James Baldwin on Black-Jewish Relations, Israel and the United States

Israel wasn’t created because non-Jews loved Jews but to protect Western interests

James Baldwin who died in 1987 aged 63 was a Black American essayist, novelist, playwright, poet and social critic.

With the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), a distillation of his own experiences as a preacher’s son in 1930s Harlem and the essay collection Notes of a Native Son (1955), Baldwin established himself as a prophetic voice of his era. Baldwin remains not only a chronicler of his epoch but a thinker who helped shape it. One of the great modern prose stylists, he applied his passion, wit, and relentlessly probing intelligence to the fault lines of American society while remaining true to his early credo:

“One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give.”

 “I fell under the spell of Baldwin’s voice. No other black writer I’d read was as literary as Baldwin in his early essays, not even Ralph Ellison. There is something wild in the beauty of Baldwin’s sentences and the cool of his tone, something improbable, too, this meeting of Henry James, the Bible, and Harlem. I can see the scratches in the desk in my room where I was reading ‘Notes of a Native Son,’ Baldwin’s memoir of his hated father’s death the day his father’s last child was born in 1943, one day before Harlem erupted into the deadliest race riot in its history. I can feel the effects of this essay within me still.”

Darryl Pinckney, The New York Review of Books, April 4, 2014 from the Library of America

For a biography of Baldwin see here 

My attention was drawn to Baldwin, Israel and the Jews by an essay by Stephen Salaita, James Baldwin and the Jewish State. Salaita was subject to a Zionist witchhunt at Illinois University at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 when critical remarks he made on social media about Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza were used as a pretext to withdraw a tenured job offer. After a major campaign by Palestine solidarity supporters and academics, including being censured by the Association of American University Professors and a boycott by visiting professors, a settlement was reached. University of Illinois OKs $875,000 settlement to end Steven Salaita dispute

The whole episode, including the lies and destruction of email evidence by former Chancellor Phyllis Wise, who was a casualty of her own witchhunt, was extensively detailed by Electronic Intifada at the time. See

Univ. of Illinois protected white supremacist, but not Steven Salaita, report finds

Steven Salaita settles lawsuit with Univ. of Illinois

Univ. of Illinois official who fired Steven Salaita admits to destroying evidence

Salaita’s article was based on Baldwin’s ‘The Cross of Redemption – Uncollected Writings and in particular an essay Blacks and Jews.

The essay consists of a transcript of a remarkable discussion held by Baldwin, who was a professor at the University of Massachusets-Amherst. As Salaita notes, Baldwin’s ideas on Zionism and Israel arose in the context of the 1984 Presidential election in which Jessie Jackson, a civil rights campaigner who stood for the Democratic nomination in 1984 and 1988, had used the epithet “Hymietown” to describe New York City in what he thought was an off-the-record conversation with a journalist.  (“Hymie” is an anti-Jewish slur.)  When the comment was reported, it erupted into a scandal. 

Baldwin claimed that “Jesse is singled out for particular reasons.” Hymietown, is hardly the most anti-Semitic slur that has ever been levelled. New York is famous for the large number of Jews, some 2 million, who live there. Hymie, a reference to a typical Jewish name simply emphasised the Jewish presence in New York. It reminds me of Jo Bird’s play on words – ‘Jew process’ rather than ‘due process’.

It was an artificial controversy in which the Zionist lobby sought to weaponise anti-Semitism against a radical Black candidate. As Nathan Perlmutter the neo-liberal Executive Director of the Anti-Defamation League, a Zionist organisation that had previously spied on anti-Apartheid activists on behalf of BOSS, the South African secret police, said of Jackson’s apology for the remark:

“He could light candles every Friday night and grow side curls, and it still wouldn’t matter. He’s a whore,”

. The controversy was a forerunner of the attacks on Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Alexander Ocasio-Cortez. The difference this time around is that instead of apologising they stood up to their detractors and that is why they all won their primaries. If Corbyn had done the same instead of cowardly throwing his supporters under a bus then he might be Prime Minister now.

They say there's no Zionist lobby!

