Campaign for Free Speech on Palestine – Come and hear Ali Abunimah, Editor of Electronic Intifada and Ben Norton of Grayzone

Today Zionism is the main enemy of free speech only last week Zoom cancelled a San Francisco University seminar featuring Leila Khaled

On Thursday we will be holding the third meeting around Free Speech on Palestine and Israel in the wake of the Board of Deputies 10 Commandments, no. 5 of which instructs people not to appear on a platform with anyone expelled or suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’ from the Labour Party.

In fact the 10 Commandments are looking very frayed at the edges with John McDonnell and Laura Pidcock having successfully defied them at the Labour Representation Committee AGM a few weeks ago.

Steve Silverman of the CAA with Danny Thomas, Tommy Robinson's criminal bodyguard

Our last meeting with Norman Finkelstein proved somewhat controversial with the usual Zionist attacks in the Jewish Chronicle the CST and an absurd one in The Times of Israel implying that Finkelstein is a Holocaust deniers. Not forgetting of course the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism which labels any support of the Palestinians as ‘anti-Semitic’. 

Steve Silverman of the so-called Campaign Against Antisemitism with Mel Gharial - the link person between the Zionists and Tommy Robinson

Zionist Hypocrisy over ‘anti-Semitism’

On 7^th August 124 Zionist groups purporting to speak on behalf of Jews, sought to impose the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism on Facebook. What was ludicrous was that these organisations included genuine anti-Semites, racists and fascists!

As even the Jewish Chronicle pointed out these organisations include the Middle East Forum (MEF), whose President, Daniel Pipes is an open racist and part of the ‘counter-jihad’ movement. The MEF was, by their own admission, ‘heavily involved’ in funding the legal defence of Tommy Robinson, who was gaoled for contempt of court.

Steven Silverman of the CAA (back to camera) with Paul Besser of Britain First

Tommy Robinson is not only a virulent Islamaphobe and racist, he was a member of the neo-Nazi holocaust denying British National Party and to this day maintains links with neo-Nazis.  Nonetheless Tommy Robinson loves Israel and even declares that he is a Zionist.

Other racist groups signing the Open Letter to Facebook include the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which openly lied to the Jewish Chronicle when it declares that it had no links to Tommy Robinson. In fact it works closely with the group of far-Right Zionists around Jonathan Hoffman and Paul Besser who themselves form a Zionist fan club for Robinson.

Another group of racists petitioning Facebook was North West Friend of Israel which has also demonstrated with Tommy Robinson and fascist supporters. Not forgetting of course the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God – the biggest evangelical church in Brazil. A supporter of Brazil’s fascist President Bolsonaro, anti-abortion and anti-Indian

Also amongst the signatories was the Haym Salomn Centre, which states its aim as being “combating antisemitism, Islamic terrorism and defending Western values.” Classic identitarian politics of the far-Right.

The Haym Salomn Centre also attacks “leftist stories funded by George Soros in outlets like the New York Times and Huffington Post.” Attacks on George Soros as funding the ‘liberal’ media are standard Jewish conspiracy theories. 

Not forgetting our old friends the Zionist Organisation of America led by Mort Klein. The ZOA distinguished itself after Trump was elected by inviting the anti-Semitic Steve Bannon, Trump’s special advisor as a guest of honour. Bannon told his former wife that he didn’t want his girls going to a school where there were lots of ‘whiny brat’ Jewish children. The ZOA also invited Sebastian Gorka, a member of the Hungarian fascist Vitezi Rend.

But it’s not just Facebook. As the 2 articles below demonstrate, there is a concerted attack by the Zionist movement, aided and abetted by the Trump and Johnson administrations, to prevent us speaking out.

Absurdly this is in the name of fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ as if anti-Semitism was a phenomenon separate from what most people understand as racism.  Equally absurd is the fact that Trump, a by-word for White Supremacy and racism purports to oppose racism.  The same is true of Boris Johnson, an equally vile racist.

Below are 2 articles on how Zoom, which has become very popular with the left in the wake of COVID-19 prevented a meeting at San Francisco with Leila Khaled.  Leila Khaled was accused of being a ‘terrorist’ because she is a member of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Any organisation that opposes the Israeli state is classified as terrorist by the United States. Nelson Mandela and the ANC were also deemed ‘terrorists’ in their time. All opposition to colonialism and imperialism is defined as terrorism. What we don’t want are large media companies thinking they have the right to decide what we can and can’t hear, even to the extent of closing of a meeting held by a university. What was worrying was that both Facebook and Youtube cooperated in this act of censorship.

The last CFS meeting with Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali and David Miller

Zionist organisations today stand in the forefront of those attacking academic freedom.  Always in the name of ‘anti-Semitism’ of course as if Jews have a vested interested in the oppression of the Palestinians.

