Jonathan Hoffman MEP? – Bang Goes such a Promising Political Career!

The Renew Party’s Racist Star Crashes to Earth in an Entirely Predictable Explosion

The full versions of the above videos can be seen here and here

You can take a horse to the water but you can’t make it drink.  You can take Yonatan Scoffman to a Party but you can’t expect him to remain house trained.

You will be forgiven if you haven’t heard of the Renew Party. They are yet another ‘centrist’ party, anti-Brexit, full of middle class professionals and budding careerists. The type of people who can be characterised as the muddled middle or as we used to say of the SDP, the fuddled fiddle!

They describe their politics as economically dry or freemarket and socially liberal.  In other words another variant of the free market Blairite/Clintonite economics that have left the poor poorer, the NHS half privatised, demonised claimants and refugees whilst their international solidarity begins and ends in Europe. 

Perhaps not quite the kind of renewal that most people want!

Renew is a party of unashamed capitalism in political crisis.

These people abound with business degrees and marketing skills. They are the kind of people who if they can’t find a fence to sit on will go out and build one.  They stand for a system in crisis and harken back to a gold age. In the absence of anything to say they proclaim that they are ‘new’ or in the case of these people ‘renew’.

Annabel Mullin

Richard Breen - property developer who funds Renew

Their leader is Annabel Mullin, a member of the identikit middle class and their main funder is Richard Breen, a property developer.

It is no surprise that Jonathan Hoffman felt in his element. He took to Renew much like a leech to its host. Just as support for Israel and Zionism was a precondition of support for and membership of New Labour, so this is the case with Renew.

One thing that marks out political ‘centrism’ is unquestioning support for British foreign policy, which means the ‘special relationship’ with the US, NATO and imperialism.  And that means unquestioning support for Israel’s role in the Middle East as the United States’s gendarme.

Hoffman appears in a training video

Renew advertise themselves as a ‘new party with a new vision for fixing the problems of 21st century Britain.’  Sometimes one wishes that these people also possessed a political memory because there was another New Party. It was formed in 1931 by one Oswald Moseley.  By the following year it had metamorphosed into the British Union of Fascists.

It is therefore no surprise that they have formed up with Chuka Ummuna’s TIG group and apparently the Greens and Lib Dems too to field a joint Renew-TIG candidate at the forthcoming Peterborough by-election.

Hoffman with Kevin Caroll of the EDL

In the background are members of the EDL in army fatigues - picket of the Ahava shop - Hoffman originally called this photo shopped until the photographer (David Hoffman) threatened libel

Here we see Hoffman with Besser of Britain First (top left) Ambrosine Shitrit and Sharon Klaff (far-right Islamaphobes). Hoffman's normal excuse is to blame being seen with fascists on the camera!

Hoffman with Britain First's Paul Besser - in front Amanda Shitrit, Pegida alongside 'Mad' Mel Gharia  both of whom are Tommy Robinson supporters 

Hoffman being ejected by the police yet again

Hoffman with 2 members of the Jewish Defence League, Roberta Moor and Robert de Jonge. The JDL is a Jewish-Nazi group outlawed as a terrorist group in the USA

Hoffman with far-Right Tory activist Thor Halland (left) and looking glum with the Police (yet again)

Hoffman with a variety of fascists including Hitler supporter Neil Horan top left

It is on one level not surprising that Hoffman, a man who is at home with an ecumenical list of fascists, from Britain First to the EDL, fits in so easily with Renew. Parties such as these consist of wannabee members of the political establishment. Not only are they mainly White but racism and assumptions of Britain’s imperial role courses through their veins. Anti-racism consists of tokenism and a few Black faces. It stops at anything questioning the state.

Renew’s big brother, Change UK, is led by Chuka Ummuna.  Although Black by birth he is as politically White as his fellow TIG MP, Angela Smith. She of the 'funny tinge.’ Chuka is very exercised by ‘anti-Semitism’ but has nothing to say about the Windrush scandal or the ‘hostile environment’ policy that led up to it. Unsurprisingly  since he supported it.

Googling would have saved Renew a lot of heart ache

However in the age of the Internet, it was rather remiss of Renew to admit Hoffman to its candidate list without having done basic due diligence.  Like Googling his name for example!  A quick search turns up such gems as his recent arrest on charges of harassment and assault.  You’d even learn that Hoffman was shot by his grandmother!  However I suspect this was unfortunately a different Jonathan Hoffman though on second’s though it could be true!

I have been passed a fascinating Facebook conversation involving a James Mendelsohn, who is some kind of liberal Zionist and his exchanges with both Renew and Hoffman. Clearly Mendelssohn is a dying breed.

In essence the conversation revolved around a disgusting cartoon that Hoffman was distributing, allegedly of Jackie Walker from a fake parody Twitter account. The cartoon was virulently racist, emphasising thick lips, dreadlocks and green slime emanating from her head.  It contains just about everything you could possibly want from a racist cartoon about Black people.

Candidate Hoffman explains all

If a similar cartoon of a Jewish person, with a long and crooked nose, grasping hands and fingers, an evil eye etc. had been drawn one suspects that Hoffman would have had no difficulty recognising its anti-Semitism.

As Mendelsohn made clear, a cartoon exaggerates peoples’ features, this was simply a racist caricature. There was nothing amusing in it nor was it in any way a likeness of Jackie's features.

