The Threat to Freedom of Speech from Brighton Council Leader Nancy Platts - all in the name of 'anti-Semitism'

 Like Trump Platts Professes Concern About 'Antisemitism' when the real concern is to prevent criticsm of Israel 

When Trump told four Black Congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna S. Pressley to ‘go back home’ (despite 3 of them being born in the USA), he also added for good measure that they 'hate America and hate Israel.'

Trump’s concerns are understandable because the one country in the world where Trump is more popular than unpopular is the apartheid State of Israel. [See Support for Trump higher in Israel than almost any other nation: poll]

Like the Tories and Labour’s Right, Trump cannot distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Which is why, at the very time he was condemning 'anti-Semitism' he was also accusing America’s Jews, 80% of whom vote Democrat, of disloyalty to both himself and the State of Israel. Like his former adviser Steve Bann, Trump uses support for Israel as a stick to beat America’s Jews with!

examples of the abuse that Jackie Walker, one of Platt's targets received -  this is the abuse that anti-Zionists regularly receive but which, unlike that of Zionist prima donnas like Ruth Smeeth is never mentioned

According to Trump Israel is the ‘real home’ of America’s Jews. This is a Zionist doctrine, although many Zionists prefer to maintain a state of political schizophrenia. As Peter Beinart, one of the few genuinely thoughtful Zionists around, whose opinion pieces are always worth reading (perhaps because he’s a Professor of Journalism!) remarked ‘in the past, Trump has repeatedly spoken about American Jews as if they were Israelis.’

And this is equally true of Platts and Kyle.  It is now part of Labour Party culture (if such a term is not an oxymoron) to equate criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews i.e. anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew. 

That was the purpose and function of the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism that Brighton and Hove council adopted last October and for which Nancy Platts voted. So when meetings are held which criticise Israel or Zionism, idiots like Platts (who to be fair has a limited comprehension of such matters) equate such criticism with hostility to Jews).  And those of us who are Jewish anti-Zionists are merely the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ or to use the Nazi term beloved of Zionists, ‘self-haters’ (because if you hate your race you hate yourself).

As Beinart noted 

‘In an April speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he called Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister” and warned that a Democratic victory in 2020 “could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

At the White House Hanukkah Party last December, he told the mostly Jewish audience that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, “love your country. And they love this country.”

When Kyle, Platts and friends conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism what they are doing is saying that the murderous actions of Israel are carried out on behalf of Jews, wherever they live. That is the logic of equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. After all Israel is a ‘Jewish state’. 

Trump being a white supremacist says out aloud what Kyle and Platts can only whisper, viz. that Jewish allegiance is to Israel.  In the meantime these ciphers do their best to introduce Israeli ‘democracy’ into Britain by closing down meetings they disagree with.

Merely by talking about 'resistance' Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was gaoled whereas people who chant 'Death to the Arabs' are never even prosecuted

After all Israel is the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ albeit a democracy which sent to prison an Israel Arab poet, Dareen Tatour, for expressing support for Palestinian resistance. No amount of racist abuse from Jews in Israel has ever resulted in imprisonment, even in the case of the two rabbis who wrote a book in 2011, Torat HaMelech (the King's Torah) explaining how, according to Jewish law, it was legally possible in war to kill Palestinian children and infants. But this is the type of racism that Platts and her claque ignore.

The Israeli prosecutors found there was 'no basis' to indict the authors of a book who explain why its lawful to kill Arab children

None of this should be any surprise.  At the heart of Zionist theology is the belief that Jews are aliens in the countries they reside in. Israel is the Jewish state and it openly proclaims that it is the state of all Jews. That is why every Jew has the ‘right of return’ to Israel, regardless of whether they have ever been there, whereas Palestinians who were born and lived there for generations have no such right. Racism is inseparable from Zionism and the Kyles and the Platts of Labour's Right are its defenders. 

Yet when it comes to the Windrush Scandal, stop and search and other, genuine examples of racism, Kyle and Platts are silent. Only racism against a section of White people concern them.

As the Jewish Democratic Council of America put it, Trump has ‘"weaponise(d) and politicise(d) anti-Semitism" for political gain.’  And that is exactly what Nancy Platts and Peter Kyle, with their allegations of ‘Jew’ hate/baiting also do.

