A Simple Message to Jeremy Corbyn – Stop Apologising for non-existent anti-Semitism You have nothing to apologise for
 |
| Picket of the BBC by JVL and LAW |
Called at short notice by Jewish Voice for Labourand supported by Labour Against the Witchhunt, Brent Momentum and at least two union branches, we had an excellent picket of the Biased Broadcasting Corporation today otherwise known as the Voice of Israel.
 |
| Tony Greenstein speaking at the BBC picket |
The BBC has been one of the main proponents of the fake anti-Semitism campaign, picking up on every neo-con allegation it can find against Corbyn. It has portrayed the execrable Margaret Hodge as a latter day saint, despite her despicable role as Council leader in Islington in covering up child abuse (not a word of which passes the BBC’s corporate lips).
I spoke almost as soon as I arrived on behalf of LAW and my message was that if the BBC wanted to focus on genuine anti-Semitism then why has it refused to cover the alliance between the Conservative Party and anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament? Since 2009 the Tories have been part of the European Conservative and Reform group which contains the anti-Semitic Polish Law & Justice Party, which has just passed a Holocaust law making it an offence to refer to Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Events such as the burning alive of up to 1600 Jews in Jedwabne in 1941 by nationalist Poles were made a criminal offence, despite the fact that in 2001 Poland’s President Aleksander Kwasniewski apologised
 |
| Today's picket of the BBC |
None of this prevented the far-Right Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard from defending Michal Kaminski, MEP for the L&J party and member of the Polish Sejm for Jedwabne, who defended and exonerated those who committed this crime. Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to JewsAs Pollardnoted Kaminski was ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ Support for Israel and Zionism meant he couldn’t be an anti-Semite. Which exonerates nearly all the world’s anti-Semites! More recently Pollard has been accusedby David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group of endangering his family under threat from fascists. This is the level of hypocrisy we are dealing with.
Also members of the ECR Group are the Latvian National Alliance (LNNK/Freedom and Fatherland) party with one MEP Robert Zile. Zile spends a Saturday every March demonstrating in Riga with veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS. Not a word of any of this passes the lying lips of the BBC and their tame reporters. For more details of Tory Party tolerance of anti-Semitism in Latvia and Eastern Europe see Monkia Lowenberg’s Riga, Capital of European Culture: Waffen SS, Stags and Silence?None of this, genuine anti-Semitism, has ever been reported by the BBC or our yellow press. They are far more interested in fake anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Thus we are in an Orwellian situation where Black = White and anti-racism = anti-Semitism. I also had a message to Jeremy Corbyn.
For f*** sake stop apologising for your past. Do you really think that apologising will stop the attacks on you? The more you apologise the more they will step up the bogus allegations. Is Seamus Milne’s head filled with sawdust these days?
Your enemies are going to dig up all sorts of stuff. Stand your ground. If they attack you for speaking with Hamas/Hezbollah say what you used to say. They are not terrorists, they are representatives of the oppressed. Hamas and Hezbollah were both elected and you had the right to speak alongside them. Indeed but for Israel neither organisation would even exist.
Yes their military wings are designated as terrorists but so is the Kurdish PKK. That is an outrageous political decision which has no regard to their actual activities. It is the Israeli army who are the real terrorists. Israel helped create Hamas and if they hadn’t murdered 20,000 people and injured about 100,000 in their invasion of Lebanon in 1982 there would have been no Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s main offence was being the only Arab army to stand up to Israel and win in 2006.
 |
| Thatcher shakes hands with the man she called a terrorist |
Hamas and Hezbollah don’t drop bombs on or shoot guided missiles at peoples’ homes, schools or hospitals. The ANC too were designated terrorists by Reagan and Thatcher and until recently the US had them on a terrorist watch list.
Stop apologising for the fact that a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. Hajo Mayer, at a meeting you chaired, compared Israel to the Nazis. It was the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Army, General Yair Golan, who saidthree years ago that:
“If there is something that frightens me about the memories of the Holocaust, it is the knowledge of the awful processes which happened in Europe in general, and in Germany in particular, 70, 80, 90 years ago, and finding traces of them here in our midst, today, in 2016
This is what veteran peacenick, Uri Avnery, himself a Zionist wrote:
‘The discrimination against the Palestinians in practically all spheres of life can be compared to the treatment of the Jews in the first phase of Nazi Germany. (The oppression of the Palestinians in the occupied territories resembles more the treatment of the Czechs in the “protectorate” after the Munich betrayal.)
