Please Sign AND Share the Petition to reinstate Asa Winstanley's Press Pass for Labour Party conference

This attack on free speech is a shameful act of appeasement – Israel’s Apartheid Press will be accredited unlike Electronic Intifada

SIGN THE PETITION

If anyone had any doubts about what the witchhunt means in practice then the refusal to issue Asa Winstanley with a press pass should remove those doubts. It is about silencing the voice of Palestine and allowing the voice of Zionism and the Jewish Supremacist State to rule unchallenged.

It is shocking enough that Asa was ever suspended.  His only ‘crime’ has been to show through painstaking journalism that the fake anti-Semitism allegations in the Labour Party were a put up job. Asa has written a series of well researched articles such as:

Jewish Labour Movement worked with Israeli embassy spy

How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis and

Jewish Labour Movement was refounded to fight Corbyn

These article have caused great discomfort amongst the ranks of the Jewish Labour Movement and the operatives of the Israeli Embassy. They have have resulted in complaints by the JLM and to the Labour Party.  Free Speech is something that these racist bastards hate and the Labour Party, UNDER JENNY FORMBY’S DIRECTION has silenced Asa Winstanley.

Of course in Israel Palestinian journalists are shot at and detained whereas in Britain they rely on the useless bureaucrats of a Corbyn led Labour Party to deny press passes and suspend dissenting voices.

Employing the ‘logic’ of the Salem Witch Trials in America, which Arthur Miller used as an allegory for the McCarthy witchhunt in America, in The Crucible, denial that the Labour Party is anti-Semitic is proof that you are anti-Semitic. It is the logic of every fascist and police state the world over.  An accusation is tantamount to guilt which is what the JLM have been arguing for ever since they mounted their slow coup in 2015.

The suspension of Asa is shameful and the denial of his press pass is even more shameful.  Don’t just sign the petition share it and share this story too.

Bombard these racist bastards in Southside. Unfortunately whilst the hated Iain McNicol is gone his underlings still remain behind and in charge.  Jenny Formby has proved a wash out. 

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Tony Greenstein

 

 

Boris’s Coup is a Constitutional Outrage but it may yet rebound on Johnson and the Monarchy

As Tony Benn pointed out, the Royal Prerogative is the undemocratic heart of our Constitution 

When I first heard that Boris Johnson was going to rule without what he considers the unnecessary interference of parliament my first thoughts were that this is what happens when I go away for a short break!

We live in interesting times and no more so for the Royal Family and the Queen. Not since the death of Princess Diana, which was at first a relief to ‘the firm’, have the Royals been in the firing line. This has not been a good week for them  First there was the little local difficulty of her son Prince Andrew and his association with Jeff Epstein, a convicted paedophile and his almost certain sexual relations with girls being held in conditions of captivity and now the suspension of parliament

Her Majesty has consented to preventing Parliament meeting in order to discuss the major constitutional issue of the time. There can be no doubt that the Queen could have told Johnson to go away and secure the assent of Parliament to its own dissolution. She didn’t because clearly Johnson has no majority for such an undemocratic manoeuvre. He has been elected by the members of the Tory party only and lacks a majority in the House of Commons.

Thus we see that the Monarchy represents the undemocratic heart of our constitutional settlement and the Royal Prerogative is its instrument. It could however backfire badly on Boris for a very simple reason.  Brexit no longer commands a majority amongst the British people and that is why there is such resolute opposition among the Brexiteers to a second referendum or Parliament having a vote.  There is certainly no support for no deal.

We saw today that there is mass anger at what has happened and it is likely to grow not diminish. Boris Johnson’s plummy public school accent and that of the 18^th century caricature Rees-Mogg cannot hide the deviousness and dishonesty behind this dictatorial act.

It is right that people should besiege parliament and Downing Street and it would be right if they riot because riots are how the peoples’ will can be manifested.

Parliament, if it has the will, can easily pass legislation taking control over the legislative process, revoking Article 50, agreeing to a referendum or seeking an extension to Article 50.  Where there is a will there is a way.  That will mean the smaller parties falling in behind Labour including the treacherous Lib Dems, who found no difficulty sitting in the same cabinet as George Osborne and Cameron but object to Jeremy Corbyn.

Boris Johnson may have bitten off more than he can chew and the resignation of Ruth Davidson is an omen of the deep split in our ruling class.

