Ken Livingstone Must Be Reinstated & Corbyn Must Fight Back
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| Ken Livingstone - under suspension for speaking the truth |
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| The coin that the Nazis struck in commemoration of the head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo visit to Palestine courtesy of the Zionist labour movement |
For the past few months the Labour Party has been subject to a similar programme of destabilisation. A programme in which the Zionist movement played and is still playing a major role.
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| Identity Politics have wrecked havoc with Jones' socialist politics - He supports the Palestinians and he supports their oppressors |
From July 2015 onwards, when it became increasingly clear that Corbyn would win the leadership election, we had a campaign, initiated by the Daily MailEXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his 'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed and fronted by the Jewish Chronicle under Stephen Pollard, its far-right editor and member of the Henry Jackson Society, The key questions Jeremy Corbyn must answer The aim of the campaign was to paint Corbyn as a ‘friend’ of ‘terrorists’ – Hamas and Hezbollah and an associate of holocaust deniers.
When Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the campaign shifted to an attack on Gerald Kaufmann for having said at a meeting that it was ‘Jewish money’ that was responsible for the pro-Israel policy of the Conservative government. Groups such as the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an overtly Zionist political organisation masquerading as a charity [see EXCLUSIVE - Lifting the Lid on the Campaign Against Anti-SemitismThe Bogus Charity that Campaigns Against Corbyn, Muslims and Palestinians waged a prolonged campaign against Kaufman as if he was the most notorious anti-Semite since Adolf Eichmann.
When I searched the Jewish Chronicle’s database for ‘Jewish money’ I turned up no less than 590 occurences of this phrase! It is a phrase commonly used in the Jewish community. As an example of Zionist hypocrisy, on May 1sta former prominent Jewish funder of the Labour Party, Michael Foster, was given nearly 10 minutes of airtime on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme to explain why Jewish people weren’t going to be funding the Labour Party whilst Corbyn was leader. Of course ‘Jewish money’ is only anti-Semitic when used by opponents of the State of Israel.
Jewish Chronicle columnist Geoffrey Alderman called for Kaufman’s excommunication from the Jewish community despite having used the very same term twice in the same article. A man who deserves banning Jewish Chronicle Geoffrey Alderman and Gerald Kaufman –Jewish Chronicle Columnist’sExercise in Hypocrisy
Despite his outburst against Kaufman Alderman was remarkably tolerant in respect of David Whelan, the former owner of Wigan Athletic football club, who stated that ‘there is nothing like a Jew who sees money slipping through his fingers’ and when challenged by the Guardian responded that ‘I think they [Jews] are very shrewd people…. I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else. I don’t think that’s offensive at all.’ To most people this would count as anti-Semitism.
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| Lansman holds talks with racist Zionist groups and supports Livingstone's expulsion whilst remaining Chair of Momentum |
Alderman’s take was that‘It was ‘a sad and miserable tale of political correctness taken to new depths of absurdity.’ This football fuss is a bit rich 5.12.14. Despite ‘shrewd’ being used in the sense of canny or mean, i.e. a stereotypical comment about Jews and money, Alderman’s comment was ‘who reading this column could take umbrage at that?’ And as for Jews chasing money, Alderman believed that ‘as far as I’m aware no serious research has been done on this subject. But it’s certainly true that the Jewish view of money differs considerably from that of Christianity.’
