The Zionist war against Corbyn could become a self-fulfilling prophecy and INCREASE anti-Semitism
Many people who are deceived into thinking that the Zionist groups attacking Corbyn represent all of British Jews, who believe the lie that the Board of Deputies represents all Jews rather than the most reactionary and racist section of Jews, are likely to feel resentful at the way 'antisemitism' has been prioritised over their needs and concerns. Especially when it is clear to anyone who can has eyes to see or a brain to think that British Jews do not suffer from any discernible form of oppression.
There were after all not many if any Jews who were living in Grenfell Tower nor are there many living in the slums of Hackney or earning a living on a zero hours contract. The predominance of refugees and Black people at Grenfell was obvious to all.
In their attempt to take down the most radical leader that the Labour Party has ever had the Zionists are increasing not decreasing anti-semitism. Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who described Corbyn as an anti-Semite was the same Jonathan Arkush who effusively welcomed the anti-Semitic administration of Donald Trump to power. However most people will not understand why these right-wing and reactionary Jews are so concerned about what seems to them to be a non-existent antisemitism.
Black people fearful of Theresa May's 'hostile environment' policy and who have barely recovered from the shock of Grenfell Tower are not likely to be impressed by the claim that British Jews are suffering from an epidemic of anti-semitism in the plush neighbourhoods of Golders Green. Anti-semitic attacks in Hendon are few and far between and it is not synagogues but mosques that are at risk from fascist firebombs.
The homeless and those living in insecure accommodation, struggling to survive on reduced benefits or eking out an existence in the gig economy are likely to feel resentful at Jews for trying to remove the one hope that millions have for challenging the vice-like grip that the rich and powerful have on society. Why is it they ask that the George Osbornes, Theresa Mays and Sir Eric Pickles are so concerned about 'anti-Semitism' and Israel when the same people are indifferent if not actively hostile to Black and ethnic minorities?
People who really are oppressed and exploited will not understand that the Zionist campaign in the name of all Jews is a fake and phoney campaign on behalf of the British Establishment. Black, Muslim and ethnic minorities are likely to ask why it is that the concerns of a rich millionairess, Margaret Hodge, someone who turned a blind eye to child abuse when she was Council leader, should take priority over their very real needs and concerns.
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| Even the paper wot supported Hitler is opposed to 'antisemitism' |
Zionism has never been concerned about genuine anti-semitism. Quite the contrary. As we saw in Paris in 2015 in the wake of the killing of 4 Jews in the Hypercacher kosher supermarket, the Zionist movement are always eager to exploit Jewish tragedy for Zionist purposes. Whilst the bodies were still warm, Benjamin Netanyahu flew in to tell French Jews that Israel, not France, was their 'real home' and that they should depart for Israel to become settlers. The Zionist solution for the Jewish diaspora, to abandon their actual homes, is no different to the solution of anti-semites through the ages. Netanyahu to French Jews: ‘Israel is your home’
This is the irony of the campaign in the Labour Party against the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Definition of Antisemitism. It is a campaign which will increase, not decrease anti-semitism and that is a prospect which most Zionists will be entirely happy with. Zionism has never fought anti-semitism. On the contrary Zionism has always seen itself as a political beneficiary of anti-Semitism.
Earlier this week Luciana Berger, Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, made what the Daily Mail describedas ‘her most outspoken attack on the Labour leader to date’. According to the Guardiana speech by Jeremy Corbyn five years ago made her ‘feel unwelcome in my own party.’
It is good that Luciana Berger should feel unwelcome. She has no business in the Labour Party. She is a racist not a socialist and she is a supporter of the world’s only apartheid state. She is deeply unpopular in the constituency she was parachuted into, Liverpool Wavertree and if she departed there would be few who would regret her passing.