Tony Greenstein

Bracknell UNITE Invited Me to Speak on the Labour Party Witchhunt – You Can Guess What Happened Next!

The Chair of Bracknell Labour Party, ex-Cop Roy Bailey Asked  for Advice on whether Labour Party Members are Allowed to Attend the Meeting!!

Roy Bailey - an 'excellent communicator with strong analytical skills' - all of which seem to have deserted him'

At first I thought I must be hallucinating. Surely it couldn't be someone whom Tony Benn had described as “the greatest socialist folk singer of his generation” engaging in a vicious McCarthyite witch-hunt. I thought he had died. But no, it wasn’t that Roy Bailey.

This was a New Labour version who had obtained a doctorate in the quack discipline of ‘criminology’ which is really about control in a capitalist society and as such is pretty worthless, a reservoir of prejudices dressed up in the language of science.

There was a time when people like Bailey believed that criminality was inherited and indeed Max Nordau Deputy President of the World Zionist Organisation was an ardent believer in such nonsense.  He even wrote a book about it, Degeneration.

Nordau was influenced by the work of Italian psychiatrist and founder of criminal anthropology Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), who argued that criminality was inherited. You get a flavour of Nordau’s ideas and the origins of Zionism from what he wrote about Oscar Wilde. Nordau’s bio op on the British Museum site states that

Roy Bailey's modest profile on Linkedin. He is apparently an 'excellent communicator' and also 'a strategic thinker with strong analytical skills' all of which seemed to have deserted him!  

After having attacked the ‘predilection for suffering, disease and crime’ in influences such as Swinburne, Nordau argues that Wilde ‘has done more by his personal eccentricities than by his works.’ Denouncing his dress sense as the ‘pathological aberration of a racial instinct’, Nordau adds that ‘what really determines his actions is the hysterical craving to be noticed’; ‘it is above all a sign of anti-social ego-mania to irritate the majority unnecessarily’. Dismissing Wilde’s poetry as derivative, and focusing instead on his prose essays, Nordau concludes that ‘Oscar Wilde apparently admires immorality, sin and crime’.

You can see why Roy Bailey, who is also a devotee of Zionism, is so attracted to the study of criminology and thus passes himself off as an academic and no doubt as an intellectual too. However I digress.

In his Linkedin Profile Bailey describes himself as a ‘Strategic thinker with strong analytical skills’. Unfortunately his skills seemed to have deserted him when an invitation arrived from Bracknell Unite informing him that I was speaking to a meeting on September 2^nd on the Labour Party witchhunt and that Labour Party members were welcome to attend

You can just imagine the reaction in Roy’s mind.  He is a good member of  Progress and the idea that an EXPELLED Labour Party member has the audacity to share his opinions with people, on behalf of an organisation called Labour Against the Witchhunt, was too much for him. This was taking democracy too far.

Almost immediately the cop in Roy came to the fore. Wasn’t I expelled from the Labour Party as an anti-Semite? The fact that I'm Jewish was irrelevant since obviously I was the 'wrong sort of Jew'. One suspects that his first reaction was to reach for a law book and see if there was a law against this kind of thing.

It matters not a jot that my expulsion, like that of so many, was carried out by a kangaroo court headed by the Witchfinder General Maggi Cosins and was because of my views on Zionism. As far as Roy is concerned there are no bad laws and there are no miscarriages of justice or bent and corrupt coppers. What matters is those who got away. 

The fact that war criminals like Tony Blair is still a member of the Labour Party, alongside fellow racists like Tom Watson, whilst socialists are expelled and suspended has probably never bothered Bailey. After all, despite his pretensions to be an academic he is at heart a simple fellow.

The Police mentality is a simple one.  The law is there to be obeyed, not to be challenged or questioned. The idea that the law simply reflects existing property relations and that the police and state are there to preserve the interests of the ruling class is anathema to Roy. 

The fact that hunting with dogs is now illegal but Police spend their time harassing hunt sabs rather than those who evade and break the law on hunting is probably dismissed without a second’s thought by this upstanding ex-cop.

All that mattered to Roy is that subversive thoughts and ideas may be up for discussion and, quite understandably, the cop in him rebelled at such a prospect.  As I said in my letter (below), Roy may have left the police force but they have never left him.

