Report – Labour Against the Witchhunt All Members Meeting 28 August 2021

LAW votes narrowly not to support setting up a socialist movement but votes to uphold No Platform for Fascists

Update

It would seem that the Spectator had a mole at the meeting! Its account is published here. It would seek that some sad nerd spends his time doing little else than attending the meetings of groups. This is the nerd in his own words and this is an interview with him in The Critic.

The most revealing comment is in his article Infiltrating the Left where he says:

'I was never a hateful person myself before I started doing this — but now, I despise these people and everything they do. I suppose hate rubs off

 Of course what mole doesn’t reveal is who is paying him and his relationship to the secret state.  My assumption throughout is that mole is a man.  

TG 

Introduction

LAW held its All Members Meeting last Saturday night with over 100 members attending. The agenda and a record of the decisions are here. This is a brief report on what took place.

The context of the meeting is a witchhunt unprecedented in its scope and ferocity in which Keir Starmer and his glove puppet David Evans have torn up all democratic rules and procedures. Regardless of the electoral cost, Starmer is determined to drive the left out of the Labour Party. Acting on behalf of the ruling class Starmer is determined that never again will a socialist and anti-imperialist gain control of the Labour Party.

Can you imagine what the press would make of the Labour Party if Corbyn had proscribed Progress, Labour First and the other scab organisations of the Labour Right. They would have cried ‘dictator’ from the rooftops. However attacks on the left meet with their approval – from the Mail to the Guardian.

When Starmer came to power he announced his intention to ‘root out the scourge of anti-Semitism’ despite the fact that what passed for ‘anti-Semitism’ was not hatred of Jews but hatred of apartheid Israel and the Zionist movement.

Starmer immediately declared that he was a Zionist, ie a racist ‘without qualification’. The subsequent issuing of reports by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group and Human Rights Watch declaring that Israel was an Apartheid State have had no effect on Labour’s racist leader.  On the contrary, whilst fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ he has quietly readmitted to Labour the Trevor Philips for whom Muslims are a ‘nation within a nation’ and who has described the adoption of Christian children by Muslims as ‘akin to child abuse’. There are some forms of racism that Starmer is perfectly happy with.

This is what 'Zionist Without Qualification' Starmer Supports

The mere mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ however was enough to send Momentum’s children running to nurse for fear of something worse. ‘Anti-Semitism’ was the evil by which all manner of deeds were done. So when Starmer wanted to be rid of Rebecca Long-Bailey, to whom he had felt obliged to offer the position of Shadow Education  Secretary, ‘anti-Semitism’ was the excuse to remove the last vestiges of the Corbyn left from the front bench.

The excuse was retweeting Maxine Peak condemning Israel’s Police for having taught the American Police the neckhold that killed George Floyd. Now whether this was strictly true was irrelevant. What is true is that the Zionist Anti-Defamation League boasted of having ‘trained 150,000 (US) law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers’ with the Israeli police.  The ADL has since taken this down but I quoted it here. Apparently this was an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy’. What Israel’s police were not teaching was respect for human rights!

Likewise when Jeremy Corbyn was suspended Andrew Scatterbrain, head of Momentum, complained that this ‘undermined the fight against anti-Semitism’. Scatterbrain didn’t get it that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations had been perfected to get rid of Corbyn even before he was elected as Labour leader.

The stupidity of much of the Labour left coupled with its cowardice has led to the present situation of automatic expulsions, where due process and natural justice have been abolished. LAW and its sister organisation Labour-in-Exile-Network were proscribed on July 20 for having called out the fake and spurious nature of the anti-Semitism allegations levelled by the Jewish Labour Movement, which is affiliated to the main proponent of Israeli apartheid, the World Zionist Organisation which contains a Land Theft Division.

Although over 100 people attended the meeting and there were some good debates, it cannot be said that the meeting responded adequately to the needs of the hour. Partly this was because of the disarray of LAW’s Steering Committee whose 6 members are grossly unrepresentative of the organisation. LAW has had hundreds of new members since Starmer outlawed us yet 50% of the Steering Committee are members or supporters of the tiny Communist Party of Great Britain.

