This article was first
printed in Middle East
Monitor. Stanley Heller, a friend and comrade from the USA, sent me an article by
Alona Ferber in Ha'aretz . At his prompting I wrote a response to Ferber’s
article which Ha’aretz refused to print. Stanley subsequently put my
article up on the Struggle.
Like the Guardian here, Ha'aretz refused to print an article that went against
the dominant narrative of 'Labour antisemitism'.
Tony
Greenstein
When You Scratch a Liberal
Zionist You Find a Racist – Ha’aretz is simply more subtle and intelligent than
the most of the Zionist press - but it is still a Zionist paper
Ha’aretz occupies much the same position as the Rand
Daily Mail did in South Africa. It is the lone voice of
liberalism in the world’s most racist state.
Except that there is one important difference.
Whereas theRand Daily Mail opposed Apartheid, Ha’aretz is a
supporter of Zionism. Ha’aretz believes that Israel can be humanised and yet
remain a Zionist state. Essentially that you can have a non-racist
version of Zionism. It believes a Jewish state can also be a democratic state.
It is an oxymoron masquerading as a political philosophy.
 |
| Alona Ferber repeated the lie that Ken Livingstone had said 'Hitler was a Zionist' whereas he stated that 'Hitler supported Zionism' a rather different thing - when this was pointed out to Ha'aretz they simply ignored repeated complaints |
In
Israel the terms ‘left’ and ‘right’ take on a different meaning to that
which is normally understood by these terms. In Israel Left and Right define
one’s attitude to the Palestinian question. In normal democratic societies, in
states that claim not to discriminate between their citizens on the basis of
religion or colour, Left and Right defines one’s position in respect of class
and economic issues. Politics in Israel are polarised around Jew v Arab and questions
of race and racism. This is why the Israeli Labour Party fails to meet the
criteria of a left-wing party on both counts!
That is why former leader, Shelly Yacimovich declared that it was a ‘historic
injustice’ to characterise the ILP as a left-wing party. The ILP ‘"has always drawn
its power from being a centrist party. There have been both hawks and doves
within its ranks.’ As someone opposed to historic injustices I have no intention of calling the Israeli Labor Party left-wing or socialist. Which is one reason why I want their bastard offspring in Britain, the Jewish Labour Movement, to be disaffiliated from the Labour Party.
Where Yacimovich was being economical with the
truth was in her statement that ‘Labor has always drawn its power from advocating peace, but pragmatically," There isn’t a single Israeli war that the ILP hasn’t supported.
Its record of murdering Palestinian refugees seeking to return to their lands
in the 1950’s (they were characterised as ‘infiltrators’) bears comparison with
anything Likud has achieved.
On
economic matters Ha’aretz is a free market paper. Its Defence Correspondent Amos Harel is close to Israel’s
security establishment as was his predecessor Zeev Schiff (which didn’t prevent
Moshe Dayan trying to have him fired!). But above all
Ha’aretz is loyal to the Israeli state.
It is signed up to the Zionist agenda even if it permits a couple of
anti-Zionist journalists, Gideon Levy and Amira Hass, to write for it. Hass and Levy are the exceptions that prove the rule.
Ha’aretz
is certainly the most astute of Israeli newspapers. It realises that an Israel
drifting inexorably to the Right is haemorrhaging political support in the West
and that Israel, even more than South Africa before it, is dependent on
political support in the United States. That is why the growth of support for
the Palestinians in the Democrats is so worrying for the more intelligent
Zionists, who can see beyond the end of their nose.
 |
| The usual meaningless Zionist statistics - even assuming 85% of British Jews think Corbyn is anti-semitic I doubt if even 1% can explain coherently why this is so - all these polls do is to measure the effectiveness of the mass media |
Ha’aretz
has a depth of coverage of Israel which shows some, at least, of the reality of
what Zionism means in practice. It is sincere in wanting a Jewish state that
treats its Arab citizens equally. The problem it faces is that a
Jewish State, by definition, cannot help but treat its minorities as tolerated
guests. Zionism, for which Israel is a Jewish state above all, cannot all for equality or democracy.
That
is why Ha’aretz, despite its criticisms of the consequences of Zionism as they
play out in Israel is still loyal to the idea of a Jewish state. Like the Rand Daily Mail it too is opposed to BDS
and sanctions.