When the lockdown first occurred I joked that the Zionists would now have a problem because they couldn’t intimidate hall owners anymore into cancelling meetings.  Now it seems that they have found a way to ‘persuade’ the owners of Zoom, the largest company marketing meeting room software. It remains to be seen whether what happened at San Francisco University is a one-off but it points to the need for the socialist movement to develop its own software to enable meetings so as to bypass Facebook, Zoom and Youtube.

Indeed there is a need for a socialist social media rather than having to put up with the control freakery of Facebook.

The Meeting Tomorrow

Ali Abunimah is Founding Editor of Electronic Intifada, the most popular and respected Palestinian web site in the world, whose articles told the story of the Zionist ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in the Labour Party.

Ali was the first to speak out against anti-Semites such as Israel Shamir and Gilad Atzmon in or around the solidarity movement. In the latter case he helped author a joint letter from Palestinians and Arabs, Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon.

Other speakers include Ben Norton, Associate Editor of the Grayzone, an Investigate Journalism enterprise as well as your usual favourites – Jackie Walker, Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth. The meeting will be chaired by Chris Williamson, the only principled MP in the Labour Party who stood up to the Zionist fake anti-Semitism campaign.

Come and join us

Tony Greenstein

 Zoom cancels panel featuring Leila Khaled amid protests from pro-Israel groups

Zoom announced that it will deny its services to San Francisco State University today to block an online panel featuring Leila Khaled from happening with its software. Pro-Israel groups, including one partially funded by the Israeli government, are taking credit for the cancellation.

By Michael Arria September 23, 2020

Zoom has announced that it will deny its services to San Francisco State University (SFSU) today and block an online panel featuring Leila Khaled from happening with its software. As a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Khaled was connected to two plane hijackings that took place in 1969 and 1970.

The event (which was titled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice & Resistance”) was to be sponsored by SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program and the Women and Gender Studies Department.

A statement from the company to the group reads, “Zoom is committed to supporting the open exchange of ideas and conversations, subject to certain limitations contained in our Terms of Service, including those related to user compliance with applicable U.S. export control, sanctions, and anti-terrorism laws. In light of the speaker’s reported affiliation or membership in a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and SFSU’s inability to confirm otherwise, we determined the meeting is in violation of Zoom’s Terms of Service and told SFSU they may not use Zoom for this particular event.”

The event was protested by a number of right-wing, pro-Israel groups including The Lawfare Project. The Act.IL app, which targets the BDS movement and is partially funded by the Israeli government, has taken credit for helping to cancel the Zoom event:

Michael Bueckert, a PhD student in sociology and political economy at Carleton University who tracks the app online, points out that its users have sent emails to the California State University Board of Trustees and informing them that they “may be violating US law by supporting a terrorist.”

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, tweeted, “This is what happens when we subcontract our universities to Zoom: they decide which events are acceptable and which aren’t. It’s outrageous.”

“This is a dangerous attack on free speech and academic freedom from Big Tech: Zoom cannot claim veto power over the content of our nation’s classrooms and public events,” said Palestine Legal director Dima Khalidi in a statement “The threat to democracy is elevated by the fact that Zoom’s decision to stamp out discussion of Palestinian freedom comes in response to a systematic repression campaign driven by the Israeli government and its allies.” 

Organizers and individuals connected to the event have been responding to criticisms since the event was announced.  After SFSU President Lynn Mahoney wrote an article declaring that she welcomed diversity but condemned hate, former political prisoner (and scheduled panelist) Laura Whitehorn wrote Mahoney a letter about the webinar.

“Leila Khaled is a leader in the movement for the rights of the Palestinian people,” the letter reads. “She has fought in many ways for the right of return to historic Palestine, and she will offer important lessons and information about the history of women’s involvement in working for the rights of the Palestinian people under occupation and in exile. I found your acceptance of a narrative that brands her a terrorist or a hater to be deeply offensive and in conflict with what I believe an educator should say, teach, and promote.”

People who signed up for the event received an email from organizers, saying that they expect the school to “uphold our freedom of speech and academic freedom by providing an alternative venue to this open classroom.”

Update: Since this post was published, Facebook removed the event page from its site and YouTube shut down the stream just minutes into the talk.

Big Tech’s dangerous attack on free speech and academic freedom: Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube censor SF State Palestine class

Three tech giants censored an online class featuring Palestinian, Black, Jewish and South African activists at San Francisco State University, after pro-Israel advocacy groups complained.

The open classroom event “Whose Narratives?: Gender, Justice & Resistance” featured Palestinian activist Leila Khaled and was scheduled to take place at 12:30 PDT before being erased from Zoom, Facebook and YouTube.

