The time has come to Organise to Stop the Witch-hunt - Meeting Saturday October 21st 12.00-3.00 p.m - Calthorpe Arms, Gray's Inn Rd, London

We should turn the witch hunt onto Labour's real racists - the Right and the Zionists

After their defeat and demoralisation at Labour Party Conference, it is clear that the Jewish Labour Movement, the Blairite right-wing together with Labour’s civil service under Iain McNicol and his familiar, Sam Matthews, are determined to once again use the stick of ‘anti-Semitism’ as a means of attacking the Left in the Party.

Labour’s Conference was not a happy affair for the JLM and their Chair Jeremy Newmark, as it was clear that the sympathies of most conference delegates weren’t with Israel’s military police state and the apartheid regime.  The wearing of Palestinian lanyards by so many delegates must have seemed like rubbing salt into their wounds.  If you believe that Palestinians (or Arabs) are inherently anti-Semitic then you cannot but interpret this as anti-Semitism.

Freedland has led the Guardian's repetitive campaign about Labour Party 'anti-semitism'

However the Right are also stupid.  Their targeting of Moshe Machover, who is both a distinguished academic as well as a well-known Israeli Marxist and dissident was stupid and has backfired.  It has made it very clear to people that it is anti-Zionism that is under attack, not anti-Semitism.  Yet again one of the main targets of the anti-Semitism witch hunt is Jewish!

Moshe has submitted a most excellent defence against the charges against him, which you can see here

Even the most stupid right-winger (Luke Akehurst) should understand that an ‘anti-Semitism’ that sees Jewish anti-racists as the main enemy isn’t anti-Semitism.  It is using the label of ‘anti-Semitism’ for opportunistic purposes.  It is anti-Zionism in disguise.

The article which led to Moshe's expulsion

We now have a situation where left-wing groups like Labour Party Marxists and Socialist Appeal are effectively being proscribed  whereas Progress and Labour First are untouched.  That is why demands have to be made on Jeremy Corbyn and McDonnell.  Both in previous years opposed the witch hunt of Militant and other left groups.  It is incumbent upon both of them to come out against McNicol’s McCarthyist regime.

If Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell fail to oppose the witch hunt of the Left in the Labour Party today they will buckle at the first hint of pressure from the City tomorrow.  That is why it is long overdue for Corbyn, McDonnell and Dianne Abbot to condemn what is happening in no uncertain terms.

No one except the most lunatic Zionist pretends that Moshe Machover is anti-Semitic.  Nothing he has said evinces hatred or hostility towards Jews.  What he has been accused of by McNicol’s pet poodle, Sam Matthews, is of having written an ‘apparently anti-Semitic article.’ And what was the offence?  Quoting Reinhard Heydrich, the Deputy Chief of the SS, as saying how much he supported the German Zionist movement.  This is a fact.  The full quote can be found in the book Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany by Francis Nicosia, the Raul Hilberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University and himself a Zionist.

Zionism has never had any problems when it came to working with anti-Semites 

Telling the truth is anti-Semitic!  The Zionists say that we should not quote a Nazi.  In that case virtually every historian of the Nazi period is guilty!  So is the Israeli state which quoted Adolf Eichmann against himself at the 1961 trial.  The real question is why Heydrich and not just Heydrich is on record as praising Zionism in the period 1933-1939.  The answer is an uncomfortable one for the Zionists.

The Labour Right is being aided in its attacks by the Press, the Guardian in particular.  Jonathan Freedland, who I have already criticised in an Open Letter wrote, even by his abysmal standards, a poisonously dishonest article Labour’s denial of antisemitism in its ranks leaves the party in a dark place. 

Ken Loach was refused a right of reply when the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland suggested he was supportive of holocaust denial

It is time for us to fight back.  The Alliance for Workers Liberty have set up a Stop the Purge group, but this is a group which studiously avoids the small matter of those suspended or expelled because of the anti-Semitism witch hunt.  Indeed the AWL actually support the expulsion of Ken Livingstone and they were responsible for removing Jackie Walker from her position as Vice Chair of Momentum.  This is not surprising since the AWL subscribes to the nonsense notion of ‘left anti-Semitism’.

The proposal is to set up Labour Against the Witchhunt and there is an event page here.

Hope to see you on Saturday.

Tony Greenstein