The Lie of Labour Anti-Semitism has but one purpose – the removal of Corbyn (I)

The Jewish Labour Movement motion that a Corbyn Labour Government ‘would not be in the interest of British Jews.” should result in their Immediate Disaffiliation

What more does it take for Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour leadership to understand that the JLM can never be appeased? There can never be an end to the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign for two reasons:

i.              Anti-Semitism is now defined as hostility to Zionism not Jews – that was the reason the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism was adopted.

ii.           Because this campaign has only ever had one aim - the removal of Corbyn as leader.

The JLM’s ‘no confidence’ motion in Corbyn at its weekend conference should be reciprocated by saying  we have no confidence in the Jewish Labour Movement whose very existence is a living lie.

The time has come to end a situation whereby the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labor Party, a party that supports the deportation of 40,000 non-Jewish Black African refugees from Israel, and which even opposes dismantling Jewish settlements in the West Bank has all the privileges of an affiliated socialist society.

Since the JLM can’t even bring themselves to advocate a vote for a Labour Party led by Corbyn what possible reason is there for allowing them to remain an affiliated socialist society?

It’s time for the myth that the JLM is the ‘Jewish section’ of the Labour Party to be exploded.  The JLM, which claims a membership of 2,000 is predominantly non-Jewish. Although they do not disclose details of their members there is no doubt that at least 2/3 of their members are non Jewish. 

For example in Brighton and Hove right-wing Labour councillors such as Dan Yates, Warren Morgan, Emma Daniels, Caroline Penn and Julie Cattell to name but a few are members of the JLM. None of them are Jewish.

This Sunday Times montage portrays Jeremy Corbyn as the sinister, one-eyed devil at the heart of a conspiracy of hate

No Jew who is not a Zionist can possibly join a group which is affiliated to the settlement funding World Zionist Organisation. The majority of the Labour Party’s Jewish members are not Zionists so why is the JLM allowed to represent itself as the Labour Party’s Jewish section?

The JLM describes itself as the descendant of Poalei Zion, which affiliated to the Labour Party in 1920. The reason it was able to affiliate then was that the Labour Party was a fully paid up supporter of the British Empire and the Zionist colonial settlement was a strategic partner of British colonialism in the Middle East. That was the purpose behind the 1917 Balfour Declaration authored by the Tory Foreign Secretary Arthur ‘Bloody Balfour’.

The JLM was virtually dead up till 2015 when, in the wake of Corbyn’s election, it was refounded for the sole purpose of leading a campaign to remove Corbyn. In an article by Asa Winstanley which led to his suspension soon after, Asa described how Jeremy Newmark, Chair of the JLM and a key Israeli Embassy operative explained, in hitherto unused footage from Al Jazeera’s The Lobby how “a bunch of us sat in a coffee shop in Golders Green” around September 2015 to “talk about re-forming the JLM to do something with it.’ This came against the backdrop of what Newmark described as “the rise of Jeremy Corbyn” and “Bernie Sanders in the states.”

When the JLM decided to employ a Director, no doubt with funding from Israeli government sources, who did it turn to but Israeli Embassy political officer, Ella Rose. As Al Jazeera's The Lobby showed, Ella was most upset with Asa Winstanley when he exposed this fact.

Crooked Jeremy Newmark explains the JLM's strategy to his pro-Israel acolytes in the JLM

The JLM, which Louise Ellman described as having been founded in 2004 is an affiliated socialist society of the Labour Party with the right to put motions to annual conference and send delegates to and affiliate to local Labour Parties. Newmark’s plan was, as he told a JLM barbecue in September 2016, based on “utilizing the rights and privileges it [JLM] enjoys as a socialist society” within Labour. In other words the Israeli state, via its London Embassy would be represented at all levels of the British Labour party in order to destabilise it.

Jewish Chronicle 'journalist' Rosa Doherty was informed of Asa Winstanley's suspension before he was

The JLM operates a double act with Labour Friends of Israel, which it was responsible for founding in 1957 in the wake of the Suez debacle. Whereas LFI defends the actions of the Israeli state, for example the shooting dead of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza, the JLM has concentrated exclusively on an ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign directed at Palestinian supporters. It is noticeable that the JLM doesn’t, at least in its own name, support or even comment upon Israeli actions. It has nothing to say about things like water theft and Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children.

However JLM MPs have been extremely active and outspoken in supporting Israeli repression. Louise Ellman MP in particular has repeatedly supported the IDF’s torture and abuse of Palestinian children as documented by UNICEF and others. For example in January 2016 she interrupted other MPs 3 times in a debate on Palestinian child prisoners.

The JLM has been the primary vehicle of destabilisation in the Labour Party. Realising that it was difficult if not impossible to defend Israel’s actions, they decided that they would instead attack their opponents as ‘anti-Semites’. Anyone mentioning the word ‘Zionism’ would be attacked because 'Zionist' was held to be a ‘euphemism’ for Jews in the words of Chakrabarti, someone who understands nothing about Zionism or Palestine. The only people who use ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ interchangeably are Zionists and anti-Semites. When fascists use the term 'Zionist' it is not a euphemism but a disguise or cover. 'Euphemism' is entirely the wrong word. 

