Fake Charity ‘Campaign Against “AntiSemitism” ’ Attacks Tony Greenstein - Author of Petition to Charity Commission

Hatchet job by the CAA

The ‘New International Definition of Anti-Semitism’  Saying Anything That Upsets Zionist Propaganda Organisations like the CAA

I have to confess that I felt a certain embarrassment at the fact that Israel’s favourite propaganda organisation in this country, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, had not until yesterday attacked me.  Indeed searching their site I came up with no mentions whatsoever of my name!

I am however pleased to announce that as a result of my campaign, I have now gone within a week from 0 to 3 appearances on the CAA website!

However by launching a petition questioning their charity registration I have brought the wrath of god on my head (I assume that that’s not anti-Semitic!).  It seems as if the CAA had some difficulty deciding how best to approach the matter.  It was clearly important to attack me but the question was how.  In the end they opted for the hackneyed ‘left=right’ formulation ‘TonyGreenstein’s attempt to shut down Campaign Against Antisemitism showcases thesimilarities between far-left and far-right’. 

some of Gideon Falter, CAA Chairman's directorships

I guess this shows something of a lack of imagination but what can you expect from people whose only answer to anything is to shout ‘anti-Semitism’?

The idea that the left and right are really one and the same has a good pedigree.  No less  than Adolf Hitler pursued this particular theme as part of his belief in the International Jewish Conspiracy Theory. In a speech on 28th July 1922 Hitler spoke of how:

The Jews were a ‘capitalist people who ‘found a way to lay their hands on the fourth estate. [the proletariat] The Jew founded the Social Democratic, the Communist Movement… On the Right, he attempted to intensify all existing wrongs to such an extent that [the worker] … would be provoked beyond measure.’

It is also idiotic.  Because some on the Left support Brexit and the BNP do, does that mean that the Left=BNP?  Perhaps because both dogs and cats have tails that dog=cat?  It is an absurd process of ‘logic’.

My place in infamy is assured!

However the CAA is nothing if not crude.  They say that they are not surprised that Jenny Tonge ‘signed up to a petition proposed by notorious antisemite Tony Greenstein.’  To make such a statement, without a whiff of evidence, is clearly defamatory.  The CAA is increasingly being forced into assertions of anti-Semitism without any underlying or justifying rationale.

The CAA referred to a hack article in the ‘paper wot supported Hitler’ the Daily Mail Online attacking the petition which noted that ‘We are extremely grateful to Baroness Deech, Bob Blackman MP, Matthew Offord MP and Mike Freer MP, all of whom rushed to defend our work.’  They are all Tories, not a species usually known for their hostility to racism.  I can’t remember any of the above supporting the Dubs amendment supporting the admission of child refugees into Britain.  But then the ‘anti-Semitism’ of the CAA has little if anything to do with what most people consider to be racism.

The CAA explain that ‘Mr Greenstein is to be squarely defined as an antisemite under the International Definition of Antisemitism, which states that “Denying the…intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people at the hands of National Socialist Germany…during World War II” is antisemitic.’  It is in fact the International Holocaust Definition of Anti-Semitism.    The IHRA definition uses more cautious phrases such as 'might' or 'could' but for the CAA the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism outlaws anti-Zionism.

Certainly denying the intentionality of the genocide of Jews, and others during the Holocaust would indeed be anti-Semitic.  But of course I have never done so.  What they are objecting to is the fact that I have drawn attention to the fact that the Nazis, quite consciously, supported the Zionist movement in Germany prior to the outbreak of war. 

That is a fact that Zionist historians themselves, like for example Lucy Dawidowicz and Francis Nicosia have admitted.  I realise that it is painful but that’s how life is.  What it isn’t however is anti-Semitic.  Unless the truth is also anti-Semitic.

On 28th January 1935 Lucy Dawidowic writes in her book ‘War Against the Jews’ that Reinhardt Heydrich, who Gerald Reitlinger rightly describes as the “real engineer of the final solution” issued a directive stating:

‘the activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organizations that are engaged in the occupational restructuring of the Jews for agriculture and manual trades prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.’  These organisations therefore ‘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)’. [Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, pp.118, citing Mommsen 'Der Nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat pp.78/9 and Nicosia, Zionism and anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.119.

In May 1935 Schwarze Korps, which was the paper of the SS, wrote in a similar vein:

the Zionists adhere to a strict racial position and by emigrating to Palestine they are helping to build their own Jewish state.... The assimilation-minded Jews deny their race and insist on their loyalty to Germany or claim to be Christians because they have been baptised in order to subvert National Socialist principles.  [Randolph Braham, The Politics of Genocide – The Holocaust in Hungary, Vol. 1. Columbia University Press, 1981 p. 484, fn. 94., 5 May 1935, L. Dawidowicz, p.118, citing Karl Schleunes, The twisted road to Auschwitz – Nazi policy towards the Jews 1933-39, 1970].

Just as today people like Robert Spencer, one of the founders of the Alt-Right movement in the USA, support Israel as a fellow ethnic nationalist state.  Indeed the phenomenon of white supremacists and Islamaphobes supporting Israel as a racial state that they would like to emulate is common throughout Europe, from Le Pen to Geert Wilders to Herr Strache.