Pollard himself was more than willing to excuse anti-Semites when they were pro-Israel. Michal Kaminski, the Conservative’s new partner, in the European and Conservative Reform group in the European Parliament, was ‘the best friend of the Jews’ despite being anti-Semitic. [see ‘Poland’s Kaminski isnot an anti-Semite: he’s a friend to Jews’: and Weapon of Choice
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| Ben Gurion - 'it is in our interest to use Hitler' as they 'turn a disaster (the Holocaust) into a productive force |
The reason why Kaminski could not possibly be anti-Semitic, despite being a member of a former neo-Nazi party and opposing a Polish apology for Jedwabne, when up to 900 Jews were burnt alive in a barn, was that ‘Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.' David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptibleJewish Chronicle 1.10.09.,
Other incidents of ‘anti-Semitism’
In February there began the new phase in the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. It centred on Oxford University Labour Club whose co-chairman Alex Chalmers resigned claiming that his fellow Labour Club members were anti-Semitic . The occasion of this resignation was the decision of the Club to support Oxford’s Israel Apartheid Week. Oxford University Labour Club co-chair, Alex Chalmers, resigns amid anti-Semitism row
Since then we have had the case of Vicky Kirby, an ex-Bradford Mayor who tweeted that 6 million Zionists died in the holocaust when complaining that even greater acts of genocide didn’t receive the same attention as the Jewish genocide and now of course Ken Livingstone’s reference to Hitler’s support for the Zionist solution to German anti-Semitism.
In what is the first comprehensive investigation of these allegations of anti-Semitism by Electronic Intifada researcher and journalist Asa Winstanley it becomes clear that these allegations are not what they seem. How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis
Alex Chalmers was an intern with BICOM the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre, which despite describing itself as an ‘an independent research centre’ is an Israeli propaganda group.
The case of Vicky Kirby which was one of the worst examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ presented turns out to be a case of someone quite innocent fitted up. Her ‘big noses’ comment was nothing more than quoting from a play the 2010 comedy film The Infidel. The information had been taken from the far-right Conservative web site Guido Fawkes which had cropped a screenshot of a tweet to make it appear that these were her own words.’ In other words the usual Tory dirty tricks. The article
analyses the role of New Labour MP and ex-NUS President Wes Streeting who attended a key anti-BDS Conference in Tel-Aviv. Streeting, who le arnt the tricks of the trade in NUS, is almost certainly working with the Israeli embassy and no doubt has other intelligence links.
Ken Livingstone
On April 28th in an interview with BBC Radio London’s Vanessa Feltz Ken Livingstone, in the course of defending suspended MP Naz Shah from accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ remarked that:
‘Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’Labour antisemitismrow: Ken Livingstone interview transcipts in full These remarks can be best understood in the context of Hitler supporting the Zionist solution to German Jewry i.e. expulsion, though even this is not strictly accurate. Ken Livingstone says Labour should reinstate himbecause everything he said about Jewish people "was true"
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| From the biography of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jewish Agency, by Shabtai Teveth - this is BG's reaction to Britain's Kindertransport plan to save 10,000 Jewish childen by bringing them to Britain in 1939 - saving half Germany's children in Palestine was better than saving all of them in England |
There is no doubt that Ken made a number of minor mistakes. Israel didn’t exist in 1933, the area was called Palestine, it was a British Mandate territory. Secondly Hitler didn’t win any election in 1932, on the contrary his vote in the November election compared to July dropped by 2 million to 11.74 million (33.09%) compared to 13.,23 million (37.3%) for the KPD and SPD. Hitler was put into power on January 30 1933 by reactionary political and military forces who sought the destruction of the German labour movement. Thirdly the final solution was not a product of Hitler’s madness. Even without Hitler the final solution would have taken place. It was the product of war imperialism and the fanatical anti-Semitism of a section of the Nazi Party. The final solution had a logic and momentum of its own. When the expulsion of Jews was no longer an option after 1939 the countdown to the destruction of European Jewry had begun. It began in June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa.
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| Ben Gurion's official biographer Teveth concludes that for Ben Gurion and implicitly the whole Jewish Agency Executive, there was a very thin line separating him from seeing the Holocaust as a 'beneficial disaster' |
Livingstone’s comments weren’t the wisest thing to have made in the course of an ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt. However in essence they are correct. The Nazi movement singled out the Zionist movement as their favourite Jews.
For example on 28 January 1935 Heydrich, the ‘“real engineer of the final solution” [Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p.13.] issued a directive to the Bavarian Gestapo that ‘The activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organisations…. lies in the interests of the National Socialist state’s leadership…. (they) are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish (assimilationists).’ Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p.118, citing Hans Mommsen, ‘Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat’ pp. 78-9.