The rain of racist Bills in the Knesset, those already adopted and those in the works, strongly resembles the laws adopted by the Reichstag in the early days of the Nazi regime. Some rabbis call for a boycott of Arab shops. Like then. The call “Death to the Arabs” (“Judah verrecke”?) is regularly heard at soccer matches.
A member of parliament has called for the separation between Jewish and Arab newborns in hospital. A chief rabbi has declared that Goyim (non-Jews) were created by God to serve the Jews.
Our ministers for education and culture are busy subduing the schools, theatre and arts to the extreme rightist line, something known in German as Gleichschaltung. The supreme court, the pride of Israel, is being relentlessly attacked by the minister of justice. The Gaza Strip is a huge ghetto.
Of course, no one in their right mind would even remotely compare Netanyahu to Hitler, but there are political parties here which do emit a strong fascist smell. The political riffraff peopling the present Netanyahu government could easily have found their place in the first Nazi government.
One of the main slogans of our present government is to replace the “old elite”, considered too liberal, with a new one. One of the main Nazi slogans was to replace “das System”.
Army rule
By the way, when the Nazis came to power, almost all high-ranking officers of the German army were staunch anti-Nazis. They were even considering a putsch against Hitler. Their political leader was summarily executed a year later, when Hitler liquidated his opponents in his own party.
We are told that Golan is now protected by a personal bodyguard, something that has never happened to a general in the annals of Israel. I strongly recommend people read the whole article. Uri Avnery: Israeli politics bears comparison with end of Weimar Germany and rise of fascism, Irish Times, 25.5.16.
This relates to one of the ‘illustrations’ in the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism. Corbyn made yet another rod for his own back by following meekly in the footsteps of Theresa May and adopting this dishonest and disingenuous script whose only purpose is to equate supporters of the Palestinians and opponents of Zionism with the Nazis. Corbyn is an ‘anti-Semite’ to those the BBC regularly interviews because he is reluctant to adopt the whole of the IHRA.
Today we had a lively demonstration and made our views clear to the BBC, which John Pilger describedas the most effective propaganda organisation in the world.
We live in times which are Orwellian. Anti-racists are racists and anti-Semites whereas Tories, whose party was founded on racism and Empire are now anti-racists! A party which fought against the admission of Jewish refugees to Britain and under Lord Balfour introduced the anti-Semitic 1905 Aliens Bill is now apparently opposed to anti-Semitism.
There is no more eloquent opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’ than Boris Johnson. The same man who describedBlack people as ‘picanninies’ with ‘watermelon smiles’ and who only yesterday described Muslim women as looking like letter boxes. This piece of filth is also a sincere opponent of ‘anti-Semitism’.
The reality is that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the false anti-racism of the Right. It is a cover for real racism Islamaphobia. It is no wonder that one of the main proponents of the false anti-Semitism campaign, John Mann MP, is a bigoted racist when it comes to the Roma who he considers a social pest, much as the Nazis did.
We need to turn the heat up on the BBC and all the other liars in the mainstream press. When we can have the racist press, the Sun and Mail, being in the forefront of the campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ we can be sure that the ‘problem’ in the Labour Party is utterly contrived. That is why Corbyn has to be saved from his own stupidity. If he doesn’t start fighting back he is doomed. And the person who bears most responsibility is the scab leader of Momentum, Jon Lansman, a Zionist for whom defence of Israel is more important than a socialist Labour Party. Already there are reports of secret meetings of his MPs. CORBYN'S CURTAIN CALL: Furious MPs vow to 'COLLAPSE’ leadership at SECRET MEETINGS
We know who these MPs are and in the event Corbyn manages to win a working majority at the next election we can expect these scabs to refuse to support him as Prime Minister.
We have to deselect Labour’s Tory MPs now. If their bluff isn’t called then they will, when the time is ripe, act as a Tory/Liberal 5th column.
MPs such as Joan Ryan, Chris Leslie, Hilary Benn, John Mann, Wes Streeting, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth, Ian Austin, Margaret Hodge et al should be ‘encouraged’ to join a more suitable party.
Today’s picket should be the first of many such actions and well done to Jewish Voice for Labour for calling it.
Tony Greenstein
See Tariq Ali's NEW ATTEMPT TO UNSEAT JEREMY CORBYN
 |
| Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC |
 |
| Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC |
 |
| Inminds Demonstration Last Friday Outside the BBC |