There is virtually no anti-Semitism in Brighton and Hove.  Jews are a privileged, white community. I know of no anti-Semitic attacks in Brighton. The statement by Platts that ‘I am concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ is disingenuous.  As the meeting with Chris Williamson demonstrated when Jewish people came to stand with him, Jewish people have always been welcome at Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings.

There are no events where Jews are not welcome. Of course racists, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish are not welcome at anti-racist events. So members of Sussex Friends of Israel, who did their best to intimidate venues into cancelling the talk by Chris Williamson 2 weeks ago are not welcome. They include people like Simon Cobbs who has demonstrated alongside the English Defence League.  But that is because Cobbs is a racist not because he is Jewish.

There was a complete and total failure to support a family under attack by racists - no comparable case has ever affected a Jewish family

There is and always has been a problem of anti-Muslim racism in Brighton and about that Kyle and Platts are silent. That was particularly true in the case of the Deghayes family, three of whose sons went to fight for Jihadis in Syria after the Police’s failure to tackle the racism they experienced. As the Guardian noted:

Racist incidents increased in 2007 when the boy’s uncle, Omar Deghayes, was released from Guantánamo Bay after being held for five years after his arrest in Pakistan. His return to Brighton led to an angry backlash locally where far-right groups reportedly whipped up anger. Graffiti reading “Behead all Muslims” was daubed near their home and when it was attacked by a mob, police installed CCTV.

Social workers reported that it became increasingly difficult dealing with the family who felt their complaints were not dealt with adequately.

As the boys’ behaviour deteriorated further, youth and social workers expressed their “helplessness” at having no solutions. They expressed “shock and disbelief” when it was discovered the brothers had gone to Syria. “This possibility had never been identified and there was also no recognition that the siblings were vulnerable to radicalisation, travel or participation in conflict.”

The failure to deal with racist attacks on the family led directly to the alienation (‘radicalisation’) of their three sons. Nancy Platts kept her mouth shut during all of this and other failures, such as the murder of Jay Abatan, which Brighton Police force also failed to deal with. But when it comes to non-existent anti-Semitism she is willing to bare her soul to a Zionist publication which has called Jeremy Corbyn an ‘anti-Semite’.

I therefore wrote Platts a letter last night and sent the letter to every Labour and Green Councillor on Brighton and Hove Council.

We know of course what this is about and it has nothing to do with ‘anti-Semitism’ and everything to do with Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone speaking at the fringe of the Labour Party conference in one month.

We expect that the Zionist movement will object. In Israel the Police would simply ban such meetings. In Brighton the Zionists are expecting their faithful poodles Platts and Kyle to do their dirty work. We have news for them.  Chris Williamson and others will speak in Brighton next month regardless of the grandstanding of New Labour's racists.

Below is a letter I wrote to Nancy Platts.  I suspect I won't be receiving a reply!!

Tony Greenstein

Councillor Nancy Platts

Leader Brighton and Hove City Council,

Brighton Town Hall

BN1 1JW

Email to:          nancy.platts@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Dear Nancy,

I have just read your interview with Jewish News, a paper which only a year ago spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’

An ‘existential threat’ means a threat to one’s very existence. In other words a Corbyn government would represent a mortal danger to Jews. This is the paper which you chose to confide in.

You used to work in Corbyn’s office. I don’t know whether or not you still support him or if, in your new role as Leader of the Labour Group, you are seeking to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors, Warren Morgan and Daniel Yates, both of whom are members of the Jewish Labour Movement.

The title of your interview ‘‘I want Jewish people to feel welcome in Brighton’ is highly offensive. It is no different in tone to the remarks of Warren Morgan two years ago which led to his resignation. You clearly imply that Jewish people are not welcome in Brighton. What evidence do you have for this? Perhaps you could explain why you have singled out Jews as opposed to Muslims or Black people?

I have lived in Brighton for over 40 years and have rarely encountered anti-Semitism other than from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. I am the author of the only book detailing the history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and the South Coast. A book which was reviewed by the Argus in 2012. I think I know a little more about anti-Semitism than you.

