The Heroism of Olga Benario, a German Jewish Communist, Stands in Contrast to today’s Reactionary ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign

A photo of German communist Olga Benario Prestes who was killed in a Nazi euthanasia centre in April 1942 , Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany

Olga Benário Prestes died in Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942 where she was gassed alongside hundreds of other women political prisoners. ["Olga Benário Prestes". Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (Jewish Women's Archive)]. She is relatively unknown and is an anti-fascist heroine.

Although she was Jewish what counted for her was not her religion but her political commitment as a Communist to the fight for socialism. Her example contrasts with today’s racists who abuse and misuse the legacy of anti-Semitism in order to uphold the capitalist order. 

Because that is, of course, the purpose of people like Tom Watson and Chuka Ummuna for whom ‘anti-Semitism’ is a stick with which to beat genuine anti-racists.

Olga’s heroism and dedication is an example to all of us in a time when fascism is rearing its ugly head, hand in hand with its partner-in-crime Zionism.

Tony Greenstein 

Olga Benario Prestes: the German Jew Who Fought Fascism to the Death

The daughter of the German communist killed by the Nazis discusses her legacy in the modern fight against the far right.

February 3, 2019 Gouri Sharma Al Jazeera

"I fought for the just and the good, to make the world better. If I must now say goodbye, I promise I won't give you any cause to be ashamed of me, not to my last breath." 

This is how German author Ruth Werner imagined Olga Benario Prestes's final letter to her husband Luis Carlos Prestes and her daughter Anita before her death in 1942.

Killed in a Nazi euthanasia centre shortly after turning 34, the German communist's words would have alluded to her lifelong fight against fascism.

Hers is a story of bravery and resistance that speaks to the various times in which it's been told, and which has left a legacy in Germany, Brazil and beyond.

Olga Benário in 1928

For her daughter, Anita Leocadia Prestes, today a retired professor and historian living in Rio de Janeiro, it's a legacy that needs to be remembered.

The 82-year-old tells Al Jazeera:

"It's important to publicise fighters like [Olga] Benario so people understand it's necessary to stop the rise of fascism and to prevent similar tragedies. Her example is inspiring to young people who want to fight against fascism, and for social justice and freedom."

An early lesson in social justice

Born in 1908, Olga was the youngest of two siblings in a middle-class Jewish family from Munich. Her mother Eugenie was part of Bavarian high society, while her father Leo was a member of the German Social Democratic Party and a lawyer. He would often represent poor factory workers for free, and it was through him that Olga first learned about social justice.

Her relationship with her mother, however, was 'tense', as, from a young age, Olga questioned - and rejected - the comforts that came with her middle-class upbringing.

Olga Benario was born in 1908 to middle-class Jewish family in Munich [Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany

In 1923, the same year an Austrian named Adolf Hitler initiated the Beer Hall Putsch - a failed attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic in Munich - 15-year-old Benario joined the underground Communist Youth Organisation (KJVD).

Her activities with the group, including putting up illegal revolutionary posters around town, led local police to register her as a 'communist agitator'.

It's important to publicise fighters like [Olga] Benario so people understand it's necessary to stop the rise of fascism and to prevent similar tragedies. Her example is inspiring to young people who want to fight against fascism, and for social justice and freedom.

ANITA LEOCADIA PRESTES, OLGA BENARIO'S DAUGHTER

She soon got into a relationship with Otto Braun, a fellow communist seven years her senior. When Olga was 18, the pair left to join the larger communist movement in Berlin and she took on similar activities in her role as a leading KJVD member in the working class neighbourhood of Neukolln.

A police headshot of Olga Benario taken when she was arrested in Berlin in 1926 [Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany

A police headshot of Olga Benario taken when she was arrested in Berlin in 1926 [Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany

Her arrest on charges of 'preparations for high-treason', followed by her successful attempt to break Braun out of jail in 1928, made Olga a well-known figure across the city.

