Iain McNicol Avoids Discussing Livingstone's Accusation of Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis
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| Cartoon in the Zionist Press concerning Ha'avara - 'don't worry Hitler, the Jews of Palestine are helping you.' |
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| John Mann MP who makes a living out of 'anti-Semitism' confronts Ken Livingstone |
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| Livingstone waxes lyrical outside his hearing |
Naz Shah’s quip was made in the context of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge when 2,200 Palestinians were butchered in Gaza and when 551 children were also slaughtered. It was in the context of the very real and existing threat of transfer of the Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank/Gaza. A plurality of Israeli Jews, some 48%, supportthe Nazi solution of the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from where they live. What we are seeing in Jerusalem today and elsewhere is the slow transfer and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinians.
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| In the 1930's the Daily Express was a pro-Hitler paper and this infamous headline, which inverted reality and stated that it was the Jews ('Judea') which had declared war on Germany, was used repeatedly by the Nazis to justify their attacks on German Jews |
During the attack on Gaza, which was allegedly in self-defence, we had Israeli mobs chanting that ‘There’s No School In Gaza, There Are No More Kids Left’. We had the disgusting spectacle of Israelis taking their armchairs and even a coffee machine to neighbouring hills overlooking Gaza in order that they could get a better view of the death and destruction that Israel was causing in Gaza. [Israelis gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza]
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| Today the Daily Express attacks Livingstone for his 'anti-Semitism' |
This is the reality that Labour’s witch hunters avoid mentioning. It says something about the timidity of Corbyn that he has not condemned the witch-hunt of Ken Livingstone or the false anti-Semitism campaign in the Labour Party. Corbyn above all should know, because he himself has experienced false anti-Semitism allegations. Corbyn has also followed Theresa May in endorsingthe International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism which conflates Zionism and anti-Semitism.
Labour’s witch hunters are desperate to avoid any debate about the content of what Livingstone said. We were told a year ago that what Livingstone said about Hitler supporting Zionism and whether the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis was a heinous example of anti-Semitism. Now it is reportedthat:
‘Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol made it clear in a letter to the former mayor that the case against him was not about the historical facts but whether his conduct was “grossly detrimental” to the party, especially given his defence of anti-Semitic Facebook posts by Bradford West MP Naz Shah.”
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| Germany's Zionist newspaper, Judische Rundschau, welcomed the 1935 Nuremburg Laws |
We should bear in mind that the ‘anti-Semitic Facebook posts’ by Naz Shah included a map of the United States with Israel transplanted to it. The map first appeared on the site of the Jewish Virtual Library, which isn’t known to be an anti-Semitic site!
The catch-all charge, favoured by McCarthyites, of bringing the Labour Party into disrepute, is of course entirely subjective. It is a matter of opinion depending on where you stand. Some of us think that if anyone brought the Labour Party into disrepute it was Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war, but clearly being a war criminal is not seen as disreputable by crooked McNicol.
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| Medal Nazis struck after 6 months trip to Palestine by the head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo - Baron von Mildenstein |
Most people will be under little doubt that Ken Livingstone’s almost certain expulsion will be because of what he said about the Zionists collaborating with the Nazis. The truth is also ‘anti-Semitic’. So it is useful to look at the argument of Professor Rainer Schulze, an academic apologist for Zionism, to understand why McNicol fought shy of tackling the substance of what Livingstone said.
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| Edwin Black's 'The Transfer Agreement' is the major work on Ha'avara - Rainer Schulze clearly hasn't read it |
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| Professor Rainer Schulze - Court Historian to the British Establishment |
Professor Rainer Schulze – Court Historian to the Establishment - Defends Nazi-Zionist Collaboration
Livingstone was attacked a year ago by Professor Schulze, who is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Essex in Labour antisemitism row: there was nothing Zionist about Hitler’s plans for the Jews. The article was reprinted in The Independent as Hitler and Zionism: Why the Haavara Agreement does not mean the Nazis were Zionists. Unfortunately being a professor of history doesn’t mean you have to know much about your subject and this is often the case with Holocaust professors eg. Deborah Lipstadt.
When the Nazi government was put in power by Germany’s conservative and military in January 1933, world Jewry reacted by setting in motion an economic boycott of Nazi Germany. Given that it was completely unorganised and spontaneous, it was remarkably successful.
By mid-April England had supplanted Germany as the largest exporter to Denmark and Norway. German exports were 10% down in April. For June the export surplus was down by 68% compared to May. For the entire first half of 1933 exports were down 51%. ‘That six month loss would have been greater except that the anti-Nazi boycott had not really commenced until late March.’ [1] German exports to France decreased by 25%. Egypt had an almost complete Boycott.[2] Exports were down 22% to America compared with 1932 levels.