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| It is true that Luciana Berger is unwelcome in Labour it is however it has nothing to do with her being Jewish and everything to do with her being a racist |
Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel followed this with a call for Corbyn to ‘apologise & take responsibility for actions which have caused such hurt anger & distress.’ Given her disgraceful role in falsely accusing Jean Fitzpatrick of anti-Semitism, as revealed by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby, it is Ryan who should be apologising. Joan Ryan is someone whose main concern in Parliament is claiming the maximum amount of expenses. Her Wiki entry notes that she claimed £173,691 in expenses for 2006/2007, the highest for any MP having come runner-up in 2005/2006. Ryan's dedication to her expenses didn’t prevent her penning an article in last week’s Jewish Chronicle Jeremy Corbyn appals me - and his behaviour will get no better
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| The idea that this corrupt racist MP has suffered 'hurt, anger and distress'is for the birds! |
Even the most stupid right-wing member of Momentum (Jon Lansman excepted) should be able to see that there is a pattern here. Old speeches from Corbyn expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and opposing the antics of Zionist disrupters are now being dug up and recycled in what is a war of attrition. People like Luciana Berger then express how ‘hurt’ they are by what was said 5 years ago!
The time has long since gone when we need to fightback against Israel’s surrogates in the Labour Party. The meeting called last week by Camden Momentum, which was attended by over 110 members of Momentum from 16 groups in London, is a start. It decided to begin the organisation of a fightback since it is blindingly clear that Lansman and his National Coordinating Group have no intention of doing anything to defend Corbyn against the ceaseless attacks of the Zionists.
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| Even the Sun, which employed the vile Katie Hopkins, is opposed to 'anti-semitism' |
Quite simply Momentum is politically paralysed at the moment as its owner and Leader is in bed with the very Zionists who are attacking Corbyn.
As the film of Jeremy’s speech shows he said nothingwhich was in any way anti-Semitic. The professions of hurt expressed by Luciana Berger and Joan Ryan are entirely synthetic.
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| Joan Ryan MP - Chair of Labour Friends of Israel which justified Israel's murder of 160 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza |
We are however in a dangerous situation and Corbyn’s own reticence in fighting back is making things worse. It is crucial that maximum pressure is put on Labour’s National Executive Committee next week not to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.
That is why Labour Against the Witchhunt and other organisations are calling for a mass lobby of the NEC to make our voice heard. It is ESSENTIAL that people make every effort to attend.
Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct is dead in the water. It was a bridge too far. It tried to reconcile the irreconcilable by accepting the IHRA whilst, at the same time, defending people’s right to free speech on Palestine. This is not possible. The whole purpose of the IHRA is to limit freedom of speech.
Indeed the Code bends the stick so far that Brian Klug, an Oxford philosophy don, an expert in anti-Semitism and founder of Independent Jewish Voices wrotethat ‘Ironically, it is the drafters of the Labour party’s NEC Code, not their critics, who have grasped the meaning of ‘working definition’.
The ‘working definition’ is another name for the IHRA. Brian is right yet he is also wrong, because he accepts the bona fides of the Code’s critics. This is a great mistake since the Zionist critics of Corbyn aren’t in the slightest concerned about anti-Semitism but Israel. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is a means to an end and Corbyn’s Zionist critics are intent on redefining anti-Semitism to mean hostility to Israel as opposed to Jews.
The IHRA has one and only one purpose, to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. It is important to remember this.
Anti-Semitism itself is easy to define. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ All of 6 words. According to Klug ‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’ That comes out as 21 words. By way of contrast the IHRA Working Definition on Anti-Semitism is over 500 words.
Professor David Feldman, Director of the Sears Institute for the Study of Antisemism, described the IHRA as ‘bewilderingly imprecise’. Hugh Tomlinson QC described it as having a ‘potentially chilling effect’ on free speech and Sir Stephen Sedley, the former Court of Appeal judge who is himself Jewish wrote in the London Review of Books (Defining Anti-Semitism)how the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’
The Origins of the IHRA
It is instructive to consider just exactly why it was considered necessary to construct a 500+ word definition of anti-Semitism when 6 words would do. Michael Whine, of the Zionist Community Security Trust, in A Short History of the Definition wrote how the intention was to create a definition ‘which could adequately describe both the demonization and disproportionate criticism of Israel which masqueraded as anti-Zionism, and which came increasingly from Muslims...’In other words it wasn’t anti-Semitism but Israel which was their main concern from the start.
