A personal letter
to Rebecca
Long-Bailey
Last Thursday the Jewish
Labour Movement, Labour Friends of
Israel and Jewish News jointly staged hustings for the 4
leadership candidates. All of them tried to outbid each other in their
condemnation of Labour Party ‘anti-Semitism’.
Perhaps we should put the
‘anti-Semitism’ Disinformation
Paradigm into perspective. According to a
new survey by former Tory Party Treasurer Lord Ashcroft, 73% of
Labour Party members believe the issue of anti-Semitism has either been
invented outright or wildly exaggerated by Corbyn’s opponents. Amongst
socialist members of the Labour Party this rises to 90%. Just 22% of members
believe anti-Semitism is a serious problem (6% of the Left).
 |
| Despite all the propaganda - 3/4 of Labour Party members believe the 'antisemitism' allegations were invented or wildly exaggerated |
Amongst Momentum members
92% believe that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were an invention or wildly
exaggerated. Jon Lansman is completely out of touch, even with his own
members. This is the context in which the debate last week took place.
See Poll:
Labour members say anti-Semitism crisis “invented”
Rebecca Long-Bailey, the ‘left’ candidate gave a
toe-curlingly embarrassing display of subservience to Israel’s supporters. In
the words of
Sienna Rodgers of Labour List
Rebecca Long-Bailey kicked off the
Jewish Labour Movement hustings... with an apology for the “hurt and anxiety”
caused by Labour antisemitism ... she ... vowed to prioritise: a disciplinary
process that is “legally independent, free from political bias or
interference”; educating members; and calling out antisemitism.
You could not put a piece of paper between any of the
candidates. Having been persuaded against my better judgement to support RBL,
having previously described
her as a wannabee Neil Kinnock, it is doubly disappointing to realise that I
was right all along!
Realising that dialogue is the spice of life and the enemy of
the totalitarian ideology that is Zionism, I decided to send a personal letter
to Becky. Being an ex-solicitor I am sure she will have no problem in digesting
the contents!
Tony Greenstein
Dear Becky,
This is, as you will
appreciate, a painful letter to have to write. However knowing you as I do I am
sure you will understand why I felt it necessary to put pen to paper or rather
finger to keyboard.
Despite my many
doubts about your recent move to the right, in particular your support for
the expulsion of Chris Williamson and the Board of Deputies’ 10
Commandments (Pledges), I reluctantly accepted the argument from
comrades that you were the least worst of the 4 candidates.
It was on the basis
that you were still, just, a socialist, that I supported you and gave out
leaflets supporting you and Richard Burgon at various meetings in Brighton and
Hove.
Yesterday I was rung
up by a friend in Brighton Kemptown CLP. Her question was simple. Who should
she vote for? After listening to you at the Zionist hustings I couldn't in good
conscience recommend a vote for you.
It should have been obvious just by the list of sponsors what this
hustings was about. Socialism isn't just a word. It means anti-racism and
anti-imperialism being an integral part of one's politics. Any socialist worthy
of the name would have refused to take part in hustings sponsored by Labour
Friends of Israel.
Surely you are not so
naive as to believe that an organisation which has not once condemned Israel’s
occupation of Palestinian land or its Apartheid practices could be genuinely
opposed to anti-Semitism?
 |
| According to the murderous 'logic' of Labour Friends of Israel, the responsibility for Israel shooting unarmed protesters lies with Hamas, not Israel! RBL is quite happy to keep company with this scum |
Have you forgotten
the response of
LFI to the news that Israeli snipers were firing at unarmed demonstrators at
the Gaza fence? They blamed those
who died for their own deaths.
Over
500 children have been injured and over 70 have been murdered in cold
blood by the Israel’s army since March 2019. Yet what was the response by LFI?
It tweeted ‘Hamas must accept
responsibility for these events.’ Except that Hamas didn’t shoot those
who died or who were crippled by exploding ammunition deliberately designed to
disable.
Imagine that a Palestinian organisation had blamed Israel for the
deaths of 70 Jewish children. Would you have spoken on their platform? If not
why do you speak under LFI’s banner. Do Palestinian lives not count? It seems
Becky that you need to examine your own racism before pointing the finger at
others.
LFI also supported the
attack on Gaza in 2014, as it has done all Israel’s wars. 2,200 Palestinians
were murdered, including 551
children. Do tell me what your description would be of someone who
supported the murder of 500+ Jewish children. Racist? Anti-Semitic?
Yet when it comes to the blood of Palestinian children you turn a blind eye.