One day before the scheduled event, Zoom announced it would not permit the event with Ms. Khaled to take place. Zoom had previously threatened to terminate the account for the entire California State University (CSU) system if SFSU allowed the event to proceed.

Facebook removed the event page the day of the event, and YouTube repeatedly shut down streams of the event within minutes after they began streaming on that platform.

“This is a dangerous attack on free speech and academic freedom from Big Tech: Zoom cannot claim veto power over the content of our nation’s classrooms and public events,” said Dima Khalidi, director of Palestine Legal. “The threat to democracy is elevated by the fact that Zoom’s decision to stamp out discussion of Palestinian freedom comes in response to a systematic repression campaign driven by the Israeli government and its allies.” 

The event is organized by the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies program and program in Women and Gender Studies at SFSU and features Ms. Khaled in conversation with several prominent activists from Black and South African liberation movements and Jewish Voice for Peace.

As of Wednesday morning, event registration was open on Zoom and an event page was live on Facebook. By 9:30 a.m. PDT, both pages had been taken down.

“This censorship violates our freedom of speech and academic freedom as faculty to teach, deprives our students from the right to learn, and denies the general public the right to hear from speakers who are not readily available on mainstream media,” said Drs. Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa, co-organizers of the event, in an email to the SFSU Provost Jennifer Summit. “SFSU and CSU should not participate in such censorship directly or indirectly.”

“It’s outrageous for Zoom, which has assumed such a prominent role in online learning during the pandemic, to interject itself into this university-approved classroom event by threatening to sever its contract with CSU completely,” said attorney Dan Siegel, who is representing Professor Abdulhadi.

Zoom’s actions followed pressure from right-wing Zionist organizations including the Lawfare Project and an Israeli government-sponsored app that is taking credit for the cancellation.

These right-wing groups peddle a dangerously over-broad theory that hosting Ms. Khaled, who is 76, to discuss critical narratives of resistance, gender and sexual justice constitutes criminal activity. They argue that because she has been publicly affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, professors at San Francisco State are not allowed to host her as a speaker.

Ms. Khaled is not being compensated for her talk and the exchange of ideas in a university setting is constitutionally protected free speech.

Several of the other speakers were part of resistance and liberation movements that were once criminalized, including:

• Sekou Odinga, a former member of the Black Liberation Army and political prisoner for 33 years
• Ronnie Kasrils, a Jewish anti-Zionist activist and former member of the armed wing of the African National Congress
• and Laura Whitehorn, a political prisoner for 14 years and current member of Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been attacked by Zionist groups and the Israeli government. 

Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, a prominent Palestinian scholar-activist has faced relentless attacks from Zionist organizations – most recently after giving a guest lecture at UCLA in 2019 where she critiqued Zionism as a political ideology of supremacy akin to white supremacy.

UCLA concluded that there had been no wrongdoing in an investigation of the lecture due to a complaint from a student who disagreed with her views.

Despite this, the right-wing Zionist group StandWithUs filed a federal civil rights complaint against UCLA in October 2019 over the lecture, which the Trump administration opened as a formal investigation in January 2020 following an executive order adopting a distorted redefinition of antisemitism that targets advocacy for Palestinian rights.

Last month, over 120 pro-Israel groups sent a letter lobbying Facebook to censor criticism of Israel by labeling it as hate speech using Trump’s definition of antisemitism. Adopting this definition will give even broader latitude to the censorship of Palestine advocacy.

“Right-wing Israel proxy groups, the Trump administration, and Big Tech firms are conspiring to censor any and all discussion about or advocacy for Palestinian freedom at a time when Trump’s foreign policy seeks to liquidate the Palestinian issue,” said Dima Khalidi. “They will not succeed, because people who believe in democracy, dissent, and freedom for all will not be silenced.”

The General Union of Palestine Students at SFSU issued the following statement: 

“If SFSU prides itself on its values of critical ethnic studies thought, and representation in curriculum of all ethnicities and races, it should itself as an institution uphold those values and defend its faculty against censorship and attacks. SFSU must ensure that Zoom does not have control over its curriculum.”

Brighton & Hove Labour Left Alliance Zoom Meeting on White Privilege and the Fight Against Racism - Tuesday September 29, 7.00 pm

White Privilege? Is this the Cause of the Racism that led to George Floyd’s Murder or is it Another Example of Identity Politics?

I have to confess that after years being involved in the anti-fascist and anti-racist movement that it was only recently that I became aware of the concept of White privilege in conversation with a supporter of the Black Separatist group, the Nation of Islam, led by Louis Farrakhan. However it seems to have taken off amongst a wider layer of Black activists. I want to explain why I am opposed to what I consider a reactionary and bankrupt slogan.