Blacks, Jews and America

What is remarkable about Baldwin’s comments are how perceptive he was about the reasons for the establishment of Israel and the relationship between Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Noting how ‘the black American singles out the American Jew because so much of the black inheritance comes from the Old and New Testament’ Baldwin observed how Black people

‘unconsciously tends to expect more from a Jewish person than he expects from anybody else. And because the American Jew in this country is essentially a white man, this expectation is always defeated with a resulting accumulation of bitterness.’

Baldwin put it down to American Jews ‘acting on the minor inheritance and rejecting the major one’, which I interpret as meaning that Jews, instead of looking to their past role in the fight against racism and exploitation, instead choose the ‘minor’ issues of slavish obedience to Israel’s dictates and their own material situation.

Baldwin emphasised that

‘a black man does not expect from an American white man what he expects from an American Jew, and when that expectation is defeated, a certain bitterness ensues’ whereas if Jews were like William Buckley, a well-known neo-liberal ‘from whom obviously I expect nothing.’ [Laughter from audience.]

In remarkably perceptive off-the-cuff remarks Baldwin remarks on how ‘Whenever Israel is mentioned one is required, it appears sometimes to me, to maintain a kind of pious silence. Well, why? It is a state like other states.’

Think of the Labour Party 36 years later.  You can say what you want about Chile, South Africa and France and no one will pay a blind bit of notice, but mention Israel and the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunters of Starmer and they will be all over you.

If you criticise Israel for poisoning a well then this will be immediately deemed ‘anti-Semitic’ because historically Jews were accused of poisoning wells.  The 2^nd example of the IHRA states:

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective — such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

No matter that the Zionist poisoning of water is a demonstrable fact. In 1948 the Zionists poisoned the water supply of Acre with dysentery. The evidence for this comes from the files of the International Committee of the Red Cross files, which became available, 50 years after the event , under the reference G59/1/GC, G3/82, sent by ICRC delegate de Meuron from 6 May to about 19 May 1948.

Baldwin spoke about how Israel ‘came into existence as a means of protecting Western interests at the gate of the Middle East.’

Bearing in mind how Corbyn and McDonnell didn’t get it after 5 years of abuse, Baldwin reached for the heart of the problem that caused so much confusion in the Labour Party:

in order to be a Zionist, it is not necessary to love the Jews. I know some Zionists who are definitely anti-Semitic. And to be a Jew is not necessarily to be a Zionist.

Referring to the confected Hymietown remark of Jesse Jackson, Baldwin again realised what was happening:

There is something about the whole anecdote which rubs me the wrong way, something that —I smell a rat somewhere, it doesn’t seem entirely—can we use the word?—kosher. [Laughter from audience.] Be that as it may, the press, the media... is now saddling Jesse Jackson with the label or the suggestion of being anti-Semite, of being an anti-Semite. I think I know Jesse well enough to say that that seems to me exceedingly unlikely.

This exactly mirrors the fake campaign in the Labour Party. Any remark, however humorous, about Jews was interpreted as ‘anti-Semitic’ whereas the racist troll, Luke Stanger, could be suspended for two years for saying that Travellers and Gypsies are a ‘nasty blight’ on society. If he had referred to Jews he would have been fast-tracked out of the Labour Party but idiot Corbyn and the servile McDonnell never got it.

We only have to think of Donald Trump’s remarks: “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” And who were they disloyal to?  Well Trump clarified this too. Israel!  But Netanyahu and the Zionist chorus showed no interest in genuine anti-Semitism. For the Zionists Trump’s support for Israel trumps his anti-Semitism.

Baldwin noted that

‘for the most part the American Jew is simply, in the black person’s life, nothing but another white American, who goes to church on Saturday instead of Sunday.’

Speaking of the weaponisation of anti-Semitism and how the Zionist lobby uses trivial examples of anti-Semitism, which Jackson’s certainly was, to mount an attack on a radical Black candidate:

‘it would seem to be a pity if it [Jackson’s campaign] can be destroyed by this ancient red herring of anti-Semitism which I’ve seen drag through so many discussions with such disastrous results over so many years.

