Message to Corbyn – Don’t appease Apartheid – the Zionists will only be satisfied when you are gone
Jewish Voice for Labour banners at demonstration tonight as hundreds of Jews showed that they did not agree with the false 'antisemitism' campaign of the Zionists |
Last week Corbyn was the friend of Putin. This week Corbyn is an
anti-Semite. The charge of the false anti-Semitism brigade has been
led by Jonathan Arkush, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and
various right-wing Labour MPs.
Throughout his campaign Trump gave a nod and a wink to blatant
anti-Semitic messages and caricatures. As the New Republic
observed ‘Donald
Trump is doing a very strange pro-Israel, anti-Semitic dance.’ And
therein lies the clue. Trump and the alt-Right combine anti-Semitism
with vehement support for Zionism. The alt-Right might not like
American Jews very much but they love Israel.
Jonathan Arkush didn't let his opposition to 'antisemitism' prevent him from welcoming Trump as the new President |
Naomi Zeveloff of the
Forward wrote,an
article, in shock and surprise, in the Jewish Forward, How Steve Bannon
and Breitbart News Can Be Pro-Israel — and Anti-Semitic at the Same Time.
Historically Zionism and anti-Semitism were two sides of the same racist
coin. As the founder of Political Zionism Theodor Herzl wrote:
‘“In
Paris ... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-semitism, which I now began
to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness
and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-semitism.” Zionism has never fought
anti-Semitism because it starts from the basis that anti-Semitism is a
hereditary disease that all non-Jews possess. That is what makes
this false anti-Semitism
campaign no nauseating.
campaign no nauseating.
We have the phenomenon today of people like Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi
founder of the alt-Right declaring that
he is a White Zionist. If you are a white supremacist what is there not to like about Israel. It is the ideal ethno-racial state. That is
the clue to Arkush’s outbursts – it’s not anti-Semitism that he is concerned
with but opposition to Israel. If Corbyn had been like Tony Blair, a supporter
of Israel and Zionism then he would not have received such
treatment. It is no accident that Arkush demanded today that Jackie
Walker, a Black Jewish anti-racist activist be expelled. This is the
logic of the false anti-Semitism campaign – it is anti-Zionist and anti-racist
Jews who are their primary targets. That was why I was expelled.
Chris Williamson is coming under increasing attack by the Zionists |
And it’s not only Jewish anti-Zionists
and anti-racists. Chris Williamson MP is also being targeted by this
racist scum. It is the left which is under attack and it is people
like Lansman who are scabbing on them.
There is also a certain irony in the Board calling a demonstration to criticise Corbyn's antisemitism. Throughout its history the Board has done its best to avoid confrontations with fascists and anti-Semites.
The allegedly anti-Semitic mural that was erased 6 years ago |
Only a complete idiot or a Guardian
journalist (e.g. Owen Jones) could really believe that this is about a
mural that was erased 6 years ago. Even the Jewish Chronicle some 2½
years ago mentioned this mural as ‘having anti-Semitic
undertones’ in other words it wasn’t at all obvious that it was
anti-Semitic at all. It is about bankers living off sweated Black
labour. The figures in it are not obviously Jewish and nor do they
have the usual features of anti-Semitic cartoons – hooked noses
etc. It is more about freemasonry than Jews.
If we are to believe the Mail and
Express and the usual gaggle of right-wing Labour MPs – Louise ‘child abuser’
Ellman, Liz Kendall, John Mann etc. then Corbyn has given his support to
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. It is strange that a Tory tabloid
press, which consistently demonises refugees and asylum seekers and Muslims is
so hot on ‘anti-Semitism’.
What we are seeing is a frenzied and
co-ordinated attack on the Corbyn leadership of the Labour
Party. There is little doubt that this latest campaign has been
planned for some time. It is deliberately intended not merely to
derail the local election campaign but to destabilise the Corbyn leadership
itself. We see the same MPs – Streeting, Owen Smith, Chuku Ummuna
get up to attack Corbyn. People who normally have no interest in opposing
racism suddenly find their voice when it is a privileged white minority that is
the centre of attention.
Demonstration on College Green |
This is not
about hatred of Jews but hatred of Israeli Apartheid
Nothing is more
sickening than to see the Board of Deputies pose as opponents of anti-Semitism.
