PLEASE SIGN THIS
PETITION & GIVE THE SOCIALIST CAMPAIGN GROUP OF MPs A BACKBONE
Of course
there were a handful of anti-Semites in the Labour Party but that was not the
purpose of the campaign. There are in every party. No doubt there are some paedophiles amongst
Labour’s half a million members. Would
anyone say it is ‘overrun’ by them?
The purpose
of the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was clear from the start. To remove and
destabilise Corbyn. It succeeded in its objective because a large section of
the Labour Left, including the Campaign Group and Jon Lansman’s Momentum bought
into it.
That is why
a key demand of the Zionists and Jewish Labour Movement was to redefine
anti-Semitism. If you asked the average person what anti-Semitism was they
would answer that it was someone who didn’t like Jews. The OED defines
anti-Semitism as ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews’. The IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism, which
after 3 years of an incessant campaign the NEC adopted, defines anti-Semitism
in terms of hostility to Israel.
Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA has written opposing the use of the IHRA to chill free speech. Why is it that
Campaign Group MPs are so frightened of doing the same?
It is therefore no accident that the first victims of the
‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt were Jewish and Black anti-racists such as Tony
Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth. It is also no surprise that Asa
Winstanley, a journalist on Electronic Intifada who wrote extensively on this
campaign for example How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour
Party’s anti-Semitism crisis was also suspended.
In the past week
Professor David Miller, co-author of Bad News for Labour, has also been suspended. Its book launch during
Labour Party conference was cancelled by Waterstones after the
normal volley of abuse and intimidation from Zionists. Understandably they
feared that a book by 5 academics which carefully examined the evidence for
Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ would be embarrassing. In the end the book launch was
put on by Brighton and Hove Labour Left Alliance and the Rialto Theatre.
Pluto Press described the book as revealing “shocking findings of misinformation spread
by the press, including the supposedly impartial BBC, and the liberal
Guardian.” It is no surprise that the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt has
ensnared Black and Jewish anti-racist activists, journalists and now academics.
This is how McCarthyism spreads its wings.
By buying into the
‘anti-Semitism’ narrative and failing to see where it came from the Socialist
Campaign Group and Momentum aided a campaign whose only purpose was to remove
Corbyn as leader.
Despite doing everything
asked of him, the campaign against Corbyn was relentless. In the words of Len McCluskey the Board of Deputies ‘won’t take yes for an answer’. Of course
they wouldn’t. Their only aim was to
remove Corbyn. The only MP who had the courage to stand up to this campaign was
Chris Williamson and to its shame, the Campaign Group refused to give him its
support when Tom Watson and company were on the attack.
The Board of Deputies 10 Commandments (Pledges)
During the leadership election Campaign Group member Rebecca
Long-Bailey pledged her support for the 10
Commandments. Commandment No. 5 stipulates that anyone who
shares a platform with someone who has been expelled/ suspended should be
suspended. This is McCarthyist guilt-by-association.
No Platform has
traditionally been reserved for fascists not socialists. In accepting the BOD
dictates members of the Campaign Group are abandoning free speech and civil
liberties.
When Diane Abbot and Bell Ribeiro-Addy addressed a Zoom
meeting they were targeted by the BOD for having been in the same meeting as
Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein. Both Jackie and Tony are Jewish. Their only
‘crime’ is to oppose Zionism.
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The BOD represents the most reactionary section of British
Jews. It is the same Board which warmly
welcomed Donald Trump to
power in the United States, despite him running an anti-Semitic
election campaign. Trump, the
most pro-Zionist President in US history, has just praised the ‘good
bloodlines’ of Henry Ford, who received the highest civilian award from Nazi
Germany. Yet unsurprisingly the Israeli government is full of praise for Trump.
This disinformation
paradigm was built on the
lie that ‘anti-Semitism’ drove the Jewish community away from Labour. Ever since
the 1960’s the majority of British Jews have voted Tory. In 2015 the JC
reported Huge majority of British Jews will vote Tory
and
just 22% would vote Labour, despite it having its first Jewish leader, Ed
Miliband.
In 1939 both Aneurin Bevan and Stafford Cripps were expelled
from Labour. Even the most Neanderthal right-winger didn’t demand that anyone
speaking with them should be expelled.
If the Board demands that people should be suspended for
associating or speaking with those expelled then there is just one reason - to
protect the Israeli state.
Israel is a state which from its inception was based on ethnic
cleansing. Today it rules over 5 million Palestinians who have neither civil or
political rights. This is what the IHRA and you, by your silence, are
defending. This is imperialism not anti-racism.