Apart from being well known for a series of anti-Semitic statements such as

‘The Jews, a small handful, control the movement of this great nation, like a radar controls the movement of a great ship in the waters. … The Jews got a stranglehold on the Congress."

Farrakhan’s views are comprehensively reactionary. I’m not interested in what is the reflective racism of a section of Black people, Farrakhan’s comments were not a threat to Jews. They merely represent the backward consciousness of a section of the most oppressed group in American society.

Farrakhan’s ire is not directed against US capitalism and imperialism. On the contrary what he has always campaigned for is a space for Black capitalism, hence his ‘buy Black’ slogan.

The NOI has repeatedly been found to have links with White supremacist groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, in 1962 American Nazi Party boss George Lincoln Rockwell appeared at NOI’s 1962 Saviours’ Day Convention, christening Elijah Muhammad, NOI’s leader as the Hitler of blacks. In another, Malcolm X, on departing from NOI in 1964, spoke of an Atlanta meeting between NOI and the KKK in an attempt to establish mutual working conditions. Other contacts included the ‘Third Positionists’ in Britain’s National Front.

Add caption

Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam is very similar to Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement which also preached the need to build Black businesses and in fact set about creating some such as the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. It also advocated the colonisation of Africa (which had already happened when freed slaves colonised Liberia and Sierra Leone).

In June 1922, Garvey met with Edward Young Clarke, the Imperial Wizard of the KKK. Garvey made a number of speeches in the months leading up to that meeting in some of which he thanked the whites for Jim Crow. Garvey once stated:

I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together. I like honesty and fair play. You may call me a Klansman if you will, but, potentially, every white man is a Klansman as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically and politically is concerned, and there is no use lying

Unsurprisingly this embrace of the Klan  produced a fierce and hostile reaction amongst Black people. The "Garvey Must Go" Campaign gained momentum after Garvey held a secret meeting with Edward Young Clarke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in June 1922. Immediately afterward, Randolph and Owen's Messenger magazine published an article entitled "Marcus Garvey! The Black Imperial Wizard Becomes Messenger Boy of the White Klu Klux Kleagle."

Marcus Garvey

Garvey doubted whether whites in the United States would ever agree to African Americans being treated as equals and argued for segregation rather than integration. Garvey suggested that African Americans should go and live in Africa. He believed ‘in the principle of Europe for the Europeans, and Asia for the Asiatics" and "Africa for the Africans at home and abroad".

Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association and Farrakhan’s NOI are Black Separatist organisations which see no connection with capitalism or an alternative to a system based on exploitation. On the contrary they seek to create a Black bourgeoisie with which to combat the White bourgeoisie.  It is a movement of the Black petit-bourgeoisie which is unable to see beyond skin colour.  It had no social or political analysis.

In this the NOI and UNIA were not unique.  Garvey’s movement was known as Black Zionism.

Garvey’s UNIA and Farrakhan’s NOI are examples of a certain tendency in a section of oppressed peoples. When racists say you are different from us and we cannot live together, instead of fighting the principle of racism they adopt it as their own. This was equally true of Zionism. It never quarreled with anti-Semitism on principle, it simply wanted to adopt the same principles in respect of non-Jews.

The difference was that whereas powerful forces in the West gave their support to Zionism, all except the White supremacist fringe has given no support to Black Separatism. What made Zionism become more than a fringe Jewish Messianic movement was the fact that it was a colonial project from the start and its alliance with British colonialism. As Trotsky wrote of the Back to Africa movement:

“The American Negroes gathered under the banner of the ‘Back to Africa’ movement because it seemed a possible fulfilment of their wish for their own home. They did not want actually to go to Africa. It was the expression of a mystic desire for a home in which they would be free of the domination of the whites, in which they themselves could control their own fate” (On Black Nationalism, Leon Trotsky, International Socialism 43, April/May 1970)

This was equally true of Zionism. It traded on the idea of a Jewish ‘longing’ to return ‘home’ to Palestine. After all it is repeated every day in their prayers ‘next year in Jerusalem.’ But this too was nothing more than a pious longing to be free of oppression. When faced with the choice of going to Palestine or the United States just 1% of the 2.5 million Jews who fled the Russian pogroms between the mid-19^th century and 1914 chose Palestine. There was nothing to stop them going to Palestine. The Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a part, had no internal borders. 99% of Jews chose Britain or the United States as their promised land.

The_SS_Yarmouth_Black_Star_Line_1919

By way of contrast Malcolm X started off his political life in the NOI and moved to the left as he saw the futility of Black Separatism. On March 24^th Malcolm X announced that he was leaving the NOI.  From this point onwards he moved towards a position whereby he saw capitalism not skin colour as lying at the heart of Black oppression.

