Statement from Palestine solidarity activists and organisations concerning Peter Gregson
For a number of years Peter Gregson has
been an activist on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement. Whereas
previously he has been treated as a nuisance today his activities pose a threat
to the solidarity movement and should be treated as such.
Gregson is notorious for setting up his
own ‘campaign’ groups such as LAZIR (Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic
Racism) and the Campaign Against Bogus Anti-Semitism. Now it is the One
Democratic Palestine [ODP].
In setting up ODP he is deliberately
misleading people into believing that it is the same as the One Democratic State Campaign
and One Democratic State Initiative.
Gregson was initially expelled by
Labour Against the Witchhunt in 2019 for posting a petition
linking to an article by Ian Fantom that defended a holocaust denier Nick Kollerstrom,
who Gregson described as a ‘holocaust sceptic’. Fantom wrote that Kollerstrom ‘had been targeted in a witch-hunt for a
literature review he wrote on ‘The Auschwitz “Gas
Chamber” Illusion and a… swimming
pool at Auschwitz.’
When
requested to take this link down Gregson refused. Fantom and Kollerstrom are
co-founders of the Keep Talkinggroup which has hosted a variety of conspiracy
theorists like Piers Corbyn and anti-Semites such as Gilad Atzmon.
Gregson’s
reasons for participating in the ‘Keep Talking’ group’
was that ‘we need to use every
single platform we can find to get our message out.’ This included the
anti-Semitic far-Right. The Jewish Chronicle
published an article based on correspondence which Gregson
had made public detailing what had happened.
Gregson has
since been refused membership by Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jewish Network
for Palestine and a host of similar groups.
Recently
Gregson has espoused openly anti-Semitic arguments seeing the source of the
government’s support for Zionism as being due to the undue influence of Jews.
In an article on the anti-Semitic Redress site, he stated:
The people
who foisted the IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support
Israel, so the question arises: do Jews in the UK have significant leverage
within the bodies that represent our interests – our courts, our media, our
trade unions, our political parties, our government?
Gregson answered his question in the
affirmative. In a section ‘Rich Jewish bankers’ Gregson declared that ‘Right
from the outset, rich Jewish bankers such as Lord Rothschild backed Zionism. It
is unlikely we would have Israel now were it not for his influence.’
The suggestion that Israel owes its
existence to ‘rich Jewish bankers’ is a classic anti-Semitic stereotype.
It is also untrue. The Rothschilds were a house divided with the majority of
the British family opposed to Zionism. For example the President of the
anti-Zionist League of British Jews, formed in the wake of the Balfour
Declaration, was Sir Lionel Rothschild, a Tory MP.
The Jewish bourgeoisie were
overwhelmingly opposed to Zionism. The only member of the Lloyd George cabinet
who opposed the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin
Montagu. However facts rarely disturb Gregson.
Gregson wrote
that ‘Plenty of politicians too… are Jewish and support Israel.’ Support
for Israel is common to all politicians, Jewish and non-Jewish. Gregson singled
out Jon Lansman and Rhea Wolfson who ‘used their tribal background shamelessly
in 2018 to successfully remove our freedom of speech on Israel.’ Gregson
completely ignores non-Jewish and Christian Zionist support for Zionism.
Gregson asserted that ‘it was the
wealthy and influential Jews in politics and the media who foisted the IHRA
definition upon us’. Gavin Williamson, who threatened universities with a
loss of funding if they didn’t adopt the IHRA, is not Jewish. In conflating
being Jewish with Zionism and Israel, Gregson echoes Zionist propaganda and the
IHRA itself.
The struggle for Palestinian liberation
and against Zionism is an anti-racist struggle. There is no place in the
Palestine solidarity movement for those who spread anti-Semitic propaganda
under the guise of support for the Palestinians. In so doing Gregson plays into
the hands of the Zionists and Israel’s supporters.
We advise supporters of Palestine to
reject Peter Gregson and keep a wide berth from his many and varied
organisations.
Gregson’s Anti-Semitism Doesn’t Hurt Jews
But It Does Hurt Palestinians
As Palestine
solidarity activists are well aware, accusations of anti-Semitism are the only
defence that apologists for Israeli Apartheid have left in their armoury. With Jewish
neo-Nazi Ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel
Smotrich in Israel’s coalition government and the reign of terror that is
being conducted by the military junta in the West Bank, ‘anti-Semitism’ is
their only answer to the call for Boycott Divestment and Sanctions.