In 1936, the Palestine Post reported the demand that:

… the German Zionist Federation be given recognition by the Government as the only instrument for the exclusive control of German Jewish life was made by the Executive of that body in a proclamation today. All German Jewish organizations, it was declared, should be dominated by the Zionist spirit. [http://www.counterpunch.org/2002/12/23/51-documents/ Lenni Brenner, 51 Documents, 23.12.02.]

So well established is the close relationship between the Zionist movement and the Nazis established that it is barely worth arguing.  The Zionists, when the Nazis came to power, welcomed their arrival as confirmation of their thesis that Jews had no place in another peoples’ land. 

Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of Labour Zionism’s daily paper, Davar, saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.  [Nicosia, ZANG, p.91]  Rabbi Joachim Prinz, one of the leaders of German Zionism and later President of the American Jewish Congress and Vice Chairman of the World Jewish Congress admitted that:

“It was morally disturbing to seem to be considered as the favoured children of the Nazi Government, particularly when it dissolved the anti-Zionist youth groups, and seemed in other ways to prefer the Zionists. The Nazis asked for a 'more Zionist behaviour.” [Joachim Prinz, Zionism under the Nazi Government, Young Zionist (London, November 1937), p.18]

Nor is this simply in the past.  Zionism is based on the idea of the rejection of the idea of a Jewish diaspora, it is called ‘negation of the diaspora’.  Of course there is a contradiction between the fact of the existence of Jewish communities outside Israel and the Zionist belief that it is only in Israel that a Jewish life can be fulfilled.  However whenever there is a rise of anti-Semitism (as oppose to the fake kind, anti-Zionism) then Zionism responds as it always has.

This is why, with the election of Trump and the coming to power of people like Steve Bannon of Breitbart and the Alt-Right as his Strategic Advisor, we see that Zionism is reacting once again in the ways that Zionism has traditionally reacted.   It welcomes genuine anti-Semitism, it seeks to work with it.  Hence why Mort Klein and the Zionist Organisation of America invited Bannon to its annual gala dinner.  In what is a familiar refrain he says that as Bannon is a friend of Israel he cannot be anti-Semitic. Bannon and Breitbart: Friends of Israel, not anti-Semites.

In America this has caused liberal Zionists considerable anguish.  After all they have been brought up with the idea that Zionism is opposed to ‘anti-Semitism’ which they have been told manifests itself as opposition to Israel and yet when it comes to anti-Semitism of the far-Breitbart Right, Zionism has no objections. 

The Jewish Forward, a liberal Zionist paper seemed shell-shocked, not only by Trump’s victory and the open anti-Semitism of his supporters, but at the welcome they received from the Israeli government and the Zionist movement.  In what seemed to be a journey of self-discovery How Steve Bannon and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time, the Forward’s Naomi Zeveloff declared that:

‘though it would seem impossible to hate Jews but love the Jewish state, these two viewpoints are not as contradictory as they appear.

Zeveloff cited Steven Cohen, a sociologist at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion that there is “little correlation” between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and that “Many people who dislike Jews like Israel and many people who are critical toward Israel are affectionate toward Jews.”

This might seem like bread and butter to some of us, a statement of the obvious, but to those who have been brought up on anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism propaganda, it is indeed a revelation.

Zeveloff was shocked by the fact that although Trump 'has professed an ultra-right view of Israel... many of Trump’s followers spout anti-Semitism.'  Zeveloff cites Yael Sternhell, a Tel Aviv University professor of history and American studies, that "As long as Jews are in Israel fighting the ‘good fight’ with the Arab world as a bastion of American ideals and values in the Middle East, then they are very useful and admirable allies,” but “Once they are home demanding a multi-cultural democracy, demanding that the country accommodate their religion, their belief and their custom that is a different story.”

The CAA’s hatchet job is having none of this.  Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are one and the same.  It says that ‘Mr Greenstein may be known also for the company he keeps: often appearing supporting Jackie Walker, who has also (twice) suspended by the Labour Party for antisemitism. Ms Walker’s antisemitism is well known’. 

I am of course very happy to keep company with Jackie Walker, and note only that this article is libelous of her too!  McCarthyite guilt-by-association is one of the favourite ploys of the CAA.

The CAA are clearly worried about my accusation that their ‘anti-fascist’ work was merely a façade, window dressing for their real purpose of attacking anti-Zionist groups and anti-Zionism.  They say that my assertion to this effect ‘will no doubt raise eyebrows’ with the Charity Commission ‘since, as it is well known that challenging fascist neo-Nazis is a primary focus of our work, and has been since our campaign was founded.’   

It is also well known that the CAA was founded in the midst of Operation Protective Edge, Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, in order to combat opposition to that war, which it deemed ‘anti-Semitic’ I’m not sure how they keep a straight face.

The CAA also make reference to minor convictions of mine 33 years ago.  Not only are they long spent but this is in itself an offence under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and of course nothing to do with my views whatsoever.  But then again the CAA have no alternative but to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

What is becoming clear though is that the CAA is in receipt of some of the $50m that Gilad Erdan’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs has budgeted to combat BDS.  There are also a number of other allegations concerning them which I shall reveal in due course.