opponent of all things Palestinian and supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and all round reactionary.
Tony Greenstein
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| Alex Richardson, former aide to Joan Ryan MP, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel |
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| Alex Richardson, as captured in Al Jazeera's The Lobby when Joan Ryan MP (right) discussed with Israeli agent Shai Masot that she was being given a £1 million slush fund to finance dirty tricks in the Labour Party |
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| Barnet Young Labour is affiliated to the racist Zionist JLM - hence their letter |
An Open Letter from Young Labour members in Barnet
Dear Jeremy Corbyn, Jennie Formby and members of the NEC,
We are a group of young, grassroots, enthusiastic activists in Barnet who are committed to the Labour Movement. We first joined the Labour Party because we were, and remain, horrified at the damage that the Conservative Government has wreaked on communities up and down the country with their programme of austerity. We wanted an end to the ideological and ruinous privatisations perpetrated by the Tory run Barnet Council, which has long prioritised profit over people. We know that Labour’s vision of a better world is radical and transformative, and we got involved to help bring that day about. We want to help Labour be the best it can.
Unfortunately, this task is being made impossible by the Labour Leadership’s repeated inability to get to grips with the issue of antisemitism. We are socialists, and will always standing with our oppressed comrades in solidarity. We joined Labour for this reason, because we know how good its record in Government is on bringing about legislative equality. But we are horrified at the victim-blaming, bigotry, and incompetence that has been all too characteristic of the approach towards dealing with antisemitism. This has been most recently expressed through the NEC’s incomprehensible decision to abandon the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which is in use throughout thousands of British institutions and across 31 countries, in favour of a watered-down definition. Under the NEC definition, the antisemitic trope of alleging that Jews, by virtue of their identity, have their loyalties primarily to the State of Israel, is being deemed acceptable. Furthermore, the assertion that the intent of the perpetrator is most important gives a get-out-of-jail-free card to antisemites, and disregards the Macpherson principle, which Labour uses to arbitrate on allegations of prejudice towards every other group within our movement.
We live and campaign in Barnet, a borough that has the highest concentration of Jewish residents in the country. While we have always opposed antisemitism for the same reason that we and our comrades have opposed all prejudice – because it’s the right thing to do; the impact it is having on our election prospects in Barnet is undeniable. Throughout the recent local elections campaign, we canvassed hundreds of households to try and convince them of the future we wanted to see, a Labour Council. Our policies were incredibly popular on the doorstep, and indeed until the story about the antisemitic mural surfaced, our numbers predicted an unprecedented Labour majority of 4-7 seats. Yet, as the depth of Labour’s antisemitism problem unfolded, we came across more and more voters – Labour voters – who refused to give us their support. We met left wing Jewish residents, many of whom had been lifelong Labour voters, yet they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Labour this time, even though they agreed with our policies. We encountered Jewish voters crying because they agreed with our vision for Barnet, but because of the national failure to deal with antisemitism, they felt politically homeless. We were told of Jewish members who joined in 2016 to vote for Corbyn, yet no longer felt they could remain a part of the party they loved.
Labour must regain the support of the Jewish community, not because it will win us votes, but because it would be morally abhorrent to do anything else. We desperately want to help Labour to do that, but because of a national consistency in ignoring Jewish voices within and outside of the party, our task becomes harder and the damage becomes deeper.
We ask you, in the spirit of the solidarity, tolerance and respect that our party was founded on, to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism as the first of many steps in tackling this evil. To do anything else would be unforgivable.
We look forward to your response.
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin Lorie – Chair of Barnet Young Labour
Viljo Wilding – Secretary of Barnet Young Labour, Youth Officer of Hendon CLP
Jack Lubner – Campaigns & Membership Officer of Barnet Young Labour, Diversity Officer of Finchley and Golders Green CLP
Dominic Breen – Vice Chair Treasurer of Barnet Young Labour
Sadiyah Akther – Vice Chair Women’s Officer of Barnet Young Labour
Luisa Attfield – Disabilities Officer of Barnet Young Labour, Women’s Officer of Finchley and Golders Green CLP
Rachel Barker – LGBT Officer of Barnet Young Labour, LGBT Officer of Hendon CLP, former Barnet council candidate
Alex Luxford – Under 19s Officer of Barnet Young Labour
Tom Barker – Hendon Officer for Barnet Young Labour
Dominic Norcliffe-Brown – Trade Union Liaison Officer of Barnet Young Labour
Liron Velleman – Youth and Students Officer at the Jewish Labour Movement, former Barnet council candidate
Dora Hirsch
Noam Solomons-Wise
Izzy Lenga
Alex Richardson
Harry Jacobs
Noa Gendler
Josh Newmark