Labour’s Thought Police claims another victim - Black Jewish activist Jackie Walker

Labour’s McCarthyist purge is led by the British representatives of the Zionist & racist Israeli Labour Party 

Black Jewish Momentum activist suspended after being targeted by racists & Zionists

Jackie Walker is Vice Chair of both Momentum and Thanet Labour Party.  She is Black and of Jewish descent.  She has just been suspended as part of Labour’s racist witch hunt.  As a Black and Jewish anti-racist she was perhaps an inevitable target.  Most of the victims so far have been Muslims or Black people, with a couple of Jewish anti-racists thrown in for good measure.  She has been suspended at the instigation of the Israel Advocacy Movement.

It is essential that Momentum now finds its voice and opposes this witch hunt and the suspension of Jackie Walker or else the Right will walk all over it.  It looks as if the Right's campaign over 'anti-semitism' has already been responsible for a poor showing by Labour in the Council elections.  

Either Jon Lansman as Chair of Momentum gives a lead in this and breaks off his cosy chats with those in Labour Friends of Israel/JLM who are spearheading the witch hunt or he should be removed as soon as possible.

It is also essential that Jeremy Corbyn now remembers his roots, his work in the past for the Palestinians and begins to grow a backbone once again

The IAM is an organisation that proclaims that its mission is to 'successfully repel the libellous accusations Israel's detractors frequently hurl.' 

The Israeli Labour Party that the Labour Zionists are in a World Union with were close friends of the White Supremacist Apartheid state in South Africa

It is an organisation which denies that there was a Nakba (Catastrophe) when 3//4 million Arabs were expelled from Palestine.  It is a Nakba denial movement and operates according to the same principles of Holocaust denial.  A refusal to accept the evidence of those who lived through what happened and even the archives of those who did the expelling.  It takes issue with the Zionist historian Benny Morris who, in the 1980's, use recently opened Hagannah (Labour's terrorist militia) archives to show,  without a doubt that the Palestinian refugees were expelled.  Morris does not condemn Israel for doing so, on the contrary he believes they should have expelled all the refugees and not 85% of them.

John Vorster, South Africa's Apartheid Prime Minister was a member of the Broederbond and interned for supporting the Nazis in the war

The IAM summarises Morris' argument as follows:

'The refugee problem was caused by attacks by Jewish forces on Arab villages and towns and by the inhabitants’ fear of such attacks, compounded by expulsions, atrocities, and rumors of atrocities — and by the crucial Israeli Cabinet decision in June 1948 to bar a refugee return.'

This is born out my the archives, witnesses who participated in these events and by e.g. Menachem Begin, former Likud Prime Minister, who boasts that the massacre at Deir Yassin village near Jerusalem, provoked the flight of the Arabs.  

According to the Israeli Advocacy Movement

As many of the Arabs were recent migrants or the children/grandchildren of recent migrants, they simply returned to the neighbouring countries they’d originally came from when they fled.

Many Arab villages were systematically depopulated by the Arab Liberation Army (an army of volunteer soldiers from Arab countries sponsored by the Arab League) and local gangs loyal to the Arab Higher Committee (the de facto Palestinian government headed by the Grand Mufti). The empty villages were then transformed into military positions for anti-Jewish attacks.

These are the Zionist equivalent of holocaust deniers.  But these racists and revisionists are the ones who are driving the witch hunt.  What we need is an investigation into racism in the Compliance Unit of the Labour Party and the suspension of its head, John Stolliday pending such an investigation.

Jacqueline’s real crime is that she is also an anti-Zionist.  This is intolerable to Stolliday and Iain McNicol, Labour’s General Secretary.  

Jackie Walker's comments on Jewish involvement in the slave trade - certain subjects are verboten

Jackie's partner, Graham Bash, who is a life long Jewish activist in the Labour Party, has issued an open letter to those who have suspended Jackie Walker:

Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party

As a Jew (all my life) and Labour Party member (48 years) I am outraged at  the way allegations of anti-Semitism  have been used to silence legitimate  criticism of Israel and undermine  Jeremy Corbyn as my party’s leader. 