Even in Palestine in the first few days of April thousands of orders for German goods in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were cancelled. However the ‘socialist’ Zionists of Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party, were furious. They wanted to do business with the Nazis, not campaign against them. They immediately launched a campaign against the Boycott of Nazi Germany. On Kol Yisrael, on May 18th, they broadcast that ‘Screaming slogans calling for a boycott… are a crime... We are all anxious about our brethren in Germany, but we have no quarrel with the representatives of the German government in Palestine.’ [3]
At the 18thWorld Zionist Congress in Prague in 1933 Mapai, which controlled the Congress, refused to put forward a motion condemning the Nazi regime.
Schulze puts forward the establishment view of Ha'avara which is that there was nothing wrong in a trade agreement with the Nazis. Similar arguments were used by those who opposed a Boycott of South Africa in the 1970’s. Thatcher and Reagan then argued that ‘constructive engagement’ with Apartheid was the best policy. Rainer Schulze is in essence arguing that the Zionist policy of constructive engagement with the Nazis was the best policy.
In the 1930’s the same establishment worthies who today are opposed to the Boycott of Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’ were equally opposed to the Boycott of Nazi Germany. The Board of Deputies of British Jews voted on July 23 1933 by 110-27 to oppose a Boycott of Nazi Germany. It was the occasion for the coming together of the previously anti-Zionist bourgeois leadership under President Neville Laski and the growing Zionist contingent on the Board. As Black observed, ‘in July 1933 influential Anglo-Jewish leaders committed themselves to the Zionist solution of the German Jewish crisis.’[4]
In the United States the Roosevelt administration justified its opposition to a Boycott of Nazi Germany on the ludicrous grounds that it undermined Hitler! Hitler was seen as the ‘element of moderation’ in the Nazi state! [5] The definition of a ‘moderate’ has always been flexible.
Rainer Schulze is however correct on one thing. Hitler wasn’t a Zionist. Nor did Ken Livingstone claim he was. It is however indisputable that the Nazi regime supported and favoured the Zionist movement.
Reinhardt Heydrich, Himmler’s Deputy and leader of the Reich Security Main Office which combined the Security and Criminal Police, the Nazi Security Service and the Gestapo, issued on the 28th January 1935 an order which stated that
The activities of the Zionist-oriented organisations... lies in the interest of the National Socialist state leadership’ before going on to say that these organisations ‘are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations (assimilationists).
i.e. the majority of German Jews [6] In Schwarze Corps, paper of the SS, Heydrich wrote that the Nazi government ‘is in agreement with the great spiritual movement within Jewry, Zionism...’ [7]
Nicosia, who is a Zionist and Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University, wrote:
Throughout the 1930’s, as part of the regime’s determination to force Jews to leave Germany, there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews, Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine.[8]
If Schulze isn’t aware of this then he has no business trumpeting his professorial credentials on the subject. If he is aware of the above then he is an academic liar, an establishment poodle. The above quotes can be found in books by two Zionist historians, the late Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews and Francis Nicosia’s Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. The SS, which was the most pro-Zionist of all the components of the Nazi state and which went on to implement the Final Solution, saw in the Zionists the ‘volkish’ Jews who accepted that Jews should play no part in the affairs of Germany.
