Why do accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ cause Labour MPs’ Spines to Turn to Water?
Before reading in last week’s Zionist press about Angela
Rayner’s attack on me, I had barely heard of the woman. She is not exactly a
household name. Nor is she known for her wit and charm. In an interview
just over a year ago she demonstrated her mettle:
“I see myself as soft left. I’m very pragmatic. I’m
interested in how we can change lives for the better; how we can we put
socialism into practice. Every time we expend energy on fighting each other,
we’re letting down the people that need us the most.”
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| Jewish only Afula - the racism that Angela Rayner didn't mention |
Which is a restatement of Blair’s aphorism
that “what matters is what works”. Pragmatism
is the excuse for a thousand excuses as to why socialism should be postponed.
Blair’s adage was the basis for private sector vultures to cherry pick the NHS.
PFI also worked for some people. New Labour sycophants
such as UNISON’s Dave Prentis were all in favour of mortgaging our future when
PFI first appeared. After all it worked and enabled hospitals and schools to be
built, albeit at the cost of the future.
This is the kind of pragmatism which the Angela Rayners of
New Labour specialised in. In a further
display of the political bankruptcy of this New Labour leftover (she supported
Andy Burnham in the first leadership election) Rayner observed that ‘Ideology
never put food on my table'. Employing this logic we should forget about socialism altogether and
follow the non-ideological route of the United States’s Democrats, the second
party of capitalism.
This is the pathetic
specimen that is currently Shadow Education Secretary. And Rayner is not alone.
There is Emily Thornberry, another Labour luvvie who is equally spineless and
waiting for Corbyn to fall or be pushed. These creatures hate ‘ideology’
because ideas about the society we live in might suggest we have a systemic
problem in capitalism, based as it is on profit and exploitation rather than
human need, that poverty and unemployment is integral to a free market economy.
Angela Rayner is a prime example of the Fabian
spirit which has imbued countless Labour managers of capitalism. In the same
Guardian interview this pragmatist assured her interviewer that she wouldn’t
get rid of grammar schools ‘because
that would mean destroying good schools’. Presumably employing
the same logic Rayner would keep Eton and Harrow and no doubt she would also
keep private medicine since that also works.
In other words Angela Rayner is a typical example of Labour’s
wretched right-wingers who ends up defending the interests of the
multi-nationals and imposing austerity in the ‘national interest’.
This is by way of introduction to the invitation extended to
Rayner by the Board of Deputies to address its annual gathering at the House of
Lords. It was a controversial invitation and the Jewish Chronicle’s Editor,
Stephen Pollard called
it, in his normally measured hyperbole, an‘idiotic, craven and deeply
counter-productive decision”.
However BOD President Ms Van der Zyl undoubtedly realises
that with the virtual collapse of May’s ramshackle administration and the
prospect of a Labour government under Jeremy Corbyn, it might be a good idea to
talk to the future government rather than boycott it. Ms Rayner was therefore
in a strong position and she could have told the Board, to put it politely, to
fuck off if they gave her any grief. If members of the Shadow Cabinet don’t
have the bottle to tell the small minded small businessmen of the Board where
to get off then they will be putty in the hands of the currency speculators.
The Zionists discovered that in her radical phase, after
having visited Auschwitz, Rayner had quoted from Norman Finkelstein’s seminal
book, Holocaust Industry which
describes how the Zionist movement has exploited the Holocaust both financially
and politically. Rayner tweeted that “As
Norman G Finklestein writes in his seminal book The Holocaust Industry it is
important to fight for and preserve the integrity of the historical record.”
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| The problem with asking people like Angela Rayner to have the courage of their convictions is that they never had any convictions |
What you might ask is wrong with that? However you should
never underestimate the yellow streak running through Labour MPs. Instead of
defending her quote from a book praised
by Noam Chomsky and the most eminent of all Holocaust historians, Raul Hilberg,
Rayner ‘expressed regret and apologised for quoting from
the controversial book, The Holocaust Industry, by anti-Zionist Norman
Finkelstein.’
The Jewish News observes
that Finkelstein ‘claims in the book that
the US Jewish establishment exploits the memory of the Holocaust for political
and financial gain.’