Katinka Krause, 64, is a bookshop owner who has volunteered at Galeria Olga Benario, a Berlin-based gallery, for more than 30 years.

"There were posters of her all over town and images shown before cinema screenings offering 10,000 marks to find her. Many workers gave her a home and doors were made in different places so she could escape at anytime,"

Now a target for the authorities, the pair headed to the Soviet Union, where Olga joined the Communist Youth International, a branch of the Communist International (Comintern).

Olga Benário Prestes during her imprisonment in Brazil in 1936. She was shortly afterwards deported to Germany and murdered by the Nazis in Ravensbrück.

Her relationship with Braun soon over, she underwent an intense period of military and strategic training, a skillset that included learning English, French and Russian, plus skydiving, horse-riding and piloting.

She also proved herself with successful international missions to Western Europe, getting arrested in Paris and London for her part in protests.

'A gift' to Hitler

In 1934, back in Moscow, Olga was tasked with accompanying Brazilian communist leader Luis Carlos Prestes, then in exile in Moscow, back to Brazil.

Olga was to be his bodyguard amid preparations to overthrow Brazilian leader Getulio Vargas, who looked to be sliding towards dictatorship. Disguised as a married Portuguese couple during their lengthy journey there, the pair reached the South American nation in love.

In 1934, Olga Benario was charged with escorting Luis Carlos Prestes, who had been in exile in Moscow, back to Brazil [Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany]

The revolution against Vargas failed in 1935, and Olga was eventually captured. Vargas shipped her back to Germany as 'a gift' to Hitler.

Swiss-German professor Robert Cohen has written three books on Olga Benario. The most recent, Der Vorgang Benario. Die Gestapo-Akte 1936-1942, (The Benario Process: The Gestapo File 1936-1942) examined the 2,000 Gestapo documents on her that came to light three years ago. According to Cohen, it's likely to be the largest dossier of documents on any Holocaust victim.

Cohen describes Olga as physically and mentally tough, and says he has sought to represent her from a feminist perspective.

"She took on roles only men were supposed to do, and was as brave and knowledgeable. When Prestes was arrested, the Brazilian police had the order to shoot him. By that point, Benario was two or three months pregnant, but she stepped in front of him and the police didn't know what to do. She didn't do this just out of love, she did it because it was her job."

Resistance in Ravensbruck

Shortly after her return to Germany in 1936, she gave birth to Anita in a Berlin prison. After 14 months, mother and daughter were separated and in 1939, Olga was transferred to the Ravensbruck concentration camp, situated 90km from Berlin in the north of the country.

A concentration camp only for women, it was built to house inmates considered 'deviants'. Up until its closure in 1945, more than 130,000 women and children, including aristocrats, political prisoners and spies were held there. Olga was among the first batch of women to arrive.

A photograph of Olga Benario Prestes in the exhibit 'Women of Ravensbruck - Portraits of Courage', curated by Rochelle Saidel for the Florida Holocaust Museum. Artwork on the right by Julia Terwilliger

Rochelle Saidel is the founder and executive director of the Remember the Women Institute, an organisation based in New York that supports cultural and research projects that aim to include women in history.

"She was whipped, put in a punishment bunker and worked as a slave labourer in the Siemens factory, which was one of the main slave labour companies at the camp," says Saidel.

"Plus, she was very broken when they took her baby away from her. For a year-and-a-half she didn't know what had happened, for all she knew the baby could have been given to a Nazi family. Despite that, she continued helping other people and remained idealistic."

ANITA LEOCADIA PRESTES, OLGA BENARIO'S DAUGHTER

Olga was named Blockalteste, or block elder. She made a small secret atlas to teach other prisoners about geography and war, collaborated on a clandestine newspaper and put together a detailed atlas which remains in archives today.

Then in February 1942, she was taken to the Bernburg euthanasia clinic, where she was gassed to death in April.

Olga Benario Prestes was 34 years old when she was killed by the Nazis [Image courtesy of Galeria Olga Benario in Berlin, Germany]

Her daughter says she maintained a firm stance towards her captors right up until the end.