This is the same Board of Deputies that in 1936, when the British Union of
Fascists tried to march through the Jewish East End of London, told Jewish
people to stay at home and keep their heads down. In the 1970s and
1980’s it did the same when we were fighting the National Front and British
National Party. The Board of Deputies is the equivalent of the
Judenrat (Jewish Councils) in Nazi occupied Europe which everywhere helped
round up the Jews for the Nazis.
When it comes to real anti-Semites the Board of Deputies policy has always been to avoid confrontation and public clashes - only anti-Zionism merits their opposition |
The Board of Deputies
is an undemocratic petit-bourgeois body representing the most reactionary,
synagogue going Jews. It does not represent Britain’s secular
Jews. It has never had an interest in opposing
racism. Its sole concern is with support for Israel and Zionism.
The campaign of the
Board has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with Israel. Hence
why their targets in the Labour Party are mostly Jewish anti-Zionists like
Jackie Walker and myself or anti-racists such as Marc Wadsworth.
Anti-Semitism
in Britain is the most marginal form of racism. Jews are not subject to state
racism. There are no Jewish deaths in custody. Jews are not subject to
immigration controls, police violence, economic discrimination or racial
attacks. Anti-Semitism is at an all-time low despite the Zionist
attempts to manipulate the statistics. We don’t see fascists trying
to mow down worshippers outside synagogues or firebombing them. This
is the lot of Muslims.
What this campaign is about is
Israel. The Board of Deputies is a notorious supporter of
Israel in the name of Jewish people. The far-Right
Campaign Against Anti-Semitism attacks any and all opponents of Zionism and
Israel.
This is why the
statement of Jeremy Corbyn apologising for his view 6 years ago that the mural
should not be taken down in the interests of free speech was a mistake. Even
worse was his apology for the ‘hurt’ caused by
‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn has
nothing to apologise for. There is no anti-Semitism in the Labour
Party. There may be a few people with anti-Semitic ideas in
their heads but that is caused by Zionism primarily. If you tell
people repeatedly that everything Israel does is as a Jewish state in the name
of Jewish people, some idiots will believe them. However the cause
of their ‘anti-Semitism’ is the actions of Zionism and its apologists.
Corbyn and his
advisers such as Eton educated Seamus Milne don’t seem to recognise that
because the Zionists are not interested in anti-Semitism, they are not
interested in Corbyn’s apologies for anti-Semitism either. They have
one concern and one concern only. Seeing an end to Corbyn’s
leadership of the Labour Party.
Unfortunately Momentum, which is led
by Jon Lansman nationally has continually given credence to the idea that the
Labour Party is overrun by anti-Semitism. Momentum's political paralysis at the present time is shocking and is almost entirely due to Lansman's soft Zionism.
Corbyn’s reaction to
this campaign should be simple. He opposes anti-Semitism but he also opposes
the weaponisation of anti-Semitism against people who are neither anti-Semitic
or racist. Instead of standing up to Zionism and the apologists for Israel’s
apartheid system Corbyn has prostrated himself before them. Having begged their
forgiveness he has been kicked in the teeth. It is as embarrassing as it is
futile. Corbyn has a fine record of opposition to racism and support
for anti-imperialist causes which he is squandering.
You cannot appease
racists or reactionaries. Everytime Corbyn apologises or says that
he is not an anti-Semite Arkush and his people laugh at him. They
are not interested in fighting anti-Semitism but in eradicating support for the
Palestinians. If Seamus Milne had his wits about him he would
realise that there is nothing Corbyn can do, bar resigning, that will please
the Zionist movement in this country.
What is most
significant is the silence of Momentum. You might
think that at this of all times that Momentum’s 36,000 members would be called
upon to demonstrate against the Zionists
tonite.
Not a bit of it. Lansman, having given credence
to the Zionists’ false anti-Semitism campaign has nothing to
say. Having buttered up the corrupt Jeremy Newmark, Momentum’s
Dictator is at a loss for words.
Fake Zionist 'charity' calls a demonstration against Corbyn |
It
is crucial that Momentum groups ignore Lansman and the undemocratic structures
he has created and mobilise to counter the demonstration of the CAA. The vultures are circling and we should be doing
our best to oppose them, not pretending they are not here.
The
time has come to fight back not appease these racist bastards. The first thing we should do is to ensure
that there is a massive opposition to the proposed demonstration on April 8th
which the misnamed Campaign Against
Anti-Semitism has called. Jon
Lansman will do his best to ignore it or pretend that nothing is happening but we should ignore
Lansman.
