YOU CAN’T APPEASE ZIONISM It's time McDonnell & Corbyn STOPPED started fighting back We Are Witnessing a Slow Motion Coup
ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE AND SAYING SO IS NOT ANTI-SEMITIC
Open Letter to Stephen Pollard, Editor of the Jewish Chronicle
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| It's true - the idiocy and malevolence of the front pages are 'unprecedented' whether they should boast about it is another matter |
The adoption of the big lie technique that Hitler pioneered when he argued in Mein Kampf that the benefit of telling a "colossal" lie was that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously"is indeed unprecedented. Never before have papers that call themselves Jewish done so much to stir up anti-Semitism.
If their campaign succeeds in overthrowing Corbyn, which is its purpose, then many people will indeed blame 'the Jews'. Stephen Pollard and his fellow reactionaries are playing with fire.
The purpose of this campaign is not to fight anti-Semitism but to remove Corbyn. That is why John McDonnell particularly is behaving in a cowardly and stupid fashion. Quotingan unnamed Labour MP, the Jewish Chronicle’s Lee Harpin wrote: “John McDonnell wants power at any cost. If this means making the Labour antisemitism row go away for the time being then so be it. Jeremy isn’t quite so malleable — and neither are those who work alongside him at the top.”
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| Every reactionary Tory paper is concerned about 'antisemitism' |
At any cost means accepting a definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which renders support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism racist. It means abandoning any form of international solidarity. It means turning a blind eye to Israeli Apartheid for the sake of a temporary peace.
McDonnell’s ‘strategy’ is not only unprincipled but stupid. This latest attack on Corbyn is not about the IHRA, still less anti-Semitism. It is the beginning of an attempt to remove the Corbyn leadership entirely. As the Tories face their Waterloo over Brexit, the Establishment in this country are panicking at the prospect of a Corbyn government.
If McDonnell loses his nerve now, then we can be sure he will be putty in the hands of the City of London were he were to become Chancellor. Cowardice today will mean treachery tomorrow.
According to the joint editorials Labour’s refusal to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism in full means that the use of the phrases “Dirty Jew” and “Zionist bitch” is now acceptable in the Labour Party. This is a lie worthy of Goebbels himself. It is a measure of the desperation of the Express’s former editor, Stephen Pollard, that he resorts to such nonsense.
‘Zionist bitch’ may be sexist and offensive, even when used against Margaret Hodge, but it is less offensive than calling Jeremy Corbyn a ‘fucking anti-Semite’. And it is far less offensive than attacking the victims of child abuse, as Hodge did when Islington Council leader.
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| Now this foul woman is a Jewish Chronicle hero |
For 3 years the Zionist lobby, including the Labour Right, the Israeli Embassy, Jewish Chronicle and Britain’s yellow press, have poured cold water on any suggestion that their concerns about Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ were motivated by Israel and Zionism. They were only concerned with Jew hatred they told us yet even a cursory reading of their whinging makes it clear that Israel is at the centre of their concerns.
Leaving aside the hysterical nonsense about an ‘existential threat to Jewish life in this countrythat would be posed by a Corbyn -led government’ what concerns them is the ‘deleting and amending four key examples of antisemitism relating to Israel.’
Only two weeks ago Pollard called the Labour Party ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. Why? Because ‘instead of adopting the [IHRA] definition... Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’ Precisely and what are these parts?
i. Calling Israel ‘a racist endeavour’. Only last week Israel passed the Jewish Nation State Law, which even liberal Zionists acknowledge is an Apartheid Law. It removed Arabic as an official language, supports Jewish –only settlements and deliberately omitted any reference to equality. Is calling this racist anti-Semitic?
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| If Arabs paraded through the streets of Tel Aviv with this banner the Police would arrest them, beat them up and they would receive at least a couple of years in prison - Jews however have complete immunity |
ii. Comparing Israel to Nazi Germany is also anti-Semitic. Why? When mobs demonstrate with banners proclaiming ‘kill them all’ whilst chanting ‘death to the Arabs’ is that not reminiscent of a certain European state in the 1930’s? Recently hundreds of Jews demonstrated in Afula protesting against the sale of a house to an Arab. Is that not similar to signs in German towns saying ‘Jews not welcome’?
iii. Another of their concerns is ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’. But the idea that Jews form a separate nation with the right to self-determination is an anti-Semitic idea. It rests on the belief that Jews don’t belong in the states where they live. It follows therefore that Jews owe their loyalty to Israel, the self-proclaimed ‘Jewish state’ than to the country they live in. But the IHRA says this is also anti-Semitic!
The IHRA is so contradictory that by its own definition it is anti-Semitic! Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge criticised it as not a definition. David Feldman, the Director of the Sears Institute for Studying Anti-Semitism defined it as ‘bewilderingly imprecise.’