I know what anti-Semitism is. I was  brought up to learn how the Jewish  East End fought with the dockers  against Mosley’s fascists at Cable  Street. I was told at school how it was  a pity that Hitler didn’t finish off the job  of murdering all Jews. And very quickly  I learned what it was like to be made to  feel an outsider. It was hardly  surprising that I started going on anti-  fascist demos in my late teens and  very soon afterwards joined the Labour  Party, which I remain a member of to  this day. 

I know what anti-Semitism is. Apart  from socialist, anti-racist politics, my  other love is football. How many times  as a West Ham fan have I had to  endure my own team’s fans singing “I  never felt more like gassing the Jews”?  Or being attacked by my team’s own fans  for daring to put up a ‘West Ham fans  United Against Racism’ banner at  Upton Park. 

I know what anti-Semitism is - I have a  sensitive ear for anti-Semitic  comments - and, without doubt, the  place I have encountered it least is  within the Labour Party. In 48 years, I  have encountered anti-Semitism once,  perhaps twice, compared to countless  episodes outside. 

Of course I have encountered deep  antipathy to Israel, and its murderous  actions to deny justice for Palestinians,  but that is what I would expect from a  democratic anti-racist party – and  these are views shared by me and  many other peace loving socialist  Jews. 

Throughout most of my years in the  party, I have worked closely with  Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell.  They have always been the first to  fight injustice and inequality and from  them there has never been a hint of  anti-Semitism. 

What is happening in the party today is an attempt to cynically use rare  examples, and usually false  allegations, of anti-Semitism as part of  a McCarthyite witchhunt against  supporters of Jeremy. As if to prove  the point, the latest victim is my own  partner and anti-racist campaigner,  Jackie Walker, of mixed heritage (Afro-  Caribbean and Jewish), outrageously  suspended from the Labour Party,  simply for telling the truth that her  Jewish ancestors were involved in  financing the Slave Trade, that the  African holocaust was even worse  than the Jewish holocaust, and that  anti-Semitism is not a major problem in  Corbyn’s Labour Party. 

I am proud of the heritage and family  traditions that helped my development  on the road to being an anti-racist,  international socialist. This current  witchhunt will not deflect me, and  countless thousands like me, from the  struggle for justice worldwide and for a  socialist Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. 

Graham Bash 

The Israeli Labour Party, when it was in power, established the closest of relations with the Apartheid Government in South Africa.  It partnered a joint arms and steel company in South Africa, Iskandoor (an offshoot of Histadrut’s Koor Industries conglomerate – Histadrut being both Israel’s trade union federation and the 2^nd largest employer at the time).  Israeli Labour shared nuclear technology with South Africa in return for financing its own nuclear weapons projects.

Israeli Labour is a party that was responsible for the expulsion of ¾ million Palestinians, the massacre of thousands of them and a refusal to readmit any refugees for fear of endangering the Jewish demographic majority in Israel.  It is because of this fear that Arabs might outnumber Jews that it sponsored the Koenig Plan of Judaisation in the Galilee and similar programmes in the Negve.  If you want a comparison try the DeJewification programs of the Nazis and you’ll get the flavour.  Same mentality even if expulsion rather than extermination was the method.

Israeli Labour is a party that kept Israel’s Palestinians under military rule for 18 years, confiscated their land, refused to recognise ½ their villages and detained political radicals without trial indefinitely.  An Israeli Labour Party whose leader talks about it not being an ‘Arab loving’ party.

I only met Jackie Walker last month when she came to chair the Brighton and Hove Momentum meeting.  Ironically the subject of my suspension came up when the meeting voted, with only 1 against, to oppose the suspension.  Jackie spoke briefly of the fact that there seemed to be more and more suspensions locally, never dreaming that she might fall victim.

What was Jackie’s offence?  She wrote ‘many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Carribean.’