Baldwin’s comments on White  liberals, many if not most of whom were Jews, was telling in view of the conflicts that arose in for example New York between Black parents and White, mainly Jewish school teachers.

when the civil rights movement was in Alabama... they were very indignant. And then I watched what happened imperceptibly but fatally when that same movement moved north to Brooklyn, to Pittsburgh, Detroit, and New York. And their attitudes changed.... Their attitudes changed because they began to feel more and more threatened, and a liberal facade or even a liberal attitude was not enough to deal with the speed with which the movement was moving

When a student questioned Baldwin’s assertions about the foundation of the Israeli state and misattributed to him the suggestion that Israel was founded to protect oil interests, Baldwin replied that:

I said to protect the vital interests of the Western world... but I would be lying to you and lying by my own experience if I said to you that the Europeans—the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the French—impressed me as having any very vivid concern for Jews. The French are still anti-Semitic, so are the British, so are the Dutch, so are the Poles, so are the French. They’ll probably be anti-Semitic until the nation disappears

Baldwin immediately gets what Corbyn and his gaggle of sycophants, from Seamus Milne to Karen Murphy and Jennie Formby didn’t get. Israel was not established because of any concern for Jews. It is only a Jewish state in its racial make up, not its values or ethics. Baldwin elaborates upon this declaring that:

Part of the hazard of being a Jew, historically and... actually, morally, historically of being a Jew, is finding yourself doing the Christian’s dirty work. You see what I’m saying? It’s not a condemnation; it’s simply a fact. So it is in that sense to say that Israel is useful to the Western interests.

Unlike many people these days and organisations like If Americans Knew which portray the United States as the pawn of Israel, Baldwin understood very well that Israel is ‘doing the Christian’s dirty work.’

The only disagreement I would have with Baldwin was on the question of Israeli sales of arms to South Africa where he said:

‘As far as I know, Jesse has said nothing about arms sales to South Africa, and I don’t think he will, you know. The arms sales to South Africa on the part of Israel are again an example of the traditional role that Jews have often played in Christendom.’

That isn’t quite true. Even when the West imposed an arms embargo on the Apartheid state Israel still supplied it with weaponry, including nuclear arms.

However all in all it was an extremely interesting lecture, even more so because many of these issues were barely visible back in 1984.

Tony Greenstein

Blacks and Jews – extracts – James Baldwin

Because the most awful thing about the black American relationship to Jews, to the American Jew, is that the black American singles out the American Jew because so much of the black inheritance comes from the Old and New Testament—so much of our imagery: “Let my people go,” all of those legends black people have lived with and made real up until this hour—and that means that unconsciously a black person tends to expect more from a Jewish person than he expects from anybody else. And because the American Jew in this country is essentially a white man, this expectation is always defeated with a resulting accumulation of bitterness, because the American Jew is acting on the minor inheritance and rejecting the major one.

a black man does not expect from an American white man what he expects from an American Jew, and when that expectation is defeated, a certain bitterness ensues. I might feel very differently about my ex–running buddies if in fact they were all Calvinists, if they were people like William Buckley, from whom obviously I expect nothing. [Laughter from audience.]

What is behind it, in another way, has to do with something else— something else which no one ever wishes to discuss. And that is the actual role in the Middle East of the state of Israel. Whenever Israel is mentioned one is required, it appears sometimes to me, to maintain a kind of pious silence. Well, why? It is a state like other states. It has come into existence in a peculiar way. But it does not, does not, become a state because people who wrote the Balfour Declaration, or Winston Churchill, or for that matter anyone in Europe, or in the Western world, really cared what happened to the Jews. I wish I could say differently, but I would be lying if I did—it came into existence as a means of protecting Western interests at the gate of the Middle East.

In any case, in order to be a Zionist, it is not necessary to love the Jews. I know some Zionists who are definitely anti-Semitic. And to be a Jew is not necessarily to be a Zionist. I’m putting it to you this way in the attempt to clarify something which is happening all around us. All of this is triggered by the incipient attack on Jesse Jackson, who allegedly made, or has confessed to having made, an anti-Semitic remark in a private conversation, while a reporter was listening. There is something about the whole anecdote which rubs me the wrong way, something that —I smell a rat somewhere, it doesn’t seem entirely—can we use the word?—kosher. [Laughter from audience.] Be that as it may, the press, the media, to which we owe so much, which is so enlightening for us all, is now saddling Jesse Jackson with the label or the suggestion of being anti-Semite, of being an anti-Semite. I think I know Jesse well enough to say that that seems to me exceedingly unlikely.

it is true that for the most part the American Jew is simply, in the black person’s life, nothing but another white American, who goes to church on Saturday instead of Sunday.