This is about as controversial as
saying that the sun sets in the west or that gravity calls things to fall. The
Zionist movement, of which the American Jewish establishment is an integral
part, has shamelessly exploited the Holocaust for the benefit of Israel. Why even
the fraudulent ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism that the Zionist movement is
trying to impose on us is called the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance
definition. It would be honest at least
to call it the Israel government sponsored definition of anti-Semitism. The
Holocaust has been exploited mercilessly by the Zionist movement. Finkelstein’s book documents just a few of
these examples. The Holocaust has become an ideological construct, separate
from the memory of the Holocaust itself, replete with its own museums and
cultural artifacts, the purpose of which is to defend the practices of Zionism
and the Israeli state.
What makes this
even more shameful is that the actual Holocaust survivors themselves live in
poverty, denied all but the most basic sustenance in a militarized economy run by a handful of
oligarchs. See Tens of thousands of Israeli Holocaust
survivors are living in abject poverty
Finkelstein gives as an example (p.30)
of how little the Zionist movement is concerned about the Holocaust the example
of Ronald Reagan’s visit to Germany’s Bitburg military cemetery in 1985. During
the course of this visit Reagan declared that German soldiers, including
members of the Waffen SS, ‘were victims
of the Nazis just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps.’ The
Waffen SS were responsible for running the camps.
What was the reaction of the same Zionist
lobby groups who ritually accuse all and sundry of anti-Semitism? They defended Reagan who was a good friend
of Israel. In 1988 Reagan was given the ‘Humanitarian of the Year’ award by the
Simon Wiesenthall Centre and in 1994 the ‘Torch of Liberty’ award by the Anti-Defamation
League. When one remembers that Reagan sponsored death squads in El Salvador
and the Nicaraguan Contras you realize how deep the Zionist sickness is.
Yet the cowardly Rayner, backed
down. Instead of defending her right to quote from Holocaust Industry and telling the Board where to get off she
decided to imitate the victims of China’s Red Guard. She could have been
quoting from the Report to the March 1949 Seventh Central
Committee meeting of the Communist Party of China on the ‘Marxist-Leninist
weapon of criticism and self-criticism.’ which explained that ‘We can get rid of a bad style and keep the
good.’ Rayner’s self-abnegation knew no limits:
“I regret the choice of quote I used to
illustrate it, and now that I know more about the context I would not make that
reference again. I apologise for what was a genuine misunderstanding, in what
was always intended to be a message of solidarity with the Jewish community.
This underscores the importance of engagement with the Jewish community to
improve understanding about this issue.”
Humiliation
piled on humiliation. It’s as if these ciphers don’t believe in anyting. If
Rayner had been guilty of ‘anti-Semitism’ the Board of Deputies would be the
last body to apologise to. Throughout
its miserable 258
years existence this organisation, set up to pay
homage to George III on his accession to the throne, has utterly failed to
defend the Jewish community against anti-Semitism. The only time it fought against
discrimination was in the mid-19th century when it fought for the Emancipation
of the Jewish bourgeoisie, in particular its rights to stand for Parliament.
After having been elected three times Lionel de Rothschild finally
took his seat in 1858 after the passage of the
Jewish Relief Act.
The
Board completely failed to defend the rights of Jewish refugees from Czarist
Russia at the end of the 19th century. On 18th January
1894 500-600 Jewish workers in the East End of London occupied the Grand
Synagogue seeking an audience with Chief Rabbi Herman Adler who had described
the Russian immigrants as “criminals... mentally and
physically afflicted.’ They had to be thrown out by
truncheon wielding police. When the Tories, under Zionist hero and Prime Minister Arthur Balfour introduced
the Aliens Act 1905 to keep the Jewish refugees out, the Board failed to oppose
it. As the editor of the Jewish
Chronicle, L Greenberg, noted: ‘The Board asked for the driest of dry
bread, it was given the hardest of hard stone.’ [Jewish Chronicle 24.4.1908
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| The Board of Deputies message to Jews when faced with real antisemitism in October 1936 was to 'keep away from the route of the Blackshirt march' - nothing has changed since |
On
2nd October 1936 the BOD advice to Jewish workers and anti-fascists was
to ‘Keep Away’ when Moseley’s British
Union of Fascists tried to march through the East End. The Board was
comprehensively ignored and today the anti-fascist movement commemorates the Battle
of Cable Street in 1936 when Moseley’s fascist thugs were stopped in their
tracks by the Jewish and non-Jewish working class.
In
the 1970’s the neo-Nazi National Front was being talked about as the third
party of British politics. At the West
Bromwich by-election in 1973 the NF’s Martin Webster gained 17% of the vote
saving his deposit. In the Stechford by-election in 1977 the NF beat the
Liberals into 4th place, gaining 8.2%. It was as a result of this
that the Anti Nazi League was formed in late 1977.