This is a statement of fact that can be demonstrated in many an academic journal.  When taking an MA in imperial history at London University I studied the slave trade and came across Jewish involvement quite often.  It is a fact.  Jews weren’t the only people involved in the trade, nor did they play a predominant role but nor were they absent.  It is quite proper to point out that Jews have not only been oppressed in history but have also been persecutors.  Just as today, Jews are primarily oppressors in their role as Zionists whereas anti-Semitism is at a historic low. 

What we are seeing today is that the Zionist movement is using the marginal existence of anti-Semitism, it is more a prejudice than a form of state racism, and redefining it in order to fool the more gullible and guilt tripped left, like Owen Jones, Jon Lansman and now John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn.

Of course fascists and anti-Semitic site the fact of Jewish involvement to say that it was the Jews who were responsible for the slave trade.  But since when do we take our cue from fascists and anti-Semites?  Are we to restrict what we say in case they misuse it?  They will anyway.  Christians too played their full part.  There is for example the notorious example of the Church of England Codrington plantation in Barbados.  The CoE resisted the abolition of slavery till the end.  The Quakers too were heavily involved in both slavery and ironically opposition to slavery.  I’m not aware of any major Jewish participation in the anti-slavery movement though I have no doubt that given that Manchester was one of the main centres of the British anti-slavery movement that there would have been many individual Jews involved, since Manchester had the second largest Jewish community in Britain after London.  One anti-slavery activist who was well known was a Rabbi G. Gottheil.

Below is an article from the Jewish Journal on Jewish involvement in slavery in The Netherlands.  The Jewish Journal according to its website is the largest Jewish weekly newspaper in the United States outside of New York City.’ 

There is also an excellent review of the Nation of Islam’s The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews: Volume One by Winthrop D Jordan September 1995  Jordan points out that the main Jewish involvement was in the Brazil and Suriname trade and it was mainly Dutch Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal who were involved.  Jewish involvement in the British and French slave trade was thought to be minimal though there were considerable numbers in the southern American states.

The Nation of Islam has a reputation for anti-Semitism being a Black separatist group.  In reality it apes and mimicks white anti-Semitism as an oppressed group and it is also a reaction to Jewish racism. It has been particularly attacked by racist Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League which lauded Ronald Reagan and awarded him its Torch of Liberty award and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which in 1988, awarded Reagan, supporter of the Argentinian Junta and the Nicaraguan Contras, with the “Humanitarian of the Year” award despite his speech at Bitburg cemetery in Germany where he said that the SS were “victims of the Nazis just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”   The ADL has a reputation for hypocrisy (it has also supported John Hagee President of Christians United 4 Israel when he described Hitler as god’s hunter sent to drive Jews to Israel).

The suspension of Jackie Walker for daring to raise the topic of Jewish involvement in the slave trade, as if its anti-Semitic to even discuss these matters, is outrageous.  We now have a list of forbidden topics laid down by our McCarthyist masters.

We should demand the closing down of the Compliance Unit and the dismissal of both Stolliday and McNicol.

Tony Greenstein

How culpable were Dutch Jews in the slave trade?

Cnaan Liphshiz and Iris Tzur, JTA

Posted on Dec. 26, 2013 at 1:33 pm

Amsterdam musicians dressing up as Black Pete, the slave of the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas. (Cnaan Liphshiz/JTA)

On a busy street near the Dutch Parliament, three white musicians in blackface regale passersby with holiday tunes about the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, and his slave, Black Pete.

Many native Dutchmen view dressing up as Black Pete in December as a venerable tradition, but others consider it a racist affront to victims of slavery. With Holland marking the 150th anniversary of abolition this year, the controversy over Black Pete has reached new heights. Hundreds demonstrated against the custom in Amsterdam last month, and more than 2 million signed a petition supporting it.

Through it all, Dutch Jews — some of whom celebrate their own version of the Black Pete custom, called “Hanukklaas” — have largely remained silent.

