Tweeting Your Opposition to Israeli Apartheid Can Get You Suspended as the racist Jewish Labour Movement makes clear their opposition to a Corbyn led Labour Party
The election results were Labour 20 (23), Tories 14 (20) and Green 19 (11) Independent 1 (0) with the 2015 election results in brackets.
In fact Labour held 20 seats prior to the elections because there had been 2 defections to the TIG group, including former leader Warren Morgan and one councillor, Ann Meadows, crossed the floor and joined the Tories.
Meadows, a councillor for 20 years stood again for the Tories and obtained just 627 votes, 47 votes ahead of the next Tory and 23 votes below the third placed Green! The Labour candidates all gained over 1,500 votes which demonstrated that after 20 years as a councillor she hadn’t secure a personal following, thus proving the wisdom of deselecting her.
In Wish Ward, Momentum supporter and the only Black woman standing, Alex Braithwaite was suspended. Her offence was to call into question the fake anti-Semitism campaign supported by the Tory press. According to The Argus her offence was that
‘She retweeted an article by Vox Political entitled ‘A general election is in the offing – time for another anti-Semitism smear against Jeremy Corbyn’
According to that well known anti-racist paper, the Daily Mail Alex ‘shared messages supporting Ken Livingstone and claiming the Rothschild family controlled the European Central Bank.’
Even worse ‘she posted a cartoon which suggested the BBC was controlled by the ‘terrorist state’ of Israel.’
Supporting Ken Livingstone is now part of the definition of anti-Semitism! Suffice to say sharing a tweet five years ago about the Rothschilds hardly counts as anti-Semitism either.
The Sussex Jewish Representative Council (which is fronted by Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel) sent this tweet:
“We are very concerned by a tweet from Labour candidate, Alex Braithwaite.
“Once again she has questioned and belittled the allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.
“More than this, she again suggests that it is concocted to ‘smear’ Jeremy Corbyn.”
So questioning the fake anti-Semitism smear campaign is itself proof of ‘anti-Semitism’. Just as challenging the claims of witchcraft in Salem could earn you a place on the gallows.
Every week the Jewish Chronicle runs a new story accusing Corbyn of ‘anti-Semitism’. This week there is a bonus. The next has been extended to John Prescott, Labour’s former Deputy Prime Minister for suggesting that the fake anti-Semitism campaign is about Israel!
John Hobson's classic book on Imperialism |
And as if to prove Alex and John Prescott are correct the Jewish Chronicle Editor and former Daily Express editor, Stephen Pollard, wrote an editorial Hobson’s Voice, which openly called Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite. Pollard wrote
Week after week, more evidence emerges cementing the inescapable conclusion that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite. So, once again, we pose this question to mainstream, decent Labour MPs: How can you, in all conscience, work towards making a racist politician Prime Minister?
Those who campaign to put today’s Labour into power are, inescapably, working to put an antisemite into Ten Downing Street.
Outrageous McCarthyism against someone who, unlike Pollard, has spent his whole life fighting racism, anti-Semitism included.
The subject of Pollard’s ire is the foreword that Jeremy Corbyn wrote in 2011 to John Hobson’s 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study. The book Imperialism some 8 years ago. Hobson like so many people a century or more ago believed that Jews were the centre of world finance. Many Zionists like Theodor Herzl also wroteabout the ‘terrible power of our purse’. However malevolent racists and defamers like the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland forget about Zionism’s anti-Semitic pedigree, included its allianceswith anti-Semites like Viktor Orban and Steve Bannon today.
As Guerilla Wire points out in a 1995 pamphlet for the Fabians (page 11), Tony Blair described Hobson as “probably the most famous Liberal convert to what was then literally ‘new Labour’.”– strangely no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ there. Likewise in his 2005 Chatham House speech on liberty and the role of the state, Gordon Brown cited Hobson with approval – also nothing was said about ‘anti-Semitism’.
Indeed despite the fulminations of the Guardian’s racist and Zionist columnist Jonathan Freedland, the cover of the 2011 edition to which Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword, carries a Guardian review which said ‘Hobson’s Imperialism belongs to the small group of books in the years from 1900 to the outbreak of war that have definitely changed the contours of social thought.’
Again no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ and in 2015 the Guardian’s former political editor Michael White wrote:
“At his Nottingham rally someone thrust into my hand a copy of JA Hobson’s influential classic, Imperialism (1902) whose 2011 edition contains Jeremy’s own perfectly decent introductory essay. Its analysis will impress many”.
Strangely enough Michael White made no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’.
If anything proves that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn and people like Alex Braithwaite is fake then the attacks on Corbyn over his review of a classic text on Imperialism by John Hobson proves it definitively.