LFI's stance is not surprising as one thing Al Jazeera’s
programme, The
Lobby, made clear was that Labour Friends of Israel is a wholly owned
subsidiary of the Israeli Embassy.
 |
| The Board of Deputies blamed those who were killed for their own deaths |
The Board of Deputies
too blamed the Palestinians. Their statement said
that ‘the
responsibility for the violence lies with Hamas’ before going on to support the
murder of unarmed demonstrators: ‘Israel is defending
its people from repeated violent attempts at mass invasion.’ they
wrote.
The idea that
Palestinian refugees trying to return to the lands they were expelled from
should be shot down in cold blood says everything about the Board. Whatever
else they represent it is not the socialist traditions of British Jewry.
 |
| The Board of Deputies openly supported the murder of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza yet has the gall to talk of 'antisemitism' |
 |
| 21 year old medic Razan has come to symbolise the State Terrorism of Israel whose snipers picked off Razan for no other reason than that she was there |
Even medics, such as
21 year old Razan Najar, have been murdered by
Israeli snipers. All to the approval of the same BOD whose 10
Commandments you have agreed to. According to these 10 'pledges' you
must not communicate with anti-racist or socialist Jews.
 |
| The Board of Deputies spent more time attacking the ANL than the National Front |
I would be interested
in an explanation as to how demanding that the Labour Party only communicate
with the reactionary BOD, has anything to do with fighting anti-Semitism since
the BOD has always opposed the
fight against fascism and those who are genuinely anti-Semitic.
 |
| When it came to challenging genuine anti-Semites the Board of Deputies urged Jews to keep their heads down and say nothing - only Israel concerns them |
In the 1930’s the
Board opposed physical resistance to the British Union of Fascists telling
Jews to stay at home during the Battle of Cable Street. In the 1970’s
when the National Front was growing stronger they did the same. According to Paul
Holborrow, Secretary of the Anti-Nazi League
‘We were constantly
under attack from the Jewish Board of Deputies ... because of the SWP’s
anti-Zionism.’
The Board of Deputies
has only ever been concerned about one thing, supporting Zionism and the State
of Israel, opposition to which they term ‘anti-Semitism’.
You opened the hustings by
paying tribute to the great Jewish MPs that Manchester has had. You might have
mentioned the late Gerald
Kaufmann MP, Father of the House of Commons. In 2009 he made one of
the great
parliamentary speeches. He said, during Operation Cast Lead, when 1,400
Palestinians were murdered that:
My parents came to Britain
as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by
the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came
to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.
My grandmother did not die
to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in
Gaza.
You stated that ‘our Jewish Community
just didn’t feel safe or welcome within our party.’ This is the big
lie that Goebbels spoke
of. There is no evidence whatsoever that even one Jew felt unsafe in the Labour
Party. True the racists of the JLM, the British wing of the ILP may have felt
uncomfortable when defending Apartheid but that surely is good.
What is remarkable
about the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was the number of Jews who were
victims. Not only was Jackie Walker and myself expelled, but numerous
anti-Zionist Jews such as Glynn Secker and Jo Bird were suspended. Professor
Moshe Machover, the founder of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation was
also expelled, until Sam Matthews was forced to reinstate him.
 |
| Oozing insincerity Emily Thornberry promised to expel anti-Zionists from the Labour Party - this despicable woman gained just 1.9% of the Zionist vote! |
You stated that you
would ‘act on the
recommendations of the EHRC’ and that you find it very shameful that
the Labour Party is being investigated by them. It’s not shame but outrage you
should be feeling at the interference by a State body in the internal affairs
of the Labour Party. The EHRC is not and never has been an anti-racist body. It
is a body consisting of the great and good whose purpose is to ensure
'diversity' and neutralise anti-racist campaigning.
The Equality and Human
Rights Commission has never condemned the Tory government over the
Windrush Scandal, still less investigated it. It has remained silent over the
recent deportations of Black British citizens to the West Indies and said
nothing about Islamaphobia in the Tory Party or the racism of
the Prime Minister. This is unsurprising since the EHRC is chaired by a
Zionist, David Isaac.
It is no surprise that
no other forms of racism failed to get a mention at these Zionist hustings.
Zionists are interested in defending, not combating racism.
Your response to the
resignation of Louise Ellman and Luciana Berger proves that you represent
the abandonment of everything Corbyn stood for. You said that it was ‘absolutely
devastating & shameful that we had MPs leaving the party because they
didn’t feel welcome.’ thus implying that anti-Semitism played a part
in their decisions. This is a total fabrication.
Ellman was targeted,
not because she is Jewish but because she was a vitriolic right-winger
who defended Israel’s
mistreatment of Palestinian children. Arresting children in the middle of the
night, blindfolding and beating them, including sexual abuse. All of
these practices this wretch of a woman defended. Many of her political
opponents were Jewish. I suggest you read ‘The
Riverside Scandal’ and then apologise.