"She never wavered before the enemy, stating that 'if others became traitors, she would never be'. She paid with her life for such steadfastness, since if she were to deceive her comrades, she would have had the chance to take up asylum in Russia, Mexico or England."

The politics of memory

Authors, filmmakers, curators and theatre directors have all sought to tell her story. Saidel says the various ways in which it has been narrated are a clear example of the politics of memory.

"It depends on who, on why and when they are remembering," she says.

The Jewish part of her identity in particular has triggered much discussion. As a communist herself, Anita regards her mother more as a political prisoner than a Jewish victim of the Nazis.

Cohen says he sees both. "Benario never insisted on her Jewishness, in fact as a communist she was very distant from it," he says.

"When they captured her in 1936, the documents showed they treated her mostly as a communist and a member of the Comintern, from whom they could learn secrets about what the Soviet Union and other communists were up to. But from 1940 onwards, they refer to her almost exclusively as a Jew."

ROBERT COHEN, SWISS-GERMAN PROFESSOR AND AUTHOR

Anita was saved by her paternal grandmother Leocadia Prestes and reunited with her father in 1945. She has since written about her parents extensively. Her latest book, Olga Benario Prestes: Uma comunista nos arquivos da Gestapo (Olga Benario Prestes: A Communist in the Gestapo Archives) was published last year in Portuguese, and alongside Gestapo documents, features letters between her parents.

Anita Leocadia Prestes, Olga's daughter, is a retired professor and historian who has written about her parents [Photo courtesy of the Sao Paulo-based Boitempo publishing house, which published Anita's most recent book]

Anita Leocadia Prestes, Olga's daughter, is a retired professor and historian who has written about her parents [Photo courtesy of the Sao Paulo-based Boitempo publishing house, which published Anita's most recent book]

Anita says that in Brazil, her mother is seen as a "symbol of the struggle of freedom fighters and communists". The 2004 Brazilian blockbuster film, Olga, was Brazil's submission for the 77th Academy Awards in the Best Foreign Film category, although it was not accepted as a nominee.

ROBERT COHEN, SWISS-GERMAN HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR

In Germany, during the Cold War, she was considered a heroine in the east of the country, with schools, care homes, factories and streets named after her.

Being a communist heroine in the East meant that the West ignored her. Krause, the volunteer at the gallery in former West Berlin, says that's now changing and more people are learning about her across the country. 

For Cohen, Olga Benario's legacy, particularly today, as far right movements grow in prominence across much of the world, is clear.

"Resist. We cannot accept what is going on. Olga Benario did it two ways. She fought fascism while she was free, and then she resisted the Nazis for six more years. That is almost unimaginable."

---

Gouri Sharma is a freelance journalist based in Berlin. Previously, she spent five years working on the production desk for Al Jazeera's media critique show, the Listening Post. 

The Equality Commission Inquiry into Labour ‘Anti-Semitism’ is Political Interference by the State in a Corbyn-led Labour Party

The Inquiry Was Set Up at the Instigation of Racists - Labour should have told the EHRC to Investigate the Windrush Scandal and the Hostile Environment Policy

This is an example of the CAA's racism

The so-called investigation by the Equalities & Human Rights Commission into Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ is a direct political attack on the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party. Never, not once, has the EHRC campaigned against state racism. It did nothing about the Windrush scandal, the hostile environment policy, the detention of migrants or any other form of state racism. The EHRC is a useless body which acts as a soft cop.

It is no wonder that Gideon Falter of the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an organisation set up in 2014 at the height of Operation Protective Edge, with the express purpose of labelling opposition to Israel’s campaign of mass murder as ‘anti-Semitic’ was crowing about his success.

A sample of the 317 articles attacking Corbyn on the CAA site

Ever since Corbyn was elected as Labour leader the CAA has made it its prime objective to remove him as leader. At the time of writing there are no less than 317 articles on its website attacking Corbyn.