It is with
extreme reluctance that I circulated the statement below to activists asking
them to sign a call for people to avoid Peter Gregson and his increasingly
bizarre anti-Semitic statements such as his remark
that
The people who foisted the
IHRA definition upon us were the Jews in the UK who support Israel
Those of
us with longer memories than the day before yesterday will recollect that it
was the distinctly non-Jewish Gavin Williamson who foisted the IHRA fake
definition of anti-Semitism upon universities by threatening
their funding.
Jonathan Freedland - Led the Fake 'Antisemitism' Campaign Against Corbyn
Even
worse was the remark
of Gregson that the Zionist movement supported
the annihilation of European Jews. Such hyperbole is totally unnecessary. As I
show in my recent book Zionism
During the Holocaust the Zionists did many terrible things, from blocking
routes of escape for Jewish refugees to entering into an trading agreement with
the Nazis that destroyed the Jewish Boycott but there is no evidence that they supported
Hitler’s final solution.
until 1940 most Jews refused to move to Israel on
religious grounds. These were the people that Hitler gassed. With Zionist
support. Proof? Over the period 1942-44, Rabbi Weissmandl of Hungary made a
deal with Adolf Eichmann whereby the Germans would “sell” the Jews to him
Weissmandel made no deal with Eichmann, that was Rudolf Kasztner,
the leader of Hungarian Jewry. If Gregson is referring to the Europa Plan of Weissmandel
it was with Dieter
Wisliceny not Eichmann. To accuse any Jew, even Zionists, of having
supported Hitler’s extermination of the Jews is clearly anti-Semitic because it
is blaming the dead for their own murder. The Nazis did not distinguish between
Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews in the gas chambers.
As Boris
Johnson demonstrated with his racist and anti-Semitic novel 72
Virgins the Zionist movement has no objection to genuine anti-Semitism.
Instead it seeks to redefine opposition to racism as racism in an exercise of double
think that Orwell long ago predicted.
Jews in
Britain are overwhelmingly White and suffer no discrimination on account of
being Jewish. Jews in Britain are a largely middle class community as Jewish historians
Geoffrey Alderman and William Rubinstein have documented. Of course not all Jews
are prosperous but on average they
are. Nor do they suffer from state racism.
Nonetheless
anti-Semitic prejudice is to be condemned, not because of its effect on Jews
but because it is extremely damaging to the Palestinian cause. It lends weight
to the false accusations of the Zionists that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic.
It is welcome
that Asa Winstanley, author of Weaponising
Anti-Semitism, which documents the scurrilous
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign waged against the left and Jeremy Corbyn,has signed the statement. Altogether 57
people and organisations have added their signature, representing a cross
section of the Palestine solidarity and Jewish anti-Zionist spectrum. It is regrettable
that noone in the Jewish Socialists Group signed the statement although people
are welcome to add their signatures by commenting on the article or emailing me.
Although
national PSC declined the opportunity to sign the statement activists from 6
PSC branches have added their signature in addition to two branches, Norwich
and Cambridge. Mick Napier, founder member and former Chair of Scottish PSC has
also signed.
Palestine Action Activists Picketing Court Hearing
Five activists
from Palestine Action, including
founders Huda Ammori and Richard Barnard as well five members of Jewish Network
for Palestine have added their names as has John Tymon of Football Against
Apartheid.
The Rev. Stephen Sizer - Victim of Justin Welby and the Zionists
Especially
welcome is the Rev. Stephen Sizer, who was defrocked earlier in the year after false
allegations of anti-Semitism from the Board of Deputies were upheld by a
rigged Church of England tribunal. Justin Welby, the most right-wing Archbishop
of Canterbury since George Carey, presided over the campaign against Stephen.
Carey was later found to have covered up child abuse in the Church of England as
Welby has also done.
The statement
below conveys a very simple message. The cause of Palestine is an anti-racist
one and when anti-Semites take up the cause we will act to isolate them in just
the same way as we did Gilad Atzmon a decade ago.
Unlike the Zionists and the multiplicity
of lobby groups such as the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism/CST/Board of
Deputies etc. we will not tolerate racists in our ranks and we will call them
out.
Speaking of which Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith for Palestine based in
Chester also needs to be ostracised. As this report
of a speaking engagement by Alain Alameddineof One Democratic State
Initiative shows,
Joseph O’Neill’s Interfaith
for Palestinegroup is stuffed the most appalling bigots and anti-Semites.
They invited me to speak a few years ago but when I took a look at their other
speakers, who included holocaust denier Israel Shamir I declined.
Tony
Greenstein