The Zionists were allowed to organise, hold meetings, fly flags, have a newspapers whereas the ‘assimilationists’ were repressed. The Zionists used their patronage by the Nazis to encroach on the position of the majority of the Jewish community demanding parity in the Reichsvertretung, the Jewish communal organisation in 1935. Indeed they took over all the positions on the Reichsvereinigung, which was established in 1939 after Krystalnacht.
The Zionist policy was that Jews should flee to Palestine or nowhere. Their twisted logic was that if other countries could solve the crisis of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe then Palestine would be made redundant. In any case anti-Semitism, being a disease, would simply spread to other countries. Only Palestine could provide a long-term solution to anti-Semitism. It was a racial concept of humanity. The Zionists therefore lobbied the Gestapo not to allow Jews to emigrate to countries other than Palestine. It was a consistent Zionist policy to oppose the emigration of Jewish refugees to countries other than Palestine such as Santo Domingo which had offered to take 100,000 refugees as a result of the Evian Conference.
In a memo to the Jewish Agency Executive after Krystalnacht, Ben-Gurion wrote:
if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people's entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem. [Y. Elam, Introduction to Zionist history, Tel Aviv 1972, pp.125-26. See also Ot, paper of youth cadre of Mapai, No.2, winter 1967 cited by Machover-Offenburg p. 58 and Brenner, p. 149. Memo of 17.12.38]
It is essential that socialists defend Livingstone. The suspension of a National Executive member, a former MP and London Mayor and a figurehead of the Labour Left for the last 30 years marks a new stage in the witchhunt. According to reports, Corbyn was extremely reluctant to suspend Ken but he was bullied into it. After a staged confrontation with the boorish bully John Mann MP, Livingstone was suspended. Popular opinion holds that it is Mann, not Livingstone, who should have been suspended. Mann is Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism which devotes its time to opposing BDS and support for Palestinians.
Tweets and comments made even before Naz Shah was an MP were dug up and she was dismissed as John McDonnell’s PPS. Naz Shah suspended by Labour party amid antisemitism row
One tweet, issued in the middle of Israel’s genocidal Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, when 2,200 people in Gaza were murdered by Israel, including 551 children, was to joke that Israel should be relocated inside the United States as this would save the US the trouble and expense of maintaining the Israeli state and preserve Palestinian life. She displayed a map showing Israel as the 51ststate of the USA. It turns out that this was produced by Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American academic and anti-Zionist who is the son of two holocaust survivors. There was nothing anti-Semitic about this map. It was a twitter type fantasy solution to the problem of Israel’s barbarism.
To the humourless and vindictive squad of Progress MPs such as Mann and Streeting, Naz Shah was the next worst thing to Eva Braun and she was forced to resign her position. She was suspended from the Labour Party and forced to make a humiliating apology like a prisoner in a Stalinist re-education camp. When Vanessa Feltz asked me why she would confess to anti-Semitism if she wasn’t guilty I explained that there have been many false confessions in history, such as the defendants in Stalin’s purge trials. It’s not difficult to persuade someone that they are guilty if you apply enough psychological pressure and you see your career disappearing before you.
The media, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland in particular have played a despicable role in the witch hunt. see for exampleLabour and the left have an antisemitism problem Freedland, a ‘liberal’ Zionist berates the left in particular for not accepting the Israeli state. My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any other minority
What if, he asked, Israel were the only Black state in the world. Would we oppose it then. Professor Kamel Hawwesh of Birmingham University answered yes, Palestinians would reject any coloniser, whatever their colour. A Palestinian view on the antisemitism row Freedland demonstrates both his ignorance and his malevolence when he compares a Jewish Israel to a Christian Britain. In Britain Christianity is an adornment. It doesn’t entitle you to special privileges. It doesn’t mean that your planning application in the Jewish town of Afula will be rejected because you are Palestinian. Israel's Virulent Housing Bias Runs Deep — and It's Not Only Aimed at Arabs
The BBC has also lived up to its reputation. It has afforded the Labour Right every opportunity to air their allegations whilst denying anti-Zionists a platform. There has been an almost one-sided media barrage. One of the only exceptions was the BBC Big Questions programme on Sunday May 1stat 10 am when there are relatively few viewers. Moshe Machover, Daphne Baram and myself were widely considered, even by Zionists, to have trounced those who alleged that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same thing. I also did an interview with Vanessa Feltz, BBC London’s Zionist interviewer where I refused to be diverted from explaining why Israel is an apartheid society, but these are very much the exception.