What I myself may think of Mr. Jackson, Reverend Jackson, in the privacy of my own house has nothing to do with this possibility, and he’s the only candidate which offers us this possibility. And it would seem to be a pity if it can be destroyed by this ancient red herring of anti-Semitism which I’ve seen drag through so many discussions with such disastrous results over so many years.

it is not enough to be a liberal, to have the right attitudes and even to give money to the right causes. You have to know more than that. You have to be prepared to risk more than that. I am telling you this because I have watched what happened to many of my liberal friends when the civil rights movement was in Alabama, let us say, in the Deep South, and they were [inaudible] very indignant. And then I watched what happened imperceptibly but fatally when that same movement moved north to Brooklyn, to Pittsburgh, Detroit, and New York. And their attitudes changed. I really hate to put it to you that way, but that is what happened. Their attitudes changed because they began to feel more and more threatened, and a liberal facade or even a liberal attitude was not enough to deal with the speed with which the movement was moving

In talking about Israel before, you said that Israel wasn’t set up because anyone else [cared] about the Jews, but you implied it was set up to protect oil interests in that area. And I would argue that point and say that I think after centuries of despoil that there was a bit of that, [but] that this was an area that the Jews did deserve as their homeland, and I just find it hard to accept that it was set up to protect oil interests.

 BALDWIN: I said to protect the vital interests of the Western world, and I don’t mean to be sardonic or cynical, but I would be lying to you and lying by my own experience if I said to you that the Europeans—the English, the Dutch, the Germans, the French—impressed me as having any very vivid concern for Jews. The French are still anti-Semitic, so are the British, so are the Dutch, so are the Poles, so are the French. They’ll probably be anti-Semitic until the nation disappears

why do they think that the Jews are going to protect Western interests and Israel doesn’t even have the oil?

BALDWIN: Oh! Yeah, I know that. I didn’t say oil, I said the vital interests of the Western world. Part of the hazard of being a Jew, historically and actually, and part of precisely the danger I was talking about when I began about the way a Jew intrudes himself on a black person’s attention because he is the only white man you see. But then part of the hazard, actually, morally, historically, of the Jewish … of being a Jew, is finding yourself doing the Christian’s dirty work. You see what I’m saying? It’s not a condemnation; it’s simply a fact. So it is in that sense to say that Israel is useful to the Western interests.

STUDENT: I have a question on anti-Semitism and Israelis or Jews doing America’s dirty work. Has Jackson made any censorious remarks about Israeli arms sales to South Africa? And could you maybe talk about how Jackson might take a position on Israel and arm sales to South Africa?

BALDWIN: As far as I know, Jesse has said nothing about arms sales to South Africa, and I don’t think he will, you know. The arms sales to South Africa on the part of Israel are again an example of the traditional role that Jews have often played in Christendom. It is, uh … After all, the state of Israel, as a state, that is to say, in terms of who is responsible for it, where the money comes from, is a—what is a polite word we use?—it is a Western state, it is a Western creation, it is a Western responsibility, isn’t it? And Israel selling arms to Israel, selling arms … I mean, South Africa, well, we all know that. I think it would serve very little purpose to single out Israel as the supplier of arms to South Africa when the real supplier of arms, not only to South Africa but to many, many other parts of the world, is not the state of Israel, but France, England, this country above all—you see what I’m saying? The state of South Africa, the state of Johannesburg, cannot be blamed on Israel—you see what I’m saying?

Like a Mafia Boss, Starmer Paid Hush Money to Labour’s Crooked Staff in order to Prevent an Investigation into the Leaked Dossier

DEFIANCE NOT COMPLIANCE

Starmer’s Glove Puppet David Evans Must be Prevented from Destroying Free Speech and Democracy in Labour

 

As I predicted when he was elected, Starmer would be no ‘centrist’ contrary to what Lansman and his fellow Momentum traitors had assured us. When Starmer emerged alongside Coronavirus, I wrote

‘If anyone had any doubts about who and what (Sir) Keir Starmer represents, his Shadow Cabinet appointments today should lay them to rest.  Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right.’