Jews were, according to the Zionists, not German but Jewish nationals. The Zionists alone amongst German Jews welcomed the Nuremburg Laws of 1935, which stripped the Jews of German citizenship. This is not even a matter of serious dispute. On 21st June 1933, the German Zionist Federation [ZVfD ]sent a memo to Hitler:
On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group…. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.[9] Black, who is himself a Zionist historian observed:
‘It became that much harder for German Jews to defend against Nazi accusations of illegitimate citizenship when a loud and visible group of their own continually published identical indictments ... as Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg made clear ... ‘If an organisation inside the state declares that the interests of the German Reich do not concern it, it renounces all its civil rights.’ Zionism had become a tool for anti-Semites.’ [10](my emphasis)
Ha'avara and the Saving of Jewish Refugees
Ha'avara had nothing to do with saving Germany’s Jews. No one in 1933 envisaged that the Nazis would embark on a policy of extermination nor did the Nazis themselves plan for it. That came later with Operation Barbarossa and war imperialism. The ZVfD and George Landeur, its Director, ‘fought for German regulations that would prevent German Jews from saving their wealth by any means other than investing it in Palestine.’ [11] Zionism was only interested in building the Jewish state. Saving the Jews was secondary to this. ‘By late July, transfer activists spoke increasingly of ‘saving the wealth’ and ‘rescuing the capital’ from Nazi Germany. The impact on German Jews themselves seemed to be a subordinated issue.’[12]
The other question is, why did Nazi Germany agree to a trade agreement whereby German goods were exported but they were paid not in hard currency but German Reichsmarks? The answer is simple:
Without the worldwide effort to topple the Third Reich, Hitler would have never agreed to the Transfer Agreement.[13]
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| David Ben-Gurion, first Israeli Prime Minister opposed the rescue of Jews if the destination wasn't Palestine |
Zionism only supported the rescue of Jews if they went to Palestine. David Ben-Gurion, Chairman of the Jewish Agency was quite explicit about this. Ben Gurion argued that:
‘Zionism… is not primarily engaged in saving individuals. If along the way it saves a few thousand, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals, so much the better.’ But in the event of a conflict of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.’[14]
Saul Friedlander, a Zionist Holocaust historian noted that ‘the Palestine leadership refused to extend any help to emigrants whose goal was not Eretz Israel (Land of Israel).’ [15]
When Britain proposed the Kindertransport which saved 10,000 German Jewish children after Kristallnacht in November 1938, the Zionist movement opposed it. Ben Gurion wrote:
If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.[16]
Ha'avara was condemned by virtually the whole of world Jewry for placing the interests of the Zionist movement and a future Jewish state above the interests of Germany’s Jews. Even the Jewish Chronicle, paper of the Jewish Establishment, opposed it:
we object to the transfer of their assets in the form of the products of German factories and German employment. We say that that is aiding and comforting one of the most savage oppressions, even in Jewish history…. It breaks the united Jewish boycott front, a front let it not be forgotten, with which non-Jewish sympathisers were also aligned.[17]
Between 1933 and 1939 Ha’avara accounted for 60% of total capital investment in Jewish Palestine.[18] Over RM100 million of German goods were exported from Germany to Palestine.[19] Less than 20% of German Jewish emigrants went to Palestine and only a minority of them came via Ha'avara. Those German emigrants who did utilise Ha'avara were the richest German Jews, because you needed the equivalent of £1,000 in cash in order to qualify for entry to Palestine as a capitalist. The émigrés themselves received a fraction of what they paid for those goods.
Not once did Schulze even mention the Boycott of Nazi Germany. This is academic dishonesty. You cannot understand the opposition from the overwhelming majority of Jewish people to Ha'avara without understanding the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany.
Israeli historian Tom Segev explained why the Zionist movement opposed a Boycott of Nazi Germany.
The purpose of the boycott was to force the Nazis to halt their persecution, so that Jews could continue to live in Germany. Ben Gurion and his associates, by contrast, wanted German Jews to settle in Palestine and they saw Ha'avara policy as a means toward that end.
In other words, this was the old Zionist policy of welcoming anti-Semitism as an inducement to Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The Zionists didn’t want Jews to live in the diaspora. They saw the persecution of Jews in Germany as the inevitable outcome of Jewish ‘homelessness’ – living in other peoples’ countries. As Nicosia observed some Zionists ‘even believed that the Nazi triumph represented, as Berl Katznelson stated “... an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have.’[20]
Contrary to their rhetoric about ‘anti-Semitism’ today, when anti-Semitism was at its height in the Nazi era, Zionism sought to exploit the tragedy of German and European Jewry. Not once did it seek to combat or oppose Nazism.
The Nazis were frantic in their desire to destroy the Boycott. By agreeing to Ha'avara, the Zionist movement helped the Nazi regime survive. As Black notes, there was a real possibility that without Ha'avara the Nazi regime might have cracked in the winter of 1933.[21]
Ha'avara, far from being a rescue scheme for Jews was a rescue scheme for the Nazi state. That the Zionist movement was guilty of collaboration cannot be doubted, even if the tame establishment historian Rainer Schulze suggests otherwise. One of the consequences of Ha'avara was that:
‘The German economy would have to be safeguarded, stabilized and if necessary reinforced. Hence the Nazi party and the Zionist Organisation shared a common stake in the recovery of Germany. If the Hitler economy fell, both sides would be ruined.’ [22]
The idea that the Zionist Organisation or the Jewish Agency were concerned with rescuing German Jews in their own right is for the birds. Their primary goal was the building up of Jewish Palestine and everything had to be seen in that light. Werner Senator, a member of the Zionist Executive told the Jewish Agency office in Berlin that if it did not improve the ‘human material’of those it was sending, the Agency would cut the number of Palestine certificates for Berlin Jews. Indeed it was decided that those above the age of 35 would receive certificates, ‘only if there is no reason to believe that they will not become a burden here.’ Tom Segev noted that Eliahu Dobkin, a member of Mapai and the Jewish Agency Executive considered that those German Jews who were ‘merely refugees’ were ‘undesirable human material.’ [23] The Zionists even used the same terminology as the Nazis. German Zionism was a Jewish volkish current.
