James Baldwin – ‘But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of Western interests’
Pete Willsman’s comments that the Israeli Embassy is behind the fake anti-Semitism campaign in the Labour Party are based on the Al Jazeera undercover programme The Lobby. It is a fact that the Israeli Embassy was heavily involved in creating Young Labour Friends of Israel via their agent Shai Masot.
It is also undeniable that the Embassy worked hand in glove with the Jewish Labour Movement, which describes itself as the ‘sister party’ of the Israeli Labour Party, in promoting the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis. The JLM’s first Director, Ella Rose, was a free transfer from the Israeli Embassy.
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| More evidence that the Israeli Embassy has no connection to the fake 'antisemitism' crisis - pictured (l-r) Jeremy Newmark of the JLM, Ella Rose, Director JLM and Mark Regev, Israeli Ambassador and war criminal |
There is no justification whatsoever for Pete Willsman’s suspension and Corbyn should personally intervene to have it rescinded forthwith.
In one of his more idiotic comments Alistair Campbell, Blair’s former spin doctor who was expelled for voting for the Lib-Dems protestedto Sky News that:
"If you're someone like me who is considered to be not one of Corbyn's people then you get what seems like a pretty summary of justice but if you are someone who is clearly very close to Mr Corbyn, then you get to sit on the National Executive."
It probably did not occur to Campbell that the reason Willsman is on the NEC is because he was elected to that position. Campbell by way of contrast has never been elected to anything.
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| Extract from The Lobby showing Michael Rubin, Parliamentary Officer of Labour Friends of Israel discussing financial help from the Israeli Embassy |
It is a favourite talking point of the Right to compare the ‘injustice’ of Campbell’s expulsion with the suspension of Pete Willsman. We had Tony Blair’s former flatmate, Lord Falconer on BBC News fulminating about how Pete should be expelled within 14 days.
It is another example of Corbyn’s idiocy that he appointedFalconer of all people to oversee the conduct of Labour’s disciplinary processes. Apparently it was at the instigation of John McDonnell.
Falconer’s hypocrisy is sickening. Hundreds if not thousands of people have been expelled for merely saying they support a candidate of another party, let alone voting for one. Mel Melvin, Woman’s Officer in Brighton Kemptown was expelled for saying she supported George Galloway in a by-election. I didn’t notice the media, the BBC’s Jon Sopel, ITV’s Peston or indeed Falconer demanding Mel’s reinstatement.
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| James Baldwin |
It is true that expelling Campbell for voting for the Lib-Dems is like impeaching Richard Nixon for Watergate. Given the secret war on Cambodia and the bombing of Vietnam to impeach him for burgling the Democrat’s election offices and covering it up seemed trivial.
Similarly given that Campbell was responsible for the Dodgy Dossier and fixing the intelligence that enabled British participation in the Iraq War, it is churlish to punish him for voting Lib-Dem when he should have been expelled as a war criminal.
Willsman’s broad allegations, that staff in the Labour Party are working for or in contact with the Israeli Embassy is almost certainly correct. It is also highly likely that some of them supply British Intelligence with information. His allegation that the 68 rabbis who wrote to the press attacking Corbyn were ‘obviously organised by the Israeli embassy - saying antisemitism in the Labour party is widespread and severe." is not far off the mark.
One thing is certain and that is somebody organised them and that somebody would have been in close contact with the Israeli Embassy. What is also the case that the letter supporting Jeremy Corbyn from 29 Orthodox Rabbis did not get any publicity. But they were the wrong kind of rabbi!
But even if Pete Willsman was wrong. Just suppose the Israeli Embassy is innocent and doesn’t get involved in domestic politics, which is pretty unlikely, in what way are his comments anti-Semitic?
Apparently Willsman made the comments in January when he met the American-Israeli author Tuvia Tenenbom, who was in the UK to write a book. So it has taken 5 months for these comments to surface. They were made off the record and Pete is perfectly entitled to believe them.
If Corbyn and the Left, Momentum and others, don’t respond to this latest suspension then we can wave goodbye to the idea of a radical Labour Government.
From the very beginning Corbyn has failed to get a grip with the fake anti-Semitism campaign. Instead of apologising and retreating he should have been clear from the outset. These allegations are cynically and politically made not in order to attack anti-Semitism or any other form of racism but because as a handy weapon to attack him.
Indeed the fake anti-Semitism campaign is likely to increase anti-Semitism as people see ‘the Jews’ mobilising against a radical Labour leader.
