The Goebbels/Pollard
Technique of Repeating a Falsehood Does Not Make it True
Every week without fail there is another story
in the Jewish Chronicle campaign to ‘prove’ that Jeremy Corbyn’s is
anti-Semitic. Its editor, Stephen Pollard, is a former editor of the Daily
Express and a member of the cold war Henry Jackson
Society, a virulently Islamaphobic organisation whose Associate Director
is the racist Douglas Murray.
Geoffrey Alderman is
a right-wing eccentric and Zionist. He has been a columnist at the Jewish
Chronicle since 2002. He is also an academic at the private University of
Buckingham. He was rightly condemned when he wrote
that ‘Few events... have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks
than news of the death of the Italian so-called "peace activist"
Vittorio Arrigoni.’ Vittorio’
was a member of the
International Solidarity Movement who was murdered in Gaza.
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| Geoffrey Alderman |
He was once a member of the Board of Deputies
but left to the sound of booing and hissing and was called a ‘communal gadfly’ a title that he has
somewhat taken to heart since he has compiled an anthology
of his writings based on this description.
Alderman’s primary claim to fame is as a
Jewish historian. His book The
Jewish Community in British Politics was the subject of a concerted
effort by the Board of Deputies to persuade him to excise certain parts
concerning racism in the Jewish community and in particular that nearly 2% of
Hackney Jews had voted for the neo-Nazi National Front.
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| Above the Zionist Attack on the Labour Party |
When the Anti-Nazi League, a mass anti-fascist
group, was created in 1977 to meet the challenge of a growing National Front, which had attracted over 100,000 votes in the GLC elections and
large votes in local elections in cities such as Leicester and Bradford, the
Board of Deputies attacked it, with what Maurice Ludmer, editor of
Searchlight Anti-fascist Magazine described as
‘"all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were
watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form
of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination
to repeat every mistake of that era.’ [Searchlight
41, November 1978]
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| Another non-story in the Jewish Chronicle - its enemies always 'rant' - the poor dear above had to be 'consoled' after having been told by John Prescott a few home truths |
Alderman was one of the few prominent British
Jews who criticised the Board of Deputies for attacking the ANL rather than the fascists.
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| Another non-story in the Jewish Chronicle - they hate the idea that Corbyn meets Jews aren't part of the Zionist clique |
What is remarkable about the current wave of
anti-Semitism hysteria is the almost complete unanimity of the Zionists about
Labour’s non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ and in particular Jeremy Corbyn’s
‘anti-Semitism’.
The lynch mob has been led by Stephen Pollard.
Writing in 2019 in the Daily
Mail he stated that ‘It took me a long time before I felt it appropriate to describe Jeremy
Corbyn as an anti-Semite.’ This is such a blatant lie that it is a wonder that Pollard's
nose hasn’t already grown to twice its size!
Even before Corbyn was
elected as Labour leader the Jewish Chronicle was accusing him of consorting
with holocaust deniers, such as Paul Eisen.
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| All the major Jewish news papers sing the same song - is it any wonder that many Jews respond that 'antisemitism' is a worry though individually they never experience it? |
Last July, in their United
We Stand editorials, the 3 major Zionist papers in Britain accused Corbyn
of posing an ‘existential threat to
Jewish life in this country’. Who else
but an anti-Semite could do this?
The Foreign Editor of the
Jewish News, Stephen Oryszczuk heavily
criticised the joint editorial in an interview with Canary saying that
‘The question is whether
there is an intention to taint him. Some are certainly out to get him, but
without revealing sources, all I can say is that it’s sometimes questionable where
these things come from.’ Oryszczuk described what happened as a ‘character
assassination.’
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| One of the emails sent out weekly by Pollard |
Oryszczuk was immediately
put on ‘sick leave’ and has I understand been forced out.
Alderman has
never been one to pull his punches. In the Spectator he has written a devastating
critique of the idea that Corbyn is anti-Semitic.
 |
| Freedland and Finkelstein join hands to demonise Corbyn |
Alderman first takes issue with Danny
Finkelstein, The Times Associate Editor and Tory Peer, who was a Board
Member of the Gatestone Institute. The GI promotes Tommy Robinson, Geert
Wilders and a whole host of racists, fascists and Islamaphobes. The Gatestone
Institute, which is funded by American billionaire Nina Rosenwald, the “sugar
mama of anti-Muslim hate”,
described
Robinson as ‘a British free-speech activist and Islam critic.’ I hate to think what they might have
called Hitler. A Jew critic?
