Labour Against the Witchhunt Forms in Response to Expulsion of Moshe Machover – Join Us

The Compliance Unit and Iain McNicol Are The Last Bastion of the Right

prescient

See the Labour Against the Witchhunt Facebook Page

The time has come to fight back.  The Left simply cannot allow the Right to continue with expelling those they don’t like.  The Momentum leadership under Lansman, which should have taken on the fight against the witch hunt has, instead, got into bed with the witch hunters.  It was Lansman and his friends who laid the basis for Jackie Walker’s suspension from the Labour Party by removing Jackie from her position as Vice Chair of Momentum.  If people really want to see a radical and socialist government under Jeremy Corbyn we have to stop the witch hunt in its tracks.  Indeed we need to be rooting out the Blairite bureaucracy.

Iain McNicol - received a hero's welcome at Labour Friends of Israel - mastermind of the anti-Corbyn witch hunt

Labour Against the Witch hunt was formed on Saturday and we have a few simple positions;

• 1.      No auto exclusions  Everyone has the right to a hearing.  The Chakrabarti Report found that Labour’s disciplinary and complaints procedures “... lacked sufficient transparency, uniformity and expertise” and failed to observe “the vital legal principles of due process (or natural justice) and proportionality”.
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• 2.      It is unacceptable that there are differing definitions of anti-Semitism.  Anti-Semitism isn’t a difficult thing to define.  It is hostility or hatred of Jews.  You don’t need a 450 word definition unless your purpose is to conflate opposition to Zionism, the ideology that led to the foundation of the Israeli state and genuine anti-Semitism.

Corbyn has adopted the short, two sentence International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition

“Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The AWL's 'Stop the Purge' supports the purge of Ken Livingstone

This definition is itself too imprecise, open ended and uncertain.  What makes it unacceptable is that it introduces and lays the basis for 11 ‘examples’ of anti-Semitism, 7 of which relate to Israel.  In other words the whole purpose of the definition is to conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.  Whilst Corbyn has not adopted these 11 examples the Labour bureaucracy has.  We have therefore adopted the definition first espoused by Professor Brian Klug of Oxford University in his lecture ‘Echoes of Shattering Glass’ delivered in his 2014 lecture in Berlin’s Jewish Museum on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. 

‘antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.’

The article that triggered the  expulsion of Moshe Machover

 3.      Thirdly our demand is that the Compliance Unit is abolished.  It is completely undemocratic and unaccountable.  Instead all disciplinary action is to be taken by elected bodies in future.

It is important that LAW builds itself quickly in the coming months and engages in a series of activities, such as a picket of the NEC to demand the reinstatement of Moshe Machover to holding meetings and a conference.

A four person Executive Committee was elected – Jackie Walker, Stan Keable, Pete Firmin and Tony Greenstein.

Political Background

The Labour Party Conference just gone was a dismal and dispiriting time for Jeremy Newmark, Mike Katz and the Jewish Labour Movement/Labour Friends of Israel.

When Naomi Wimborne Iddrissi and Leah Levane got up to decry the false anti-Semitism smears of both organisations there was rapturous applause and even standing ovations.  When Jeremy Corbyn mentioned Palestine the audience got to their feet.  Nothing was guaranteed to elicit a cheer more than mention of Palestine.

I realise dear reader that you are unlike to be too sympathetic to Newmark and Katz but I ask you not to be too cold hearted either.  For two years they have campaigned incessantly to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  They have secured the suspension of Jackie Walker (twice) myself and even some non-Jews for ‘anti-Semitism’.  They have lobbied, pressurised, campaigned and of course briefed their friends in the Tory press.  It’s almost as if no one reads the Daily Mail in the Labour Party.

And then what?  None of it has made a blind bit of difference because the Labour Party conference swung to the Left.  What was the point of that £1m slush fund for Joan Ryan MP if nothing has changed?  Why Newmark even overcame his distaste for the Left and befriended and flattered Jon Lansman, the property millionaire owner of Momentum.  Ok he’s not that much to the left for you and me but to Newmark he is a raving communist. 

Newmark even fooled Lansman into thinking he was a socialist-Zionist of the Mapam stripe. (for those who don’t know Mapam, although Zionists, have tended to support certain basic civil liberties for Arabs in Israel – today they are part of Meretz and clinging onto a presence in the Knesset).  In fact Newmark goes along with the Occupation, house demolitions the lot.

