Like most non-Jewish Zionists, Stürmer is not only a Vile Racist he is also Anti-Semitic!
Remember
when the false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations first began to emerge in the Labour
Party? If you said they were about Israel and Zionism not anti-Semitism you
were accused of being a ‘conspiracy theorist’. We were just being paranoid they
told us.
It was
obvious from the beginning that the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis was not about
anti-Semitism but Israel/Zionism. When had the Zionist movement previously been
concerned with anti-Semitism?
Israel's racist Ambassador, the religious nut Tzipi Hotovely, calls Starmer and Rayner her 'friends' - Hotovely supports the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank's Palestinians and opposes 2 states
The Board
of Deputies welcomed
Trump to power. It was happy for Zionists like Tommy Robinson and his Jewish
supporters, like Jonathan Hoffman, to attend the Board’s rallies in support of
Israel. Let us recall the various stages in the fake ‘anti-Semitism campaign.
The first
major outing for the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was at Oxford University’s Labour
Club in 2016. Its Chair, Alex Chalmers, alleged that his fellow members had ‘problems with Jews.’ But Chalmers himself
admitted that the catalyst for his resignation was the support of the Labour
Club for the Israel Anti-Apartheid Week. Well today everybody bar Sir Stürmer accepts that Israel is an
Apartheid State.
Starmer repeats Zionist propaganda - Israel is the 'only' Jewish state in the world. Any socialist worth his salt would oppose ANY ethno religious states. South Africa used to claim it was the only Christian state - so what?
The next milestone was Ken
Livingstone who alleged that Hitler supported Zionism. Well the Nazis did
single out Zionism for favourable treatment. This is a historical fact. As Zionist
historian David Cesarani wrote ‘The
efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible
and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.’ [Final Solution
p.96].
Then we had
the Chakrabarti
Report and the press conference where Marc Wadsworth criticised Ruth Smeeth
for her chumminess with Telegraph journalists. This was a major ‘anti-Semitic’
incident despite the fact that Wadsworth didn’t know Smeeth was Jewish and that
Smeeth had been an employee of BICOM, the main pro-Israel Lobby Group in
Britain. Some facts it seems aren’t important.
Corbyn's utterly futile and stupid attempt to appease his enemies
Corbyn
abandoned a Black anti-racist activist who he had known and worked with in
favour of a right-wing Labour MP, who Wikileaks revealed was a ‘protected asset’
of the USA. This is what appeasement of the Right meant – abandoning your
friends.
In May and
again in September 2016 Jackie Walker, a Black-Jewish socialist, was suspended
for raising the question as to why Holocaust Memorial Day doesn’t include the
slave trade, the African holocaust.
At the end
of 2016, following Theresa
May’s adoption of the IHRA
definition, Corbyn followed suit. This 38 word definition read:
“Antisemitism
is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews.
Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward
Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community
institutions and religious facilities.”
Virtually
no one uses this illiterate 38 word production of Ken Stern. Anti-Semitism
isn’t a perception so much as an ideology, a form of prejudice, discrimination
and violence against Jews as Jews. If it is a ‘certain perception’ we are never
told what that perception is. If it ‘may
be expressed as anti-Semitism’ what else might it be expressed as?
Anti-Zionism? The second sentence, which says it could be directed at Jews or
non-Jews (i.e. everyone!) is tautological.
But Corbyn,
eager to prove his credentials, adopted the IHRA when there was a simple definition
from the Oxford
English Dictionary: ‘hostility to or
prejudice against Jews.’ Corbyn preferred to appease the Zionists even
though they were unappeasable.
On the International Day of Solidarity with Palestine Starmer & Rayner spent their time attacking Palestinian supporters at a meeting of LFI and the JLM
It wasn’t
long before the Jewish Labour Movement
and the Board of Deputies demanded that the
full IHRA definition, with its 11 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’, 7 of which
referenced Israel, be adopted. Len McLuskey, threw his weight behind it on the
basis that once it was adopted the ‘anti-Semitism’ affair would go away.