It reflects on the sad state of the Labour Party  today that people like Roy Bailey are officers of their respective Labour Parties and secondly that they feel the need to ask for advice on whether Labour Party members should be allowed to hear from someone who has been expelled.  I guess in his studies on criminology our Roy didn’t come across cases like the Guildford 4 or the Birmingham 6 and if he had done he would have dismissed them with the ‘rotten apple in the barrel’ theory.

We should not be harsh on Roy Bailey. In his own blundering way he simply reflects the mentality of those who are working to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn. In so many ways Roy Bailey, with a police state inside his head, is a good example of Progress and the Labour Right’s intolerance for socialist politics and ideas.

Tony Greenstein

By email to: royjbailey@btinternet.com 

September 24 2019

Dear Mr Bailey,

I was made aware, earlier today, of a post on Terry Pearce’s Facebook page. Terry is Chair of Bracknell Branch of UNITE and they have invited me to speak to them on September 2nd.

Apparently you are seeking advice from the Regional Labour Party as to whether or not Labour Party members are allowed to attend my talk as I have been expelled from the Labour Party. It would seem that you are treating members of Bracknell Labour Party, of which you are I believe Chair, as if they were still at primary school.

It speaks volumes about the state of democracy in the Labour Party if you believe that members need permission to attend a trade union meeting. I realise that any mention of forbidden topics to do with a certain state in the Middle East are considered ‘anti-Semitic’ unless they are part of a re-education programme that goes by the name of ‘training. However I am surprised that even a member of Progress (treat as in Newspeak where War is Peace) should consider that permission is needed to attend a union meeting.

My first thoughts when I heard of your request was that maybe you were auditioning for a bit part in a play about the Inquisition. Torquemada perhaps? But then I realised that I wasn’t treating the matter with the seriousness it clearly deserves.

I understand that you are by your own description a former Senior Police Officer in the Thames Valley Police Force, one of the most backward forces in Britain. You may recall A Complaint of Rape which was shown by the BBC in 1982, a savage interview by 3 officers of a rape victim who effectively became the accused. It achieved, as you are aware, national notoriety and was responsible for a revolution in how rape victims were treated nationally.

However the Labour Party is not a police state. Members are, even under the regime that the supporters of the Israeli State would like to introduce, still free, at least in theory, to attend whatever meetings they may wish to participate in.

Of course you could have attended my talk and if you had disagreements expressed them. This is called freedom of speech, concepts which are clearly quite alien to you.

I understand that your concern is that I have been expelled from the Labour Party when so many racists such as Tom Watson, to say nothing of war criminals like Tony Blair, are still at large. Please allow me to allay your concerns. I stand in a long and honourable tradition.

Sir Stafford Cripps, Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer was expelled from the Labour Party in 1939 as was Aneurin Bevan and George Strauss. Ken Livingstone was also expelled before being readmitted and then forced to resign by narrow minded bigots.

I was expelled because I am a Jewish anti-Zionist. Like Whites in South Africa who opposed Apartheid I oppose Zionism. This is termed anti-Semitic by Labour’s racist right-wing just as 30 years ago people like you argued for ‘constructive engagement’ with Apartheid.

I realise that you don’t understand why some of us are not so enamoured with a state that arrests Palestinian (not Jewish) children in the early hours of the morning, blindfolds and beats them before forcing them to confess in a language they don’t even understand.

Israel is a state, not of its own citizens but its Jewish citizens and indeed Jews who are not its citizens. That is what a Jewish state means. It is a state that demolishes the homes of its Arab citizens in order to make way for Jewish settlers. It is a state where Jewish residents of the northern city of Afula demonstrate against the sale of a single house to an Arab. It is a state where there is a separate education system for Jews and Arabs. I realise that this presents no problem to you and your racist supporters in Progress but that is what I will be talking about.

I am sure that if you want to explain why you support a state based on racial supremacy that people will be more than interested to hear your arguments. What people will not understand is why you should want to prevent other people hearing them.

You seem to have a contempt for freedom of speech and democracy. It would appear that although you have left the Police force, it has not left you.