By way of contrast there were just 10 references to the BNP, nearly all which were in passing and 11 references to the EDL, again nearly all of which were in passing. There was just one reference to Tommy Robinson and that was not about him. But since Robinson-Yaxley Lennon is overtly pro-Israel the CAA has no interest in him.

If this were a Jew then it would undoubtedly be called anti-semitic

Falter didn’t disguise what his agenda was.  He was reported in the Guardian as saying that Labour ‘has now become a home for hatred in British politics’ and that the Labour Party ‘now finds itself in the company of the BNP’. Falter went on to say that ‘Jeremy Corbyn himself is an antisemite and unfit for any public office, and though few have acted, most Labour MPs seem to agree with us.”

The CAA is the body that the EHRC has listened to and it beggars belief that Corbyn’s office and the Labour Left, including what's left of  Momentum have not yet woken up to the danger of this politically inspired attack on Corbyn’s leadership.

One of the CAA's Islamaphobic patrons

As far as the CAA is concerned, any support for the Palestinians is, by definition, ‘anti-Semitic’. You would search in vain for any criticism ever of anything Israel does to the Palestinians.  The CAA however never hesitates to attack the Palestinians and their organisations as ‘anti-Semitic’.

The CAA have shown no interest in the anti-Soros antisemitic campaign

When Netanyahu’s ex-aide, Aviv Bushinsky called the American Ambassador Dan Shapiro, a ‘Jew boy’ the CAA refused to say anything despite me mailing them twice.

Even the timid and cautious Palestine Solidarity Campaign is demonised as ‘anti-Semitic’ by the CAA. Yet if there is any group that deserves to be investigated it is the CAA itself which is virulently Islamaphobic.

This racist pamphlet is no longer available on the CAA site 

In its Report British Muslims and Anti-Semitism (the full version of which is no longer on the CAA’s website) they deliberately do their best to stir up Jewish-Muslim tensions. Accompanied by an openly racist stereotype of a Muslim the CAA wrote:

‘building bridges with British Muslims has become the focus of outreach work by British Jews.... the gradual buildup of understanding and friendship between Britain’s Jews and Muslims has been utterly eclipsed by growing antisemitism amongst British Muslims. On every single count, British Muslims were more likely by far than the general British population to hold deeply antisemitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for British Jews, rating Jews much less favourably than people of other religions or no religion, yet astonishingly British Muslims largely do not recognise antisemitism as a major problem.

It has long been suspected that sections of the British Muslim population harboured hatred towards British Jews. This survey goes some way to identifying pockets of prejudice, but it also shows that the prejudice is horrifyingly widespread.’

This was no less than a call to arms.  The CAA then went on to indulge in what, in any other circumstances, would be described as stereotyping:

It would be interesting to see a poll by Jewish people on their attitude to Muslims!

‘Antisemitic British Muslims are more likely to be men, to be older than 35, to be social renters, to be in employment, to have been born outside Britain, to live south of the Midlands in England, or in Scotland, and they are overwhelmingly likely to sympathise with terrorism, violence and extremism.’

In 2015 the CAA conducted a thoroughly unscientific poll of British Jews in order to find ‘proof’ that most Jews were thinking about leaving Britain for Israel.  It found that:

Even the right-wing Jewish Chronicle crossed swords with the CAA over their absurd proposition that nearly half British jews were thinking of leaving

The CAA also conducted a thoroughly unscientific poll of British Jews in order to find ‘proof’ for the Zionist wish that ‘anti-Semitism’  was that bad that most Jews were thinking about leaving Britain for Israel.  It found that:

·               58% of Jews believed that they had no future in Europe.

·               More than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism now echoes the 1930s

·               1 in 4 British Jews has considered leaving the country in the past two years because of rising antisemitism. 

·               45% of Jews questioned feel their family is threatened by Islamist extremism.

·               77% of Jews questioned have witnessed antisemitism disguised as a political comment about Israel.