Hoffman defended it on the ground that well, Jackie has dreadlocks and she is Black. He argued that as the person who drew the cartoon has no racist intent (how could he possibly know leaving aside whether he is the best judge in such matters) the cartoon itself can’t be racist.

The logic is baffling. An act of discrimination in law isn’t negated because the discriminator didn’t intend to discriminate.  It stands or falls on its own merits.  If you pay someone less because they are Black or older then you are presumed to have intended to discriminate.  It is inherent in the act.

It used to be the case that a person was presumed to intend the consequences of his own action in capital murder cases. Today this is interpreted as assuming that if you engage in certain actions then you must be taken to foresee the consequences and hence possess the essential mens rea (guilty intent). 

What the person intended when she drew the racist cartoon is irrelevant to the question of whether the cartoon is or is not racist. That is an objective fact. What she intended is subjective.

Letter to Annabel Mullin about Hoffman

When Mendelsohn brought Hoffman's cartoon to the attention of Renew Annabel Mullin responded by saying ‘We do not believe it has passed the threshold for racism.’ Presumably Mullin was referring to the cartoon itself and not just Hoffman’s distribution of it.  Regardless the explanation did not give a clue as to why an obviously racist cartoon, was not deemed to pass the threshold for racism.  The only conclusions to be drawn is that Renew’s threshold is very high or Ms Mullin’s toleration for it is high.

Mendelsohn therefore concluded that ‘@RenewParty has failed badly in failing to take meaningful action against Mr Hoffman for his defence of the image.’ And that ‘@RenewParty certainly won't be getting my vote, any time soon.’

Where I part company with James Mendelsohn is in his final conclusions that Hoffman is ‘a long-time pro-Israel and anti-antisemitism campaigner’ and that in his opinion ‘his defence of the above image makes him unfit to be involved in any such campaign.’ 

On the contrary someone like Hoffman is extremely well qualified to defend the world’s only Apartheid state! There is nothing incompatible in Hoffman being a virulent anti-Black racist and being a Zionist.  They go hand in hand.

Many of the comments of Mendelsohn and his friends, in their attacks on Jackie Walker and their unfounded assertions that she is racist, are themselves racist. Hoffman, with his crude golliwog style cartoons is being honest whereas his liberal Zionist critics are being disingenuous.

If you support the State of Israel in all its racist glory then it is inevitable that you will end up as a thorough going racist.  That however is something that Mendelsohn and his fellows are going to have to work out for themselves. Asking themselves questions such as why is it that Zionism is politically supported by the far-Right and people like Tommy Robinson and Richard Spencer?

However it seems, after denying that Hoffman had crossed their invisible threshold for racism, that he has nonetheless been quietly excluded from the Renew candidates list. 

I also have a confession to make.  Finding out that Scoffman is such a dedicated opponent of Brexit has been the only thing that caused honest soul searching on my part about my stance on Brexit!

Tony Greenstein

 

Jewdas or Judas? - Who’s Betraying Whom?

Keeping it in the family - Jewdas Rebellion Doesn't Extend to Palestine or 'Anti-semitism'

To Jonathan Arkush of the Board of Deputies (or Bored of Deputies) Jewdas are a ‘source of virulent anti-Semitism’. Arkush and his fellow Zionists cannot be considered politically as of sound mind if they really believe this.  Zionism does terrible things to otherwise normal people.  It is nationalist mind rot.

This one tweet demonstrates that Jewdas really don't get it when it comes to the use of 'anti-semitism' as a weapon against the Left

Anyone who falls over backwards to welcome Donald Trump to power, given his anti-Semitic election campaign and at the same time has the audacity to call other Jews ‘anti-Semitic’ is beyond redemption.  It is unfortunate that Corbyn has treated Arkush as if he was bona fide and genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism.  Corbyn has completely failed to understand where this right-wing Tory is coming from. 

One thing Arkush and the Board cannot be accused of is a sense of humour.  These narrow minded petty Jewish nationalists, bigots and small-time businessmen don’t find the antics of Jewdas amusing in the slightest. 

All they can see is that Jewdas don’t sign up to 100% support of Israel and Zionism.  That is the only standard by which they measure people.  Zionism uber alles. Hence they dismiss Jewdas as just another group of ‘Jewish self haters’ – since to Arkush and company only fully fledged racists are mensches.  

Although Jewdas may be seen as outrageous by present day standards they are pretty tame and conservative by the standards of Jews yesterday. They are middle class dilettantes.

For example in the period before the first World War Jewish socialists and anarchists invaded the Great Synagogue in protest at the refusal of the Chief Rabbi to support Jewish workers’ strikes and the unemployed. 

William Fishman describes how on the 26^th January 1894 some 500-600 unemployed entered the Great Synagogue seeking an audience with ‘the long suffering Chief Rabbi’.  They were forced to disperse by police armed with truncheons.  ‘The Evening News, among other dailies waxed indignant at the antics of this  ‘mob of foreigners’ in creating a riot.’  ‘It is a natural result of our previous humane treatment of the Jewish immigrant... It is bad enough to have these people coming over to undersell our workers...’(p.209)

Now where did we hear that one?  Oh yes, the Tory press has always concerned about the wages of British workers being undercut by foreigners.  The same Tory press that hates trade unions that strike for higher wages!