Tony Greenstein

Open letter to Brighton & Hove Councillors - We Intend to Defend Freedom of Speech on Palestine and Israel - Kyle, Platts and Yates will not prevail

Anti-Zionism is not Anti-Semitism and Israel is no more a Jewish State than South Africa was a Christian State

Dear Councillor,

Last October Brighton and Hove Council passed a resolution supporting the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism. As we pointed out at the time, a 500+ word definition is not a definition. The IHRA, which mentions Israel in 7 of its 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ was solely concerned with conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

People refusing to allow Kyle and Yates to dictate who they could listen to

We cited the views of a variety of legal and academic scholars – Hugh Tomlinson QC, Geoffrey Robertson QC, Sir Stephen Sedley and even the person who drafted the definition, Kenneth Stern. All were agreed that the IHRA was being used to chill free speech. Robertson described the IHRA as not being fit for purpose.

Stern, in testimony to Congress described how the IHRA had
‘chilled pro-Palestinian expression’ highlighting its use by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to vilify Bristol University lecturer, Dr Rebecca Gould because of an article she had written, ‘Beyond Anti-Semitism’ . Stern described the attempt to get Gould sacked as ‘chilling and McCarthy-like.’

Asa Jansson of Brighton & Hove Labour Left Alliance

As Dr Geoffrey Alderman, a right-wing Jewish and Zionist academic, wrote in the Independent of 31 July, the IHRA’s 11 examples ‘embed numerous internal contradictions’. [This Labour Party row will not be settled by relying on a flawed and faulty definition of antisemitism]

Despite a range of Black and Muslim groups in Brighton making their opposition to the IHRA clear, the Council chose to ignore them and adopt the IHRA on the spurious grounds that the Jewish community supported it.  In reality the people who supported it were activists of Sussex Friends of Israel. I doubt if 1% of Jewish people in Brighton or elsewhere have actually read this muddled and verbose prose.  But even if Jews in Brighton and Hove had supported it it would have been wrong to adopt a definition which says that the Palestinian experience of Zionism and Israel is anti-Semitic.

Peter Kyle - Hove's right-wing 'Labour' MP

What we predicted has come to pass. Three weeks ago Peter Kyle MP used the IHRA to ‘persuade’ the Brighthelm Centre  to cancel a meeting by Chris Williamson. This then gave encouragement to a campaign of threats, abuse and harassment directed at first the Holiday Inn and then the Friends Meeting House, both of which were forced to cancel Chris’s meetings. Kyle has repeatedly refused to condemn this abuse and threats.

Despite this we ensured that the meeting went ahead in Regency Square. Over 150 people assembled to hear Chris Williamson. We sent a message that we will not allow freedom of speech to be curtailed. Instead of applauding this exercise of people power that miserable wretch Cllr. Dan Yates called for the Council to penalise the organisers!

Nancy Platts, the new group leader, implies that Jews aren't welcome at the moment - Jews suffer least from racism yet Platts is silent on genuine racism

Our meeting included a number of Jewish people who were happy to stand with Chris Williamson and reject the attempt of Kyle to use Jews as a stick to beat the left of the Labour Party with. This is the real anti-Semitism.

What Kyle did resembled the actions of Donald Trump who, in the course of telling 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ berated them because ‘“They hate Israel & all Jewish people’. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why a White Supremacist should, almost in the same breath, utters the most vile racist insults against 4 Black women and then protests his undying love for Israel and Jews.

Today from Viktor Orban to Mattheo Salvini, Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD and our own Tommy Robinson, the far-Right combines anti-Semitism with ardent support for Israel.

Likewise the same Tory tabloids which have waged an unceasing campaign consisting of fake anti-Semitism allegations against Jeremy Corbyn have also employed ‘journalists’ like Katie Hopkin, a neo-Nazi who talked of perpetrating a ‘Final Solution’ to Muslims and described refugees as ‘cockroaches’. Hopkins combines ardent support for Israel with a justification for the shooting dead of 11 Jews at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

One doesn’t need to look any farther than the Tory party which combines support for the IHRA with being in alliance with fascists and anti-Semites in the European Parliament. For the past 10 years Tory MEPs have been members of the European Conservative and Reform Group.

The 4 Congresswomen who were told to 'go back' home by Trump, the Zionists' best friend 

The ECR contains a variety of fascist and anti-Semitic groups including the Brothers of Italy, the Swedish Democrats and Poland’s Law & Justice Party which was led by Michal Kaminski, a man who excused the massacre by Poles at Jedwabne in 1941, burning alive up to 1,600 Jews on the grounds that they had collaborated with the Soviet invasion in 1939.  [Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski]. Roberts Zile MEP, another ECR member, of the Latvian LNNK even demonstrates each March with the veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS!