Luciana Berger was
another Blairite parachuted in to Liverpool Wavertree. The Chair of her own
constituency was Jewish. She was hated, not because she was Jewish but because
she was a nasty right-winger who was Director of LFI from
2007-2010.
One can only presume
from your fatuous remarks that you only support the deselection of MPs if they
are not Jewish!
You spoke of a ‘breakdown of
trust’ between the Jewish community and the Labour Party. Leaving
aside that there is no single Jewish community, the facts are that the Jewish
community has long deserted Labour. For over 50 years British Jews have voted
Tory in overwhelming numbers. In 2015 64% of Jews voted Tory
and just 15% voted Labour despite having a Jewish leader, Ed Miliband.
But even this is
untrue. Jeremy Corbyn forfeited the support of British Zionists but Labour
never had their support anyway. Orthodox Jewry did not criticise Corbyn and 34
Orthodox Rabbis wrote a
joint letter condemning the Board's attacks on Corbyn but of course the BBC and
the prostitute press preferred not to publicise this.
As recently as last
December Rabbi Ephraim Padwa, Head of the 35,000 Union of Orthodox Hebrew
Congregations wrote a letter condemning those who called Corbyn 'antisemitic'.
Yet instead of aligning yourselves with these and other Jews you preferred to
ally yourself with the most racist and reactionary section of British Jews.
The
Jewish Community Hasn't Supported Labour for 50 Years
I suggest you read
Daniel Staetsky’s article in The Times of Israel, How
British Jews vote and why they vote this way. The
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the past 4½ years has been a wholly artificial
creation whose sole aim was to remove Jeremy Corbyn.
On December 5th 2019
just 1 week before the election, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Pollard,
in a letter
to readers wrote that
‘over the next 6 weeks
we will discover if the British public are prepared to put an anti-Semite into
Number Ten.’
Was this a false
allegation? If so then why is it antisemitic to say that similar allegations
against Labour Party members are also false? According to Zionist propagandists
denial of false allegations of 'antisemitism' is proof of
one's guilt!
In just the same way
denial of being a witch at Salem in the
17th century was held to be proof that you were a witch. I thought we had come
just a little way in the past 300+ years but it would seem not. Instead Beccy
you stand in the tradition of Cotton
Mather and those whose false accusations led to the witch-trials which
in turn led to the murder of 19 people, including 14 women.
Elizabeth Reis wrote about
the dilemmas that faced women in the witch trials:
"During examinations, accused women were
damned if they did and damned if they did not. If they confessed to
witchcraft charges, their admissions would prove the cases against them; if
they denied the charges, their very intractability, construed as the refusal to
admit to sin more generally, might mark them as sinners and hence allies of
the devil."
 | |
|
In fact the only women who were hanged at Salem were those
who denied their guilt.
In May 2018 the President of the Board of Deputies, Jonathan
Arkush, stated that
Corbyn ‘has anti-Semitic views.’ Clearly this was a lie but it wasn't
the only lie. So why are you giving comfort to these racists?
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Lansman's Protege Declares She is a Zionist
Perhaps most shocking of all was your declaration that you are a
Zionist.
Israel is an
ethno-nationalist state, i.e. a state not of its own citizens but of the
mythical ‘Jewish people’. When Netanyahu says that
Israel is ‘not
a state of all its citizens’ he is right. That is an admission that
racism is part of Israel's DNA.
No state has a right
to exist. Did the Apartheid, Francoist or Nazi states ‘have a right to exist’.
Why? States are not people.
 |
| Keir Hardie - member of the Trilateral Commission and a friend of the secret policeman |
Zionism is the racist
ideology that has guided the Israeli state from its foundation. Even before
1948 the Israeli Labor Party operated a colour bar, campaigning for Jewish
Labour i.e. a Boycott of Arab Labour. Today the ILP supports the
deportation of Black African refugees because they are not Jewish and therefore
threaten the Jewish demographic majority of Israel.
The Jewish National
Fund, which owns and
controls 93% of Israeli land deliberately excludes Arabs from access
to it. What is a Jewish state if not a state that discriminates against those
who are not Jewish?
I realise that you
know nothing about the Israeli state but are you seriously suggesting that
criticism of Zionism and its bastard offspring, the Israeli state, which armed
and trained the death squads of Guatemala as they murdered up to
200,000 Mayan Indians, is anti-Semitic? Is criticism of Israel for arming and
equipping the death squads of El
Salvador, arming the Argentinian
Junta (which murdered up to 3,000 Jews) and Pinochet,
to say nothing about Apartheid
South Africa, antisemitic?
Yes of course Israel's
supporters cry ‘anti-Semitism’. What else can they say? If you can't
attack the message then attack the messenger.
For ‘socialists’ such
as you to defend such a state because it is ‘Jewish’, as if the Holocaust
entitles Israel to support neo-Nazi regimes, is shameful.