In 2012 Brighton anti-fascists scored a historic victory against a Police force which was intent on forcing an English Defence League march through the city. I must confess that I don’t remember either you or any of the other exponents of  Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ of having played any part in either that or any other anti-fascist activity.

You state in your interview that you are ‘concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ Well we all would be concerned if there was any truth to such a story.  However it is a lie peddled by your Zionist friends to drum up sympathy.

Two weeks ago there was an attempt to prevent a meeting by Chris Williamson MP in Brighton. Peter Kyle MP called him a ‘Jew baiter’ a charge that is nothing less than a form of political terrorism. Kyle’s real objection was that Chris had opposed the witchhunt in the Labour Party and called for open selection of Labour MPs. In other words Jews were being used as a stick to beat the Left with.

Instead of speaking up in support of free speech and the rights of peaceful assembly, rights guaranteed under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights you have chosen to stand with the McCarthyists and those who would destroy free speech on Israel and Palestine. You have done this at the behest of supporters of Israeli apartheid.

Allegations of anti-Semitism by the Right, and I include you in that, are nothing more than a convenient smokescreen for those who wish to avoid a debate over Israel and Zionism. You can rest assured that just as we ensured that Chris defied the threats of violence from those who tried to prevent him speaking two weeks ago we will do the same again.

We are determined to ensure that Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker are able to speak freely at the Labour Party conference fringe, your McCarthyist friends notwithstanding.

Jackie Walker in particular has suffered vile racist abuse  from your Zionist friends. I am copying some of them here so that you cannot plead ignorance. In Israel Zionists march to chant of ‘death to the Arabs’. In this country they complain of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Racism against Black people is an integral part of Zionism. In Israel Black Jews are not considered fully Jewish and currently there is an attempt to forcibly deport 40,000 Black African refugees who in the words of Netanyahu ‘threaten Israel’s Jewish identity. The Israeli Labour Party too supports deporting these refugees. The same Israeli Labour Party that the Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to.

I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in this country, including Jewish anti-Zionists, who has not been called an anti-Semite. The fact that people like you have been taken in by this nonsense speaks volumes about your commitment to anti-racism.

It was little more than a year ago that you were on the platform speaking alongside Chris Williamson. It seems that having fulfilled your political ambitions you are travelling a well worn path to the right that people before you have taken.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism is not confined to Britain or the Labour Party. In the United States Donald Trump has combined vociferous support for Israel with praise for neo-Nazis. When telling 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ he also attacked  them because they "hate Israel & all Jewish people.’

I’m sorry to see that you have joined with those who use bogus charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ to deflect support for the Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself. If Jews in this country experienced even a tenth of the discrimination that Palestinians endure in Israel then they would indeed have cause to complain about anti-Semitism.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Letter I wrote to Nancy Platts

Mad Cows and Englishmen –The Telegraph goes Barking Mad over Beef and Communism

As Douglas Murray chokes on his racist bile, is the Torygraph's headline the most stupid ever? 

I rubbed my eyes when I saw the headline ‘University which banned beef now hosts 'Communist' summer school’. What could possibly be the connection between the decision to take beef off the menu at Goldsmiths University, as part of their contribution to fighting global warming and a debate between Professor Moshe Machover, the founder of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation and myself?

What for that matter is the connection between British Beef and hosting the annual Communist University? I guess in the mind of the Daily Telegraph it’s only the loony left and rabid feminists who would ban the staple food of every red blooded Englishman. Hosting a Communist University must be proof that our way of life is under attack even though it is a commercial booking and nothing to do with the university itself. Small details such as these are irrelevant to the rabid right.

Phoebe Southworth was a hackette in search of a story and she wasn’t going to let facts stand in the way. Yes it’s true I’ve described abusive Zionists who call you a ‘self hater’ as Zionist scum. That is precisely what they are. It is also an incontrovertible historical fact that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis. Get over it. In the 1950’s Israel staged a four-year long trial of the leader of Hungarian Zionism, Rudolf Kasztner over allegations by survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust that he had collaborated with Eichmann and helped send them and their families to their deaths. When Kasztner was found to have collaborated with the Nazi, literally ‘sold his soul to Satan’ by Judge Benjamin Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court the government of Israel fell. 