“You can’t have capitalism without racism”, he said once in a rally in Harlem. On another occasion, when he was talking about the liberation struggles in Africa, he stated that:

“You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic (...) You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”

He went even further showing that he was moving towards a class position:

“We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American Negro is part of the rebellion against oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era....It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”

 

 

On February 21 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York City. However the Police were not interested in the identity of his assassins.  Instead two of the three people convicted were innocent but framed by the New York Police. It is now known, thanks to the film Who Killed Malcolm X that new evidence points the finger at four members of a Nation of Islam mosque in Newark, N.J., depicting their involvement as an open secret in their city. One of those convicted, Talmadge Hayer, was also a NOI supporter. He was caught by Malcolm X’s bodyguard and rescued by the Police with a handgun.

As Joel Whitney argues in The Murder of Malcolm X

There was nothing J. Edgar Hoover feared more than a charismatic black radical who could inspire the oppressed to fight back. And that’s why, according to a compelling new series, the FBI had its fingerprints all over Malcolm X’s murder.

The NOI hated Malcolm X because his ideas were proving attractive in the America of the 1960’s with the riots and Black Panthers. He also upset their cosy relationship with the White Establishment. He was subject to close surveillance by the FBI and the counter-insurgency Cointelpro program.

Why White Privilege?

The slogan White Privilege is the product of Separatist not Socialist politics and should be rejected as such. It offers no solution.  What it does do is locate racism in skin colour. It offers no class perspective or path ahead. Like all forms of identity politics it locates oppression in the individual not the state.

Identity Politics are a backward and reactionary attempt to explain oppression in terms of fixed identities rather than the class nature of society. The ideas of White Privilege are as simplistic as they are superficially attractive.  However they must be rejected.

At a time when millions of White people in the United States and Britain have marched and demonstrated against White racism, all White Privilege does is to take the focus off the structures of a racist society and the state and turn them on Whites as individuals. It is looking through the wrong end of the telescope

Conceptually White Privilege is bankrupt on the most basic intellectual level. It is unable to explain the racism that Irish people experienced. It has nothing to say about the persecution of Roma and Gypsy people or indeed about racism directed against East European people, an integral part of the Brexit campaign.

It also has nothing to say about colonialism and imperialism, which are the direct causes of racism. I don’t know what the views of the 2 main speakers, Jackie Walker and Kerry Ann-Mendoza are.  I am sure it will be an interesting discussion. For the meeting I have prepared a discussion document which you can link to here.

If you want to attend the meeting please register in advance here. 

Tony Greenstein

No one Better Represents the Opportunism and Lack of Principle of the Campaign Group of MPs than Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle

The Height of Unreality - Sacked by Starmer for offending Zionists LRM Pledged ‘to support Keir in defending and furthering the manifesto we stood on’

I must confess I’ve never had much respect for Lloyd Russell-Moyle, my local MP.

In March 2016 I was suspended from the Labour Party and expelled two years later. I had been targeted by the Jewish Labour Movement, which throughout the Corbyn period operated as an arm of the Zionist movement and the Israeli state.

Quoting from a Ha'aretz article was seen as 'antisemitic' - since we mustn't tell the truth about how Israel uses the Holocaust to cover its war crimes and much else

The allegations against me were motivated by my anti-Zionist politics as became clear when I had my investigation interview with Labour’s hapless Regional Secretary, Harry Gregson. I blogged about it here and the transcript is here.  Gregson asked me about my comment that ‘Israel is waiting for its holocaust survivors to die’, so I handed him a copy of Ha'aretz, an Israeli paper with the exact same headline and asked Gregson if he was suggesting Ha'aretz too was anti-Semitic!

Even at this early stage of the witch-hunt it was criticism of Israel, not hate of Jews, which were behind the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.

A motion was put to the District Labour Party opposing my suspension and it was carried. LRM was the Chair of the District Party.  Did he then write to Iain McNicol, Labour’s crooked General Secretary to inform him of the local party’s policy? Well yes he did but only to ask that my expulsion be sped up, in the course of which he made a number of false allegations.!

Lloyd Russell-Moyle's letter to the witchhunters

All this was revealed when I did a Subject Access Request. Although Moyle’s letter was blacked out, it wasn’t difficult to work out who had penned it.

Naturally I wrote to oily Moyle asking what he thought he was doing. Lloyd Russell-Moyle – the Double Barrelled Hypocrite who was imposed as Chair of Brighton & Hove Labour Party. Moyle offered me a ‘limited apology’: ‘I believe Point 3 is, in hindsight poorly worded from myself.’ Being a generous soul I accepted the apology. LRM, who makes Uriah Heep seem straightforward and honest wrote:

‘I am of a firm belief that one should say things publicly which are kind, and if you are unable to say that then one must be quite (sic) and say nothing on blogs and social media, esp about members.’