Below
is a statement from Labour Against the Witchhunt and then there is an excellent
article by Jonathan Cook, a journalist who lives in Nazareth on the
implications of what is happening.
Beneath that is a short article from Tom Pride on the false
accusations of anti-Semitism.
But
above all the Left in Labour has got to wake up and realise that the MPs who
are today attacking Corbyn are not going to give up. Either we replace them or they will replace
us. If the bulk of the Parliamentary Labour
Party is left in place, then if Corbyn comes to power they will, at a time of
their choosing rebel and wield the knife.
Corbyn has not, as Jonathan Cook says below, demonstrated that he has a
backbone. He has once again caved in
instead of standing up to theses racists.
We have to therefore do what he refuses to do which is to confront Zionism
head on. In so doing we also have to
bypass the increasingly irrelevant national structures of Momentum.
Demonstration outside Parliament today |
Statement of Labour Against the
Witch-hunt
Defend Corbyn! Anti-Zionism does not equal Anti-Semitism!
We support calls for a counter-mobilisation to the cynical protest called by the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism on April 8.
The CAA is not concerned about anti-Semitism. Their purpose is to force Jeremy Corbyn to resign as Labour Party leader. Jeremy Corbyn is clearly no anti-Semite. The fact that he and many of his supporters campaign for the rights of Palestinians has been used to constantly undermine his leadership. It has turned out to be the most successful tool in the Right’s armoury in the ongoing civil war in the party.
Anti-Zionism does not equal anti-Semitism. We will continue to fight for the right to criticise the atrocities committed by the Israeli government against the Palestinians. We will continue to stand with oppressed people. And we will continue to speak out on behalf of all of those accused of false and trumped-up charges of anti-Semitism.
We stand with Jeremy Corbyn in this latest dishonest and cynical attack against him. But we also urge him and members of the Labour Party NEC to put a decisive end to the witch-hunt against his left-wing supporters in the Labour Party. The last two years have clearly shown that appeasing the right does not work.
26
March 2018
After
a short reprieve following Jeremy Corbyn’s unexpected success in Britain’s
general election last year, when he only narrowly lost the popular vote, most
of the Labour parliamentary party are back, determined to bring him down. And
once again, they are being joined by the corporate media in full battle cry.
Last
week, Corbyn was a Soviet spy. This week we’re in more familiar territory, even
if it has a new twist: Corbyn is not only a friend to anti-semites, it seems,
but now he has been outed as a closet one himself.
In
short, the Blairites in the parliamentary party are stepping up their game.
Corbyn’s social justice agenda, his repudiation of neoconservative wars of
aggression masquerading as “humanitarianism” – lining the coffers of the west’s
military-industrial elites – is a genuine threat to those who run our societies
from the shadows.
The
knife of choice for the Labour backstabbers this time is a wall mural removed
from East London in 2012. At that time, before he became Labour leader, Corbyn
expressed support on Facebook for the artist, Kalen Ockerman, known as Mear
One. Corbyn observed that a famous anti-capitalist mural by the left-wing
Mexican artist Diego Rivera was similarly removed from Manhattan’s Rockefeller
Centre in 1934.
Interestingly,
the issue of Corbyn’s support for the mural – or at least the artist – originally flared in late 2015, when the Jewish Chronicle
unearthed his Facebook post. Two things were noticeably different about the
coverage then.
First,
on that occasion, no one apart from the Jewish Chronicle appeared to show much
interest in the issue. Its “scoop” was not followed up by the rest of the
media. What is now supposedly a major scandal, one that raises questions about
Corbyn’s fitness to be Labour leader, was a non-issue two years ago, when it
first became known.
Second,
the Jewish Chronicle, usually so ready to get exercised at the smallest
possible sign of anti-semitism, wasn’t entirely convinced back in 2015 that the
mural was anti-semitic. In fact, it suggested only that the mural might have
“antisemitic undertones” – and attributed even that claim to Corbyn’s critics.
And
rather than claiming, as the entire corporate media is now, that the mural
depicted a cabal of Jewish bankers, the Chronicle then described the scene as
“a group of businessmen and bankers sitting around a Monopoly-style board and
counting money”. By contrast, the Guardian abandoned normal reporting conventions yesterday to state in its news –
rather than comment – pages unequivocally that the mural was “obviously
antisemitic”.