Starmer is not only on the hard-Right but he has done a better job than Tony Blair in purging the Shadow Cabinet. Blair included members of the left such as Frank Dobson (his predecessor in his Holborn & St Pancras seat) and Michael Meacher in the Shadow Cabinet. That was partly because MPs in those days elected the Shadow Cabinet. He also had John Prescott, who proved one of Corbyn’s few consistent supporters as his Deputy Leader.

My recent letter in the Morning Star

Starmer has appointed the worst right-wingers to the Shadow Cabinet, like Rachel Reeves and Jess Phillips whilst sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lloyd Russell-Moyle at the earliest opportunity at the behest of the Zionist Board of Deputies. This despite both signing up to the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations and the Board’s 10 pledges.

On the 13 August David Evans, Labour’s General Secretary, sent an email to local parties. A mafia boss could not have worded it better. Evan’s instructions, if local Labour Parties accept them, mean the end of what limited democracy remains in the Labour Party.

Starmer has paid £3/4m of members' money in order to protect Labour's traitorous former staff

Below is the full text of David Evans email 

FAO: CLP secretaries & chairs

As CLPs and branches are now able to meet online, I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on a few pertinent issues. This will ensure that the business your local Party is conducting is appropriate, minimises any challenge to its decisions and does not leave the Party – locally and nationally – or its officers open to potential legal liabilities. Apologies for the length of this email, but I hope you will agree it covers some very important issues....

Panorama settlement

The Labour Party recently agreed a settlement with seven former members of staff who appeared on an edition of the BBC’s Panorama programme, as well as with the journalist who hosted that programme. Those settlements included an unreserved apology and a withdrawal of the allegations previously made by the Party about those individuals. The withdrawal and apology are binding on the Party and any motions which seek to undermine or contradict them will create a risk of further legal proceedings for both the national party and local parties. As such, motions relating to these settlements and the circumstances behind them are not competent business for discussion by local parties.

CLP officers have an important responsibility to ensure that they and other members conduct themselves in a respectful and comradely manner. We therefore take this opportunity to reiterate to local Labour Parties and officers that they should be aware of the potential liabilities to them should the allegations that have now been withdrawn by the national Party be repeated.

Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report

On Monday 13 July 2020 the Party announced that it had received the EHRC’s draft report into allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party. This draft report has been provided to the Party by the EHRC on a confidential basis as part of its investigation.

When we are able to provide more information about the EHRC’s report we will do so. Until that time speculation as to the contents of the report is not helpful. It is therefore not competent business for CLPs to discuss.

IHRA definition of antisemitism

We are aware that some CLPs and branches have had motions tabled to “repudiate” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition of antisemitism and its examples was properly adopted by the Labour Party in September 2018. CLPs and branches have no powers to overturn this decision. Furthermore, such motions undermine the Labour Party’s ability to tackle racism. Any such motions are therefore not competent business for CLPs or branches.

As per the previous General Secretary’s instruction, any discussion about ongoing disciplinary cases remains prohibited.

Thousands of members of the Labour Party (reputed to be between 100,000 and 200,000)  are resigning in disgust at the direction of Sir Starmer and his cronies. This is understandable but if people simply leave they will simply be lost to the socialist movement.

Unfortunately the Left in the Labour Party is divided. The recent stitch up for elections to the National Executive Committee in the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance, saw the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Momentum Forward veto the candidacy of Jo Bird, a Jewish anti-Zionist who has twice been suspended from the Party.

Jo was the obvious choice of someone to confront Starmer and his Zionist friends. Instead the CLPD, which sat on the fence throughout the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was not even able to stand by its own member, Peter Willsman, who was suspended after being caught in a sting by Tuvia Tenenbom, a far-Right Israeli agent and disgusting racist whose talk The story of the suffering Palestinian is bull shit suggests that on the basis of receiving a gold business card that all Palestinians are affluent and prosperous.

The CLPD itself has participated in the witchhunt, notably when Russell Cartwright, the CLPD’s Treasurer, who was on the National Constitutional Committee, voted to expel Jackie Walker.