It’s not surprising Corbyn didn’t mention the 10 or so anti-Semitic lines in a book of 400 pages because they were wholly irrelevant. As Guerilla Wire says:
‘Phil Miller quoted Glyn Secker, secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour:
“Daniel Finkelstein, in his scurrilous piece for the Times (April 30th), ingeniously cobbles together quotes from two different books by Hobson . . . (he) does in one passage make a reference to the Jewish element in international finance and to the Rothschilds as did many others at that time. But he also referred to JP Morgan and Cecil Rhodes — neither of them Jewish — as examples of financiers backing imperialism”.
In other words the racist duo, Finkelstein and Freedland, deliberately manufactured a story out of nothing with the sole intention of maligning Corbyn.
The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, has form. When the Tories formed an alliance with anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament in 2009 they were attacked by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Who defended the Tories? Stephen Pollard, who wrote that Michal Kaminski, the Polish Law & Justice Party MEP was “one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where anti-Semitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ And it is true. Besides being an anti-Semite, Kaminski was, like Trump and Bannon and many others, a strong Zionist. Because Pollard defines anti-Semitism in terms of Israel not Jews. Whereas to most people anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews to Pollard anti-Semitism is criticism of Israel.
Once upon a time Jonathan Freedland called out genuine racists and anti-Semites including Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard |
Ironically on this occasion Freedland waxed lyrical about Kaminski and his fascist origins. He wrote in an opinion piece:
there was a time when no self-respecting British politician would have gone anywhere near such people. Kaminski began his career in the National Rebirth of Poland movement, inspired by a 1930s fascist ideology that dreamed of a racially pure nation. Even today, the PiS slogan is "Poland for Poles"… In 2001 he upbraided the president for daring to apologise for a 1941 pogrom in the town of Jedwabne which left hundreds of Jews dead. Kaminski said there was nothing to apologise for – at least not until Jews apologised for what he alleged was the role Jewish partisans and Jewish communists had played alongside the Red Army in Poland.
Today Freedland sings a different tune alongside Pollard. However that is no reason why the Labour Party should sing the same song.
Alex Braithwaite’s offence was being an anti-Zionist not an anti-Semite. Hove must be one of the most anti-Semitic places in Britain! Although the Tories retained Wish Ward the other Labour candidate gained 1,107 votes whereas Alex gained 1,275, 168 or 15% more votes! Despite the false claims of Fiona Sharpethat Jewish voters in the ward would be concerned, voters made it very clear what they thought of these false allegations.
The sooner that the Labour Party begins to stand up to this bogus campaign from the Jewish Labour Movement and Zionist pressure groups, the sooner the anti-Semitism issue will be put to bed. The JLM have made it clear that they will not support a Labour Government led by Jeremy Corbyn. This racist group should be disaffiliated immediately.
Right-wing Labour candidate defeated in Hanover - member of Apartheid supporting Jewish Labour Movement (although she's not Jewish) |
The results for Labour in Brighton were mixed. In Hollingdean and Stanmer Ward, Labour lost one of its seats to the Greens. Phil Clarke, former General Secretary of the Trades Council was defeated by 56 votes. In Preston Park Ward, Labour lost its two councilors as the Green Party won all 3 seats. An excellent local activist Denise Frend was defeated but the consolation prize was the defeat of JLM member, the racist Julie Cattell who belongs with Chuka Ummuna’s TIG. Likewise in Hanover and Elm Grove, although Danielle Spencer, a Momentum supporter was defeated another JLM supporter Emma Daniels was defeated, a clear victory for anti-racism.
Daniel Yates, Blairite leader of Labour Group, member of racist JLM who banned the public from the election count for the first time ever |
In Queens Park a strong challenge by the Greens meant that Labour lost one of the 3 seats and Momentum supporter Colin Piper. A number of good socialists were elected in wards such as in Moulsecoombwhere Kate Knight was elected and East Brighton where Nikki Brennan was elected. Overall the balance in the Labour Group is estimated as tilting towards the left. Currently the leader Daniel Yates is a Blairite and member of the JLM. It is to be hoped that he is replaced by a socialist.
I also found it strange that for the first time ever, under Yate's undemocratic administration, local people were refused access to the election announcements unless they had pre-existing passes. I await an explanation.
There can be no doubt that the campaign waged by the Right of the Labour Party in Brighton & Hove aimed at destroying the chances of success in the local elections. In this they were unsuccessful. Prominent amongst these were Luke Stanger, a racist who believes that Travellers are a ‘nasty blight’. But although Stanger has been suspended the kid glove treatment he has been afforded makes it clear that ‘anti-Semitism’ is a privileged form of racism in the Labour Party today.
Tony Greenstein