Of course
not only did it not go away but it intensified. You don’t need to be a genius
to understand that once the Zionists got Labour to adopt the definition they
weren’t going to let up. They had got their weapon adopted and they were intent
on wielding it.
Jenny
Formby even boasted about how many expulsions she had engineered. If she thought
the Zionists would be grateful then that is proof of her stupidity. The more
people who were expelled the more the Zionists demanded until there was only
Corbyn left. And if there were more expulsions then that was proof that
‘anti-Semitism’ was a problem. Every single step of the way Corbyn and his
supporters – Lansman, Formby, McLuskey, McDonnell and Owen Jones – sang the
Zionist narrative.
Corbyn made
it easy for Sir Stürmer. It was
Corbyn and Formby who proposed ‘fast track’ expulsions. We were told they were
only for the most ‘egregious’ of cases but Formby lied. Everyone was fast tracked
from this point onwards and they were all anti-Zionists.
The
adoption of the IHRA definition was clear proof that the ‘anti-Semitism’
campaign had been about Israel. Why else would you want a definition that said
that anti-Semitism was:
Applying double standards by requiring of it [Israel]
a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation
Leaving
aside the small fact that Israel is not a democratic nation or that there is no
Israeli nationality, this is based on the idea that if you criticise Israel and
leave out China, the Congo and everywhere else, you are anti-Semitic. According
to the IHRA’s ‘logic’ anyone who only criticises the Egyptian regime is
anti-Egyptian! Hannah Arendt explained why Jews get involved in anti-Israel
campaigns:
‘But I can admit to
you... that wrong done by my own people naturally grieves me more than wrong
done by other people.’ [The Jew as a Pariah, p.247]
Perhaps
Arendt too, a refugee from Nazi Germany was also anti-Semitic? Well yes. Well that
is what the Zionists accused her of when she published Eichmann in Jerusalem.
More racist (and anti-Semitic) nonsense from Sturmer - only antisemites claim Jews are a separate nation from those they live amongst
Corbyn was
incapable of resisting the attacks of the Right because he did not understand that
the anti-Semitism campaign was aimed at removing him not anti-Semitism.
Corbyn exacerbated
his problems. When people said that there was no problem of anti-Semitism in
the Labour Party Corbyn called that ‘denialism’. In other words denying
something is proof of your guilt!
Imagine
that you are prosecuted and asked to plead. You say ‘not guilty’ and the Judge looks up and says that pleading innocence
is proof of your guilt! Of course Stürmer has taken it to a new level. But
Corbyn unfortunately was never an intellectual. The idea behind ‘denialism’
being proof of one’s guilt was the underlying theme of the Salem
witch trials in the 17th century. This was why the only women to
be hanged were those who denied they were witches. Those who confessed escaped
the noose.
Criticising
the EHRC Report is now proof of ‘anti-Semitism’ despite the fact that it has
more holes than a colander. Why? Because Starmer wants the pretence of
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party as a cover for the attack on the left. If
Corbyn had had any sense he would have condemned its ‘investigation’ from the
beginning.
Of course
there are those on the soft left like Lansman and David Renton (whose abysmal
book I’ve just reviewed)
who continue to argue that Labour had an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem. That is why
we should be grateful to Keith for admitting the truth.
Well Stürmer
has just confirmed everything we said. When he told
a meeting of Labour Friends of Israel that support for the Palestinians was ‘anti-Zionist
anti-Semitism’ because it ‘denies the Jewish people alone a right of
self-determination.’ he let the cat out of the bag.
Even were the Jews a single people, then they
would by no means be unique. The Kurds, the Tamils, the Basques, Catalans are
just some of the nations who have been denied national self-determination.
The concept of Jewish self-determination is a thoroughly
reactionary one. There were many demands that Jews made in Britain when they
arrived on these shores but the demand for self-determination was not one of
them. Self-determination applies to nations. Jews demanded equal rights and an
end to discrimination not separation.