In 1904 Jewish anarchists ‘marched in column to the Spitafields Great Synagogue in Brick Lane, smoking or brandishing ham sandwiches, as a gesture of defiance and rejection of their creed.’  (p.259)  It provoked a full scale riot!  Also mentioned is how the socialists (Bundists) ‘pelted a Synagogue which stands adjacent to their club and that they had arranged a concert for the day of fasting... invitations which they had sent to the principal Rabbis!’ (pp. 259-260, East End Jewish Radicals 1875-1914, William Fishman).

Note how Jewish anarchists and socialists expressed their hatred of the Jewish bourgeoisie led by Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, by openly brandishing their rejection of the rituals of the Jewish religion. Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and mourning and they had arranged a concert!  They marched eating ham sandwiches and smoking (also strictly forbidden).

Contrast that with Jewdas whose act of rebellion was to hold an ‘alternative’ Seder at which Corbyn brought the horseradish for the bitter herbs.  I have to confess when I was young those of us who rejected the Orthodox did much the same as the anarchists and defied not aped the rabbinical traditions.  These middle class rebels of Jewdas are indeed tame boys and girls in comparison!

I’m not condemning them they are in their milieu Jewish pranksters with an irreverence that is itself a Jewish tradition.   I myself had a fleeting relationship with Jewdas some years ago in so far as I penned a few articles for their website (which seem to have  disappeared).

I confess to having a sneaking admiration for some of Jewdas’s activities, their anti-racism and Birthwrong but they are middle class rebels on a day trip to the Left. They are defying their parents during the day only to return home in the evening.  It is all a rebellion with the Jewish family. 

Jewdas never once bothers to put this ‘anti-Semitism’ nonsense in the context of  how Zionism uses it as a political weapon against their adversaries (including themselves) nor relating this to the privileged existence of British Jews.  Nor do they ask how it is that Arkush and co. can be so worked up about the ‘anti-Semitism’ of anti-Zionists and the Left and so remarkably unconcerned about the real Jew hatred of Israel’s friends like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, or the Polish Law & Justice Party to say nothing of the anti-Semitic attacks against George Soros as the archetypal Jewish financier.

The privileged nature of British Jewry, which is concentrated in the middle class suburbs of London is taken for granted.  Not once is the class position of British Jewry today related to this concern over ‘anti-Semitism’ and what the latter might actually mean.  Anti-Semitism is a signifier for other things yet there is a poverty of ideas in Jewdas.

The reality is, despite the schmaltzy looking back to the days of Jewish radicalism which they and other Jewish groups engage in, there is no going back.  The large Jewish working class of the East End, in which a multiplicity of radical, socialist and anarchist groups thrived, where there were unemployed groups, 30 Jewish trade unions, anti-fascists, rent strikes and communists cannot now be recreated. The Jewish working class has died and with it the tradition of Jewish radicalism.  All that is left are faint echoes of which Jewdas, is a remnant. 

In days of old Poale Zion was a fragment that mainly existed amongst middle class Jewry.  Its successor calls itself the Jewish Labour Movement at a time when there is no Jewish labour movement.  They consist either of right-wing non-Jews in Progress or anti-socialist Jews who have decided that the Labour Party is too important to leave it to the supporters of Palestine. When there was a Jewish labour movement it was decidedly anti-Zionist.  Todays JLM is a living insult to the memory and traditions of the Jewish working class. When the JLM voted by 92-4% for Owen Smith against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016 I wondered how it was that Corbyn had gained 4%.

Idiot Labour MP Angela Smith can't even spell the word Seder

Like most people I enjoyed the discomfiture of the Board of Deputies over the Jewdas Passover (Seder) meal with Jeremy Corbyn in attendance.  The frothing at the mouth reaction of firstly Guido Fawkes, the Tory Blogger and then Arkush was an added treat, to say nothing of idiot MP Angela Smith who condemned Jeremy Corbyn for attending a ‘Seber’!

Jewdas are not even the equivalent of IfNotNow, a radical  Jewish group in the USA. IfNotNow it was whose picket of the Zionist Organisation of America in 2016 persuaded Steve Bannon, Trump’s fascist friend to stay away.  IFNotNow has undertaken a whole series of pickets and events aimed at targeting American Jewish politicians’ support for Israel over Gaza.  Seven were arrested invading Senator Charles Schumer’s office and 9 were arrested obstructing the entrance to Senator Dianne Feinstein’s office. Jewdas has done nothing comparable at all.

That was why I was outraged when on Twitter Geoffrey Cohen @geoffreyJewdas extended ‘solidarity and respect to @lucianaberger @ruthsmeeth and @johnmannMP who shared their personal experiences of anti-Semitism in the House of Commons today.  It’s not easy and they must not be dismissed.’

This was in reaction to a tweet from Luciana Berger praising her own ‘bravery’.  This debate, staged by the Tories in order to enable the Labour Right to attack Corbyn and the Labour leadership was a reactionary racist pageant.  We had the obscene spectacle of Tories applauding Labour traitors and ‘anti-Semitism’ was the means by which these racists did it.  Those who had deported and removed citizenship from the Windrush children were now overcome with tears at the ‘anti-Semitism’ that Smeeth and Berger had experienced. 