What
was the reaction of the Board? It was to ignore the NF and attack the ANL
because it had been formed by anti-Zionists. Then as now its concern was Israel
not Jews. This drove Searchlight
Anti-Fascist Magazine, which was edited by Maurice Ludmer before the baleful
influence of its current editor, Gerry Gable to issue a strongly worded
editorial [Issue 41, November 1978]:
"In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish
Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze
pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a
flickering old movie, with a grim determination
to repeat every mistake of that era.
"
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| Solicitor and member of the Board of Deputies Robert Festenstein appears in promotion video with Tommy Robinson |
The
Board is stuffed with bigots such as Roslyn
Pine for whom Muslims are ‘the vilest of animals” and Arabs are simple ‘evil’ or Robert Festenstein, Deputy for
Prestwich Hebrew Congregation who starred in a Tommy Robinson video.
The
Board of Deputies, which doesn’t represent the secular majority of Jews in
Britain or Ultra Orthodox Jews is a reactionary Zionist body. Its past
President Jonathan Arkush accused Jeremy Corbyn of having ‘‘unquestionably
anti-Semitic views’. The same Arkush, writing on behalf of the Board, welcomed the election of the unquestionably anti-Semitic Donald
Trump.
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| When Israeli snipers began murdering unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza the Board of Deputies rushed to support them in the name of all Jews |
The Board has given unquestioning and unstinting support for
every act of mass murder and repression by the Israeli state. It has organised
demonstrations in support of Israel’s murderous attacks on Gaza and most
recently given its support to Israeli snipers firing on unarmed demonstrators
in Gaza. In a statement issued by both Jonathan Arkush and Marie van der Zyl
the Board stated that
‘No state could allow its borders to be breached by those
who openly wish harm to its civilians. Israel is defending its people
from repeated violent attempts at mass invasion.’
There are no borders between Israel and
Gaza. There is a security fence and the demonstrators were shot hundreds of
yards from the fence in a scene reminiscent of the Nazi killing fields in
Russia.
No doubt Angela Rayner deprecated, like all Labour’s
apologists for Zionism, Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians but she fails
entirely to connect the murder of Palestinians with the use of ‘anti-Semitism’
as a weapon against Israel’s critics.
Israel is a state that is officially an apartheid state with the passing
of the Jewish Nation State Law. As the
late Uri Avnery wrote, in his last ever article, ‘Who the
hell are we’
So
what is new about the new law which at a first glance looks like a copy of the
declaration? It contains two important omissions: the declaration spoke of a
“Jewish and Democratic” state, and promised full equality between all its
citizens, without regard to religion, ethnicity or sex.
All
this has disappeared. No democracy. No equality. A state of the Jews, for the
Jews, by the Jews.
Avnery
was one of those rare creatures, a Zionist who sincerely wanted to make peace.
He wasn’t a man of the Left, on the contrary he came from a Revisionist Zionist
background, having fought in the Irgun. But it is plain as a pikestaff that the
Israel that the Board defends is racist to the core.
Angela
Rayner, instead of taking the Board to task for implicating all British Jews in
the atrocities of the Israeli state, which inevitably helps fuel anti-Semitism,
decided to attack me instead. In Angela Rayner: Those likening Hitler to Zionism not welcome in Labour
Party Board President Marie van der Zyl was
quoted as saying that 'Labour must kick
out the racists from the party, no Ifs, no Buts, and it must do so without
further delay'. As it happens I agree with her. The first step should be
the disaffiliation of the Jewish Labour Movement and the expulsion of its
Chair, war criminal Ivor Caplin and its Campaigns Officer Adam Langleben. All
those who defend Israeli Apartheid should be shown the door. Instead Rayner she was
“glad that the likes of [Jewish anti-Zionist]
Tony Greenstein have been expelled and I want to make it clear that those who
distort history by likening Hitler to Zionism are no longer welcome.”
Angela Rayner seems to have contracted the IHRA disease, verbal
incontinence. Nowhere have I compared Hitler to Zionism for one simple
reason. Hitler was (in theory anyway) a
human being. Zionism is a political movement.
Of course if Rayner used ‘Hitler’ as a metonym for Nazism she is
right. There are many comparisons between Zionism and Nazism and Israelis including Israeli
historians are prime amongst those who make the comparisons. However comparing
two things is not the same as saying they are identical. Such logic completely escapes this Labour front
bench opportunist.