The
rise of Jeremy Corbyn, an avowedly socialist leader of Britain’s Labour Party,
has tested liberals not only in Britain but Israel too. When it comes to
socialism, then liberals are no less hostile to the ideas of the common
ownership of wealth than conservatives. That is why in Britain it is the Guardian and its Zionist Senior Journalist Jonathan Freedland who
have led the charge against Jeremy Corbyn.
Ha’aretz’s
attitude to Jeremy Corbyn has also been hostile. With a few exceptions, notably
Gideon Levy and Israel's most famous poet, Yitzhak Laor, their coverage has been universally hostile. Ha’aretz correspondents have bought into the idea
that Corbyn and the Labour Left are anti-Semitic.
 |
| The Jewish Voice for Labour and Labour Against the Witchhunt Counter Demonstration to the Zionists' 'anti-racist' demonstration |
The
title alone demonstrated its bias and where it was coming from. It made no attempt to be
even handed. It read like an ill digested propaganda tract that went from one
untruth to another with gay abandon. To Ferber support for the Palestinians is ‘gaslighting Jews’.
Ferber’s
article consisted of a series of assertions unsupported by anything in the way
of evidence. In what has become a
hackneyed metaphor, Jews were the ‘canary
in the mine’ a tired and clichéd analogy. I suggested that on the contrary,
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was the dog that didn’t bark in the night!
(Sherlock Holmes/Silver Blade)
Ferber
began with the resignation of the ‘7 Dwarfs’,
right-wing MPs (later to become 8) all pro-Zionist who decided to form an
Independent Group. Ferber even repeated
the myth that Ken Livingstone had said that ‘Hitler
was a Zionist’ even though this has been debunked repeatedly. A cursory
search on Google turns up the transcript which describes Hitler as ‘supporting Zionism’ something which is accepted as fact even by Zionist
historians such as David Cesarani and Lucy Dawidowicz.
 |
| No reason was given but one assumes it is perhaps because the accepted narrative must not be contradicted |
I
therefore sent in an article by way of reply. Ha’aretz’s Opinion Editor, Esther
Solomon sent a curt response ‘Thanks for
this, Tony, but we'll pass.’ I sent a somewhat longer response:
Dear Esther,
I'm sorry that you don't feel courageous enough to
carry a reply to Alona Ferber's article 'Corbyn’s Labour Will Never Stop
Gaslighting Jews'. It would appear that anything from a Jewish anti-Zionist
perspective that challenges the mainstream narrative about Labour
'antisemitism', a narrative which Ha'aretz has been plugging away at for the
past few years, not least from Ms Ferber, is off limits. For all
Ha'aretz's liberal credentials, there are limits to the debate you are willing
to entertain. It suggests that Gideon Levy and Amira Hass
notwithstanding, you are not willing to challenge the Zionist consensus as to
what constitutes 'antisemitism' abroad.
There is of course nothing unusual in this.
Both the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain, like the Republicans and
the Democrats, whatever their domestic disagreements maintain a policy of
bipartisanship overseas. It is interesting to see that you follow in their
footsteps.
I am not surprised that you have failed to given any
reason for your decision not to accept my piece. It is of the same length
as the original and certainly more substantive and well argued, I have said I
would forego any fee and as a prominent Jewish victim of this fake antisemitism
crisis in Britain's Labour Party I am able to offer an unrivalled perspective
as to what has actually been happening. Ms Ferber's piece is, by contrast,
little more than second hand gossip and hearsay, a hackneyed repetition of all
the old cliches and phrases.
What is happening in the Labour Party is, at least
in part, a product of the dirty-tricks operations of Gilad Erdan's Ministry of
Strategic Affairs. This was documented in Al Jazeera's film The Lobby where Erdan's operative,
Shai Masot, was seen to be heavily involved in internal Labour Party affairs
and working closely with Labour Zionist groups.
Once again if you scratch a liberal you find a
conservative underneath and if you scratch a liberal Zionist then you find a
mainstream Zionist lurking.
Kind regards
I then sent
a second message re the Livingstone inaccuracy:
Esther
Further to my previous email. Do you think you
can correct Alona Ferber's repetition of a lie, a lie that has been pointed out
many times previously, that Ken Livingstone said that 'Hitler was a Zionist'.
It is not true.