·               84% of Jews consider boycotts of businesses selling Israeli products to be intimidation and 82% say that media bias against Israel fuels persecution of Jews in Britain.

The clear implication of this photograph is that all or most Muslims support Hitler's final solution 

These were loaded questions putting ideas in the heads of people in order to gain an answer. No attempt was made to put countervailing opinions to the audience. For example it would have been equally possible to put a question such as ‘Is it legitimate to boycott settlement goods in order to pressurise Israel into a political settlement?

Even the Jewish Chronicle of 14.1.15. poured cold water on these ‘findings’ with its own Survation poll.  JC poll reveals 88 per cent of British Jews have not considered leaving UK 

The CAA poll was junk but it had served to attract the headlines and make Jewish people feel more nervous about their position in this country.  Zionism is nothing if it isn’t based around the idea of getting Jews to feel insecure in their own country in order that they emigrate to Israel.

The CAA had an agenda and conducted an opinion poll with the intention of getting people to say what CAA wanted to hear.  As a letter from 33 Jewish people in the Guardian the following week made clear ‘Accusing critics of Israel and Zionism of antisemitism merely devalues the currency.’

The Institute of Jewish Policy Research’s ‘Researching antisemitism’ [14 Jan 2015] was damning in its criticisms of the CAA’s findings concerning Jewish attitudes.  It said:

 ‘unfortunately, the organisation’s survey about antisemitism is littered with flaws,… its work may even be rather irresponsible.’  It was ‘based on an open web survey that had very limited capacity to assess whether respondents were in any way representative of the British Jewish population. So the percentages quoted are of survey respondents, not of Jews in the UK. The findings might be representative of the Jewish community in some way, but it is at least equally likely that they are not. Unfortunately, due to quite basic methodological flaws and weaknesses, there is absolutely no way the researchers or any readers of the report can really know.

The CAA routinely fiddle their figures knowing that the lazy right-wing British press will never call them out

The IJPR stated that the claim in the report that “more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism now echoes the 1930s” verges into irresponsible territory – it is an incendiary finding, and there is simply no way to ascertain whether or not it is accurate.’ It conclusions were damning:  ‘Professional social researchers build credible surveys and analyse the data with an open mind; the CAA survey falls short both in terms of its methodology and its analysis.’ 

For the IJPR this was a damning criticism. Regarding the Yougov survey into the attitudes of British people, which the CAS tried to spin the JPR said this:

 ‘A far more accurate and honest read of the YouGov data would highlight the fact that between 75% and 90% of people in Britain either do not hold antisemitic views or have no particular view of Jews either way, and only about 4% to 5% of people can be characterised as clearly antisemitic when looking at individual measures of antisemitism.’

Which was somewhat different to the CAA claim that nearly half of British people were anti-Semitic.

Such is the CAA’s Islamaphobia that they even attacked  ‘Hope not Hate’ a group which had Ruth Smeeth MP as its Deputy Director. In an article Hope Not Hate condemns those who fight Islamist extremism the CAA attack HnH for its report on “The Counter-Jihad Movement: Anti-Muslim hatred from the margins to the mainstream”.

The CAA agree with those like Melanie Phillips who deny the very existence of anti-Muslim racism. They belong to the far-Right of politics and the so-called Equality and Human Rights Commission have swallowed their bait, hook, line and sinker.

Why the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism Cannot Be Trusted

There are three examples which prove, conclusively that the CAA are not an anti-racist but a pro-Zionist group.

This post accusing Jackie Walker of being a Holocaust justifier was quickly withdrawn once they realised that her quote was by Israel's first PM Ben Gurion!  The MSM never ever mention this and similar incidents!

1.         The Case of Jackie Walker

Jackie Walker is a Black-Jewish anti-racist activist, a former Vice-Chair of Momentum, who has been demonised by the Zionist movement.  Both the CAA and the Jewish Labour Movement, the other group involved in complaining to the EHRC are guilty of this.