This debate and the nauseating speeches of Luciana Berger, Ruth Smeeth and John Mann led directly to the expulsion of Black anti-racist activist Mark Wadsworth.

I messaged Geoff twice but he was too arrogant to respond, hence this post.  Jewdas clearly have no sense or understanding of how ‘anti-Semitism’ has been used, not least against Jews like myself and Jackie Walker.  Indeed Jewdas have attacked Jackie Walker, a Black-Jewish socialist in terms not dissimilar to the vile racist abuse she has suffered at the hands of the JLM and their supporters.   They have also attacked Ken Livingstone for speaking the truth to power.

Smeeth and Berger are despicable racists. The emails they have received have largely been abusive not anti-Semitic.  This has been a consequence of their own support for Israel’s murderous behaviour.  I am more concerned about the 40+ deaths of unarmed Palestinians in the West Bank or the incarceration for 8 months of a 16 year old girl Ahed Tamimi than Smeeth being told she is a racist scumbag.

Judging by the 10 messages Smeeth read out only one was explicitly anti-Semitic.  Whilst I don’t condone the use of anti-Semitic language, the real crime is her support for Israel’s apartheid policies not the abuse she has received. Smeeth was a paid worker with BICOM, the Israeli propaganda group.  She is a Zionist shill not a victim of anti-Semitism.

Jewdas’s comments fit squarely with Jewish privilege and exceptionalism.  What matters is not Palestinians under the heel of a state which calls itself ‘Jewish’ and which the British Jewish leadership helps to support but ‘anti-Semitism’.   Pass the sick bag Alice.

As for praising John Mann (who is not Jewish) that must obviously be one of those parodies for which Jewdas is justly famous.  Mann is perhaps the most odious of all Labour’s MPs and he has stiff competition.  I copy below the experiences of Amira Hass at Angela Smith’s ‘seber’.

Tony Greenstein

Inside the Seditious Seder With Jeremy Corbyn and the Jewdas Group

The organizers define themselves as anti-Zionist Jews, or non-Zionist, or just Jews; most of them didn't know that Corbyn was invited and when he came he didn't act like the leader nor they like the led

Amira Hass (Hackney, London)

Apr 06, 2018 9:33 AM

The Labour Party's Jeremy Corbyn attending an alternative Passover seder held by the radical Jewish group Jewdas in Hackney, London. Guido Fawkes

HACKNEY, LONDON – On Tuesday morning, at 7:30 A.M. Gaza time or 5:30 A.M. in London, I awoke to a headline on the popular Israeli news site Ynet: “Britain: Corbyn attends event of group that called for Israel’s destruction.” Given that I had left that very event seven and a half hours earlier, I can say wholeheartedly that the headline should have read: “Corbyn brings the bitter herbs to alternative seder in London.”

Jeremy Corbyn grows horseradish in his garden allotment. Slivers of the pungent root he brought were added to the maror, the bitter herbs, waiting in white plastic cups on round tables in the hall below St. Peter’s Church de Beauvoir, Hackney. These bitter herbs, a glass of whiskey before (begging pardon from my Muslim friends and Jewish friends who keep kosher) and songs in my father’s tongue, Yiddish, destroyed the flu germs that had ruined part of my vacation.

I lost the chance to publish the breaking news about the Labour leader’s healing horseradish because the organizers of the event explicitly asked the 100 participants not to tweet, report in real time on social media, or take photos. Last Monday’s was a private event, and nobody wanted paparazzi to pop up. Even so, somebody was evidently taking photos surreptitiously. Since the photos reached a right-wing British blogger, of all people, who immediately uploaded them to the internet with his distorted interpretation, one would assume that the unknown photographer was a mole planted in advance with a contrarian agenda. In the coming hours, the inaccurate, selective information that the blogger disseminated drove headlines hostile to Corbyn, in social and formal media, occupying more cyberspace than had been devoted to the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza a few days earlier.

The blog claimed that Corbyn had contributed beet roots to the seder; a simple journalistic inquiry would have shown the roots’ color to be very different. The blogger also said he had a recording of people present at the meal booing when the names of two leaders on the Board of Deputies of British Jews were mentioned (or, as the seder participants put it, “Bored of Deputies”). It is true that there were catcalls, but it’s only partially true. There was much longer booing when Ken Livingstone’s name came up – a former mayor of London and Labourite who had been suspended from the party after saying that Hitler supported Zionism.

The people behind the catcalls and the organizers of the seder define themselves as anti-Zionist Jews, or non-Zionist, or just Jews. They belong to the Jewdas Group – Radical Voices for an Alternative Diaspora, founded in 2005 by young people seeking to reflect socialist-minded Judaism in independent ways, and seeing the Bund as a model.

They seek to free themselves of the identification of Jews with Israel, without conceding their right to criticize Israel’s policy against the Palestinians. They spell the organization’s name Jewdas to remove any doubt that they are Jews, but it’s pronounced like Judas, the ultimate symbol of betrayal in Christian tradition. That symbol nourished 2,000 years of Christian anti-Semitism.

The choice of a name that sounds like the most hated symbol in the eyes of the group’s non-Jewish environment suffices to grasp Jewdas’ nature – provocative, delighting in tongue-in-cheek statements and in needling history and mythology and religion. Its members, atheist and observant and all that’s in between, hang around in radical leftist and pro-Palestinian circles and flaunt their Judaism proudly, including by wearing yarmulkes and Stars of David.