Again this is an example of the Goebbels technique
of repeating a lie until it becomes the accepted truth. What
Livingstone actually said was:
' Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in
1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was
supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million
Jews. '
The whole transcript
can be
found in The Independent of 28th April 2016. It would have taken about
one minute to find it with Google yet this brazen liar prefers to go with a
version of what Livingstone said which is wholly untrue. His allegation that
Hitler, i.e. the Nazis supported Zionism in Germany prior to 1939 is, as I pointed
out in my response, supported by most holocaust historians. I am sorry
you are too cowardly to print a full rejoinder but you might at least correct
obvious untruths and lies.
At least I assume that Ha'aretz has some concern
with correcting inaccuracies?
Again I
received no reply. Checking the article a couple of days later I sent another
response pointing out that they still had not corrected Ferber’s lie. Checking
again a day later there still has not been any correction and it still reads:
‘Usual suspect Ken "Hitler was a Zionist"
Livingstone reiterated his belief that he has never (ever) seen any
anti-Semitism in the
party (ever).’ It would appear that Opinion Editor Esther Solomons is none
too concerned about errors and inaccuracies in
the articles she carries.
Below are a
sample of the articles that Ha’aretz has carried on the Labour Party’s ‘anti-Semitism’
smears.
There is an
article by Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement which contains
his usual hysterical anti-Corbyn invective:
There are then a whole series of
articles on the same theme.
This is totally untrue. Corbyn
supporters have not subjected Luciana Berger to racist abuse nor has any
evidence been produced to substantiate this.
This is ostensibly about a phone call between
Alexander Ocasio-Cortez, the new left-wing Congresswoman from New York.
In Jeremy Corbyn Could Learn Some Statesmanship
on Palestine Azriel
Bermant asks ‘Will the UK
Labour leader remain a pro-Palestinian protestor, shunning leftwing Israeli Jews but
engaging with Hamas? Or can he develop the political maturity and integrity
needed to become a real force for change?’ There’s nothing like a neutral
sub-headline!
The only balancing articles I could find were Who Put Out a Contract on Jeremy Corbyn? By Yitzhak Laor 27.8.18. ‘Slander by the right doesn’t justify the Israeli
left’s malice and interference in British politics ‘in the name of the Jewish
people’
Gideon Levy also made his
admiration for Corbyn clear when he wrote that Corbyn “is an icon of the left, a man who had spent a lifetime fighting for the
values he believed in’ 8.9.18. in
Hebrew not English.
If you want fair coverage of the
Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn you need to turn to +972 Magazine with articles such as Yes, Corbynism poses a threat — but not to
Britain's Jews where
Matan Kaminer writes
that ‘Smearing Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite has
become a popular hobby among members of the British establishment — perhaps
because what he stands for is a direct threat to their ideological
and economic interests.’ Unfortunately it’s not only the British
Establishment but the Israeli one too, including its liberal ‘opponents’ in
Ha’aretz.
Tony Greenstein
My Reply that Ha’aretz Refused
to Print
British Labour and
anti-Semitism – When it’s the truth that you are gaslighting – reply to Alona
Ferber
Alona Ferber, in her article on ‘Labour anti-Semitism’, refers
to "Goebellian lies" before proceeding to give us a good
demonstration of what this means. The bigger the lie and the more times it is
repeated, the more likely it is to be believed.
According to
Ferber, Jews in the Labour Party, especially divas like Luciana
Berger, are in need of police protection because of the
level of anti-Semitism. I am reminded of Aesop’s fable about the boy who
cried wolf. The moral of the story was that ‘"Nobody believes a liar...even when he is telling the truth!" As
I wrote in the Guardian’s Comment
is Free
‘like the boy who cried
wolf, the charge of "anti-semitism" has been made so often against
critics of Zionism and the Israeli state that people now have difficulty
recognising the genuine article.’
That is the real danger of the
wide and wholly unsubstantiated assertions of anti-Semitism by people like Ms
Ferber against genuine and committed anti-racists like Jeremy Corbyn. You
devalue the currency and thereby allow real anti-Semites a free pass. When
everyone you don’t agree with is an anti-Semite then no one is. That is the real crime that I accuse Ms
Ferber and her friends of.
Let me declare an interest.