But that changed in October, when Lody van de Kamp, an unconventional Orthodox rabbi, wrote a scathing critique about it on Republiek Allochtonie, a Dutch news-and-opinion website. “The portrayal of ‘Peter the slave’ dates back to a period when we as citizens did not meet the social criteria that bind us today,” Van de Kamp wrote.

Speaking out against Black Pete is part of what van de Kamp calls his social mission, an effort that extends to reminding Dutch Jews of their ancestors’ deep involvement in the slave trade. In April, he is set to publish a book about Dutch Jewish complicity in the slave trade, an effort he hopes will sensitize Jews to slavery in general and to the Black Pete issue in particular.

“I wrote the book and I got involved in the Black Pete debate because of what I learned from my Dutch predecessors on what it means to be a rabbi — namely, to speak about social issues, not only give instructions on how to cook on Shabbat,” van de Kamp told JTA.

“Money was earned by Jewish communities in South America, partly through slavery, and went to Holland, where Jewish bankers handled it,” he said. “Non-Jews were also complicit, but so were we. I feel partly complicit.”

Though he holds no official position in the Dutch Jewish community, van de Kamp, 65, is among the best-known Orthodox rabbis in the Netherlands, a status earned through his several books on Dutch Jewry and frequent media appearances.

His forthcoming book, a historical novel entitled “The Jewish Slave,” follows an 18th-century Jewish merchant and his black slave as they investigate Dutch-owned plantations north of Brazil in the hope of persuading Jews to divest from the slave trade. In researching the book, van de Kamp discovered data that shocked him.

In one area of what used to be Dutch Guyana, 40 Jewish-owned plantations were home to a total population of at least 5,000 slaves, he says. Known as the Jodensavanne, or Jewish Savannah, the area had a Jewish community of several hundred before its destruction in a slave uprising in 1832. 

Nearly all of them immigrated to Holland, bringing their accumulated wealth with them.

Some of that wealth was on display last year in the cellar of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue, part of an exhibition celebrating the riches of the synagogue’s immigrant founders. Van de Kamp says the exhibition sparked his interest in the Dutch Jewish role in slavery, which was robust.

On the Caribbean island of Curacao, Dutch Jews may have accounted for the resale of at least 15,000 slaves landed by Dutch transatlantic traders, according to Seymour Drescher, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. At one point, Jews controlled about 17 percent of the Caribbean trade in Dutch colonies, Drescher said.

Jews were so influential in those colonies that slave auctions scheduled to take place on Jewish  holidays often were postponed, according to Marc Lee Raphael, a professor of Judaic studies at the College of William & Mary.

In the United States, the Jewish role in the slave trade has been a matter of scholarly debate for nearly two decades, prompted in part by efforts to refute the Nation of Islam’s claim that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. But in Holland, the issue of Jewish complicity is rarely discussed.

“This is because we in the Netherlands only profited from slavery but have not seen it in our own eyes,” van de Kamp said. “The American experience is different.”

The slavery issue is not van de Kamp’s first foray into controversial territory. In Jewish circles, he has a reputation as a contrarian with a penchant for voicing anti-establishment views.

That image was reinforced last year when he spoke out against a compromise the Dutch Jewish community had reached with the government over kosher slaughter. Designed to avert a total ban, the compromise placed some restrictions on kosher slaughter that Holland’s chief rabbis said did not violate Jewish law. Van de Kamp denounced the deal as an unacceptable infringement on religious freedom.

More recently, he angered Dutch activists by suggesting that vilifying Dutch Muslims helped generate anti-Semitism. He also advocated dialogue with professed Muslim anti-Semites at a time when Jewish groups were calling for their prosecution.

But his reputation as a maverick rabbi in a consensus–oriented community has also endeared van de Kamp to some supporters.

“He is in a league of his own,” says Bart Wallet, an Amsterdam University historian and expert on Jewish history. “From the sideline, he is free to criticize and does not have to conform to anything.”