The idea that Jews are one nation was an
anti-Semitic one. It was the anti-Semites who argued that Jews weren’t part of
the German nation, that they were a separate people. Wilhelm Marr in 1879
popularised the term ‘anti-Semitism’ because what he was alleging was that Jews
weren’t European but Middle Eastern i.e. Semites. Hence the term
‘anti-Semitism’.
When Zionism first made an appearance its
fiercest opponents were Jews who it as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. Lucien Wolf, Secretary of the
Conjoint Foreign Committee [CFC] of the Board of Deputies said of the idea that
British Jews were part of a ‘Jewish nation’ that:
I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when
presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the
more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a
capitulation to our enemies.’ [B Destani (ed) The
Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972, p.727].
Pogroms against Palestinians are 'democratic' and 'rumbustious' according to Sturmer
Zionism began as a Christian not a
Jewish idea and it was promoted by anti-Semites. Edwin
Montagu, the only Jewish member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet in 1917 was also
the only one to oppose the Balfour Declaration. He accused his fellows
of anti-Semitism:
It is no more true to say that a Jewish Englishman and a Jewish Moor
are of the same nation than it is to say that a Christian Englishman and a
Christian Frenchman are of the same nation [On the
Anti-Semitism of the Present (British) Government, https://tinyurl.com/yxpopr9b 23.8.17].
Stürmer went on to argue that anti-Zionism
“equates Zionism with racism, focuses obsessively on
the world’s sole Jewish state and holds it to standards no other country is
subjected.”
Yes anti-Zionism
holds that Zionism is racist. What else is it? It sought a Jewish ethnic state,
a state ‘cleansed’ of Arabs. In 1948 it expelled 80% of its Palestinian
inhabitants to achieve an artificial majority. A Jewish settler colonial state
cannot be other than racist and with the 2018 Jewish
Nation State Law, which reserves national rights only for Jews, Israel is
an explicitly racist state.
But is
Israel held to different standards? It is worth examing this lie, which is the
underlying assumption of the IHRA definition. Perhaps Stürmer can tell us:
1.
which other country in the world brands human rights
groups as ‘terrorists’? Even Apartheid South Africa didn’t do this.
2.
which other country has two sets of legal systems
within one territory (the West Bank) for two different ethnic groups –Jewish
settlers and Palestinians? That is the definition of Apartheid.
3.
which other country seizes children in the early hours
of the morning from their beds, blindfolds, beats them denies them access to
their parents and lawyers and coerces them into signing confessions in a
language they don’t even understand (Hebrew)? Of course this only applies to Palestinian
not Jewish children.
4.
Which other country has a law (the Absentee Property Law
1950) which is used to confiscate land from one ethnicity (Arabs) and hand it
over to another ethnic group (Israeli Jews)?
According to Sturmer, pogroms against Palestinians are part of Israel's 'rumbustious' democracy
I could spend all day giving examples of
Israeli Apartheid. People can look up the B’Tselem
and Human
Rights Watch Reports, both of which describe why Israel is an Apartheid
Jewish Supremacist State.
Stürmer also had the bare faced cheek to say
that ‘under my leadership every Jew will
count.’ Presumably this is why Graham Bash, a Jewish anti-Zionist, a member
of the Labour Party for 53 years has just been expelled? Today we learn that Jewish
councillor Jo Bird has been expelled. Perhaps Starmer will explain why these Jews
don’t count. Is he saying that anti-Zionist Jews aren’t Jewish?
On 25 August this legal crook put the late Riva
Joffe, a veteran of the fight against South Africas apartheid, under ‘investigation’.
If you are Jewish in the Labour Party you are 5
times more likely to be suspended or expelled than non-Jews! Lies come
easily to Stürmer.
But Stürmer is right to say that anti-Zionism
is the ‘antithesis’ of Labour’s tradition. That is because the Labour Party was
as much a party of the British Empire as the Tories. Labour adopted Zionism even
before the Tories, because they too had an imperial mindset.