In 2014, Jewdas published a guide for how to criticize Israel while also being aware that anti-Semitism exists and avoiding the trap of anti-Semitic stereotypes and prejudices. In September 2016, it published a Facebook post urging that Livingstone be sent into space “for his own good and everybody else’s, because he won’t shut up, so we are sending him to space where nobody will hear him.” This was interpreted by non-Jews as a call to oust him from the party.

Jewdas members participate in demonstrations against the extreme right and neo-Nazis, Islamophobia and economic austerity. They party a lot, because being Jewish is fun, and have taken trips to former centers of Diaspora Jewry like Andalusia and Marseilles in what they call “Birthwrong” – as a counter to the Zionist “Birthright” trips to Israel.

Most of the people at the alternative seder were young; many belonged to the LGBT community. Some wouldn’t be considered Jews under traditional Jewish law. Two – a man and a woman – are studying for the rabbinate. Some work as cantors despite not having been formally trained. One couple, who looked Indian, saw the gathering as they walked by and were invited to join, since the Haggadah says, “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

The seder included a prayer for the release of prisoners and the return of refugees. Participants sang a Yiddish hymn whose author, Shmerke Kaczerginski, dedicated it to the young fighters of the Vilna Ghetto; one elderly participant reminded all that the Warsaw Ghetto revolt began on Pesach eve. The Jewdas Haggadah also included Bella Ciao, an Italian partisan song in Yiddish translation. Also included was Rachel Bloom’s poem “remember that we suffered,” and its immortal words: “have we mentioned hitler?” In addition, they sang “The Internationale” in English and Hebrew. Corbyn joined in, or at least lip-synched.

They enacted a neoliberal dialogue in English between Pharaoh and his CEO over how to increase Egypt’s profits. The answer: Stop paying the workers. Corbyn laughed with everybody else. Each table was asked to propose ways of fighting Pharaoh. One table parodied a purist, isolationist left. Corbyn laughed in open delight. Others said humor alone wouldn’t topple capitalism; the slaves had to form a union that would declare a general strike in Egypt.

There were good jokes and bad ones, including what seemed (at least to older participants) like excessive and infantile use of the word “fuck.” The price was five British pounds per person, not including wine, grape juice or matzah, which everyone was supposed to bring for themselves. The church was paid 230 pounds for use of its hall. One member worked for three days to prepare vegan food for everyone, using Persian recipes she learned at home.

Most participants, including several organizers, didn’t know that one member of the group had invited Corbyn; they were surprised when he arrived with his wife Laura. He didn’t act like the leader and they didn’t act like the led.

Corbyn said the blessing over Elijah’s Cup, as written in the Jewdas Haggadah: “Legend has it that the prophet Elijah will come at some point to announce the coming of the messiah. We fill up the cup and open the door just in case Eli is outside waiting. As radical Jews, we understand ‘the Messiah’ as ‘the messianic age’ or ‘redemption’ or ‘revolution.’ So let’s fill this cup with the hope that socialism and revolution will be upon us soon.”

The seder table also had a Miriam’s Cup, “to remind ourselves of the women whose stories are often hidden from the seder, and everyone who is oppressed in a patriarchal society.” And there was a Geoffrey’s Cup – named for the group’s imaginary spokesman “Geoffrey Cohen” – “as a symbol of our struggle with the Jewish establishment.”

Last year’s Haggadah included a “prayer against the state of Israel” by “Geoffrey,” which urged, “Please god smash the state of Israel. Smash it in the abundance of your love and judge it.” Jewdas members believe this is what led the blogger to assert that it called for Israel’s destruction, and thus to suggest that Corbyn’s participation in the seder was evidence of either anti-Semitism or blindness to it.

According to the British media, however, the blogger based himself on a December 2017 tweet which said, “Israel is a steaming pile of sewage which needs to be properly disposed of.” Of this quote, one Jewdas member said, “That was surely some nonsense that somebody tweeted in anger.”

Tuesday morning, Corbyn’s participation in this non-Zionist Jewish seder was indeed depicted as further evidence of his insensitivity to anti-Semitism. As evidence it was mentioned that this dissident Jewish group even dared to claim that the recent organized protest against anti-Semitism in Labour stemmed less from a desire to fight anti-Semitism than from a desire to oust Labour’s elected leader because he’s a socialist and supports Palestinian rights.

But later in the day, the tone changed, as people stopped relying on the blogger and instead investigated the details for themselves and studied Jewdas’ history. The organization received additional donations, and one person wrote on its Facebook page, “I had never heard of Jewdas before Monday but now  I think I’ve found my people.”

If Momentum is to serve any further purpose Lansman has to depart

Jon Lansman Waves the White Flag of Surrender on Radio 4’s Today Program

One reaction to the 'revelations' that Corbyn meets Jews

The full malevolence as well as the pathetic ignorance of the fake news ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was on display in all its glory with the uproar over Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a Passover seder hosted by the Jewish group Jewdas.  An ‘exclusive’ by the Tory Guido Fawkes it was eagerly taken up by the mass media and right-wing Labour MPs.  Corbyn was guilty of another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ because he had chosen the wrong Jews to sit down and have a meal with!  Instead he should have paid homage to the Tories at the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council.  He should have supped with Jonathan Arkush, President of the BOD who effusively welcomed Donald Trump and his anti-Semitic retinue of Bannon and Gorka to power.