Finkelstein criticised
Corbyn for not having condemned the anti-Semitism of John Hobson when Corbyn
reviewed his book, ‘Imperialism: A Study’ 8 years ago. Alderman is absolutely right when he writes that ‘There was absolutely no need for Corbyn to have drawn attention to them
in his foreward.’ It was as he points out 10 lines in a 400 page
book.
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| Pollard has been waging a non-stop war against Corbyn for over 3 years |
Alderman
demolishes the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan MP’s fatuous assertion that
‘‘Over the past three years… the
Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of
anti-Jewish racism. This problem simply did not exist in the party before his
election as leader.’
Alderman
points out that ‘leading socialist
activists – for instance Sidney and Beatrice Webb’ were ‘unashamed
exponents’ of anti-Semitism. Sydney
Webb described
the European continental parties as ‘Jew
ridden’ but fortunately this wasn’t true in the British Labour Party
because ‘there’s no money in it.’ Alderman was clear:
‘The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of
supporting Jewish communal initiatives’
and then
proceeds to reel off a whole long list of examples of where Corbyn has
supported local Jewish initiatives such as saving the cemetery of the West
London synagogue from the developers. Writing that
‘I could
fill this entire article with a list of philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has
signed since he was first elected as Labour MP for Islington North in 1983.’
Alderman ‘deliberately
omitted from this discussion any consideration of Corbyn’s attitude to Zionism
and whether anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.’ and he concludes that
‘the grounds for labelling him an
anti-Semite simply do not exist.’
Which is a
pretty damning indictment of the fallacious and dishonest campaign mounted by
people like Pollard, who is the Joseph Goebbels of the British Jewish
community. Pollard has turned the JC into a
Zionist propaganda rag and its circulation has dropped like a stone to less
than 20,000, many of them given away.
Which is why the JC is facing severe
financial problems.
Pollard made
his reasons for mounting the fake anti-Semitism campaign against Corbyn crystal
clear last year. In an article Labour's
new guidelines show it is institutionally antisemitic Pollard attacked the
attempt to remove or neutralise some of the examples of the IHRA. The problem
was that
‘instead
of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised
the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be
antisemitic.’
As we always said the
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was about Israel not anti-Semitism. This has always
been Pollard and the Board of Deputies’s only concern. If Corbyn had been genuinely anti-Semitic but pro-Zionist then Pollard would have raised no objection
to Corbyn.
In just the same way, the
execrable Margaret Hodge has become a hero to the Jewish Chronicle. This is the same Hodge of whom Pollard wrote
in the Daily Express that ‘it’s difficult to imagine a more blatant, shameful
and utterly contemptible piece of two-faced hypocrisy than the behaviour of
Margaret Hodge. ” Except that he wasn’t describing her attack on Jeremy Corbyn
as a ‘fucking anti-Semite.’
Of course Pollard’s
description of Hodge could not be bettered when it comes to his own behaviour
and his selective attitude to anti-Semitism.
When in 2009 the Tories left
the European Peoples Party in the European
Parliament they formed the European
Conservative Reform Group. However the parties that were included in this
group included the anti-Semitic Polish Law and Justice Party
and Latvia’s For
Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK. This met with a lot of criticism.
Jonathan Freedland, who was
then more vocal about genuine anti-Semitism wrote
that ‘there was a time when no
self-respecting British politician would have gone anywhere near such people’. He described how Michal Kaminski, the Chairman of the ECR,
began his career in the
National Rebirth of Poland movement, inspired by a 1930s fascist ideology that
dreamed of a racially pure nation. Even today, the PiS slogan is "Poland
for Poles", understood to be a door slammed in the face of non-Catholics.
In 2001 he upbraided the president for daring to apologise for a 1941 pogrom in
the town of Jedwabne which left hundreds of Jews dead. Kaminski said there was
nothing to apologise for – at least not until Jews apologised for what he
alleged was the role Jewish partisans and Jewish communists had played
alongside the Red Army in Poland.’
Freedland also pointed out
that members of the Latvian LNNK party
‘have played a leading part in the annual
parade honouring veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS.
Lest we forget, the SS were the crack troops of Nazi genocide; the Latvian
Legion included conscripts, but at least a third were volunteers, among them
men with the blood of tens of thousands of Jews on their hands. It is in honour
of those killers that Cameron's new buddies march through the streets of Riga.’
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| When it comes to a genuine anti-Semite Pollard is all over him like a rash |
Pollard you might think
would have lambasted the Tories, such is his concern about anti-Semitism. Not a
bit of it. The same man who damns Corbyn wrote a response
defending Kaminski. Kaminski was
‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews
in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’
Because Kaminski was a
strong supporter of Israel he had to be supported. And this is the dilemma of Zionism. Most
anti-Semites love Israel. The neo-Nazi founder of America’s alt Right, Richard
Spencer, even describes himself as a White
Zionist and Tommy Robinson described himself as a proud
Zionist. So did Norway’s mass killer Anders
Breivik. There is nothing incompatible about loving Zionism and Israel and
hating Jews. Most of today’s far-Right do. Indeed if you are a genuine
anti-Semite then you will also be a sincere anti-Semite.