Arthur James Balfour, who gave his name to the
Balfour Declaration was a self-declared
anti-Semite who, in 1905, as Prime Minister, introduced the Aliens Act
aimed at preventing the immigration of Jewish refugees from Russia. Anti-Semites
have always supported Zionism because both wanted Jews to be go to Palestine
not Britain.
It is amusing to see this legal liar’s 10 Pledges in which he
promised to be a unity candidate. I’ve saved them as a pdf
since it is only a matter of time before they disappear.
Pledge
No. 4 ‘Promote peace and human rights’ stated:
No more illegal wars. Introduce a
Prevention of Military Intervention Act and put human rights at the heart of
foreign policy. Review all UK arms sales and make us a force for international
peace and justice.
We haven’t heard much of this
recently! Labour policy is an arms embargo on Israel but I didn’t catch mention
of this in Stürmer ’s speech.
As for human rights, if you campaign for human rights in Israel you are accused
of being ‘obsessive’ and anti-Semitic.
Stürmer oozes insincerity in almost everything he
says. One of the reasons why he engenders such dislike is that when he tries to
sound sincere he comes across as merely trying. Take this passage:
My resolve
was hardened when David Baddiel recently gave me a copy of his brilliant book,
“Jews Don’t Count”, which shows so clearly – just as the Royal Court theatre
demonstrated last week – how racism against Jews is held to a different standard
from other kinds of racism.
And who is this ‘brilliant author’? Could it be the same David
Baddiel who ‘blacked up’ in order to ridicule and persecute Black footballer
Jason Lee? Black writer Gavin Lewis wrote:
Baddiel and
his comedy partner Frank Skinner, spent much of the 1996 ITV series of Fantasy
Football insulting the ethnic appearance of the Black soccer player Jason Lee...
and inciting others to do so. Lee was singled out for a campaign of
vilification simply because he had chosen to adopt the locks-and-cornrows style
of his Afro-diasporic heritage.’
It turns out that Stürmer’s role model
when it comes to anti-Semitism is an out and out racist. But that’s not surprising
given that his hosts, LFI, are an Israeli Embassy front.
Balfour was not only an anti-Semite, he was also a racist. When Chief
Minister in Ireland where he earned the soubriquet of ‘Bloody Balfour’ owing to
his role in the shooting of Irish protestors at Mitchellstown. In a debate in
the House of Commons in 1906 he defended the refusal to give the vote to Blacks
in South Africa:
‘We have to face the facts, Men are not born equal, the white and black
races are not born with equal capacities: they are born with different
capacities which education cannot and will not change. [Yousef
Munayyer, The Forward, 1.11.17., citing Critics of Empire: British Radicals and
the Imperial Challenge, p.306, Bernard Porter https://tinyurl.com/y4ey42p7]
This is the man who was the
Zionists’ best friend. Zionism in Britain at the beginning of the century supported
the anti-immigration Tories who were soundly defeated in the East End in 1906.
Chaim Weizmann, the leader of
British Zionism and Israel’s first President wrote favourably of his friendship
with William Evans-Gordon MP, the founder of the anti-Semitic British Brothers
League in his autobiography Trial and
Error [pp. 90-91]
. Although
conceding that Evans-Gordon was “widely
and unfavourably known to the Jewish people” Weizmann believed that:
‘our people
were rather hard on him. The Aliens Bill in
England and the movement which grew
around it were natural phenomenon
which might have been foreseen... Sir William Evans-Gordon had no particular
anti-Jewish prejudices... he was sincerely ready to encourage any
settlement of Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire, but he failed to see
why the ghettos of London or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch
of the ghettos of Warsaw and Pinsk.
The BBL was the
precursor of the British Union of Fascists. William Stanley Shaw, the President
of the BBL wrote:
I am a firm
believer in the Zionist movement, which the British Brothers League will do
much incidentally to foster. The return of the Jews to Palestine is one of the
most striking signs of the times…. All students of prophecy are watching the
manifold signs of the times with almost breathless interest… [Jewish Chronicle 8.11.01].