As Medhi Hassan noted at the time, it is quite possible to be both anti-Semitic and pro-Zionist. Indeed historically most anti-Semites were pro-Zionist including Arthur Balfour.

Cllr Dan Yates believed that this gathering should have been declared illegal - clearly he forgot he wasn't in Israel!

Under the guise of opposing ‘anti-Semitism’, concerted attempts are being made at the Labour Party conference to prevent meetings around Palestine and Israel taking place. Jewish Voices for Labour has just had a meeting at the Jury’s Inn hotel cancelled and Zionist groups have promised to try and repeat what they did with Chris Williamson.

That was why the remarks of Nancy Platts, in an interview with the Jewish News, ‘that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome’, apart from being an outright lie, indicate that she has thrown in her lot with Kyle. There is no substance whatsoever to Platt’s allegations. Jews have played a prominent part in Palestine solidarity and anti-Zionist groups in this city, however we are the ‘wrong sort of Jews’ i.e. anti-Zionists and anti-racists.

Tower Hamlets recently used the IHRA to prevent this fundraising effort on behalf of Palestinian children

Platts, Kyle and Dan Yates, amongst others, demonstrate their contempt for freedom of speech on Palestine.  A contempt which Brighton and Hove Council has given encouragement to with its support for the IHRA.  Brighton and Hove Council is not alone.  Tower Hamlets Council only two weeks ago prevented the Big Ride for Palestine from rallying in a local park because of the IHRA.

Refusing to be deterred by Kyle, Yates or Platts

The decision on the IHRA must be revisited. The IHRA is anti-democratic and a threat to freedom of speech. It does nothing to prevent anti-Semitism.  That is not its purpose. Its sole rationale is as a weapon to be used against expressions of solidarity with the Palestinians.  

In the meantime Councillors should be under no illusion that the Left in this town, including Palestine solidarity groups, have no intention of allowing racists and Zionists, backed up by Platts, Kyle and Yates, to prevent freedom of speech on Palestine.  Chris Williamson and other speakers will be heard on the Labour Party fringe come what may.

We hope you will do your duty and act to protect freedom of speech and assembly against their enemies, be they in your rank or outside.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Remembering Sam Semoff - a giant of the Liverpool Labour Movement

Sam was a Jewish Anti-Zionist and an anti-racist to the last

It was in January of last year that my close friend of over three decades, Sam Semoff, an American Jew who came to live in my home town, Liverpool, passed away.  At the time I wrote an appreciation of Sam.

Sam’s headstone has now been placed over his grave and that gives me the ideal opportunity to remind people of Sam, a comrade and a friend who stood and fought, despite ill-health, the witch-hunt in Liverpool carried out by the detestable Zionist ‘Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside (and Tel Aviv North), Louise Ellman.  At least her sidekick, the equally detestable Blairite Luciana Berger, has departed for the TIGs.

Sam was a dedicated fighter for the NHS. He fought the privatisation of the NHS and the rebuilding of the Royal Liverpool hospital which has now been severely affected by the bankruptcy of Carillon. Sam faced concerted opposition from right-wing Labour figures in 2013 when he brought a judicial review against the use of Carillon.

Joe Anderson, then the Leader of the Council, now Mayor of Liverpool said:

"My message is ‘Bog off Semoff’. We have had enough delays and interference in so many projects within this city. “Quite frankly it annoys not just me but literally thousands of people. “This is about the health of the people of this city, and is not for some individual with his own political and ideological reasons to jeopardise the services meant for the people of this city."

Here you see the reactionary politics of those who abandon any semblance of socialist politics in order to espouse the philosophy of ‘if it works then use it’.  This was the philosophy of Blair.  Employ the private sector if it helps clear waiting lists in the NHS. The alternative, expanding the existing state sector of course was not an option.

This is how you get privatisation by stealth and opportunists like Joe Anderson and Nick Small espoused with ‘if it work’ principle. Forget the politics, we will use any means, even if it involves a PFI and a corrupt cowboy company like Carillon. Six years later Anderson was singing a different song. Anderson told the Liverpool Echo that

‘This building is a monument to corporate greed - if you give the private sector free reign within the public sector then profit comes before quality and that's exactly what we've ended up with.