And who, I thought, could argued with a sentiment which could have formed part of the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount. Clearly Moyle was a kind Christian fellow and I had misjudged him!

Imagine my surprise when someone sent me a copy of a Facebook discussion with comments about me from this latter-day John the Baptist:

‘‘I am the chair of his clp [District Labour Party in fact] and can tell you he is an abusive, unpleasant little man.  I have told him that to his face.’

Leaving aside the small fact that he told me nothing to my face, other than engaging in small talk (and on one occasion apologising for his rudeness), these comments seemed slightly at odd with Moyle’s preaching about speaking kindly of people! Clearly Oily was already in training to be an MP even though he hadn’t yet been chosen as a candidate.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle (back right) and David Roger (front right)

I mention all of this because a friend in Brighton Palestine Solidarity Campaign, David Roger, wrote to Moyle on 14^th June after being suspended from the Labour Party, asking for support. In response his secretary wrote 3 days later, telling David that

‘Lloyd believes that anti-semitism has no place in the Labour Party and is pleased to see Keir acting so proactively to demonstrate this.’

The implication being that David is anti-Semitic.

David responded on 21^st June telling Moyle that he found his response

‘chilling and sadly confirmatory of my fears that ambition and career advancement have overtaken principle and ethics.’

Which is as good a description of Moyle as anything I could muster. The fact that false charges of anti-Semitism are being made against activists like David for the sole reason that they support the Palestinians was not something that troubled Moyle in the slightest.

I also wrote a letter to Moyle pointing out that he was happy to attend a Palestine solidarity social with the brave volunteers on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla with David. Moyle was also happy to have his photo taken with David but he is too gutless to take up his case.

Come July and Moyle was himself subject to much the same false allegations of anti-Semitism for comments he had made in 2009. At that time, unencumbered by office, LRM stated that Jewish claims to Israel were "not progressive in [their] very nature" and that Zionism was a "dangerous nationalist idea".

It’s difficult to disagree with either propositions. Zionism’s bastard offspring, the Israeli state, has been in a state of perpetual war with the Palestinians and its neighbours since 1948 whilst at the same time portraying itself as the victim.

A tweet from a JLM supporter

However instead of standing by his comments Moyle crawled:

“I have now deleted these posts and recognise why they were offensive,” insisting that “I am completely and unreservedly committed to supporting Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner’s pledge to rid the Party of antisemitism.”

Where, I wonder, do they get these people?  Is it a condition of being a member of the Campaign Group that you have to agree to having your backbone removed?

Divina Levrini (left)

I reminded Lloyd that amongst those who had sailed on the boat to Gaza was Divina Levrini, a young Swedish woman who, like the others, was badly beaten up and tortured by the Israeli commanders who seized the ship.  Divina, who was already ill, died soon after and who knows whether her treatment at the hands of the Israelis, which included denying her medication, played any part in this. 

The idea of apologising for describing Zionism, a racist Jewish Supremacist ideology, as nasty’ is abject political cowardice.

One might hope that people like Divina, who went on a boat despite being ill, because of her concern for the people of Gaza might give Oily the courage to stand up to the racist defenders of the Israeli state.  Unfortunately not.

The JLM, British branch of the Israeli Labour Party, which pretends to be concerned with anti-Semitism when its sole concern is Israel and Zionism, decided to go for Moyle. The Jewish News headline was Labour’s Jewish affiliate tears into shadow minister after Zionism posts apology

In an attempt to save his fast disappearing ministerial career Moyle did what come naturally to him, he grovelled.

“I am completely and unreservedly committed to supporting [Labour leader] Keir Starmer and [deputy leader] Angela Rayner’s pledge to rid the party of antisemitism. I have met previously with the Jewish Labour Movement and will be reaching out to them again now,”

This however was insufficient and Starmer gave Moyle a choice – resign or be sacked. Moyle then claimed that

owing to a campaign by right-wing media my position has become untenable. I shall return to backbenches for the time being to support Keir in defending and furthering the manifesto we stood on and to achieve a Labour government

However Joshua Garfield, a JLM operative, was in no mood to be charitable, tweeting:’

Journalists were repeatedly told that Lloyd would be reaching out to JLM. We never heard from him. It appears he opted to step down instead of reaching out to us. This was no 'right-wing media campaign,' it was his own error of judgement.

And in a statement to the Jewish News the Zionists put the boot in:

‘The Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) said it had had no formal contact with the MP since the 2017 election when he “spontaneously” joined a planned meeting between its officers and a parliamentarian.