Starmer proved that what he had previously
said, that he was a Zionist ‘without
qualification’ was, for once, the truth. How did Starmer deal with the
allegations that Israel was an apartheid state which the veterans of the
struggle against apartheid in South Africa have declared as far
worse than even the Afrikaaners?
as the principles enunciated in
its Declaration of Independence show – the State of Israel... was built on a
worldview that promotes the goals of universal freedom, justice, equality and
peace.
They were fine principles in
Israel’s Declaration of Independence and David Ben Gurion meant not a word of
them! That is why the Declaration has no legal effect. They are there for show
only. To be used by stool pigeons like Stürmer.
The
rest of Stürmer’s speech merely demonstrates that in the alliance between
the Zionists and the Labour Right the latter is quite happy to swallow all the lies
that Israel has traditionally used to explain away its demolition of Arab
homes, theft of water etc.
According to Stürmer Israel has ‘a rumbustious democracy, ‘independent
judiciary’.’ In the midst of the settler
terror in the West Bank Stürmer sees‘a
path to peace and prosperity which is worthy of our admiration and support.’
One wonders what Stürmer would
have said on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland? That this Hitler fellow
was after all elected and he did sit down and negotiate at Munich. Stürmer
would have been a more enthusiastic appeaser than Chamberlain!
Stürmer was ‘proud of the fact’ that ‘our
friends in the Israeli Labor party helped to bring the Netanyahu era to a close
and is back in government.’
It is true that Netanyahu is no longer Prime Minister and Naftali
Bennet, leader of a far-Right settler party Yamina is in power. Interior
Minister, Ayelet Shaked, makes no effort to hide her distaste for Arabs and
non-Jews. She has sought to prevent
African refugees from obtaining health care and issued
a statement that:
“On instructions from the
health minister, the representatives of his ministry tried to dramatically
expand the scope of the insurance and to apply it to the entire population of
infiltrators from Sudan
and Eritrea,
including adults. The minister opposes any step that would lead to this
population to settle down in Israel,
Shaked calls asylum seekers
‘infiltrators’. This term was first used by the Labour Zionists in the 1950s to
describe expelled Palestinian refugees who tried to return to their lands. None
of this deterred Stürmer from
waxing lyrical about how
Israel’s most precious features
are its Jewish and its democratic identities. To retain both we must have a
two-state solution.
On maintaining Israel as a Jewish Apartheid State there is
broad agreement between left and right-wing Zionists. That is why the present
far-Right government includes both ‘left’ Zionist parties, the ILP and Meretz.
‘Left’ and ‘Right’ is meaningless in Zionism . Their only differences are on
tactics not on principles.
People often think that because
Stürmer is a QC that he is intelligent. This is a mistake. It is obvious that
Israel can either be a Jewish or a Democratic state. It cannot be both. If one
ethnicity must always be in the majority, then it is inevitable that the state
will take on the character of an ethno-supremacist nature.
Where else in the world would you
have government approved demonstrations chanting
‘Death to the Arabs’. This takes
place each year on the Jerusalem Day march. The video of the 15th
June demonstration this year showed that when Palestinians objected to a
settler mob chanting this they were the ones harassed by the Police.
Imagine that there was an Arab
demonstration (which of course would not be allowed) in Israel chanting ‘Death to the Jews’. News would travel
far and wide. It would be shown on the
BBC yet a demonstration out of the Nazi past goes unremarked in this ‘rumbustious democracy’.
The Pew Report shows that more Israeli Jews support the physical expulsion of Israeli Arabs than oppose it - yet Sturmer is silent on this and more
But settlers and the right-wing
chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ is the
tip of the iceberg. In the Pew Report Israel’s
Religiously Divided Society a plurality – 48% to 46% - of
Israeli Jews wanted Israel’s Arab citizens to be expelled. This too is Israel’s
rumbustious
democracy’.