"We need an open public inquiry that looks at what went wrong and how it happened - because this is just obscene."

Anderson didn’t have the decency to apologise for the comments he made disparaging Sam’s motives , suggesting he was putting his own socialist principles before the needs of ordinary people, and retract them.  People like him constitute the detreitus of the Labour Party and reformism.

Even worse than this particular skunk was Cllr. Nick Small. As Greg Dropkin wrote when Sam brought an application for Judicial Review, Louise Ellman’s sidekick and a prominent figure in the current witchhunt approached the Legal Aid Board in order to cut off Sam’s funding.  This action guaranteed the disaster of this failed scheme. It has set back the new building by years at vastly increased public expense. The whole construction that Carillon carried out was botched.

Nick Small is the human equivalent of a viper, today pointing the finger at other socialists in the Labour Party – all with the approval of Jenny Formby and Labour’s regional mafia.

I also reprint an obituary which Sam’s daughter Shela wrote for The Guardian.  Perhaps one of the few decent things that paper has done in the past four years.

We will continue to remember this doughty fighter for the working class and the oppressed everywhere.  The Zionist skunks and scabs like Joe Anderson and Nick Small will only be remembered for their obeisance and servility to the rich and powerful.

The Threat to Freedom of Speech from Brighton Council Leader Nancy Platts - all in the name of 'anti-Semitism'

 Like Trump Platts Professes Concern About 'Antisemitism' when the real concern is to prevent criticsm of Israel 

When Trump told four Black Congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Ayanna S. Pressley to ‘go back home’ (despite 3 of them being born in the USA), he also added for good measure that they 'hate America and hate Israel.'

Trump’s concerns are understandable because the one country in the world where Trump is more popular than unpopular is the apartheid State of Israel. [See Support for Trump higher in Israel than almost any other nation: poll]

Like the Tories and Labour’s Right, Trump cannot distinguish between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Which is why, at the very time he was condemning 'anti-Semitism' he was also accusing America’s Jews, 80% of whom vote Democrat, of disloyalty to both himself and the State of Israel. Like his former adviser Steve Bann, Trump uses support for Israel as a stick to beat America’s Jews with!

examples of the abuse that Jackie Walker, one of Platt's targets received -  this is the abuse that anti-Zionists regularly receive but which, unlike that of Zionist prima donnas like Ruth Smeeth is never mentioned

According to Trump Israel is the ‘real home’ of America’s Jews. This is a Zionist doctrine, although many Zionists prefer to maintain a state of political schizophrenia. As Peter Beinart, one of the few genuinely thoughtful Zionists around, whose opinion pieces are always worth reading (perhaps because he’s a Professor of Journalism!) remarked ‘in the past, Trump has repeatedly spoken about American Jews as if they were Israelis.’

And this is equally true of Platts and Kyle.  It is now part of Labour Party culture (if such a term is not an oxymoron) to equate criticism of Israel with criticism of Jews i.e. anti-Semitism. Israel has become the collective Jew. 

That was the purpose and function of the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism that Brighton and Hove council adopted last October and for which Nancy Platts voted. So when meetings are held which criticise Israel or Zionism, idiots like Platts (who to be fair has a limited comprehension of such matters) equate such criticism with hostility to Jews).  And those of us who are Jewish anti-Zionists are merely the ‘wrong sort of Jew’ or to use the Nazi term beloved of Zionists, ‘self-haters’ (because if you hate your race you hate yourself).

As Beinart noted 

‘In an April speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he called Benjamin Netanyahu “your prime minister” and warned that a Democratic victory in 2020 “could leave Israel out there all by yourselves.”

At the White House Hanukkah Party last December, he told the mostly Jewish audience that Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, “love your country. And they love this country.”

When Kyle, Platts and friends conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism what they are doing is saying that the murderous actions of Israel are carried out on behalf of Jews, wherever they live. That is the logic of equating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. After all Israel is a ‘Jewish state’. 

Trump being a white supremacist says out aloud what Kyle and Platts can only whisper, viz. that Jewish allegiance is to Israel.  In the meantime these ciphers do their best to introduce Israeli ‘democracy’ into Britain by closing down meetings they disagree with.