However I wasn’t expelled for these ‘crimes’ but for being an anti-Zionist and ‘abusing’ people like Louise Ellman, a noxious supporter of the Israeli Military’s abuse of Palestinian children.

Letter to the Telegraph in response to their idiotic article

However The Telegraph’s idiotic reporter isn’t one to let up on a good story. Apparently ‘The latest move has prompted accusations that Goldsmith is no longer a "safe space" for Jewish students and that it is "officially becoming a Communist university".

So let us digest this.  Two Jewish people debating the finer points of whether Israeli Jews constitute a nation means that ‘Goldsmith is no longer a "safe space" for Jewish students’.  Is she really saying that hearing two Jewish anti-Zionists debate Zionism will threaten the well being of the spoilt Jewish darlings and JAPs (Jewish American Princesses) who are students at Goldsmith? 

Needless to say, when a hack needs a quote then who better to turn to than the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.  They believe that the presence of Professor Moshe Machover and myself on campus is "deeply troubling". The University is “welcoming onto campus a number of individuals who have a history of baiting Jews or outright antisemitism”.

The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has been so shop soiled of late that it has lost its effect.  Now we are ‘Jew baiting’ if we disagree with Zionism and anti-Palestinian racism. Indeed we have a ‘history’ of doing this.  I guess I also have a history of opposing fascists such as Tommy Robinson and the EDL, who Zionists like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism work with. 

The head of the college even looks like one of those hated feminist leftist do gooders

And if this was not bad enough, then Douglas Murray, the frothing at the mouth Islamaphobe  who is Associate Director of the cold-war Henry Jackson Society penned in the following day’s Telegraph, Our anti-capitalist, anti-Western universities no longer care about excellence

This mild mannered, man is the same person who, in 2009, described Robert Spencer, the leader of "Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)", as a "very brilliant scholar and writer". He is so brilliant that along with Pamela Geller he got himself banned from entering Britain. He is responsible for Jihad Watch which is allied to David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre and Frontpagemag.com an overtly racist and Islamaphobic web site.

In a 2006 speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference Murray demanded that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”:

“All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed. And of course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the West (not just the country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the West or Western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin.”

So if you sympathise with attacks on American troops in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or wherever you should be ‘forcibly deported’.  Bang goes freedom of speech.

Murray wrote in The Spectator that ‘There are certain things in Britain about which it is impossible to speak frankly. The birth rate of the Muslim population is a prime subject” The birth rate of Black and Asian people has always been an obsession with racists and neo-Nazis.

Yet this racist buffoon is given space in The Torygraph to proclaim that banning beef and hosting a Communist University means an end to civilisation as we know it.

Murray told the Telegraph’s readers that ‘tragedy always follows close on comedy’s heels and this tragedy ‘can also be glimpsed on the Goldsmiths campus.’   Why pray tell? Because Goldsmiths ‘is hosting a summer school involving a series of lectures organised by the Communist Party of Great Britain.’

Shocked as you may be dear reader there is more.

‘The lecturers include Tony Greenstein, the founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who last year achieved the almost unachievable when he was expelled from Labour for using terms like “Zionist scum” and accusing “Zionists” of “collaborating with the Nazis”. Also lecturing at the Communist summer camp is an activist called Graham Bash who will be addressing students on the subject of “How can we transform the Labour Party into a vehicle of socialism?” A lecture whose aims might be said to already have been achieved.

I know it’s not much consolation to someone who even the Tory front bench broke off relations with in 2011 because he was seen as a racist and extremist, but being expelled from the Labour Party these days, if you are Jewish and a socialist, is quite easy!

Still I don’t want to spoil a good story since The Telegraph’s readers enjoy having something to shock them over their tea and marmalade first thing in the morning. Murray engages in an attack not merely on Goldsmiths but on what he calls an ‘only slightly watered-down version of the full-throated communism’ at Cambridge University no less. He tells us of ‘a great tide has swept across the university system in America as in Britain’.  By now babbling like a hyena on heat Murray splutters that ‘It is a culture war waged with tools such as “de-platforming”, claims for “safe spaces” and more. Most of all it exists in the Academy’s fetishisation of “diversity”.’