On 7^th February the CAA put up a post Jackie Walker has now posted a text on Facebook which asks whether Hitler can be blamed for the the (sic!) Holocaust, and leaves open the possibility that he was justified.’  This was widely circulated on Twitter. What was this text?

‘If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal.  We have taken their country. It is true G-d promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our G-d is not theirs. There has been anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?’

It is difficult to understand the mental gymnastics which led to the above statement being interpreted either as a denial of Hitler’s responsibility for the Holocaust still less Holocaust justification.

What the CAA did not realise was that the quote came from The Jewish Paradox by Nahum Goldmann, founder and first President of the World Jewish Congress and President of the World Zionist Organisation! He in turn was quoting David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister. Ben Gurion was responsible for the ethnic cleansing of ¾ million Palestinians but even he understood why the Palestinians rejected Zionism and their argument that what Hitler had done was not their fault. But to the CAA any attempt to understand the Palestinian or Arab point of view is anathema.

When they realised their mistake the CAA quickly removed the article. No apology was ever offered to Jackie Walker.

This viciously racist article went up on the CAA site and is still there - with Expel being highlighted in red and a deliberately dark background being chosen to make Malakha appear sinister

2.         Malaka Shwaikh Mohammed,

Malaka, a 26 year old Ph. D. Student at Exeter University was an ideal target for the CAA, despite her involvement in anti-fascist and anti-racist work. Malaka came from Gaza. She was traumatised by Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, when 66 of her family and friends were murdered.

The CAA engaged with Malaka in their normal courteous style. One post was headed Exeter students invite terrorist-supporting antisemite to reassure Jewish students after spate of antisemitism. It was accompanied by a video titled ‘Expel Malakha Schwaikh’. The CAA could only justify their attack on Malaka by quoting what she said out of context. 

The Mail and Express apologised to Malakha but not the racist CAA

The CAA harvested tweets and social media posts by Malakha, in particular one where she apparently said

‘If terrorism means protecting and defending my land, I am so proud to be called terrorist. What an honour for the Palestinians’

In fact this comment was a response to Malakha made by another student who was in conversation with her. As she explained:

these kind of statements by Palestinians in general are most commonly in response to efforts by Israel advocacy groups and the Israeli government to demonise and dehumanise Palestinians.

In other words when Palestinians are accused of being ‘terrorists’ for resisting Israel’s Occupation they respond that if resistance means that they are terrorists then so be it. That wasn’t an admission of terrorism still less anti-Semitism. This is a rhetorical figure of speech. The CAA’s accusations are political terrorism from McCarthy’s handbook.

The press, which on the back of CAA’s campaign, had maligned Malaka, realised their error. The Daily Express acknowleged its error and admitted that:

‘In fact this tweet was one of a series of tweets in which Ms. Shwaikh was quoting responses made to her in a conversation with a student.  

Following a complaint an investigation was undertaken by the Exeter Student’s Guild which cleared Malakha of any wrongdoing. The Daily Mail and Devon Live Radio printed similar retractions. The full story is told here Character Assassination as a Tool to Silence a Palestinian Woman, Statement by Malakah, 2 March 2017.

The CAA demonised and ridiculed a vulnerable female student. After a spate of antisemitic incidents at the University of Exeter, students decided to organise a protest march. Malakha was involved in this activity and was asked to speak, as a student who had herself experienced racism.  D chose to mock Malakha’s participation in the demonstration by casting aspersions on the Exeter student body:

They did what came naturally to them and asked Malaka Shwaikh, exposed by Campaign Against Antisemitism as a terrorist-supporting antisemite, to address the crowd and make Jewish students feel safe. Whilst professing an admirable desire for solidarity, Shwaikh took the opportunity not to renounce any of her views and to instead berate those “attacking” her as simply venting their “Islamophobic” prejudice.

Alone among her detractors the CAA hasn’t apologised for their despicable behaviour. It has simply moved on to denigrating other victims.