Merely by talking about 'resistance' Israeli Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour was gaoled whereas people who chant 'Death to the Arabs' are never even prosecuted

After all Israel is the self-declared ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ albeit a democracy which sent to prison an Israel Arab poet, Dareen Tatour, for expressing support for Palestinian resistance. No amount of racist abuse from Jews in Israel has ever resulted in imprisonment, even in the case of the two rabbis who wrote a book in 2011, Torat HaMelech (the King's Torah) explaining how, according to Jewish law, it was legally possible in war to kill Palestinian children and infants. But this is the type of racism that Platts and her claque ignore.

The Israeli prosecutors found there was 'no basis' to indict the authors of a book who explain why its lawful to kill Arab children

None of this should be any surprise.  At the heart of Zionist theology is the belief that Jews are aliens in the countries they reside in. Israel is the Jewish state and it openly proclaims that it is the state of all Jews. That is why every Jew has the ‘right of return’ to Israel, regardless of whether they have ever been there, whereas Palestinians who were born and lived there for generations have no such right. Racism is inseparable from Zionism and the Kyles and the Platts of Labour's Right are its defenders. 

Yet when it comes to the Windrush Scandal, stop and search and other, genuine examples of racism, Kyle and Platts are silent. Only racism against a section of White people concern them.

As the Jewish Democratic Council of America put it, Trump has ‘"weaponise(d) and politicise(d) anti-Semitism" for political gain.’  And that is exactly what Nancy Platts and Peter Kyle, with their allegations of ‘Jew’ hate/baiting also do.

There is virtually no anti-Semitism in Brighton and Hove.  Jews are a privileged, white community. I know of no anti-Semitic attacks in Brighton. The statement by Platts that ‘I am concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ is disingenuous.  As the meeting with Chris Williamson demonstrated when Jewish people came to stand with him, Jewish people have always been welcome at Palestinian and anti-Zionist meetings.

There are no events where Jews are not welcome. Of course racists, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish are not welcome at anti-racist events. So members of Sussex Friends of Israel, who did their best to intimidate venues into cancelling the talk by Chris Williamson 2 weeks ago are not welcome. They include people like Simon Cobbs who has demonstrated alongside the English Defence League.  But that is because Cobbs is a racist not because he is Jewish.

There was a complete and total failure to support a family under attack by racists - no comparable case has ever affected a Jewish family

There is and always has been a problem of anti-Muslim racism in Brighton and about that Kyle and Platts are silent. That was particularly true in the case of the Deghayes family, three of whose sons went to fight for Jihadis in Syria after the Police’s failure to tackle the racism they experienced. As the Guardian noted:

Racist incidents increased in 2007 when the boy’s uncle, Omar Deghayes, was released from Guantánamo Bay after being held for five years after his arrest in Pakistan. His return to Brighton led to an angry backlash locally where far-right groups reportedly whipped up anger. Graffiti reading “Behead all Muslims” was daubed near their home and when it was attacked by a mob, police installed CCTV.

Social workers reported that it became increasingly difficult dealing with the family who felt their complaints were not dealt with adequately.

As the boys’ behaviour deteriorated further, youth and social workers expressed their “helplessness” at having no solutions. They expressed “shock and disbelief” when it was discovered the brothers had gone to Syria. “This possibility had never been identified and there was also no recognition that the siblings were vulnerable to radicalisation, travel or participation in conflict.”

The failure to deal with racist attacks on the family led directly to the alienation (‘radicalisation’) of their three sons. Nancy Platts kept her mouth shut during all of this and other failures, such as the murder of Jay Abatan, which Brighton Police force also failed to deal with. But when it comes to non-existent anti-Semitism she is willing to bare her soul to a Zionist publication which has called Jeremy Corbyn an ‘anti-Semite’.

I therefore wrote Platts a letter last night and sent the letter to every Labour and Green Councillor on Brighton and Hove Council.

We know of course what this is about and it has nothing to do with ‘anti-Semitism’ and everything to do with Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone speaking at the fringe of the Labour Party conference in one month.

We expect that the Zionist movement will object. In Israel the Police would simply ban such meetings. In Brighton the Zionists are expecting their faithful poodles Platts and Kyle to do their dirty work. We have news for them.  Chris Williamson and others will speak in Brighton next month regardless of the grandstanding of New Labour's racists.

Below is a letter I wrote to Nancy Platts.  I suspect I won't be receiving a reply!!