Now where have I heard of culture wars before?  Oh yes, it is a standard  meme of the fascist right

As Noah Berlatsky wrote in Jewish Currents after a neo-Nazi opened fire at Poway synagogue earlier this year, ‘“Cultural Marxism” is a trope that is rapidly spreading from the far right to the conservative mainstream.’ It was first popularised by Andrei Brevik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi (and Zionist) who murdered 77 young people.  This is what Douglas Murray is arguing for and what The Telegraph is quite happy to print in the name of fighting socialism and defending Zionism.

Meanwhile if you are interested in a debate between Moshe Machover and myself on whether or not Israel’s Jews constitute a nation, then take yourself off to Goldsmith’s College this Friday for a no doubt riveting debate! Beef I’m afraid will not be on the menu!

 The details are here! And here is the timetable.  Our debate is timed for 4.45 p.m. this Friday at Goldsmith's University St James London SE14 6AD

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Len McLuskey, General Secretary of UNITE – The Time has Come to Junk the IHRA

 The IHRA’s Only Purpose is to Prop Up Apartheid Israel, Undermine solidarity with the Palestinians and Topple Corbyn

At the June meeting of Unite SE/6246 Branch members learnt of the suspension of one of our members from the Labour Party. She is an activist in Palestine Solidarity Campaign and her ‘crime’ was tweeting opposition to Israeli political interference and Zionism.

She has been suspended with a recommendation for expulsion without a hearing. All her tweets, without exception, related to Israel and the Israel lobby. Nothing in them is remotely anti-Semitic.

The branch therefore asked me to write an open letter to the General Secretary of UNITE, Len McLuskey, asking for the Executive Council to withdraw its support for the IHRA’s bogus definition of anti-Semitism. 

UNITE has clear policy in support of BDS and the Palestinians. The IHRA defines it as ‘anti-Semitic’. The IHRA says that ‘applying double standards’ to Israel ‘by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ is anti-Semitic. The problem is that Israel is not like any other democratic state.  It is a state of only its Jewish citizens. However the IHRA starts from the proposition that Israel is a liberal democracy

BDS is only applied to Israel therefore the IHRA classifies it as anti-Semitic. Applying this logic when South Africa was an apartheid state, BDS was also racist against White South Africans and when Jews (except for the Zionists) launched a boycott of Nazi Germany in 1933 that was racist against Germans! 

 Only recently the German Bundestag, following in the tradition of Nazi opposition to Boycotts, confirmed that BDS is anti-Semitic. We had the spectacle of Greens, Social Democrats and neo-Nazis agreeing that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic!

What is amazing about the IHRA, which governments have so readily adopted, is that there is no support for the IHRA from any legal or academic scholars. Even the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern in written testimony to the US Congress criticised it for chilling free speech. It is a worthless definition whose only purpose is to allow supporters of the world’s only apartheid state to accuse anti-racists and anti-imperialists of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Take Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge who is himself Jewish. Sedley wrote, in an article for London Review of Books that the IHRA

Assume(s) that Israel, apart from being a Jewish state, is a country like any other and so open only to criticism resembling such criticism as can be made of other states, placing the historical, political, military and humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestine beyond permissible criticism.

The IHRA is based on 2 fallacies:  first that Israel and Jews are identical, a position that is in itself anti-Semitic. And secondly that Israel is like ‘any other democratic nation.’ It isn’t.  No other state in the world demolishes the homes of one section of the population in order to replace them with the majority ethnic group, Jews.

Even Dr Geoffrey Alderman, a right-wing Zionist and Jewish academic and historian, a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish Telegraph, has made a submission to the Equalities and Human Rights Council investigation into the Labour Party criticising the definition.

In an article This Labour Party row will not be settled by relying on a flawed and faulty definition of antisemitism Alderman draws attention to the 11 illustrations of anti-Semitism in the IHRA definition, focussing on 2 of them.

One example that says it is antisemitic to accuse Jewish citizens “of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” Alderman noted that

‘many Jews who hold dual citizenship and who, under certain circumstances, would act (and have indeed acted) in the interests of Israel rather than of Britain. It should not be deemed antisemitic to point this out.’

The other example he referred to is the one saying it is anti-Semitic to ‘“draw(ing) comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”  He observes that people often compare countries, for example Burma, to the Nazis.  Why is it anti-Semitic to compare Israel’s actions to the Nazis given that Israeli politicians regularly accuse their enemies of behaving like Nazis?