Likewise Dave Rich, Deputy Director of the CST, explainedthat ‘The Working Definition was not created as a guide to antisemitic discourse.’ In other words this whole exercise that Labour’s NEC is going through is impermissible because its primary target is the spoken or written word. Rich writes that ‘it can be used to identify antisemitic discourse in non-criminal contexts, but only as a rough guide, or a starting point’ and that the original purpose of the Working Definition was for law enforcement
Even the principal author of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, in testimony to the House of Representatives in November 2017, warned that:
The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech on a college campus. In fact, at a conference in 2010 about the impact of the definition, I highlighted this misuse, and the damage it could do.
Stern has subsequently spoken about how the IHRA was ‘was being employed in an attempt to restrict academic freedom and punish political speech’. One could argue that Stern was being hypocritical since the IHRA’s whole purpose was to render anti-Zionist criticism as antisemitic.
Stern described how Zionist pressure groups in the US, even when they lost court cases against supporters of the Palestinians ‘argued that even if the cases lost, they had what seemed to them a positive benefit – they chilled pro -Palestinian expression.’
Stern also asked a question particularly relevant to the current debate. Could Afro-American groups demand a specific definition of racism that included opposition to affirmative action, opposition to removing statues of Confederate leaders and opposition to the agenda of Black Lives Matters? Stern went on:
‘Imagine a definition designed for Palestinians. If “Denying the Jewish people their right to self- determination, and denying Israel the right to exist” is antisemitism, then shouldn’t “Denying the Palestinian people their right to self- determination, and denying Palestine the right to exist” be anti -Palestinianism?’
Stern described how the IHRA had been used to curtail free speech in Britain, listing the “Israel Apartheid Week” event which was cancelled by Central Lancashire University and the case of the Holocaust survivor who was required to change the title of a campus talk by Manchester university after an Israeli diplomat complained that the title violated the definition.’ Stern described as ‘Perhaps most egregious’ of all the call on a university to conduct an inquiry of a professor for antisemitism, based on an article she had written years before. Accurately describing what had happened as ‘chilling and McCarthy -like.’
Stern also gives a good example of why the IHRA is irrelevant when dealing with acts of genuine anti-Semitism. He describes how, when he was at the American Jewish Committee, he filed a complaint on behalf of Jewish high school students who were targeted for harassment because they were Jewish –
they were called “cheapie,” chants of “Heil Hitler” and “Nazi” were offered in their presence, and many were kicked on a so -called “Kick a Jew Day.” The case was successfully resolved. It was clear to the Department of Education that these students were being harassed because they were Jewish ; there was no need to consult a definition to make this determination.
And that is precisely why there is no need for a definition of anti-Semitism. It is like the elephant in the room – you recognise it when you see it.
In The Working Definition –A ReappraisalStern described howsome Jewish organizations were using it ‘in an inappropriate way, which bastardizes what it was intended’. He described their modus operandi as having ‘the subtlety of a mallet.’
Jonathan Cook givesan example of why the IHRA is a threat to free speech.
After 17 years of writing about Israel, after winning a respected journalism prize for being “one of the reliable truth-tellers in the Middle East”, the Labour party is about to declare that I, and many others like me, are irredeemable anti-semites.
What we have seen in the past three years is a deliberate attempt by Britain’s Zionist leadership to create an atmosphere bordering on hysteria in sections of British Jewry. The campaign has been both cynical and manipulative. The idea that anti-Semitism is prevalent in British society is absurd. We are living in a golden age where anti-Semitism is barely measurable. It is vanishingly small. [See The chimera of British anti-Semitism (and how not to fight it if it were real)by Norman Finkelstein]
Yet the Zionists have had a considerable success in creating the apprehension of anti-semitism amongst sections of British Jews because of the closed nature of the synagogue going Jewish community (secular Jews are largely outside their orbit) in what amounts to a campaign of panic inducement. I would argue that very Jews actually change their patterns of behaviour in any measurable way. There is no rapid upsurge in British Jews emigrating to Israel for example.