The Labour Representation Committee has been little better. It left the Labour Left Alliance shortly after last year’s Labour Party conference and has gone along with the machinations of the CLPD. Equally unfortunate Jewish Voices for Labour instead of refusing to accept the veto on Jo went along with it even though the new STV method of electing NEC representatives all but guaranteed Jo’s election. In so doing they have simply confirmed their irrelevance to what is happening in the Labour Party.

Meanwhile the LRC and JVL’s Don’t Leave Organise seems to have fallen into a deep sleep.

A good example of how not to respond to the election of Starmer and the destruction of democracy in the Labour Party is the resignation of 10 elected officers of the Harwich and North Essex Labour Party. In their letter they write:

We embraced the broad church and respected a range of views. It is said that all good things must come to an end and we all now feel that with the direction being taken by the leadership towards a more neo-liberal stance it is right that the CLP executive baton should be handed over to those that share the direction of the leadership.

This is just so pathetic in its fatalism. They say ‘all good things must come to an end’ as if the triumph of the Right was inevitable. If the individuals concerned believe that the direction taken under Starmer is the wrong one then the obvious thing to do is to stay and fight and link up with those similarly inclined.

That is what politics is about. The one thing the Right didn’t do was accept Corbyn as leader. The representatives of capitalism and imperialism inside the Labour Party did what Hugh Gaitskell once promised, to ‘fight, fight and fight again’.

Unfortunately most of Corbyn’s supporters were not steeped in the working class and labour movement tradition of struggle. To them politics was as much a fashion statement as something born out of necessity. Like those in Harwich and North Essex they had neither the stamina nor the political commitment to oppose the Right. That is partly why the Zionists’ fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, which was never about racism, met with such little opposition and such political confusion.

If Starmer’s neo-liberals have captured the leadership of the Labour Party then they should be opposed root and branch. Just as Starmer’s free market friends fought Corbyn to the bitter end, so the left in the Labour Party should do the same. To simply hand over the reins of power to one’s political enemies – and Starmer is as much our enemy as the Tories – demonstrates a lack of any serious political commitment to socialism.

Gagged - what Starmer wants to do to the rest of us

Yes Labour Party should be a broad church, however even the broadest church draws the line at the admission of atheists.  Starmer, Reeves and Phillips aren’t socialists but supporters of capitalism inside Labour. They are our class enemies.  Look what Starmer has done already:

·        Adopted the Board of Deputies 10 pledges which now openly use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a cudgel to beat the Left.

·        Sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lloyd Russell-Moyle for offending Israel’s supporters and Zionists.

·        Torn up Labour’s policy on supporting Kashmiri independence.

·        Failed to oppose Boris Johnson’s ‘herd immunity’ strategy initially. 

·        Said nothing about the increased privatisation of the NHS at a time when it was existing outsourcing which caused the shortage of PPE initially leading to the death of hundreds if not thousands.

·        Failed to condemn the Tory freeze on public sector wages and the nurses in particular

·        Demanded the opening of schools regardless of the risk of a new wave of COVID-19. In this he has ignored the teaching unions.

·        In the ‘national interest’ Starmer has refused to oppose or take advantage of the Tories catastrophic handling of Coronavirus. Instead he has engaged in ‘constructive opposition’, including saying nothing about the decanting of elderly patients with COVID-19 back into care homes causing thousands of deaths.

·        Failed to  oppose the Tories hostility to migrants from France who have no legal way of gaining asylum in Britain. Instead he criticised them for their ‘incompetence’. Presumably they should have been more efficient in turning the boats away.

There is a burning need for all the groups on the Left to come together – the Labour Left Alliance, the CLPD, LRC and Momentum Forward but it must be on the basis of a very clear opposition to any continuation of the Zionists’ ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. It is about time the Left called out the racism of Sir Starmer and the Labour Right. Above all it is necessary for the Left to understand why Corbyn went down to such a massive defeat.

We are now facing a massive witchhunt of the Left up and down the country.  People who were cleared of false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are now being resuspended. The latest suspensions are Liverpool Councillor Sam Gorst and ex-miner John Dunn. (see the LLA Resolution here).

Starmer has paid off the very staff who according to the Leaked Report spent over 3 years campaigning against Corbyn and Labour. Unfortunately Corbyn was too stupid to realise that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was not about anti-Semitism but him.