The IHRA Definition is NOT the Issue
The latest Zionist attack is NOT about the IHRA definition of Anti-Semitism or anti-Semitism. It is about removing the Corbyn leadership, which is why people like John McDonnell and Rebecca Long-Bailey, who believe that if they retreat on this all will be well, are digging their own political graves.
Brian Klug is right when he says Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct has adopted the IHRA in all fundamental respects. What Klug fails to understand is that this alleged non-adoption of the IHRA by Labour is just a pretext, a fig leaf.
For the past 3 years I and others have argued that the anti-Semitism witchhunt is not about anti-Semitism. Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and Tony Greenstein have just been collateral damage. It is about Jeremy Corbyn. We were just useful scapegoats. It is to Jeremy and even more so John McDonnell’s shame that they have betrayed comrades in order to appease racists.
One of the lessons of the fight against fascism is that appeasement simply encourages your enemy. Of course the British ruling class weren’t really appeasing fascism. Chamberlain and the Tory Party supported Hitler's destruction of the German working class organisations. They wanted Hitler to attack the Soviet Union. It was only when Hitler attacked British interests in Europe that they had second thoughts.
However much Corbyn and McDonnell appeased them the Zionists came back for more. McDonnell in particular doesn’t seem to understand that their real agenda was never ‘anti-Semitism’. There was no anti-Semitism. It was always about defending Israel and removing Corbyn, in no particular order.
The time has now come for Corbyn and Momentum, with or without Lansman, to call a halt to this policy of appeasing Israel's supporters. To use the Zionist slogan of March 26th, Enough is Enough. NO MORE CONCESSIONS TO ZIONISM AND ITS RACIST AGENDA.
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| A touching photo of the racist Orban and Netanyahu couples |
This was the week that Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister paid a visit to Israel and paid homage at Israel’s Holocaust propaganda museum, Yad Vashem. A group of Israelis, mainly Holocaust survivors, held a protest at the visit of a man who has sought to rehabilitate Hungary’s pro-Nazi war time leader, Admiral Horthy. Horthy presided over the deportation of nearly ½m Hungary Jews to Auschwitz, yet Orban called him an ‘exceptional statesman’
Veronika Cohen, one of the demonstrators and a Hungarian Holocaust survivor explained‘I don’t think that you have to be a Holocaust survivor or a Hungarian to be here to say that Orban has no business coming here,”.
Yael Weiss-Reind, whose family was murdered in Hungary during the Holocaust, saidthat Yad Vashem was granting legitimacy to these regimes when it “accepts leaders who carry out policies and ideologies that are very similar to what we saw decades ago.”
Zionism has never had any compunction in working with genuine anti-Semites. Zionism is and always has been a Jewish form of anti-Semitism. As the founder of Zionism, Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries, in reaction to the Dreyfus Affair: ‘In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to "combat" anti-Semitism.’
Zionism has created in Israel an ethno -nationalist state that is a mirror image of similar states that existed in 1930’s Europe. Zionism shares with anti-Semitism contempt for Diaspora Jewry. It believes the place of Jews is in Israel not Europe. It is fundamental to Zionist ideology that Jews don’t belong in the lands of their birth but in their own racial state. Zionism believes that Jews form a nation apart from those they live amongst, which is also what anti-Semites believe. It is also why the Zionist attack on Corbyn and the Labour Party is hypocritical.
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| There are some antisemites that Stephen Pollard doesn't object to |
There is no greater hypocrite than Stephen Pollard, the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle.Pollard is the man who defended the anti-Semitic Polish MEP Michal Kaminski, who was an MP for Jedwabne, a village in which, in 1941, fellow Poles herded up to 1600 Jews into a barn which they then set alight. Kaminski supported the Committee to Maintain the Good Name of Jedwabne yet Pollard went out of his way to defend Kaminski. Why? Because Kaminski was also a strong supporter of Israel! Pollard exclaimedthat: “Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists.”
What has really prompted this attack on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party is the fear that someone known for his opposition to US imperialism and Israel’s racism might become Prime Minister because of the precarious nature of May’s administration.
This hysterical attack betrays their weakness not strength. However much nonsense fills the pages of the newspapers and the TV screens most people do not accept the nonsense that Labour is overrun with anti-Semitism. That is why the treachery of Lansman in refusing to mobilise Momentum against these attacks is politically criminal. Momentum is losing its very reason for existence.
We need to tell the racists who wrote the joint editorials to get lost and take their Jewish only roads and towns with them. Israel is a racist endeavour. These are the same people who, when Trump came to power, fell over themselves to welcome him and his Administration to power, including anti-Semites like Steve Bannon, despite Trump having mounted the most anti-Semitic election campaign in history.