According to a surveycarried out for the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism ‘more than half of all British Jews feel that anti-Semitism now echoes the 1930s (CAA).’ Leaving aside criticisms of the methodology of this survey, Anshel Pfeffer of Ha'aretz hit the nail on the head when he wrote concerning the finding that 56 percent of British Jews agree that “the recent rise in anti-Semitism in Britain has some echoes of the 1930s.”
If the majority of British Jews and the authors of the CAA report actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously. If they honestly think that the situation in Britain today echoes the 1930s... then not only are they woefully ignorant of recent Jewish history but have little concept of what real anti-Semitism is beyond the type they see online.
The latest battle is not about a form of words. That is another act of deception. The IHRA is totemic. The Zionists will never be satisfied with how it is implemented. As Joan Ryan wrote in last week’s Jewish Chronicle ‘Nor should we pretend that even full acceptance of IHRA ends the battle against antisemitism in the Labour Party.’ In the words of the joint editorial of Britain’s 3 Zionist newspapers ‘hundreds, if not thousands, of Labour and Momentum members would need to be expelled.’
That is why Len McLuskey’s view that the IHRA should be accepted in full in order that the false anti-Semitism campaign against Corbyn will stop is pie in the sky and utterly stupid. Far from relieving pressure adoption of the IHRA will intensify the Zionist campaign.
After three years of denying that the false anti-Semitism controversy was just a convenient way to vilify criticism of Israel, the Zionists have now admitted that this is precisely what their objective is. In Sham: Labour’s plan to back down on IHRA Jewish Chronicle Political Editor Lee Harpin wrote that:
Instead of adopting the full IHRA definition, they are planning to insert a new clause which opens the door to criticism of the state of Israel as a “racist endeavour”.
The editor of the Jewish Chronicle and ex-editor of the Daily Express, Stephen Pollard, was even clearer in an article condemning the Labour Party as ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. He complained that‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’
And if there were any doubt about their agenda, Pollard complained that:
‘Labour makes a distinction between racial antisemitism targeting Jews (unacceptable) and political antisemitism targeting Israel (acceptable).’
For the Zionists targeting Jews racially is perfectly ok but targeting Israel for criticism is wholly unacceptable. The Zionists would like criticism of Israeli state racism to be automatically branded as ‘anti-Semitic’. Even the truth will be outlawed.
Israeli racism which it will be antisemitic to criticise
Only a few weeks ago hundreds of demonstrators in the northern Israeli town of Afula came on to the streets to protest that a house in this all-Jewish city had been sold to an Arab. Hundreds of Israelis Demonstrate Against Home Sale to Arab Family Mentioning the above could now be considered ‘anti-Semitic’.
All over Israel towns and cities are segregated and there are nearly a thousand all-Jewish communities with the powers to reject Arab applicants under the Reception Committees Law. Suggestions that this is racist would clearly be anti-Semitic.
Presumably the existence of a policy to separate Arab and Jewish women in maternity hospitals is also an example of Israeli multi-culturalism? And what of the religious edict, handed down by the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, that Jews are forbidden to rent rooms or flats to Arabs. An edict which, when subject to criticism, was backed by hundreds of Israeli rabbis. Eliyahu isn’t simply a racist bigot. He is a salaried state official. But to mention the above or hundreds of examples like it will also be ‘anti-Semitic’ if Labour accepts the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.
If the NEC approves the IHRA it will be an act of racism in itself. Although the Zionists claim that Councils and police bodies approve of the IHRA, Britain’s Black and Asian, Migrant and Refugee organisations certainly don’t.’ [See UK black and minority ethnic groups blast Labour Party antisemitism debate for seeking to defend Israel by erasing Palestinian history] In a statement 101 organisations reject the IHRA because of its effect on freedom of expression.
We should not despair. The idea that the Labour Party is a racist, anti-Semitic party is a ruling class narrative. It is an accepted truth for the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland, the New Statesman and assorted pundits who live in the Westminster bubble. However it does not have a popular echo. If you were to ask the man or woman on the Clapham Omnibus what anti-Semitism was, they wouldn’t give you a 500 word reply, they would say something like ‘It is someone who doesn’t like Jews’ not someone who doesn’t like Israel.