If Starmer had behaved like this when Director of Public Prosecutions and tried to buy off witnesses, he would have been arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Labour’s staff were ably supported by Lansman who devised the theory of unconscious anti-Semitism to justify the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt whilst ignoring the very conscious racism of Windrush and Grenfell. Now that the Lansmanites have been defeated it remains to be seen if Forward Momentum is going to mobilise against the rightward direction of the party. Unfortunately the involvement of the Zionist AWL in them is not encouraging.

Starmer, via his glove puppet, the arch-Blairite David Evans has made it quite clear that he wants to destroy freedom of speech in the Party. His chosen instrument is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

The IHRA definition’ of anti-Semitism was adopted after a massive Zionist and press campaign in September 208 in the vain hope that it would bring an end to the false anti-Semitism charges. Instead it massively increased the campaign because it allowed the Right to label all opposition to Israel and Zionism as ‘anti-Semitism’. It has been a weapon in the hands of the Labour Right fashioned by Lansman. 

According to Evans it was ‘properly adopted’ and ‘CLPs and branches have no powers to overturn this decision.’ What Evans is saying is that the Labour Party has no right to change its policy except when its leadership agrees. Evans even had the audacity to suggest that motions opposing the IHRA ‘undermine the Labour Party’s ability to tackle racism.’

This is the phrase that is used in virtually every suspension letter contains. It is difficult to understand how the abolition of the IHRA, whose sole purpose is to define opposition to the world’s most racist state as ‘anti-Semitic’, can undermine the Labour Party’s ability to tackle racism.

For one thing the Labour Party does nothing to oppose racism. Only last week Starmer failed to attack the Tories for using terms like ‘invasion’ to describe the desperate plight of the refugees crossing the English Channel.  Instead this stuffed ruling class dummy attacked the ‘incompetence’ of the Tories.  Presumably they weren’t deporting the refugees back quickly enough.

As Skwawkbox said, the IHRA doesn’t even describe itself as a definition as 500+ words is patently not a definition.  It is a ‘non-legally binding’ definition that governments, including anti-Semitic governments have adopted.

Evan’s warning not to discuss the fraudulent settlement with Sam Matthews and his fellow criminals should be ignored and defied.  It is clear that Labour’s legal advice was that the corrupt staff under Sam Matthews would lose.  Starmer however  was desperate to bury the Leaked Report. He had set up the Ford Inquiry under pressure, stuffing it with right-wing figures like the anti-Corbyn Baroness Wilcox.

The Leaked Report revealed at least something of the plotting and planning of Labour’s staff against the Corbyn leadership and the membership of the Labour Party. The refusal of the head of the Governance and Legal Unit Sam Matthews to take action against the few actual holocaust deniers like Christopher Crookes, until over 200 members of Labour International signed a petition demanding his expulsion, gave the lie to claims Matthews was prevented in tackling anti-Semitism by Corbyn. His sole goal was to witchhunt the Left not the very few genuine anti-Semites.

Corbyn and his Office pressurised the Compliance Unit to increase the expulsions in order to begin the process of rebuilding trust with the Zionists

To his shame Corbyn and his aides, in particular Laura Murray, actually pressurised the same right-wing staff to expel, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself. We are told on p.306 of the Report that:

Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to GLU that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”..

I have written to Corbyn asking whether he thinks ‘trust’ was re-established when we were expelled of forced out of the party and if not why not? So far he hasn’t replied which is not surprising since Corbyn clearly didn’t have a clue what was happening or why apologising and expelling more people wasn’t the best way of tackling the state inspired campaign to remove him.

What happened was that the witchhunters, after expelling us four, then moved on to new targets like Chris Williamson and Peter Willsman. The more people they expelled the more people the Zionists demanded be expelled. And the more people that were expelled by his Torquemada Formby the more it proved that the Zionists were ‘right’.

When I complained to BBC Panorama about the programme, ‘Is Labour Anti-Semitic?’ and why it did not include those who argued that the whole campaign was fake from beginning to end their response was that even Corbyn accepted that anti-Semitism was a problem in the Labour Party.