One of the most egregious examples of BBC bias was that of Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics show on March 18th which gave MPs West Streeting and John Mann opportunity to wax at length about Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ problem. Neil himself is a former Murdoch editor and Conservative Party research assistant. James Schneider, a supporter of Corbyn was given just 25 seconds whereas Streeting had 45 seconds and Mann was allowed 6 minutes and 4 seconds.
Andrew Neil, rather than subjecting his claims to cross-examination, urged Mann on to greater excesses. Take for example this penetrating question: ‘‘Why has it [anti-Semitism] come back?’ Note that Neil assumes the very thing he is asking.
Corbyn has shown not only spinelessness throughout this affair but a culpable failure to understand what is at stake. He has continuously rowed back from the positions he adopted in previous years. Alongside MPs such as the late Joan Maynard he was a sponsor of the Labour Committee on Palestine and the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine, both of which I chaired. These organisations supported a democratic, secular state solution in Palestine. We opposed a 2 state solution which at that time was supported by George Galloway’s Middle East Council! George has now come round to our way of thinking!
If Livingstone is expelled from the Labour Party Corbyn will not last long as leader. John McDonnell has taken an even worse position. He backed off last September from his comments over Ireland. Now he has added Palestine to his retreat from the Left. Rather than sacking Naz Shah he should have backed her. Instead with his ‘out, out, out’ remarks about alleged anti-Semites he has encouraged those making false allegations to greater efforts.
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| Jon Lansman welcomed Livingstone's suspension and has effectively backed his expulsion |
Momentum under Jon Lansman has been equally abysmal. Lansman has held secret talks with Labour Friends of Israel and the so-called Jewish Labour Movement, the British branch of the racist Israeli Labour Party in order to reach some form of agreement. It’s like the chicken negotiating for a safe pass from a fox. Lansman openly criticised Livingstone and supported his suspension.
In Left Futures Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’ Lansman argues that we should drop all mention of Zionism. The movement that founded the racist settler colonial state of Israel should not be mentioned even though the World Zionist Organisation is alive and kicking, funding the settlement of the Palestinian territories. Netanyahu proclaims that in the name of Zionism he cannot admit refugees to Israel, because it would undermine the national identity of the Jewish state. IsraelPM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state. Binyamin Netanyahu reignites row over fate of thousands of African migrants in Israel Harriet Sharwood, The Guardian, 20.5.12. Lansman argues that if we pretend there is no such thing as Zionism then all the cries about anti-Semitism will go away. Such is the craven attitude of left social democrats when they come under any pressure.
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| The Sex Pistols wrote a song about Owen Jones - Pretty Vacant |
Owen Jones, the Guardian’s token left commentator, has demonstrated that he is both politically and intellectually a light weight. For the last 3 years he has written an annual article deprecating ‘anti-Semitism’. Two of them even begin with the same fatuous phrase ‘anti-Semitism is a menace.’ He is incapable of understanding that when Israel is killing Palestinians, Zionists cry ‘anti-Semitism’.
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| Owen Jones scabs in the witchhunt against 'anti-Semites' and backs the Zionist 'concern' over 'anti-Semitism' |
It is not necessary to defend everything that Ken Livingstone said in order to oppose his suspension. Defending Livingstone goes hand in hand with opposing the new McCarthyist witch hunt. Whereas Joe McCarthy was an anti-Semite, his disciples come in the guise of opponents of anti-Semitism.
Tony Greenstein