“Lloyd Russell-Moyle has, in his short time in Parliament, managed to attract constant controversy in relation to antisemitism, which has caused deep upset and distress within the Jewish community in Brighton and Hove,”

“In isolation, each event would have at best pointed to a blind spot on anti-Jewish racism. Taken together they appear to be a pattern of behaviour that is simply not acceptable for a front bench member of the Parliamentary Labour Party,”

As we can see quite clearly, comments about Zionism are called by the liars of the JLM ‘a blind spot on anti-Jewish racism.’ That is the answer to fools like Jeremy Corbyn who speak of ‘denialism’.

It is ironic that someone who has gone along with the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt has become a victim of it based on an 11 year old description of Zionism (not Jews).

Of course the obvious thing for Oily to do would have been to fight back and defend his ground saying the evidence that Zionism is a nasty form of nationalism is clear and unequivocal. It is a rather mild description of a state which shoots down children protesting in Gaza

However Moyle wanted to keep his place in the Shadow Cabinet so ambition ruled that one out. Naturally the Campaign Against Antisemitism also joined in

Mr Russell-Moyle has a terrible record on antisemitism,… A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “It was deeply disappointing that Sir Keir Starmer appointed Mr Russell-Moyle to his Shadow Cabinet, given his record. Mr Russell-Moyle should still face disciplinary proceedings over his past conduct.”

Their conclusions were that ‘Mr Russell-Moyle’s statements and actions qualify as antisemitic discourse.’ But then anything critical of Zionism is ‘anti-Semitism’ according to the CAA.

Below is the email I received from Divina detailing her treatment at the hands of Israel. This is the state whose ideology is Zionism. What kind of cowardice is it that makes it impossible for Moyle to stand his ground?

We were taken to Givon prison where we were tortured in different kind of ways. The women were sleep deprived more than the men. We were six women in one dirty cell with a hole in the ground. The guards would come in and yell every one or two hours (it's hard to know how often because we had no watches. Only the clothes we had on us.) They beat at the walls and lockers and made us stand up in the middle of the night, sometimes they just came in and counted the beds with a loud voice or came in with a huge stick and beat the walls. Sometimes they had gloves and handcuffs they showed but never used...

They hit my friend, a 75 year old woman who four months before got a hip replacement surgery. They did not really beat us anytime before or after that in jail so we thought that they are so used to beat Palestinians so they forgot that our embassies were ready to act if something like that would happen

I was deprived of my important medicines for 36 hours. After that my embassy complained, but I got just the half dose of the most important one, none of the other medicines. The embassy yelled at a guard to give me my medicines and he said that I would get an appointment with the doctor. But he told me in perfect English that he doesn't understand English and I have to speak Arabic.

Later the embassy and our Swedish state department sent a doctor to the airport to immediately meet me after my flight home. ...We were stolen of our driving licenses, medicines, phones, money and creditcards. Most of our luggage is gone. I came home with only a small bag with random clothes I found. I was 2,5 months at sea, so I had much more with me.

What is really amazing is that someone like RLM is held to be on the left of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The sad reality is that the Campaign Group of today is just a shadow of what it was 30 years ago when people like Tony Benn and Joan Maynard were members.

The total lack of backbone and principle in the Campaign Group is what makes socialists despair of the Labour Party. Their collective failure to call Starmer what he is, a Blairite automaton, shows how pathetic the group is.

Below is the letter I sent to  Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Dear Lloyd,

I received a copy of the following email which you sent to David Roger. I am appalled.

'Lloyd believes that anti-semitism has no place in the Labour Party and is pleased to see Keir acting so proactively to demonstrate this.'

You call yourself a supporter of the Palestinians. You have made a number of fine speeches on Palestine and I remember your attendance at the reception for the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, all of whom were very badly beaten up, tortured, when they were captured in international waters by Israel's state pirates. Your presence was appreciated by all those present.

You may recall meeting Divina Levrini, the red-headed Swedish singer, who was already seriously ill.  She died soon after returning to Sweden, even though she was no older than her early 30s.  Below I have quoted an extract of her experiences when kidnapped by Israel. I published this as an obituary, Divina Levrini – A Star that will forever burn brightly in our memories,

Divina despite her fatal illness devoted herself to the Palestinian cause and gave her life for it.  No one expects you Lloyd to do the same. However we also don't expect you to use the Palestinians for the purpose of advancing your own career. 

In the Times of Israel  Keir Starmer was quoted as saying that:

“I do support Zionism I absolutely support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland. My only concern is that Zionism can mean slightly different things to different people, and… to some extent it has been weaponized. I wouldn’t read too much into that. I said it loud and clear — and meant it — that I support Zionism without qualification.”