We even had Angela Smith MP, the non-Jewish MP for Penistone and Stocksbridge, tweeting her outrage about Corbyn’s ‘seber’ – the idiot couldn’t even spell the word properly before spilling her venom all over Twitter.

What this episode should demonstrate to people is that there is no logic or rationale to the ‘anti-Semitism’ attack other than the removal of Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party.  Even a child should be able to figure that one out.  Unfortunately this simple truth escapes Jon Lansman, who is an open Zionist. The real concern of the defamers and libellers is not anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, in so far as it exists, but the existence of the Corbyn leadership itself.

An example of this was the Sunday Times ‘Corbyn – Factory of Hate’ and other papers’ focus on pro-Corbyn Facebook groups which have no connection either to the Labour Party or Momentum itself.  The Sunday Times claims that they are cesspits of ‘anti-Semitism’ but even by their own account there are just 2000 questionable posts and most of those are anti-Israel rather than anti-Semitic. As Jewish Voice for Labour’s excellent post The truth about Corbyn supporters’ Facebook groups states 2000 posts represents less than 0.05% of the total content on these groups.

Professor Moshe Machover has distributed a very simple Q&A on Anti-Semitism as a helpful guide to the current situation.

The Serengeti and Zebras

A Simple Guide to Anti-Semitism

Q Is there antisemitism in Britain?

A Yes.

Q How is it manifested?

A The late Ambalavaner Sivanadan distinguished two kinds of racism: “The racism that discriminates and the racism that kills.”  Antisemitism in Britain is of neither of these kinds. It is the kind of racism that insults and stereotypes.

Q Are there antisemites in the Labour Party?

A This question is like the question “Are there zebras in Norway?” The answer is “Yes, there are a few. In fact, the Oslo zoo seems to have had a few too many.”  But Norway, unlike the Serengeti, is not the natural habitat of zebras. The claim that the LP is a habitat of antisemites like the Serengeti is a habitat of zebras is a malicious lie.

Q How is this lie promoted?

A A good place to start is the Al-Jazeera exposé.

In other words the whole issue of ‘anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’ is a lie whose sole purpose is to destroy the Corbyn leadership.  It began with the Daily Mail ‘expose’ of Corbyn’s association with holocaust deniers and has continued via Oxford University Labour Club, the long erased mural in the East End of London and washed up on the shores of Angela Smith’s ‘seber’ with Jewdas.

All of these things should be obvious to anyone with half a brain, still less someone who calls himself a Corbyn supporter.  Momentum, whose sole purpose is to support Corbyn, could therefore be expected to be the first to staff the barricades in his defence and to call out the false anti-Semitism smears for what they are.

Instead, having kept completely silent for nearly two weeks as the renewed ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks gained traction, it eventually came out with a statement which conceded everything to the defamers and accusers.

Labour Against the Witchhunt has to fulfil the role that Momentum should be carryingn out

It spoke of the ‘numerous cases of antisemitism in the Labour Party’ and the ‘apology for the pain caused both to Jewish members of the Labour Party and to the wider Jewish community’.  It stated that ‘Momentum’s NCG believes that accusations of antisemitism should not and cannot be dismissed simply as right wing smears nor as the result of conspiracies.’   Momentum’s only nod to the fact that this campaign has been wholly driven by the Right and a press determined to see an early end to Corbyn’s leadership was its acknowledgment that ‘some of Jeremy Corbyn’s political opponents are opportunistically using this issue as a way to undermine his leadership.’

As if this was not pathetic enough, Lansman was yesterday interviewed for nearly 15 minutes by Nick Robinson on Radio 4’s Today.  Here was an ideal opportunity to lay some of this nonsense to rest.  He could have laid into the malevolent and vituperative nonsense of those like Angela Smith, Guido Fawkes and the press who saw something strange in him celebrating a Jewish religious festival with progressive Jews rather than reactionary Tories. 

Presumably the '#enoughisenough' referred to idiot MPs such as Angela Smith

Not a bit of it.  Lansman instead made excuses pleading that it was Corbyn’s night off.  He described Jewdas as ‘Orthodox’ Jews which, from my knowledge of them, is not true.  They are whacky and irreverent but not Orthodox. 

And then, when presented with the statement by one of their number that ‘Israel was a pile of sewage’  responded that ‘it’s certainly not helpful to Jeremy or the Labour Party’.  Calling a state, not its people, a ‘pile of sewage’ is probably the kindest thing that can be said about those who deliberately gun down unarmed demonstrators.

The quote that got Guido all steamed up

The rest of Lansman’s pathetic interview has been transcribed below.  It talks about ‘coded’ anti-Semitism, ‘unconscious’ anti-Semitism, the need for ‘training’ to overcome it.  If anti-Semitism was a real threat in society or even in the Labour Party then it should be combated in exactly the same way as all racism is.  It is precisely because anti-Semitism barely exists that Lansman had to describe this phantom in these terms.