Not
that anyone is listening now, but the artist himself, Kalen Ockerman, has said
that the group in his mural comprised historical figures closely associated
with banking. His mural, he says, was about “class and privilege”, and the figures
depicted included both “Jewish and white Anglos”. The fact that he included
famous bankers like the Rothschilds (Jewish) and the Rockefellers (not Jewish)
does not, on the face of it, seem to confirm anti-semitism. They are simply the
most prominent of the banking dynasties most people, myself included, could
name. These families are about as closely identified with capitalism as it is
possible to be.
There
is an argument to be had about the responsibilities of artists – even street
artists – to be careful in their visual representations. But Ockerman’s message
was not a subtle or nuanced one. He was depicting class war, the war the
capitalist class wages every day on the weak and poor. If Ockerman’s message is
inflammatory, it is much less so than the reality of how our societies have
been built on the backs and the suffering of the majority.
Corbyn
has bowed to his critics – a mix of the Blairites within his party and Israel’s
cheerleaders – and apologised for offering support to Ockerman, just as he has
caved in to pressure each time the anti-semitism card has been played against
him.
This
may look like wise, or safe, politics to his advisers. But these critics have
only two possible outcomes that will satisfy them. Either Corbyn is
harried from the party leadership, or he is intimidated into diluting his
platform into irrelevance – he becomes just another compromised politician
catering to the interests of the 1 per cent.
The
sharks circling around him will not ignore the scent of his bloodied wounds;
rather, it will send them into a feeding frenzy. As hard as it is to do when
the elites so clearly want him destroyed, Corbyn must find his backbone and
start to stand his ground.
UPDATE:
This
piece in the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz by their senior columnnist
Anshel Pfeffer sums up a lot of the sophistry (intentional or otherwise) underscoring
the conflation of leftwing critiques of neoliberalism and globalism with
rightwing ultra-nationalism and anti-semitism.
Pfeffer
writes:
The conspiracy theories of globalist bankers
utilizing mainstream media and corrupt neoliberal politicians to serve their
selfish sinister purposes, rather than those of ordinary people, are identical
whether from left or right.
And on either side, most of the theorists
will never admit to being anti-Semitic. They are just “anti-racist” or
“anti-imperialist” if on the left, or “pro-Israel” on the right. And most of
them really believe they have nothing against Jews, even while parroting themes
straight out of the Protocols [of the Elders of Zion].
Notice
the problem here. If you are a radical leftist who believes, as generations of
leftists before you have done, that military, political, media, and financial
elites operate in the shadows to promote their interests, to wage class war,
then not only are you a conspiracy theorist, according to Pfeffer, but you are
by definition anti-semitic as well. If you believe that an Establishment or a
Deep State exists to advance its interests against the great majority, you must
hate Jews.
The
logic of Corbyn’s critics has rarely been articulated so forthrightly and so
preposterously as it is here by Pfeffer. But make no mistake, this is the logic
of his critics.
by Tom Pride March
26, 2018
Jonathan Arkush -
the President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews - is
smearing Jeremy Corbyn with lies about anti-semitism.
But why would he do
that?
Well, you see,
what Arkush and the mainstream press is not mentioning, is that Arkush is more than a tiny bit biased
when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn.
Because Arkush is a
Tory. A right-wing one.
Here's Arkush praising Theresa May
and her “exceptionally warm and friendly" DUP coalition partners in the
Jerusalem Post:
I can't tell you
how so, so angry it makes me that someone could cynically use such terrible
suffering, such utter, utter tragedy and mass murder for petty party political
point scoring.
At this point, it's
also worth pointing out that my own great-grandmother and other members of my
family were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp for being Jewish.
Here's what my dad
wrote about it on Facebook last Holocaust Memorial Day - he puts it so
much better than I ever could:
Today is Holocaust
Memorial Day.
I can’t help but get upset and very angry about something that happened so
many years ago.
My grandmother on my father's side a frail, old, innocent, lady, who never
did anyone any harm was stripped naked herded into a “shower room” in front of
young German soldiers, probably laughing, then gassed, and dumped in a
pit!
I sadly never had the chance to meet her, but I often think of her and
wonder how could any other human do that to an old lady.
Very hard to forgive!
So before anyone
starts to accuse me of anti-semitism for supporting Jeremy Corbyn - don't even
f*cking think about it.
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