The only ‘anti-Semites’ that
Pollard and co. are opposed to are anti-Zionists. However there are still some, a diminishing
number, of Zionists, who see through their own lies. One of them is Geoffrey Alderman.
Tony Greenstein
Jeremy
Corbyn
8 May 2019
Is Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite? I began researching the answer to this
question well before Danny Finkelstein’s recent revelation in the Times that eight years ago Corbyn had written a
glowing foreward to a new edition of Imperialism: A Study, written
by the radical economist John Atkinson Hobson, first published in 1902.
Context is paramount. That’s why I feel obliged to censure Finkelstein’s
exposé. We all know what Hobson thought of Jews and capitalism. But to conclude
– as Finkelstein does – that in writing the foreward Corbyn had praised a
‘deeply anti-Semitic book’ is to give a totally false impression of what this
influential study is actually about. In a text running to almost 400 pages
there are merely a dozen or so lines which we would call anti-Semitic. There
was absolutely no need for Corbyn to have drawn attention to them in his
foreward.
It’s quite true that the Labour Party that Corbyn leads has been dogged
in recent years with incidents in which a significant number of its members,
after being publicly pilloried as anti-Semites, have been expelled from the party.
Worse than that, earlier this year a group of MPs resigned from the party,
citing rampant anti-Semitism and a failure to deal with it as one of the
reasons for their departure.
The group included the Jewish MP Luciana Berger, and also the non-Jewish
MP Joan Ryan, formerly chair of Labour Friends of Israel. In her
resignation speech, Ryan suggested that the ‘huge shame’ of anti-Semitism did
not exist until Corbyn became party leader. Criticising Corbyn for ‘presiding
over a culture of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel,’ Ryan insisted that ‘Over
the past three years… the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected
with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism. This problem simply did not exist in
the party before his election as leader.’
Really? After all, hasn’t anti-Jewish racism existed in the party since
its creation, over a century ago? In the late 19th century, wasn’t
the trade-union movement (out of ‘the bowels’ of which the party emerged, as
Ernie Bevin once graphically observed) positively riddled with such prejudice?
Weren’t leading socialist activists – for instance Sidney and Beatrice Webb
– unashamed exponents of it? To point to these irrefutable facts is neither to
excuse such racism nor to imply that it wasn’t present in other political parties.
Indeed it was and still is.
But my present concern is with Jeremy Corbyn, by which I mean Corbyn the
person. For whilst it’s one thing to accuse him of being ‘soft’ on
anti-Semitism, tolerating it and even befriending some of its exponents, it’s quite
another to level the charge against him personally. What truth – if any – could
there possibly be in such an accusation?
The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of
supporting Jewish communal initiatives. For instance he was recently supportive of Jewish efforts to facilitate the speedy issue of death certificates
by the north London coroner. In 2015 he took part in a ceremony in his
Islington constituency to commemorate the founding of the North London
Synagogue. In 2010 he put his name to an Early Day Motion (tabled by Diane
Abbott) calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni
Jews in Britain. Indeed I could fill this entire article with a list of
philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has signed since he was first elected as Labour
MP for Islington North in 1983.
In 1987 the West London Synagogue approached Islington Council with a
startling proposal: to sell its original cemetery to property developers,
destroying the gravestones and digging-up and reburying the bodies lying under
them. This cemetery (dating from 1843) was not merely of great historic and
architectural interest – in the view of orthodox Jews, the deliberate
destruction of a cemetery is sacrilegious. So when Islington Council granted
the planning application, a Jewish-led and ultimately successful campaign was
launched to have the decision reversed. I was part of that campaign. So was
Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, the then-leader of Islington Council (1982-92), whose
decision to permit the destruction of the cemetery was eventually overturned,
was none other than Margaret Hodge (though it is unclear whether she personally
was in favour of the proposal).
I have deliberately omitted from this discussion any consideration of
Corbyn’s attitude to Zionism and whether anti-Zionism is inherently
anti-Semitic. All I will say here – as a proud Zionist – is that in my view
context is, again, paramount.
I will agree that from time to time, as backbench MP and party leader,
Corbyn has acted unwisely. But the grounds for labelling him an anti-Semite
simply do not exist.
Geoffrey Alderman is Professor of Politics, University of Buckingham.
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