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Last week we saw a meeting packed to over flowing in Conway Hall dedicated to opposing the latest coup attempt. The fightback is on: hundreds rally behind Corbyn in London
Huda Elmi, who is standing for a position on Labour’s NEC spoke of how the debate on the IHRA has been used to prevent Palestinians from describing their own oppression. She gave the example of Austria, which has adopted the IHRA definition, and is also governed by the far-right, where a proposal to make Jewish people register for kosher meat is being discussed. "This definition is failing Jewish people and criminalising Palestine activism."
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| This cartoon, unlike the mural controversy around Corbyn earlier in the year, is clearly antisemitic. Yet the leader of Austria's Freedom Party, Heinz Christian Strache, is an ardent Zionist who in 2016 visited Israel's Holocaust propaganda museum Yad Vashem |
What Huda didn’t mention is that Austria’s far-Right Freedom Party, which contains large numbers of neo-Nazis loves Zionism. In 2016 its leader Heinz Christian Strache visited Israel and paid the normal visit to the Holocaust Propaganda Museum, Yad Vashem. Israel finds strange bedfellow in Austria’s far-right
Tony Greenstein
Migrant, Refugee, and BAME Communities Speak out Against Public Silence
As migrant and BAME groups in Britain, we reaffirm our fundamental right to the freedom of expression, and publicly to express our anxieties about the suppression of information on the history and lived experience of our communities.
Many of us arrived in the UK as migrants and as refugees, seeking safety from war and repression, and the effects of racism, persecution and colonialism both past and present. As a result, we know their oppressive impact on our communities, and can identify where many of the current experiences of injustices we face in Britain today are also based on racism and colonialism.
These problems are having a destructive impact on public discussions about race and immigration. It is therefore our right, and also our responsibility, to relay our direct experiences of human rights abuses suffered here and abroad, as well as their structural and historical causes, to address them. This democratic obligation is recognised in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act, to “receive and impart information”, and provides the basis for a democracy to function. As the Institute for Race Relations recently confirmed, our communities: “have a right to be heard, to make…information public, while others have the right to hear them, and the arguments based on these facts”.
We are deeply worried about current attempts to silence a public discussion of what happened in Palestine and to the Palestinians in 1948, when the majority of its people were forcibly expelled. These facts are well established and accessible, are part of the British historical record, as well as the direct experience of the Palestinian people themselves. The Palestinian communityin the UK has raised the disturbing absence of key information about these past and current injustices, and highlighted the racism it exposes then, and now.
Public discussion of these facts, and a description of these injustices, would be prohibited under the IHRA’s guidelines, and therefore withholds vital knowledge from the public. This silencing has already begun. Today we can freely describe the racist policies experienced in the era of British and European colonialism in our countries of origin (indeed it is taught in British schools), but the colonial history of the Palestinians is continually erased. This is a dangerous breach of our own rights, and of the wider British public: we must all hear the full story of the Palestinians in order to make sense of the current discussions about racism and Israel.
We also know of the efforts by organisations– including UK-based fundamentalist groups alignedwith the far-right in the US – to deny Palestinians’ basic humanity by suppressing their entire history and current plight. At the same time, hard-line conservative groups in the US, such as the Middle East Forum, are providing funding and support to anti-Muslim extremist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), deliberately increasing hatred, fear, and confusion. These coordinated efforts by right-wing extremists are being actively encouraged by President Trump’s racism and fear-mongering, which is now aimed at dismantling UNRWA, the UN agency that protects Palestinian refugees.
Over this past year, several terrible events have demonstrated the dangers of silencing migrant, and BAME communities. The fatal fire at Grenfell Tower and the shameful Windrush scandal have shown the active legacies of British colonialism, where racism forms an integral part of British policies, and renders our communities invisible. This denies our dignity and humanity, and our right to fair treatment under the rule of law: the bedrock of British society.
We urgently remind politicians and public bodies of their responsibilities to uphold the principles of the Human Rights Act for every British citizen and resident in the UK equally, especially the direct victims of colonialism, racism, and discrimination. As migrant and BAME communities we stand as one, united against all attempts to suppress our voices and our calls for justice, freedom, and equality.
Signed by 101 National Membership Organisations and Coalitions
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