3.         Rowan Laxton

In 2009 Foreign Office diplomat Rowan Laxton was accused by Gideon Falter of having shouted out, whilst exercising by himself in a gym, ‘fucking Israelis, fucking Jews’ after having seen on a TV screen footage of an elderly Palestinian man killed by Israel in Gaza. Laxton, who is now Britain’s High Commissioner to the Republic of Cameroon, was prosecuted for using ‘"threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour …’ in a public place. The Police were not inclined to prosecute but Falter leaked it to the Daily Mail and this racist rag put the Police under pressure. Laxton was convicted at first instance by Westminster Magistrates Court and was suspended by the Foreign Office.

If Jews in England faced being unable to rent places because they were Jewish then they could cry 'antisemitism'

Laxton appealed to Southwark Crown Court who acquitted him of using the phrase ‘fucking Jews’. In other words Gideon Falter was a liar who had tried to ruin someone’s career for expressing their emotions about Israel’s attack on Gaza which killed 1,400 civilians including hundreds of children.  The death of Palestinians is not something which disturbs Falter in the slightest. As Professor Geoffrey Pullum noted in The diplomat, the bishop, the bomber, and the fruit bat the Daily Mail which reported the initial conviction did not report Laxton’s successful appeal. 

Despite some disagreements with this article by Ifnotnow(it uses some anti-Semitic tropes) the information in it is still invaluable. The CAA fiddles its statistics on anti-Semitism with gay abandon as Eve Mykytyn explains in her article ‘Exposing the Vigilantes’ in The Anti-Semitism Wars and Exposed! How Britain’s anti-Semitism Scaremongers Operate.

For example it bases its statistics on anti-Semitic incidents by using Freedom of information requests to Police Forces to search their files using key words such as ‘Jew’ despite being warned by the Northumbria force that not all mentions of the word ‘Jew’ were anti-Semitic incidents.  They also described the request as a ‘fishing expedition.’

The Jewish Labour Movement is the 'sister party' of the racist Israeli Labor Party

The other group involved in making the allegations of anti-Semitism is the Jewish Labour Movement.  This is a group, some 2,000 strong the majority of whose members are not Jewish. They are by their own admission the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labour Party.

This is the same racist party which, when Netanyahu decided to expel all 40,000 Black African refugees from Israel last year supported the  deportations. It is the party that expelled the Palestinian refugees and kept Israel’s Arab citizens under Military Rule for the first 18 years of Israel’s existence  It is a party which openly wants to segregate Arabs and Jews.  In other words it is a thoroughly racist group and it is noteworthy that when, on Channel 4 last night, Karl Sabbagh raised the question  of the JLM’s relationship to the ILP, that Mike Katz was forced to lie and claim the ILP was a fellow member of the Socialist International.  In fact it left because the SI now supports  BDS!

The JNF is quite open about the fact that it supports a Jewish rather than a democratic state and this is what Falter has signed up to

Gideon Falter himself is a Director of the JNF Charitable Trust.  This is a 'charity' which with JNF Israel owns 13% of all state land and administers another 80%.  Not only has it been used to plant forests on Palestinian villages raised to the ground but to this day will not lease or rent its property to non-Jews. In other words it is a thoroughly racist body.  When Israel's Supreme Court, in the Kadaan case (now reversed through legislation) made it illegal to refuse to lease property to Arabs the JNF complained bitterly that 

'A survey commissioned by KKL-JNF reveals that over 70% of the Jewish population in Israel opposes allocating KKL-JNF land to non-Jews, while over 80% prefer the definition of Israel as a Jewish state, rather than as the state of all its citizens.

So the Equalities and Human Rights Commission is conducting an investigation into racism in the Labour Party at the request of 2 racist groups! It doesn't look promising.

Tony Greenstein

For more reading about the CAA see:

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-campaign-against-anti-semitism.html

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/exclusive-lifting-lid-on-campaign.html

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/more-false-allegations-of-anti-semitism.html

https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2018/05/over-5000-people-sign-petition-saying.html

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