I am Jewish. I am a proud anti-Zionist. I oppose Jewish exclusivism or
exceptionalism. I have spent most my life opposing racism and fascism. I was
one of the founders of Brighton and Hove Anti-fascist Committee in 1976,
Secretary of Brighton and Hove Anti-Nazi League in the early 1980’s and on the Executive
of Anti-Fascist Action in the 1980’s. I have also written a history of the
Fight Against Fascism in Brighton and the South Coast.
However none
of that stopped me from being suspended, in March 2016, as part of the Labour
Party’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt, for comments ‘you are alleged to have made.’ It was only two weeks later when
the story of my suspension was leaked to The
Times and Telegraph that I
realised that I had been caught up in the bogus allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’
being made against supporters of Jeremy Corbyn.
Amongst the
charges levelled against me at my investigation hearing was that I had accused
the Israeli state of waiting for the Holocaust survivors to die so that it
could save on the meagre benefits that it paid.
The allegation was dropped when I pointed to an article in Ha’aretz
which said exactly this! Another allegation was that I had compared Israel’s
marriage laws and the absence of civil marriage to the Nazis’ Nuremburg Laws
until I explained that this was a direct quote from Hannah Arendt’s book Eichmann in Jerusalem’ This was the
level of evidence concerning my ‘anti-Semitism’.
Nonetheless
in February 2018 I was expelled. Not for anti-Semitism but for criticism of
people like Louise Ellman MP for her support for Israel’s treatment of
Palestinian children. To this day my accusers have sheltered behind the veil of
anonymity.
Ferber cites the case of
Luciana Berger MP who has just resigned from the Labour Party alleging
anti-Semitism. What is remarkable, for all the publicity surrounding her case,
is that no evidence has ever been
produced that she has been the subject of any anti-Semitic or misogynist abuse
by Labour Party members. All those convicted are known fascists. Ms Berger was
threatened with deselection by Wavertree Labour Party, not because she is
Jewish or a woman, but because she was on the Blairite pro-war wing of the
Labour Party.
What Ferber never mentions
is the abuse that Jewish anti-Zionists have experienced from Zionists. Apart
from the usual taunts of ‘traitor’ ‘self hater’ and ‘kapos’ I have
received messages telling me that it was a pity that I hadn’t died in the
Holocaust. Jackie Walker, a Black-Jewish anti-racist who is currently suspended
has received the vilest racist abuse wishing she had been lynched and burnt
alive as she documents in her film The Witchhunt.
Ms Ferber also failed to
mention that Berger was Director of Labour Friends of Israel for three years and
Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, an overtly Zionist group.
LFI is a front for the Israeli Embassy. Supporters of Zionism and the Israeli
state in the Labour Party are located almost wholly on the anti-Corbyn right.
Berger resigned this week
along with a number of other Labour MPs, all of them pro-Israel, all of them supportive
of the war in Iraq, which was the main dividing line in the Labour Party. It
was the legacy of the Iraq war that led to the election of Jeremy Corbyn.
The idea that Berger and
those who left Labour with her are concerned about racism is fanciful. None of
them have ever displayed the slightest interest in racism or the plight of
refugees. The real scandal in British politics is not anti-Semitism but racism
against Black people, in particular the ‘hostile environment policy’ that Theresa May pioneered
with the 2014 Immigration Act. This led to the Windrush scandal and the deportation of
hundreds of Black people who had come to Britain from the West Indies with SS
Windrush in 1948 onwards. They have been
deported, despite being British citizens, because the Home Office put the onus
on them to prove their right to be in Britain whilst at the same time
destroying the very documentation that could have proved their entitlement.
In 2014 just 6 Labour MPs including Jeremy Corbyn and
John McDonnell, voted against this Act. Neither Berger nor her parliamentary
friends were amongst them. They with the rest of Labour’s MPs abstained which means
they supported the government. Amongst those abstaining was another MP who
resigned, Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel and a former Home Office
Minister. Ms Ryan had administered New Labour’s vehemently hostile policy
towards refugees and asylum seekers. The idea that Berger or Ryan are motivated
by any form of anti-racism is for the birds.
It is no surprise that one
of the 9 Labour MPs who resigned this week, Angela Smith, ‘misspoke’ when describing Black and
Asian people as having ‘a funny tinge.’ The
fact that this died-in-the-wool racist is still part of Berger’s ‘Independent’
Group speaks volumes.