To make matters even worse, first Free Speech on Israel held a meeting at Monday lunch time which was packed to the rafters and then Jewish Voices for Labour, despite being wet and woolly, held its inaugural rally on Monday evening, also packed to the rafters.  Even worse still two union bosses including Len McLuskey from Unite, attend pledging support.

LRC meeting in Brighton with Jackie Walker

And as if to make this really the Conference from hell, Jeremy Corbyn became the first Labour leader to snub the Labour Friends of Israel fringe meeting in 20 years.  Emily Thornberry, bless her heart, tried to comfort the assembled big wigs, Mark Regev and assorted Zionist nobodies with a tale of Corbyn being hard at work on his speech.  However he was caught on camera having a good time at the Daily Mirror piss up!  When Joan Ryan, Labour’s Tory MP for Enfield North read out a message from Corbyn there were cries of ‘where is he’ ‘why is he not here?’.  You see LFI expects Corbyn to attend to demonstrate they are still a force to be reckoned with.

It was reported that Iain McNicol, Labour’s crooked General Secretary, was given a hero’s reception and quite right too. When all is lost McNicol has always been steady as a rock.  He has been so reliable that it is hard to imagine he doesn’t have a formal relationship with the Israeli and US Embassies.  Paid or unpaid is anyone’s guess.

Rhea Wolfson on Labour's NEC, an AWL sympathiser supported Jackie Walker's referral to the National Constitutional Committee - spoke at the Stop the Purge meeting at LP Conference

Sure enough, when all else fails, then you have to fall back on that tried and trusted weapon, ‘Anti-Semitism’. So it was that Naomi was made the subject of a complaint because she had accused the JLM of running to the Telegraph and Mail.  How dare she say such a thing?  She mentioned Jews, well Zionists, in the same sentence as the press.  That is an ‘anti-Semitic trope’.  As Jamie Stern-Weiner points out the old anti-Semitic myth revolved around Jewish ownership and control of the media not briefing the press, but such a distinction really is being pedantic.  That means she is an anti-Semite and should be suspended if not expelled for her disgraceful speech.  Indeed everyone who stood and applauded her should be expelled for giving their approval although I accept that it might be difficult knowing who stood up and who didn’t (this can be solved by expelling all the conference delegates bar Progress supporters).

At the Free Speech on Israel meeting the Israeli speaker, Miko Peled argued in favour of free speech on Israel and all political issues.  He even mentioned ‘Holocaust yes or no’.  This was enough for the press to invent an allegation that Holocaust denial was the main topic of the meeting!  And because Tony Greenstein was present at the meeting Brighton and Hove Council’s Progress Leader Councillor Warren Morgan called for me to be expelled alongside saying that he wouldn’t invite Labour to hold a conference in Brighton again.  Kinda logical that.  Clearly both of us being Jewish we share equal responsibility for what each of us said in the meeting!  Eat your heart out Uncle Joe!

Tory Guido Fawkes is in full support of the JLM Witchhunt

And the coup de grace?  Well the JLM had been particularly annoyed by a paper that Labour Party Marxists had distributed at conference.  It contained an article by Professor Moshe Machover, an Israeli anti-Zionist and founder of Matzpen, a socialist organisation of Israelis and Arabs.  The article had the temerity to quote the Deputy Chief of the SS, Reinhard Heydrich in 1935 saying how much the Nazis favoured the Zionists as opposed to the ‘assimilationists’ in the German Jewish community.  Now it is irrelevant that this quote can be found in the book of Zionist Professor of Holocaust Studies, Francis Nicosia.  The fact that it is true is also irrelevant.  To repeat such things today is clearly anti-Semitic!  Moshe also mentioned the welcome that the Zionists gave to the Nuremburg Laws of 1935.  Again he refused to understand that things look so very different 80 years later.

So Iain McNicol and his monkey, Sam Matthews hit on the bright idea of expelling Moshe.  Because he is a professor he might cause trouble.  So they ‘auto excluded’ him, which saves the trouble of a hearing, evidence etc.  and after having to write him two expulsion letters, because the first was not clear enough they explained that it was his links with LPM and the Communist Party of Great Britain that was the real reason for the expulsion.