The proof that Israel is an apartheid
state is evidenced in the wide ranging discrimination against Israeli
Palestinians such as the hundreds of Jewish only communities from which Arabs are
legally
barred. Arabs are confined to about 2% of the land whereas 93% of the land is
in the hands of the Jewish state. According to the Jewish Nation State Law
‘Jewish settlement’ is a national objective.
As former Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, said:
“Israel is not
a state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed,
Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.”
Yet Stürmer’s
solution is two states, which is a smokescreen for continued colonisation. No
Zionist party is in favour of complete withdrawal from the West Bank. According
to Stürmer’s
... we are pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, and pro-peace... I also want
to be clear that Labour does not support BDS. BDS would not only target the
world’s sole Jewish state, but it is counterproductive: driving people apart
when we should be bringing them...
These are weasel words. Would
Stürmer have said we are pro-Black and pro-White in South Africa? You can’t be
on the side of the oppressed and oppressor. Stürmer doesn’t support BDS but he
says nothing about Israel’s enforced sanctions on Gaza. He takes the same
position as Thatcher did on South Africa. Sanctions would be
‘counterproductive’. They would hurt the Palestinians more.
The Labour Party passed policy
this year, not only calling Israel an apartheid state but supporting an arms
embargo. None of this stopped Stürmer condemning the student demonstrations
against Israeli Ambassador Tzipi Hotovely last week at the LSE.
Hotoveli is the far-religious nut
who was made Ambassador by Netanyahu. She has said of the Palestinians that
they have no history or culture. She once declared
that ‘“This land is ours. All of it is
ours. We did not come here to apologise for that.” She is an out and out
racist which for Stürmer seems part of the appeal.
In 2011, as
Chair of the Knesset’s Status of Women Committee, she invited
the Lehava to give testimony in order that they could ‘explain how they prevent romantic contacts
between Jews and Arabs.’ In response to criticism, Hotovely said
it was
"important
to examine procedures for preventing mixed marriages, and Lehava members are
the right people for that,"
Hotovely had a point. Lehava were the ‘right people.’ In 2014 Lehava held a demonstration
outside the marriage ceremony of an Arab man and a Jewish woman with the
inevitable chant ‘Death to the Arabs’.
Other actions by Lehava include setting
fire to one of Israel’s few mixed schools in Jerusalem, the Hand in Hand
school.
There is no Zionist atrocity that LFI won't defend
Lehava is a fascist group that
attacks Arab men in what they term ‘Jewish areas’ who they believe might form
relationships with Jewish women. In the words
of one spokesman, ‘“we must break their faces, bury them alive”
From Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine to Zionist footwipe - Lisa Nandy wouldn't know what principles were if they were to bite her nether regions
None of this prevented Hotovely from thanking Stürmer and Nandy ‘over their show of solidarity’. Hotoveli
also
‘praised LFI
and said she accepted their had been difficult years under Jeremy Corbyn.
Hotovely said she felt as though she was amongst “friends” at the lunch.’
LFI defends shooting unarmed demonstrators - not one word of criticism of the Israeli state or army - it's all Hamas
If Hotovely considers LFI her friends
then that is understandable. After all the Embassy funds them. Behind all their
rhetoric of 2 States LFI have never spoken out against the military occupation
of the West Bank and called for Israel’s withdrawal.
No matter
what Israel does in the West Bank, the demolition
of schools, the outlawing of 6
human rights organisations, the destruction
of roads and water pipes in the Massafa Yater area, the toleration
of settler
violence against Palestinians and the destruction
of crops and trees as ‘letting off steam’ Stürmer will
justify it. The attacks on
Palestinians by settlers is Israeli
policy..
To all of
this turns a blind eye, repeating the mantra about Israel being the ‘only
democracy in the Middle East.’ We should be under no illusion as to why this
is. Israel is the West’s strategic watchdog and you can’t kick the mutt that
does your dirty work.
Tony
Greenstein