Jewish anti-Zionists have
been amongst the main targets of the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt. When I was expelled the Board of Deputies of
British Jews called my expulsion ‘a step in the right direction.’ Why? Because
I am a fierce critic of the racism which is on display in Israel’s current
general election.
Ha’aretz is rightly
respected abroad for the being a brave and lonely voice in an Israel which is rushing
headlong ever further to the far-Right. We admire writers such as Gideon Levy,
Amira Hass and Chemi Shalev. That is why it is regrettable that you are giving
credence to this false ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative whose only purpose is to
legitimise the hold of Israel’s far-Right. There is no truth in the suggestion
that Britain’s Labour Party or the Left is institutionally anti-Semitic. It is
Israel’s own actions which feed the anti-Semites because they are carried out
in the name of all Jews.
Those who act as apologists
for Israel and Gilad Erdan’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs in Britain do a
disservice to anti-racist and democratic Israelis who are fighting for justice
and equality amidst a nationalist maelstrom. Luciana Berger, Margaret Hodge and
Joan Ryan are not brave fighters in the battle against anti-Semitism. They are Netanyahu’s accomplices. They whitewash the crimes of the Israeli
state from the snipers at the Gaza fence to the demonstrators in Afula protesting about the sale
of a house to an Israeli Arab. When Labour
Friends of Israel tweeted its support for the mowing down of
unarmed demonstrators in Gaza none of these brave fighters against racism
resigned as patrons of LFI.
Ken Livingstone is right to
say that he has never heard an anti-Semitic remark in his time in Labour. What
is remarkable about the anti-Semitism allegations is that no-one has ever heard an anti-Semitic remark. That is why hundreds
of Jewish Labour Party members support Jeremy Corbyn. Zionist Jews are in a
distinct minority as the formation of Jewish Voice for Labour has demonstrated.
The main backbone in the Labour Party of the false anti-Semitism campaign is the
non-Jewish Right who are weaponising ‘anti-Semitism’ in order to destroy Jeremy
Corbyn.
Ken Livingstone
incidentally, who was Mayor of London twice, has once again been traduced. Ferber should know by now that he did not say that ‘Hitler was a Zionist’. What he did say was that the Nazis supported Zionism in the pre-Holocaust
days. Eminent Zionist historians such as David Cesarani and Lucy Dawidowicz
reached precisely the same conclusion.
The real racism in British
society is not anti-Semitism. It is Black and Muslim people, not Jews who face
deportation, police violence, deaths in custody, false imprisonment and a legal
system riddled with racism as well as economic discrimination. Jews in Britain
are living in a golden age. They do not suffer from state racism. If Jews in
Britain suffered even a tenth of the discrimination that Palestinians in Israel
experience then they would have cause enough to complain of anti-Semitism.
Britain is nominally a
Christian state. However imagine that I decided to rent a house in an English village
only to be told that only Christians could live there or that Jews were not
allowed to rent Christian houses because this was ‘national’ land. There would rightly be an outcry and yet in Safed Jews are subject to a rabbinical edict not to rent to Arabs.
In Israel there are hundreds of communities where non-Jews are excluded legally. It is to this state of affairs that Luciana
Berger has dedicated her career.
The statistics on
anti-Semitism that Ferber quoted should be treated with a hefty pinch of salt. As
Mark Twain observed there are lies, damned lies
and statistics. The Community Security Trust’s Anti-Semitic Incidents Report 2018 purports to show an increase of 16% from 2017
to 2018, some 1,652 incidents. Let us
leave aside the fact that the CST is not a neutral body. Hidden away in the
statistics is the admission that there was a 17 per cent decrease
in the number of violent antisemitic assaults, from 149 in 2017 to 123 in 2018.
Equally strange is the fact that the number of violent incidents was some 8% of
the total whereas normally in cases of racial incidents the proportion is about
one-third. There is no oversight of the CST, an admittedly Zionist group.
It is ironic that where
anti-Semitism is increasing, as we witnessed in the United States with the
murder by a White Supremacist of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh, Israeli Minister
Naftali Bennett rushes over to reassure American Jews that not only
is there nothing to fear but the person responsible for ratcheting up the level
of racism, Donald Trump, is ‘a great
friend of the Jews.’
Tony Greenstein