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism is 6 not 500+ words

Labour’s witchhunters rely on criticism of Israel not Jews

The ‘evidence’ against the UNITE comrade is an example of how the IHRA has been used, not to combat anti-Semitism, which is hostility to Jews as Jews but to defend the world’s most racist state. When Len McLuskey did a 180 degree about turn to support the IHRA he fooled himself into believing it would mean an end to the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.  It hasn’t. It has emboldened and strengthened it. The cowardice and pusillanimity of McLuskey and the trade union leadership has increased the crisis around Corbyn and the Labour Party. It is time to tell the Zionists to get lost and if they are concerned about anti-Semitism then maybe they will stop justifying what Israel does in the name of the Jews.

Labour's witchhunters are now openly equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism

The first piece of evidence against our Branch member was about her sharing an article by Electronic Intifada journalist, Asa Winstanley, on how the Israel lobby manufactured Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. Asa has also been suspended in what is a blatant attack on the freedom of the press. Clearly Labour’s witchhunters think they are in Israel now. Asa has also been denied press credentials for Labour’s conference. It seems that Jenny Formby’s administration is now going one worse than the hated Iain McNicoll. As the IHRA’s author Kenneth Stern has admitted the IHRA ‘chills’ free speech ,.

The fourth piece of ‘evidence’ referred to an article in The Independent quoting the late Jewish Father of the House of Commons, Gerald Kaufman as saying that ‘Jewish money’ had influenced the government. The term ‘Jewish money’ is widely used in the Jewish community and I found over 600 instances of its use on the Jewish Chronicle website! It is not anti-Semitic per se.

Ironically the suspended Labour Party member's tweet 'But shhh, mustn't criticise Israel or you'll be accused of antisemitism' has come truer rather quicker than she expected!

Asking people to share a petition calling for an inquiry into Israel’s influence on democracy in Britain was another piece of ‘evidence’. What has this to do with Jews or anti-Semitism. Israel is not a Jew.

Al Jazeera’s programme The Lobby covered in detail how an agent operating out of the Israeli Embassy, Shai Masot had indeed interfered in British politics. He discussed how to bring down the Deputy Foreign Secretary, Sir Alan Duncan, who was hostile to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.  Masot described himself as a political officer assigned to the Israeli Embassy.  How can it possibly be anti-Semitic to speak the truth?

The person also said it would be ‘interesting to see how the JLM and other Zionist orgs justify this appalling action’ referring to police brutality against Palestinian children.  Is it anti-Semitic to call out the abuse of Palestinian children by Israel?

Other things that the comrade said included telling Brighton’s then leader of the Labour Council, Dan Yates that ‘privileging anti-Semitism above other forms of racism is nothing to be proud of. Neither is supporting Israeli racism and apartheid.’ It is an extremely valid question as to why the Labour Party has been obsessed with non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ when racism in society and the Windrush scandal has merited no attention at all.

Or perhaps her crime was referring to Israel’s most popular rap artist (who has a quarter of a million Facebook fans), The Shadow. The Shadow  blamed the dead at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue for their own murder. Their ‘crime’ beingn to support immigrants in the USA. Normally it is only fascists and anti-Semites who cheer on those who murder Jews but there is also a number of sick Zionists who believe that you need anti-Semitism in order to ‘encourage’ Jews to emigrate to the racial paradise of Israel. Referring to this fact is enough to be accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the morons of Southside.

Supporting an inquiry into the fake anti-Corbyn ‘charity’, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism also aroused the ire of Labour’s witchhunters as did mentioning Israel’s half-hearted probe into the fire bombing of a Palestinian family in the West Bank, which left both parents and an 18 month old baby dead and a four year old child with severe burn injuries.  The Southside scum who included this tweet clearly believe it is anti-Semitic to condemn Zionist child murderers.

The time has come for McLuskey and other union bureaucrats, like UNISON’s Dave Prentis to abandon the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism.  Why is a ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism needed anyway if not to protect Israel? My dad did not need a 500 word definition of anti-Semitism in order to fight Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists at Cable Street.  And when the BUF did attack Jews and try to march in Jewish areas, the Board of Deputies told them to stay at home. These are the very same reactionaries who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ today whenever Palestine is on the agenda.