Zionism as Jewish Self-determination or Settler Colonialism
Rainer Schulze argued that ‘Zionism was a movement based on the right of self-determination. It originated as a national liberation movement...’ A question I have often asked Zionists is when they first decided that Zionism was a national liberation movement? I have never received an answer. The founders of Zionism, from whatever political persuasion, described Zionism as a colonial movement at a time when colonialism was still respectable.
The founder of Political Zionism, Theodore Herzl when he wrote to Cecile Rhodes, the British colonialist and white supremacist in southern Africa explained thus:
‘How, then, do I happen to turn to you since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you? How indeed? Because it is something colonial.’ [24]
Vladimir Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism (the equivalent of Likud today) in his famous essay ‘An Iron Wall’ which was a polemic against his opponents in Labour Zionism argued that:
‘There can be no voluntary agreement between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs…. it is utterly impossible to obtain the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting "Palestine" from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish majority.
My readers have a general idea of the history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the native population. There is no such precedent.[25]
There isn’t even one instance of any reference to a ‘national liberation movement’ in the writings of the founders of Zionism. Zionism only became a national liberation movement when colonialism got a bad name! Today’s Zionists have decided to disguise what even the Zionists themselves used to admit was a colonialist movement in the apparel of the oppressed in order to deceive the innocent. Rainer Schulze’s history lessons are in reality an act of deception.
Rainer Schulze finished his article by indulging in a piece of straw man rhetoric:
‘Any claim that Nazis and Zionists ever shared a common goal is not only cynical and disingenuous, but a distortion of clearly established historical fact.’
That is, of course, true. But no one has claimed that they shared common goals. Clearly the Zionists didn’t support the mass genocide of European Jewry. Marshall Petain collaborated with the Nazis but that doesn’t mean he supported the aims of the Nazis. He collaborated because he didn’t want a Nazi occupation of France. When a weaker party collaborates with a stronger party they rarely if ever share the same goals. Unfortunately Professor Schulze, having very little knowledge or understanding of the topic he wrote about decided to engage in an old debating tactic. Attack something your opponent hasn’t said!
Tony Greenstein
[1] Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, Brookline Books, New York, p.223.
[2] Black, pp.265, 273. This gives the lie to the myth about Arab support for the Nazis.
[3] Black p. 144.
[4] Black, p. 212.
[5] Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, p.19. Brookline Books.
[8] Nicosia, p. 79.
[9] Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.150-153.
[10] Black p. 173.
[11] Black, p. 258.
[12] Black p. 288.
[13] Black xxiii.
[14] Shabtai Teveth, ‘The Burning Ground 1886-1948’, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1987 p. 855, speech to the Mapai Council 1933.
[15] Saul Friedlander, Germany and the Jews – 1933-1945, p. 57, Phoenix, London, 2009.
[16] Zionism and the Holocaust, http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/631/zionism-and-the-holocaust, Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy, p.199, Segev, p.28. Ben-Gurion at the Mapai CC, 7.12.38, Teveth, p.855.
[17] JC,The Unclean Thing, 27.12.35.
[18] David Rosenthall, Chaim Arlosoroff65 Years After his Assassination, Jewish Frontier, May-June 1998, p. 28, New York http://www.ameinu.net/publicationfiles/Vol.LXV,No.3.pdf. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-DwJUnaW0sMb3dxRzd5NkExaEEaccessed 13.11.15. In 1937 over 31m RM was transferred. Nicosia, The Third Reich, p.213.
[19] Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, p. 213, Hilberg fn9. p. 139, Saul Friedlander p. 26.
[20] Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p. 91 citing Friedlander, pp 15, 63-4.
[21] Black p. 189.
[22] Black, p. 253.
[23] Tom Segev, The Seventh Million, p.44, Hill and Wang, New York.
[24] Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol. 4, page 1194.
[25] Vladimir Jabotinsky, "The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs)," Rassvyet (Berlin),
November 4, 1923. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
November 4, 1923. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot
31 March 2017
Jonathan Cook
The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.
Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecturethis Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone
31 March 2017The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.
Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-03-31/labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone/#sthash.X7EuVwmm.dpufNow as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone
31 March 2017The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.
Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-03-31/labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone/#sthash.X7EuVwmm.dpufNow as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone
31 March 2017The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.
Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-03-31/labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone/#sthash.X7EuVwmm.dpufNow as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.
In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.
That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.
In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.
McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.
Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.