As Jews for Justice for Palestinians note, a survey by YouGov in 2017 for the Campaign against Antisemitism found, the numbers of those endorsing at least one antisemitic statement among Conservative and UKIP members was 40% and 39% respectively.  Among Labour and Liberal members the figures were 32% and 30% respectively. By comparing results to the 2016 survey, YouGov also found that antisemitic attitudes have fallen significantly in the Labour Party in the two years since Corbyn became Leader.  I think these figures are too high in any case and some of the statements put before people aren’t anti-Semitic for example Jewish use of the Holocaust.

Black anti-racist the late Sivanandan distinguished between racism that discriminates and racism that kills

When it came to the demonstration by the Board of Deputies a week ago outside Parliament Lansman stated it should not be a pretext for deselecting an MP.  Some 39 Labour MPs and peers attended.  Nearly all of them were the equivalent of those who John Major described as ‘the bastards’ – people who would be rid of Corbyn at a moment’s instant.

The demonstration was anything but an antiracist demonstration.  That Lansman could seriously describe a protest attended by Norman Tebbit, the arch racist who coined the ‘cricket test’ years ago to deny that British Pakistanis or Indians were British (because they supported teams from abroad) or the DUP, the party from Northern Ireland that was founded on the basis of Protestant Supremacy (and therefore identifies with the Jewish supremacist State of Israel) demonstrates just how far to the Right Lansman has come.

this fellow is a Jewish fascist with a photograph of Menachem Begin, who Einstein and Hannah Arendt accused of leading a Nazi-like party

The demonstration consisted to a large part of overt racists and fascists chanting ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a racist’ led by the guy in the picture in the Guardian (who has a picture of Menachem Begin, was once described as leading a Jewish Nazi party by Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt in a letter to the New York Times).

The irony of all this is that the far-Right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, which has already submitted a second complaint to the Labour Party that Corbyn is anti-Semitic has now also called for Lansman to be disciplined for anti-Semitism too!

If Momentum is to return to its original purpose then Lansman has to be removed from its leadership.  If it accepts the false anti-Semitism narrative then it is accepting the legitimacy of a campaign whose only purpose is to get rid of Corbyn.

Transcript of Jon Lansman’s Interview 3.4.18. on Radio 4’s Today Program

Q: Let’s start with the dinner before we move on to your statement. What puzzles people is this.  Last night Jeremy Corbyn went on TV to say, as you do in your statement, that worries about anti-Semitism are genuine.  He then sat down, had dinner with a group who say that they’re not genuine, they’re in fact a conspiracy.

 

I think this group Jewdas, unlike other groups you might describe as far left fringe groups in the Jewish community, are orthodox Jews, they’re embedded in their synagogue community and that makes them very different.  They are very much part of the Jewish community.  They’re an Orthodox part of the Jewish community, that see themselves as diaspora Jews, they perhaps don’t share the more secular approach to Israel in an ideological sense. 

Q:        You speak with authority because you’re Jewish yourself and you care about this.  My question was more not an argument about this group but does Jeremy Corbyn want to send a clear signal or not?  If he does why does he not sit down with the national leadership of the Jewish community, the Board of Deputies, the Jewish Leadership Council   not with a group who have been clear that they think that this is a fuss about nothing?

Well he sat down with this group for a Passover seder because they were people who lived in his constituency and it was his night off.  He had nothing in his official diary. His office didn’t know he was there.  So I don’t think this is as significant as it is made out and Guido isn’t known for his subtlety or nuanced debate on any issue after all.

The Daily Mail - the paper wot supported Hitler was the first paper to launch the false antisemitism smears - attacked Ed Miliband Labour's first Jewish leader for not eating a bacon sandwich correctly and because his father was a refugee from Nazi Germany

Q:        This is the Guido Fawkes web site that revealed it.  But people who have been at the dinner have also tweeted about it and have been clear.  I quoted one tweet saying Israel was sewerage which needs to be disposed of.  In a sense, isn’t this precisely the sort of language and thinking which you are now saying at Momentum has to stop.  

Well it’s certainly not helpful to Jeremy or the Labour Party but I haven’t seen the context of that and I think the main point is that Jeremy is seeking to meet with mainstream Jewish organisations.  He wants to meet, he’s very keen to meet and has been since before the demonstration last Monday with the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council. 

Q:  You know him well.  When you talk to him about this subject do you think he always understood the problem with anti-Semitism, do you think he’s beginning to understand the problem with anti-Semitism what’s going on in his mind

Jeremy is a lifelong anti-racist.  It came as something of a shock to him to be described as some kind of a racist, of harbouring people with anti-Semitic views in the Party that he now leads.  I think awareness has grown as it has for all of us. In the statement from Momentum yesterday we talked about how we are surprised by how widespread the problem is.  The problem by the way is not that there is a widespread problem of Holocaust denial or those forms of Zionism but there is a widespread problem of unconscious bias.

In his interview Lansman pointedly refused to back up Christine Shawacroft

Spell out the bias.  What is fascinating about what you’ve said is that Jeremy Corbyn didn’t realize and you are saying that you as a prominent Jew in the Labour Party, very much on the Left but a Corbyn backer, someone whose been passionate about these issues, perhaps even you didn’t realize until you looked at it how bad this was. 