What does Zionism mean
in practice? Demonstrations in
Afula against the sale of a single house to an Arab. The edict by the Chief Rabbi of
Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, forbidding Jews from renting property to Arabs. Eliyahu
is a paid Israeli state official. It means the Reception
Committee Law of 2011 allowing Jewish communities to ban Arabs from
living there. Zionism means that maternity wards in Israel are segregated into
Jewish and Arab. Education too is segregated and even Higher Education is
now falling
victim.
I doubt if there is a
single Palestine solidarity activist in Britain who hasn’t been accused of
‘anti-Semitism’. Jewish anti-Zionists, who are the equivalent of Whites South
Africans who opposed Apartheid, are called ‘self-haters’, the same term that
the Nazis used against German anti-fascists.
You said, like the
other candidates, that you support a 2 state solution. That is no solution. It
is dead as a dodo. The only reason LFI and JLM support 2 states is because they
know it won’t happen. It is a smokescreen for Apartheid. The only solution
is a single state where Jews and Arabs have equal rights.
 |
| Stephane Savary drops the mask. It's no longer about 'antisemitism' but Israel's right to be a racist |
It is strange that
'socialists' such as yourself are unwilling to support a single state where
there are equal rights for all citizens. Because that is what the
'antisemitism' campaign is really about. Today Lisa Nandy is being criticised because
she supports the Right of Return of Palestinian refugees.
Far from being the
Corbyn continuity candidate you represent a radical break from Corbynism.
Unlike Jeremy you have no record of activism. Socialist and anti-racist
politics are to you abstractions.
It is clear that there
is no genuine difference between you and the other candidates. It is not
surprising that despite your grovelling to the Zionists when the JLM came to
vote on which candidate to support you obtained a mere
1.4%! Even Jeremy Corbyn in 2016 obtained 4%!!
It must be galling
that unlike Pontius Pilate you haven’t received your reward of 30 pieces of
silver. Clearly the price of treachery has fallen victim to inflation.
Kind regards
Tony Greenstein
 |
| Lisa Nandy - the Zionists' favourite |
A Highlight of
RBL’s Contributions
In
Manchester where we have had some of the greatest Jewish MPs
It
was absolutely devastating to see what they faced... our Jewish Community just
didn’t feel safe or welcome within our
party. It was absolutely shameful that we were in that situation. We have to
say sorry and I’ll say sorry again tonight.
We have to have processes in the party that are
legally independent, free from any political bias or interference
Education
to stop the conspiracy theories and tropes that are emerging across the left
I’ve
said very clearly that I’ll adopt the Board of Deputies 10 pledges. I’ll act on
the recommendations of the EHRC. I find it very shameful that we are being
investigated by them.
Peston: Labour did better than expected
at the 2017 election and then anti-Semitism exploded as an issue... Why has it
taken so long to tackle the scandal of anti-Semitism. What have you done over
the last couple of years to try and eliminate the scourge of anti-Semitism.
Peston says he’ll start with Becky because Thornberry suggested on Newsnight
that you didn’t do enough and you were on the NEC.
RLB
attributes anti-Semitism to the large influx after 2015. We had a breakdown of trust between the
Jewish communal organisations and the Jewish Labour Movement.
Says
she spoke ‘privately’ to people to call for ‘auto-expulsions’
So
I don’t think the Party gave the right response to that programme (Panorama).
As the party of workers and trade unionists we should not have called out
former members of staff. Whether they
were correct or not ‘was a completely different matter’.
We
also have to recognise what those particular staff were going through.
Peston: would you welcome
Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman back into the party?
RLB: that was absolutely devastating & shameful
that we had MPs leaving the party because they didn’t feel welcome.
Peston intervenes to
point out that Berger stood against the party
RLB: What Luciana, Louise and
our other colleagues have been through is absolutely shocking and how they
managed to cope with that is an absolute miracle.
Peston: Is that a yes?
RLB: I would,
yeah.
RLB: We’ve got to do everything the EHRC wants and
more. We have to adopt the Board of Deputies 10 pledges. We’ve got to roll out
a robust educational progamme with the JLM.
Question from the floor:
Would any of you describe yourself as a Zionist?
Thornberry: I believe in the State of Israel therefore I’m
a Zionist.
Keir Starmer: I believe in the State of Israel, a secure
Israel I also believe in an independent Palestinian state (Peston intervenes) I
don’t describe myself as a Zionist but I understand, support and sympathise
with Zionism.
Lisa Nandy: I believe Jewish people have the right to
national self-determination. That makes me a Zionist.
RBL: On
Zionism I also agree with a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state
and a 2 state solution. I suppose that makes me a Zionist. I agree with Israel’s right to exist and
self-determine
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