Historically the Labour Party was as much a party of the
Empire as the Tories, except we dressed it up in the language of trusteeship. Today
Labour has become the party of Zionist settler colonialism, all in the name of
fighting ‘anti-Semitism’.
The Board of Deputies’ concern about anti-Semitism is very
recent. In 1936 they advised
Jews to stay indoors and
allow Moseley’s British Union of Fascists to march unhindered, at the Battle of
Cable Street, through the Jewish areas of East London.
When the Anti-Nazi League was formed in response to the
growth of the National Front in 1977, what was the Board’s response? Total
hostility. Searchlight
Magazine wrote that:
"In the face of
mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we
have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on
the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of
Kamikaze pilots... It was as though
they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. " (Issue
41, November 1978)
The Board’s position is committed to defend Israel, right or
wrong. Clause 3(d) of its Constitution states that the Board shall take ‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance
Israel's security, welfare and standing.’
In March 2018 the Board blamed unarmed protesters in Gaza for their own deaths when
Israeli snipers fired on them. Today it refuses to criticise the annexation of the
West Bank.
Israel is an apartheid state. Racism is part of the DNA of a
state whose Prime Minister openly
states that Israel is not a
state of all its citizens. For example hundreds of Jewish communities legally refuse
to admit Arabs, who are confined to just 2½% of the land. In South Africa this
was called Apartheid. In Starmer’s Labour it’s called ‘Jewish
self-determination’.
Have you ever wondered why Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi
founder of the alt-Right declares that he is a ‘White Zionist’? Or why racists
and anti-Semites the world over, from Bolsonaro, Duterte and Hungary’s Orban
are the best friends of Israel?
The Jewish Labour Movement
The
driving force of the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears is the JLM which is not Labour’s Jewish wing. The JLM is
affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation whose Land Theft Division
has pioneered the settlements in the West Bank.
The
JLM calls itself the ‘sister party’
of the Israeli Labor Party. In fact it is the British wing of this racist
party. Today the ILP, the part of government for 30 years, is reduced to just 3
seats. The ILP has just gone into coalition with Netanyahu and it too has made
a Pledge. To support the annexation of the West Bank settlements.
Have
you ever wondered why it is that the veterans of the fight against Apartheid in
South Africa have called Israel another form of apartheid? Archbishop Desmond Tutu
has termed Israel as worse than South African apartheid. Ronnie
Kassrills, the Jewish commander of the ANC’s military wing wrote
‘I fought South African apartheid. I see the same
brutal policies in Israel’. This is what the false allegations of
‘anti-Semitism’ are about.
Keir Starmer has made his position clear in an
interview with the Times of Israel: “I support Zionism without qualification.” Zionism is about establishing a Jewish
ethno-nationalist state that today’s White Supremacists see
Israel as a model and with good reason. When Israel bars asylum seekers and
seeks to deport those that have slipped through it is because they will dilute
the ‘Jewish identity’ of the state.
When Israel’s Education Ministry bans
a book depicting a teenage romance between a Jew and Arab from the High School
syllabus it does it because it undermines students’ understanding of their
‘Jewish identity’. Opposition to sexual relations between the races was
fundamental to South Africa, the Deep South and Nazi Germany.
We are asking
you to:
1.
join us in opposing the continuation of
the anti-Semitism witch-hunt. It is
aimed at anti-racists and anti-imperialist supporters of the Palestinians not
anti-Semites.
2.
oppose
the Board of Deputies 10 Pledges whose aim is to close down
discussion and debate on Palestine and Zionism.
3.
recognise
that Keir Starmer represents the hard-Right in the Labour
Party. His attempt to bury the leaked Labour Report with a Whitewash
by appointing a panel of Progress supporters confirms that. He has made it clear
that he is returning Labour to the austerity-lite politics of Ed Miliband.
4.
That
we should do what the Right did for the duration of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
We should oppose the attempt by Starmer to return us to the era of New Labour.
We
believe that no member of the Campaign Group should serve in the Shadow Cabinet
and provide Starmer with ‘left’ political cover. Starmer is a member of the British
Establishment and the Trilateral Commission
alongside such luminaries as Henry Kissinger. Starmer is the darling of the
Tory press. He has even been endorsed by
George Osborne.
The
history of the Labour Left is one of appeasing Labour’s Red Tories. That is why
the Scottish working class has abandoned the Labour Party. The only way of
winning back the Red Wall is by offering them some red meat.
In
Solidarity
Tony
Greenstein and others
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