The longer this debate has gone on about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, the more I’ve noticed on my Facebook feed for example and its particularly prevalent on social media, people who dismiss anti-Semitism as an issue in a way you would not dismiss Islamaphobia as an issue.  I think that reveals an unconscious bias that we’re all familiar with.  We send people on training courses to become aware of our unconscious bias as a result of sexism, racism, homophobia and so on.  But for some reason people in the LP seem less aware of it in themselves in relation to Jews. [compared to sexism etc]

Labour Against the Witchhunt puts out statement about anti-semitism being weaponised

Q:        Are you arguing that many people in the Labour Party, starting with the leader himself, need a form of education about what is acceptable language to use when it comes to talking about Jews and to talking about Israel?  

                                               

I think we need a widespread programme of education and training in the Labour Party about AS in order to help people recognise the dangers of using certain words, language can be very sensitive and words often mean something to other people different from what they mean to you. People need to be aware of those things.  Everybody in the Labour Party needs to be made aware. Right up to the people who are investigating charges of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party’s Compliance Unit.  Down to the people who are judging people in the National Constitutional Committee that eventually decides the outcome of some cases.   

Q:        Just to spell this out a bit.  There may be people who will say unless you say you hate Jews then you are not a racist.  I think you are saying there are all sorts of coded forms of racism using  Zio or Zionist when you really mean Jews.  Saying Israel should be wiped off the planet  instead of saying you disagree with the actions of this Israeli government.  Is that what you’re talking about?

It is.  Even the word Zionism itself means different things to different people. To some people it means the policies of the current Israeli government. We’ve seen what’s happened in Gaza in the last few days and that disturbs lots of people, me included. 

Q:        But are you saying to your supporters don’t attack Zionists when you criticize what’s happening in Gaza attack Netanyahu? 

Precisely.  There’s nothing wrong with attacking Netanyahu and the rest of the Israeli government.  But Zionism to the Jew in the street means only there being a Jewish state in Israel, safe and secure, nothing more than that. It’s not a discrete ideology, the ideology of Benjamin Netanyahu. 

Q:        You speak not just as the founder of Momentum, the most powerful organisation in the Labour Party, but you are now a member of Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee.  Take the example of Christine Shawcroft – she was on the NEC – she’s resigned now, having defended someone who did deny the Holocaust.  She always said she didn’t really read the Facebook thing but her instinct was to defend someone not to look at the evidence.  She is still on the Executive of Momentum.  Does she have to go now?

Christine Shawcroft didn’t see the photographic evidence that was so damning and she made a very bad misjudgement defending someone without seeing the full evidence. It’s one thing when you are in opposition when someone else is making the final decision about a case to take up a case about someone who feels they’ve been mistreated but when you’re chair of the committee you should see the full evidence.   So she made that bad judgement and she resigned not just from the Chair of the Committee but also from the NEC. 

Q:        But she’s not gone from Momentum.  Should she go?

We are in the middle of elections and she’s not standing in those elections. 

Q:        Are you saying, because you may be making a more general point, that her instinct, defend my people, be tribal, I’m on the Left, I’m a Corbynite, I’ve got to argue for my side, is the wrong instinct when it comes to anti-Semitism because it can mean that you defend the indefensible?

I certainly think we should not approach anti-Semitism and accusations of anti-Semitism in the way we approach cases which are factionalised, because a lot of cases that come before the National Executive are the result of in-fighting within the Labour Party.  You should certainly not approach them in that way.  We have to deal with every case of anti-Semitism on its merits.  We have to be trained in order to understand the issues properly. 

Q:        Here’s another test for you.  There’s members of Momentum around the country summoning their members of Parliament to meetings to explain why they attended an anti-Semitism rally and the implied threat is that they could be deselected.  As the founder of Momentum are you prepared to say today do not do this.  You should not need to explain why you go to an anti-racist rally. 

I do agree with that.  You should not have to defend why you go to an anti-racist rally and that’s why many Labour MPs did go there. 

Q:        So Thangam Debbonaire has been summoned to her Constituency Labour Party by Momentum activists in Bristol.  She should not have to answer those questions. 

It’s fair enough to answer a question it’s not fair enough to deselect someone for attending an anti-racist demonstration about anti-Semitism because it is clear that there is real concern within the Jewish community about anti-Semitism and we have to take that serious and we have to take every allegation of anti-Semitism seriously even if people sometimes opportunistically seize upon anti-Semitism as an issue to undermine Jeremy.  It doesn’t matter you’ve still got to take the allegation seriously. 

Q:        Let me end where we began with your view of Jeremy Corbyn.  There are some people in the Jewish community who will say look we hear the language but we also hear him call Hamas and Hezbollah friends.  We also hear him call a man who said Mossad carried out the 9/11 killings a very honoured citizen.  We also hear him praise groups who have criticized the Israelis and have dinner with groups who have criticized worries about anti-Semitism.  Are you sure, have you asked yourself in your own mind that Jeremy Corbyn agrees with you that anti-Semitism is a scourge and is different from many of the other charges laid at his feet?

I absolutely am.  He apologized in his letter to the Jewish community on Monday for the pain and suffering caused to people in the Labour Party and to people in the Jewish community.  He has said that he is an ally in the battle against anti-Semitism and I do believe that. 

Q:        In a word he has changed you say?

Well I think we’ve all realized the extent of the problem.  We’re all I think tired of too many people arguing that its all smears.  It isn’t.  We have to deal with all cases of anti-Semitism or investigate them when charges are made.