When the history of these times comes to be written the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations will be seen to have been manufactured and confected by the Establishment and its tame ‘journalists’. There are very few journalists today prepared to buck the Establishment consensus that the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis is genuine.  I can only think of Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn of The Independent. There isn’t a single Guardian journalist – not Gary Younge, Aditya Chakrabortty, Owen Jones or George Monbiot - prepared to defy the Guardian’s anti-Semitism narrative as laid down by Jonathan Freedland.

No doubt in 20 or 30 years time some bright young thing at the Guardian, if it still exists, eager to establish their reputation, will put in a freedom of information request in Washington and discover that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ which accompanied Corbyn’s election as leader were as genuine as a 9 bob note. Rather than being the spontaneous outpouring of Jew-hate that those well known anti-racist papers, the Sun and Daily Mail would have us believe, the false anti-Semitism smears were cooked to order.

If our Guardian journalist is particularly bold they will establish a link between Corbyn’s support for the Palestinians and opposition to American foreign policy with the different stages of the anti-Semitism affair starting with the anti-Semitism allegations at Oxford University Labour Club to the East End mural that suddenly appeared after 6 years.

Al Jazeera’s programme, The Lobby, gave us a glimpse of the Israeli state’s role in this affair. No doubt the American and British secret services will also be seen to have played a part in what will come to be seen as a classic example of political destabilisation, the kind that we are witnessing in Venezuela today and which was common in Central and South America in the 1970’s.

After having tweeted initially in support of the Sunday Times article Mehdi Hassan quickly rowed back

At the weekend we had a double whammy. Firstly there was the Sunday Times Corbyn Factory of Hate which began to unravel almost as soon as it hit the press. Then barely 150 people at the JLM’s AGM overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn. It is clear from the article by their new Chair Mike Katz in the New Statesman, that the Murdoch Press and the JLM operate in tandem, synchronising their moves and feeding off each other. Not once did Katz challenge the veracity or motives of the Sunday Times. On the contrary he and the JLM have deliberately tried to get the soft State, via the Equality and Human Rights Commission to attack the Labour Party. You might have been forgiven for thinking that the EHRC had its work cut out on a genuine example of racism such as the Windrush scandal, whereby British citizens were illegally deported.

There isn’t a trace of anything progressive still less socialist in the politics of the JLM. They are totally unconcerned with opposing austerity, the cuts, privatisation or indeed any left-wing campaign. Their sole concern is with ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party.  Real issues of racism such as the Grenfell fire or the Windrush deportations are of no concern to them. 

This tweet was the straw that broke the camel's back - calling the JLM what it is - an Israeli Embassy proxy

Criticism of Israel and in particular the Zionist nature of the Israeli state is to them, by definition, anti-Semitic, hence their support for the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.  As Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge noted, it isn’t even a definition, being open ended. As well-known human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC observed, the IHRA isn’t ‘fit for purpose’. The IHRA has been savaged by legal and academic scholars yet it is the common sense of our Establishment.  

It was a crucial mistake of Corbyn and his advisers to have adopted the IHRA when Theresa May did so.  It is a decision which should be reversed at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately instead of standing up to these false allegations Corbyn, McDonnell and the Labour leadership have continually apologised, promised to do better and increased the pace of the witchhunt. And the more victims that were purged the more that the JLM and the Zionists demanded. Everytime the Labour leadership has made a concession the Zionist lobby has thrown it back in its face and demanded another.

A Sun headline which was quickly withdrawm

It is not of course anti-Semites who have been caught in the net but anti-racists -  Black and Jewish activists such as Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Asa Winstanley, Ken Livingstone and myself. All of us just happen to be outspoken critics of Israel and Zionism.

If there was any truth to the allegations that Labour is overrun with anti-Semitism then what is most surprising is that newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Sun who have continually demonised asylum seekers and refugees, to the extent that they employed Katie Hopkins for whom refugees were cockroaches, were so concerned about anti-Semitism.

Why should the Tory and Murdoch press be so concerned about anti-Semitism when for example the Sunday Times doesn’t hesitate to employ arch Islamaphobes such as  Rod Liddle as columnists?  This is the same Liddle who, not so long ago, suggested that suicide bombers should blow themselves up in Tower Hamlets because it is a ‘decent distance from where the rest of us live’.

Why should the Daily Mail be so concerned about 'anti-Semitism' when it criticised Labour's former Jewish leader Ed Miliband for not being able to eat a bacon sandwich or which attacked his Marxist father Ralph Miliband as a Marxist who 'hated' his country? Why is the press which which demonises George Soros as the 'puppet master', a typical Jewish financial manipulator so up in arms about 'anti-Semitism'?

Unfortunately instead of resisting the 'anti-Semitism' narrative sections of the Left, led by Jon Lansman and Owen Jones, have appeased, flattered and supported the JLM as they led the witch-hunt of people like Chris Williamson. In many ways Lansman has done more damage to Corbyn by his support of the false anti-Semitism campaign than anything the JLM has managed. Lansman has helped prevent any concerted opposition to the movement whose aim is to topple Corbyn.

In my next blog I am going to show how Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt is aimed not at anti-Semites but almost exclusively at critics of Israel and Zionism.