Tony Greenstein

Councillor Nancy Platts

Leader Brighton and Hove City Council,

Brighton Town Hall

BN1 1JW

Email to:          nancy.platts@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Dear Nancy,

I have just read your interview with Jewish News, a paper which only a year ago spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’

An ‘existential threat’ means a threat to one’s very existence. In other words a Corbyn government would represent a mortal danger to Jews. This is the paper which you chose to confide in.

You used to work in Corbyn’s office. I don’t know whether or not you still support him or if, in your new role as Leader of the Labour Group, you are seeking to follow in the footsteps of your predecessors, Warren Morgan and Daniel Yates, both of whom are members of the Jewish Labour Movement.

The title of your interview ‘‘I want Jewish people to feel welcome in Brighton’ is highly offensive. It is no different in tone to the remarks of Warren Morgan two years ago which led to his resignation. You clearly imply that Jewish people are not welcome in Brighton. What evidence do you have for this? Perhaps you could explain why you have singled out Jews as opposed to Muslims or Black people?

I have lived in Brighton for over 40 years and have rarely encountered anti-Semitism other than from fascist and neo-Nazi groups. I am the author of the only book detailing the history of the fight against fascism in Brighton and the South Coast. A book which was reviewed by the Argus in 2012. I think I know a little more about anti-Semitism than you.

In 2012 Brighton anti-fascists scored a historic victory against a Police force which was intent on forcing an English Defence League march through the city. I must confess that I don’t remember either you or any of the other exponents of  Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ of having played any part in either that or any other anti-fascist activity.

You state in your interview that you are ‘concerned to hear that there may be any events in or around Labour Party Conference where Jewish people would not feel welcome.’ Well we all would be concerned if there was any truth to such a story.  However it is a lie peddled by your Zionist friends to drum up sympathy.

Two weeks ago there was an attempt to prevent a meeting by Chris Williamson MP in Brighton. Peter Kyle MP called him a ‘Jew baiter’ a charge that is nothing less than a form of political terrorism. Kyle’s real objection was that Chris had opposed the witchhunt in the Labour Party and called for open selection of Labour MPs. In other words Jews were being used as a stick to beat the Left with.

Instead of speaking up in support of free speech and the rights of peaceful assembly, rights guaranteed under Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights you have chosen to stand with the McCarthyists and those who would destroy free speech on Israel and Palestine. You have done this at the behest of supporters of Israeli apartheid.

Allegations of anti-Semitism by the Right, and I include you in that, are nothing more than a convenient smokescreen for those who wish to avoid a debate over Israel and Zionism. You can rest assured that just as we ensured that Chris defied the threats of violence from those who tried to prevent him speaking two weeks ago we will do the same again.

We are determined to ensure that Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker are able to speak freely at the Labour Party conference fringe, your McCarthyist friends notwithstanding.

Jackie Walker in particular has suffered vile racist abuse  from your Zionist friends. I am copying some of them here so that you cannot plead ignorance. In Israel Zionists march to chant of ‘death to the Arabs’. In this country they complain of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Racism against Black people is an integral part of Zionism. In Israel Black Jews are not considered fully Jewish and currently there is an attempt to forcibly deport 40,000 Black African refugees who in the words of Netanyahu ‘threaten Israel’s Jewish identity. The Israeli Labour Party too supports deporting these refugees. The same Israeli Labour Party that the Jewish Labour Movement is affiliated to.

I doubt if there is a single Palestine solidarity activist in this country, including Jewish anti-Zionists, who has not been called an anti-Semite. The fact that people like you have been taken in by this nonsense speaks volumes about your commitment to anti-racism.

It was little more than a year ago that you were on the platform speaking alongside Chris Williamson. It seems that having fulfilled your political ambitions you are travelling a well worn path to the right that people before you have taken.

The weaponisation of anti-Semitism is not confined to Britain or the Labour Party. In the United States Donald Trump has combined vociferous support for Israel with praise for neo-Nazis. When telling 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ he also attacked  them because they "hate Israel & all Jewish people.’

I’m sorry to see that you have joined with those who use bogus charges of ‘anti-Semitism’ to deflect support for the Palestinians. You should be ashamed of yourself. If Jews in this country experienced even a tenth of the discrimination that Palestinians endure in Israel then they would indeed have cause to complain about anti-Semitism.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Letter I wrote to Nancy Platts