The
late Professor Amos Funkenstein, former Head of the Faculty of History at Tel
Aviv University, when referring to the controversy over the refusal of soldiers
to serve in the Occupied Territories, compared them to soldiers in the German
army who refused to serve in concentration or extermination camps. [HOLOCAUST
ANALOGIES - Repaying the Mortgage Return 2 March 1990] To those who asked how it was possible to
compare the actions of Nazi soldiers with Israelis, Funkenstein replied
As a historian
I know that every comparison is limited. On the other hand, without
comparisons, no historiography is possible. Understanding a historical event is
a kind of translation into the language of our time. If we would leave every
phenomenon in its peculiarity, we could not make this translation. Every
translation is an interpretation and every interpretation is also a comparison.
Israelis
including Holocaust researcher Professor
Daniel Blatman and fellow Hebrew University Professor Ofer Cassif are presumably
also racists, according to Idiot Rayner, for comparing Israel today to Nazi Germany.
[Hebrew
U Professor: Israel Today Similar To Nazi Germany].
Even Israel’s Deputy Chief of Staff, Yair Golan, made just such a comparison. IDF
General In Bombshell Speech: Israel Today Shows Signs Of 1930s Germany. Rayner typies the bankrupt anti-intellectualism of
Labour politicians who run scared of the Zionist smear of anti-Semitism. Nearly
all of them lack the political courage to call Zionism’s racists out for what
they are.
Afula has just elected a city mayor who has vowed to keep
protect the City’s ‘Jewish character’ starting off with banning
Arabs from the city’s park. Would it be
anti-Semitic to make a comparison with Nazi Germany which, from 1935-6 onwards
also banned
Jews from parks?
Or how about the quaint Israeli custom on Jerusalem’s Flag March
of Israelis marching to the chant of ‘Death
to the Arabs’? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who
accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism and being the new Enoch Powell, encouraged Jews
to attend this march. There was a time in 1930’s Germany and Poland when ‘Death to the Jews’ was quite popular. Perhaps
this comparison is also anti-Semitic?
Or maybe the Israeli custom of having Jewish
only towns and communities brings to mind the
custom in Nazi Germany of having Aryan only communities. The existing ability
of communities of 400 Jewish families to reject Arabs and other undesirables,
under the Reception
Committees Law is being expanded
to 700 families.
The fact is that there are many comparisons which can be made
between a ‘Jewish’ state based on ethnic cleansing and racial-nationalism and
Nazi Germany. In just the same way as people compared Apartheid in South Africa
to Nazi Germany. That doesn’t mean that Nazi Germany and
Israel are the same, especially after the Holocaust began however it does mean that they have certain features in
common. Today Israel even has its own
Jewish Nazi groups based around people like the popular rapper, The
Shadow.
Unfortunately people like Angela Rayner are too cowardly to
understand that it is precisely because Israel uses the Holocaust as its
touchstone that it is a moral imperative to point out that ethnic cleansing and
all Israel’s other barbarities are no different in principle to Germany under
fascism. That is one reason why today the Israeli state is best friends with
anti-Semitic regimes such as those in Hungary and Poland.
The sheer abject cowardice of Angela Rayner is epitomized by the
fact that Marie van der Zyl
was
also scathing of Jeremy Corbyn, who, she said, “must apologise for the hurt he
has personally caused, whether by calling antisemitic terrorist groups such as
Hamas and Hezbollah his ‘friends’, defending an antisemitic mural, laying
wreaths by the graves of terrorists, or allowing so many racists and their
apologists to remain as Labour members.’
Jeremy Corbyn has nothing to apologise for when it comes to
fighting racism and if Rayner had a spine then she would have walked out because
one thing is for certain – there are next to no votes to be obtained by
appeasing Britain’s Zionists.
We even had Tory Lord Eric Pickles complaining that “those who wanted to amend the IHRA
definition wanted to be free to compare Israel to the Nazis. That is bigotry.”
This is the same Pickles who defended the Tory Party’s links in the European Parliament with anti-Semitic
parties such as Poland’s Law and Justice Party.
What Angela Rayner proves is the power of Zionism’s political
terrorism in silencing criticism of Zionism. The fact is that Israel today is
fundamentally an apartheid state, both in the Occupied Territories, where it is
most obvious, but also in Israel itself where Arabs have the status of resident
aliens. Those who seek to prevent comparisons with Nazi Germany are in effect
giving a green light for Israel to continue down the road of visceral racism
and segregation.
Tony Greenstein
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