Tony Greenstein

Len McCluskey,

General Secretary,

Unite The Union,

128 Theobald's Road,

LONDON, WC1X 8TN

Tuesday 23^rd July 2019

len.mccluskey@unitetheunion.org, executive.council@unitetheunion.org

Dear Brother McCluskey,

It’s Time to Scrap the IHRA Definition which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism

I am writing to you on behalf of Unite SE/6246 Branch. We believe that it is time to call a halt to this bogus and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. 

Last August, in an article in Huffpost you stated that ‘It would be for the best if all eleven [IHRA examples] were now agreed, so the party can move on.’ The Party however did not move on. The whole purpose of this fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

You acknowledged as much in the title of your article where you stated that the ‘Jewish community leaders’ ‘have simply refused to take “yes” for an answer.’  You spoke of their ‘Intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage in dialogue’. Why then continue to appease them?

You are right. These Zionist leaders will always refuse to accept ‘yes’ for an answer as long as Jeremy Corbyn is Leader of the Labour Party. The primary interest of these people is the defence of the Israeli state, right or wrong. That is why last summer the Board of Deputies supported Israel’s massacre of over 200 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza.

The Board of Deputies is not concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’ From the Battle of Cable Street to the present day their attitude has been that Jews should avoid confrontations with fascists.

You stated in your article that ‘it would have been far better for the party to have adopted at least ten of the eleven IHRA examples’ but you were willing to give them the whole loaf. We disagree.  The IHRA has only ever had one purpose, to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. 7 out of the 11 examples of anti-Semitism are concerned with Israel not Jews.

Our union supports a policy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Under the IHRA that is anti-Semitic since we don’t apply BDS to any other country.

Likewise the IHRA holds it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to claim that ‘the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’ This is palpable nonsense. When Israeli actress Rotem Sala protested that ‘Israel is a state of all its citizens’ she was immediately reprimanded by Benjamin Netanyahu who declared ‘“First of all, Israel is not a country of all its citizens. According to the nation-state law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish nation’.

According to the IHRA telling the truth is anti-Semitic. The examples of racism are legion from protests in Afula against the sale of a house to an Arab to the edict, by the Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid public servant that forbids renting homes to Arabs.

It is claimed that Israel is a Jewish state. What this means in practice is that Jews receive preferential treatment. 93% of Israeli state land is barred to Arabs because it is Jewish national land. Britain is officially a Christian state but the rights and duties of Jews are no different from Christians.  If a Jewish person were told that they couldn’t rent a house because they weren’t Christian that would rightly be termed anti-Semitic yet it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to criticise the same thing in Israel.

The IHRA has been panned by academics and legal scholars. According to Geoffrey Robertson QC the IHRA definition is, ‘not fit for purpose’.  Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ Hugh Tomlinson QC declared that the IHRA had ‘a potential chilling effect’ on free speech.  Even the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, complained in written testimony to the US House of Representatives that ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech’.

We understand why you agreed to endorse the IHRA last August. However appeasement only emboldens the aggressor. In recent months two members of Unite locally have been suspended for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’. Both are anti-racist activists and one is Black.

The time has come to declare that we are not going to allow this continuing attack on socialists and anti-racists, in the name of the fight against anti-Semitism. Widening the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel benefits no one, least of all Jews.

Only last week Panorama broadcast a vicious, one-sided and blatantly dishonest attack on Jeremy Corbyn. No one from Jewish Voices for Labour was interviewed.

We therefore ask that Unite representatives on the NEC are instructed to withdraw their support for the IHRA.

Furthermore, at the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton you promised that Unite would affiliate nationally to JVL.  The time has come to honour that promise.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Summary of decisions of the July 2014 Unite Policy Conference

Policy on Israel/Palestine

Work with other NGOs and all other supportive bodies in the UK and around the world and develop a Unite campaigning and leverage strategy around Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) within the next 12 months, notably against complicit companies involved in the occupation, the apartheid wall and the illegal settlements, through workforce pressure, contracts and pension funds, and encourage members to call on supermarkets and retailers to stop using companies which export goods from illegal settlements