We need to ask why is it that Corbyn and McDonnell have stillfailed to hold a meeting with Jewish Voice for Labour, Free Speech on Israel and Labour Against the Witchhunt? Instead of talking to their enemies, Corbyn and McDonnell should start talking to their Jewish friends.
Above is an Open Letter to Stephen Pollard, the Editor of the Jewish Chronicle.
Tony Greenstein
Dear Stephen,
You described the joint front pages of 3 Zionist papers this week as ‘unprecedented’. I agree. It is difficult to recollect when even the Jewish Chronicle saw deceiving its readers as its prime purpose. An article that suggests ‘dirty Jew’ and ‘Zionist bitch’ will now be ‘fair game’ in the Labour Party does not deserve to be taken seriously.
For the past three years, during the whole contrived ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis you failed to point to any actual anti-Semitism. That was why Jews such as Jackie Walker, Cyril Chilsom and myself were the most prominent targets. The only people who made anti-Semitic comments, calling Jews ‘self-haters’,‘traitors’ or ‘kapos’ were Zionists.
It is noticeable that not once have you or your co-conspirators raised the Conservative Party’s membership of the ECR Group in the European Parliament, despite it containing two anti-Semitic parties – Poland’s Law & Justice and the Latvian LNNK.
I was also surprised that your article was so fulsome in its praise of Margaret Hodge. Is this the same Hodge of whom you once said that her ‘foul hypocrisy just beggars belief’. That was just the headline! You also wrote: ‘It’s difficult to imagine a more blatant, shameful and utterly contemptible piece of two-faced hypocrisy than the behaviour of Margaret Hodge.’’ I couldn’t have put it better myself. You also wrote:
‘Her behaviour drags the entire political system into disrepute, and she would now be well advised to withdraw from public life....
Last April, she apologised for what she called her “shameful naivety” when, as leader of Islington Council, she dismissively brushed aside the victims of paedophiles who preyed on children in council care. One victim, Demetrious Panton, who was abused by the former head of an Islington children’s home in the late 1970s, was dismissed by Mrs Hodge in a letter to the BBC as “extremely disturbed”.
It was almost beyond parody when she was then appointed Children’s Minister by Tony Blair. ... the sheer grubbiness of her brand of hypocrisy leaves a stench that makes others look almost admirable.’
Matthew Norman wrote: ‘With a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility.’ It would appear that a dose of Zionism is the best political disinfectant for getting rid of the ‘stench that makes others look almost admirable.’
The blessed Margaret was not the only one who was giving off a stench. Your concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ was not in evidence when Polish MEP Michal Kaminski was invited to speak to Conservative Friends of Israel. Kaminski was MP for Jedwabne, a village in which, in 1941, up to 1600 Jews had been herded by fellow Poles into a barn which was then set alight. When the truth of what occurred was revealed by two Polish Jewish historians Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski agreed to make an apology, for which he was criticised by Kaminski.
Your response was to write an article Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews in whichyou described him as ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ After all ‘ Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.’ Not only did Kaminski oppose an apology but he argued that those few who survived the Holocaust, should apologise to the Poles! It seems that there are some anti-Semites that you have no objections to.
Jeremy Corbyn’s crime is not that he hates Jews but he doesn’t support the Israeli state. You wrote‘instead of adopting the (IHRA) definition ... Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’
It is clear that your agenda is not anti-Semitism but Israel. If the Labour Party was anti-Semitic you would have no objection as long as it was pro-Zionist. Genuine anti-Semites in the Trump Administration, such as Steve Bannon, who objected to his children going to school with ‘whiny Jewish brats’have never merited an ‘unprecedented’joint front page article despite an election campaign which Dana Millbank described thus: Anti-Semitism is no longer an undertone of Trump’s campaign. It’s the melody. This did not prevent your fellow ‘anti-Semitism’ campaigner Jonathan Arkush from giving Trump a warm welcome.
Trump of course is pro-Israel whereas Corbyn is not, which is why Trump’s praise for the ‘fine people’ i.e. neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, who chanted ‘the Jews will not replace us’ seems to have made him the most popular President ever in Israel.
When you talked about the threat to Jewish life in this country what really concerned you was support for the world’s only Apartheid state. A state where hundreds of Jews can demonstrate in Afula against the sale of a house to an Arab.
If Jews in this country experienced what Palestinians in Israel undergo then your complaints of anti-Semitism would have some merit. Your gripes about non-existent anti-Semitism should be treated with contempt.
The time has come when Corbyn needs to get a backbone and tell you and your fellow creative writers where to go. The truth is, Stephen Pollard, you would not recognise anti-Semitism if it bit you on your ample backside.
Best wishes,
Tony Greenstein