Zionism is the founding ideology of the Israeli state.  It is the ideology of 'Jewish settlement' as per the Jewish Nation State Law which Ha’aretz describes as enshrining discrimination in Israel’s constitution . It is the ideology that dictates that 93% of Israeli land is off limits to the Palestinians.  It is the ideology of the demographic fear of having too large an Arab minority in the ‘Jewish State’ and therefore dictates that there can be no marriage between Arab and Jew. Mixed sexual relations are a social taboo in Israel. Zionism is the ideology which dictates that half the villages of Israeli Arabs are 'unrecognised' which means they lack the most basic facilities such as running water and are in danger of immediate demolition.  No Jewish villages or communities are 'unrecognised'.

When you say that you support Starmer's 'pro-active' anti-Semitism campaign what you mean is that you support the current suspension of 25 Jewish members of the Labour Party for ‘anti-Semitism’ and the ‘investigation’ of hundreds if  not thousands more.

Contrast this concern about ‘anti-Semitism’ with the fact that Luke Akehurst supported Israeli snipers firing on unarmed demonstrators in Gaza killing medics and over 70 children. Akehurst has not been expelled. If someone had justified the murder of Jewish children then their feet wouldn’t touch the floor.  I can only conclude that Jewish lives are more precious than Palestinian lives to the racists who are conducting the present bout of expulsions.

I already know that you supported my expulsion because I obtained under SAR the email you sent to Iain McNicol urging that it be sped up. But you also support the classification as 'antisemitic' of people like Divina because I don't know a single Palestine solidarity activist who hasn't been called an anti-Semite. It is trite knowledge that ‘anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism’ is the operative slogan of the Zionist movement.

As Mick Davis, Chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, stated in his evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on Antisemitism:

Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself, and is so associated with the right of the Jewish people to have their own country and to have self-determination within that country, that if you attack Zionism, you attack the very fundamentals of how the Jews believe in themselves.

The above statement is not only nonsense but quintessentially anti-Semitic. The home of British Jews, myself included, is Britain.  It is only anti-Semites who tell me to ‘go back to Israel’. Indeed that is why anti-Semites, from Trump to Orban to neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson support Zionism and Israel. Is that so hard to understand?

Starmer’s ‘proactive’ campaign on anti-Semitism has become a campaign against anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews as well as Black activists such as Marc Wadsworth and Jackie Walker. If Labour’s leaked report is correct then the only people that the anti-Semitism witch-hunt didn’t affect were the handful of genuine anti-Semites in the Labour Party.

That is why when the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was at its height, the Zionists demanded that anti-Semitism be redefined.  Instead of the OED definition of ‘hostility to or prejudice to Jews’ there was substituted a 500+ word IHRA Working Definition which included 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which referred to Israel.  Calling Israel a racist state is an expulsion offence.

The only MP who stood up for his principles and opposed the IHRA was Chris Williamson and he was betrayed.  When I challenged you about this at a public meeting you told me that Corbyn had provided a route back to him. This was a lie.

You and the Campaign Group have also been remarkably silent about the Board of Deputies 10 Commandments (Pledges) which, in best  McCarthyist fashion, make it a disciplinary offence to be seen with someone who is suspended or expelled.  It prohibits meeting with ‘fringe’ i.e. anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews.  Perhaps you could let us know what your position on this is?

You entered Parliament as a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn yet you endorsed a campaign whose sole purpose was to remove him. The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was never about anti-Semitism or hatred of Jews.  It was always about removing someone who was seen as hostile to the British-United States special relationship and NATO.

It has been suggested to me that compared to Peter Kyle MP, the MP for Hove, whose support for Israel right or wrong is notorious, we should be grateful for your support for the Palestinians.  I disagree. I would prefer the honesty of the enemy I know than the fickle friendship of someone whose support is opportunistic and liable to change.

Black Lives Matter in 2016 came out in support of BDS, calling Israel an Apartheid state and genocidal.  It was rewarded by accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the usual suspects. Mort Klein, President of the Zionist Organisation of America, urged that BLM be put on a list of hate groups, calling them

 ‘a Jew hating, White hating, Israel hating, conservative Black hating, violence promoting, dangerous Soros funded extremist group of haters.

According to the Telegraph, which was prominent in the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, Black Lives Matter protests are a catalyst for anti-Semitism. This is the ‘anti-Semitism’ that Keir Starmer is busy prosecuting and which you are endorsing. 

If you sincerely support the Palestinians and oppose Israeli Apartheid, as recognised by all the veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu, you will reconsider your facile support for Starmer’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. 

If you decline this opportunity to put clear red water between you and Sir Keir then the only conclusion that I and other activists can draw is that you are first and foremost an opportunist committed to your own career above all.  I am sure that you wouldn’t want to be remembered in that light.

Fraternally,

Tony Greenstein