The Left needs to take on board the fact that the Right now hold all the levers of power, both in the bureaucracy and on the NEC. The trade unions, with the exception of Unite and some smaller unions, are going along with whatever Starmer demands.  UNISON, which is in the process of electing a new General Secretary to replace the corrupt Dave Prentis, will hopefully break from its uncritical support of Starmer.

However socialists in the Labour Party need to be actively working with and organising with the increasing number of expelled or resigned members outside the Labour Party.

One thing is for certain and that is that Starmer is not going to achieve a Labour majority at the next election. New Labour lost Scotland and it has also lost large parts of the Midlands and North – not because of Brexit – but for historic reasons which I will explain at an opportune moment.

For the moment the Left – from the CLPD and LRC to JVL, Momentum Forward and the LLA, need to devise a strategy of war against Starmer and his cronies. Starmer has proved that he is unfit to lead the Party given his dismal performance over COVID-19. He is a wooden placeman who should be put out to grass.

John Dunn confronting the representative of Big Pharma, Owen Smith

The contrast between the useless gesture of the North Essex officers and John Dunn, one of the original Clay Cross councillors and an ex-Miner at Orgreave, could not be greater. ‘Come and get me you bastards’ was his reaction to being told that he was being investigated again. In 2016 he was suspended for confronting Owen Smith, who was then challenging Corbyn, over his attempt to exploit the sacrifices of the miners at Orgreave for his campaign. Dunn was cleared and the bastards in Southside are now investigating him again.

I also urge people to support the Justice for All Labour Party Members crowdfunding appeal. SS Starmer has torn up all the rules of natural justice. This so-called human rights lawyer’s idea of justice is to present a list of allegations and then ask you to prove your innocence with a 14 day cut-off period.  You are then disciplined by people unknown acting in response to allegations made by anonymous people. It is the democracy of the Stasi.

Even bourgeois courts understand the concept of natural justice better than the scum who are today running the Labour Party. That was why, in December 2017, when I was given 4 weeks from a hospital bed to respond to their thick bundle, despite having been suspended for nearly 2 years I sought and obtained an injunction at the High Court.

In Liverpool meanwhile socialist Councillor Sam Gorst has been suspended on the usual fake allegations as Starmer’s Labour Party seeks to destroy that which was built in the last 4 years. All these actions are taking place under the fast-track procedures which we were assured at the last Labour Party conference would only be used in ‘egregious’ cases.  And who proposed the fast-track procedures which meant no hearing, no trial?

Corbyn and fellow fool Jennie Formby introduced the fast-track procedures. They thought if they sped up the expulsions they could appease the Zionists.  Come December and the Zionist movement, Chief Rabbi Mirvis included, waged a war on Corbyn. I have written to Corbyn asking him to explain his treachery but a fool rarely answers back.

But it is Corbyn’s followers, those who kept apologising for his inadequacies and who refused to tell him to his face that they don’t stop chasing you until you stop running, who are equally responsible.  Instead people like Seamus Milne, Owen Jones, Jon Lansman and even the Jewish Socialists Group’s David Rosenberg ran with the ‘anti-Semitism’ nonsense. They all accepted the Right’s narrative.

Let me leave the last word to my friend Mark Elf of the blog Jewssanfrontieres. He too was suspended and sent the standard letter asking him to prove that he was innocent. Instead he resigned.

Many thought that Corbyn was appeasing the supporters of racist war criminals because he was too nice. He wasn't too nice. He was downright nasty and to his friends too. He wasn't too nice, he was too Labour. Then there was mural gate. A garish arguably but by no means unambiguously antisemitic mural. Even David Toube of Harry's Place, no slouch when it comes to false allegations of antisemitism, didn't think the image antisemitic when he saw it in real life though he changed his mind when he heard the artist's explanation of it. Corbyn didn't even say he like it. He just asked why it was being removed. He might not even have seen it. And guess what? Yup, Corbyn apologised again. And again. And again.

Although the consensus among left groups in the Labour Party is on continuing to work inside, it may well be that that will prove impossible in the long term. Because if one thing is clear it is that the Right are determined never to permit the reoccurrence of another left-wing leader. Their problem is that there will be no repeat of the Blair era either. Like their counterparts in Europe, right-wing social democracy has had its day.

Tony Greenstein