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| Every week the Zionist rag aka Jewish Chronicle has a new anti-Corbyn hit piece |
Every week there is a new front page story in the Jewish Chronicle, which is a Zionist rag, attacking Corbyn as an anti-Semite. There is an ongoing campaign of which Tom Watson is the leading proponent. Corbyn’s abject cowardice in failing to get to grips with these attacks and confront them will almost certainly mean that his leadership will ultimately be a failure.
The sharks are circling. The Independent Group were just the first shot. Unless there is a fightback then sooner or later we will see a more acceptable candidate emerge such as Emily Thornberry, a sponsor of Labour Friends of Israel emerge. Only this week we have an articlein the New Statesman, from an erstwhile ‘friend’ Francis Prideaux Jeremy Corbyn Must Resign as Labour Leader Before the Party Loses all Hope.
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| For some strange reason John Mann's concern about antisemitism doesn't extend to Gypsies even though they were exterminated just like Jews in the Holocaust |
That this is not and never has been about anti-Semitism should be obvious. As I have repeatedly pointed out the concern of Labour’s Right for ‘anti-Semitism’ doesn’t extend to any other groups.
John Mann showed himself to be anti-Gypsy with his Bassetlaw Anti-Social Behaviour Handbook which advised that ‘the Police have the powers to remove Gypsies or Travellers’
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| Tom Watson's distress at the ejection of racist Phil Woolas |
When Phil Woolas, the racist Labour MP for Oldham North and a former Home Office Immigration Minister was removed as an MP by the High Court for election offences. Tom Watson confessedthat ‘I’ve lost sleep thinking about poor old Phil Woolas and his leaflets.’
Poor Phil had run a campaign which, according to an email from his election agent, aimed to ‘make the white folk angry’
Tom Watson was the Campaigns Organiser for Liam Byrne in the 2004 by-election in Birmingham Hodge Hill. In The ghost of EnochNick Cohen described the gay bashing, racist campaign that Watson ran when ‘Labour reshuffled the pack and played the race card’ against the Lib Dems.’ One Labour leaflet carried the slogan:"Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."
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| The racist leaflet that led the High Court to removing Phil Woolas as MP for election offences |
Liam Byrne MP, the Labour candidate told voters,
'I know that people here are worried about fraudulent asylum claims and illegal immigration. Yet the Lib Dems ignore what people say. They ignore what local people really want. The Lib Dems want to keep giving welfare benefits to failed asylum seekers. They voted for this in Parliament on 1 March 2004. They want your money -and mine - to go to failed asylum seekers.'
As Cohen commented,
‘Labour didn't mention that the disputed measure was a plan to take the children of asylum seekers from their parents and put them into care, which Michael Howard had denounced as 'despicable'.
It is these very same racists who are now shouting anti-Semitism. Tom Watson, former Vice-President of Trade Union Friends of Israel wouldn’t know what anti-Semitism was if it appeared on his doorstep with a toothbrush moustache holding a swastika.
It is a sign of Corbyn’s feebleness that instead of calling Watson and Hodge out he allows them to walk all over him, promising to be a better doormat next time around.
We need to get out of our heads the idea that there is any correlation between Israel’s behaviour and Jews. Even the IHRA definition says that ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ is anti-Semitic.’ That is exactly what the accusers of Pete Willsman have done. They have said that Willsman’s criticisms of the Israeli Embassy are anti-Jewish.
As the great Black American novelist, poet and activist, James Baldwin once said
“But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests.
Criticisms of Israel are not criticisms of Jews. Baldwin elaboratedon this theme to an audience at the University of Massachussets:
Whenever Israel is mentioned one is required, it appears sometimes to me, to maintain a kind of pious silence. Well, why? It is a state like other states. It has come into existence in a peculiar way. But it does not, does not, become a state because people who wrote the Balfour Declaration, or Winston Churchill, or for that matter anyone in Europe, or in the Western world, really cared what happened to the Jews. I wish I could say differently, but I would be lying if I did—it came into existence as a means of protecting Western interests at the gate of the Middle East.
Labour’s anti-Semitism zealots are engaged in a form of anti-intellectualism designed to destroy all debate or discussion in the Labour Party. They are petty and vindictive little McCarthyites for whom debate and freedom of speech is the enemy. Goaded on by the gutter press that they feed, they are making members afraid of saying anything in case they put their foot wrong.
The time has long gone when people on the Labour Left, including Corbyn and McDonnell, need to call this out. Pete Willsman and Chris Williamson MP should be reinstated immediately and political enemies like Margaret Hodge should be put to the sword and told to join Chuka Ummuna and his ‘funny tinge’ comrades.