Now I have no objection to the group per se.  After all I have written for their newspaper the Weekly Worker for over 15 years, but they have a line on the Labour Party, that it was founded as a ‘united front of a special kind’ which is bonkers. The Fabians were amongst those that formed the Labour Party and they are and were an organisation of the liberal bourgeoisie, the Webbs and the Shaws.

The CPGB suggest that any attempts to build anything outside of Labour is doomed to failure. They follow what amounts to a rigid dogma, almost a theology.  I termed them the Catholic Church of the Left at the meeting! Regardless of changing circumstances they stick to the same line. Some 120,000 members of the Labour Party have already left in disgust at the behaviour of Starmer and they have nothing to say to them apart from stay in and fight!

The meeting was chaired by Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish woman who was witchhunted in  disgraceful wave of racism and betrayed by Jon Lansman when Jackie was removed as Vice-Chair of Momentum  in the autumn of 2016.

Resist at the Rialto & Labour Left for Socialism

Two years ago, because of Zionist pressure on venues not to hire out venues to anti-Zionists we hired for 2 days the Rialto, a Brighton theatre whose owner has experience of supporting the Kent Miners and is unafraid of a few racist trolls.  Last time we put on a book launch for Bad News for Labour that Waterstones, under pressure from the Zionists had abandoned at the last minute.

This time we hiring the venue for 4 days and have a whole series of alternative events planned. from Sunday of the Conference to Wednesday. You can register for the events here. They provide an alternative to the controlled dissent of Momentum’s World Transformed. An outline of what is planned at Labour Party Conference is here.

A public meeting called by Defend the Left on 18^th September is planned with Ken Loach, Howard Beckett, Graham Bash, Esther Giles and other speakers. 

LAW has also participated, not without problems, in an organisation Labour Left for Socialism.  LLS has published a statement signed by 15 organisations, some of which, such as CLPD have effectively been complicit in the witchhunt.  Now of course people and organisations can learn the error of their ways, but the question unfortunately they haven’t.

After prolonged discussion LAW’s Steering Committee agreed to send two delegates to this organisation and to agree to the statement yet strangely enough LAW’s name has been left off the statement. What is even worse is that the statement contains the following weasel words. LLS ‘stand(s) in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.’ What this meant is that of the 3 proscribed Labour Party organisations LLS only supports one of those organisation, Socialist Appeal.

Because LAW and LIEN have been proscribed for their opposition to the fake anti-Semitism witchhunt and this statement effectively refuses to support them. Stan Keable, the CPGB secretary of LAW sent an email to (LLS) expressing his ‘disappointment’ with them.

When I saw this anaemic email I immediately sent a somewhat stronger email saying that:

‘it really is disgraceful that Labour Against the Witchhunt, one of the proscribed groups, has been deliberately left off the joint statement by Don't Leave Organise, that purports to oppose the proscriptions but instead introduces the following weasel words:

'We stand firmly against proscriptions, and stand in solidarity with every grouping that is proscribed solely for holding socialist views.'

Unfortunately the co-Chair of LAW, CPGB supporter Tina Werkman took exception to my blunt words and at an emergency Steering Committee moved that I be removed as a delegate to LFS. My replacement has since decided not to take up his place as delegate, yet Ms Werkman, instead of proposing that I be restored as delegate has proposed that LAW just send one delegate, the CPGB’s Stan Keable. None of this was reported to the AMM meeting.

DISCUSSION OF MOTIONS

The first motion moved by the CPGB’s Kevin Bean welcomed the invitation to LAW and LIEN to participate in LLS without any criticism of it bar the fact that you can’t quote anyone who speaks in its meeting under the so-called Chatham House Rules. To me this seemed the least of its problems. No mention was made that Socialist Action, an ‘underground’ group which is part of the CLPD representation, had effectively tried to ensure that the group did not support those who did not go along with the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.

Tina Werkman moved an amendment putting this right and it was passed by 60-11 with the CPGB opposing.

The main vote however took place on the assertion in paragraph 2 that ‘LAW stands for unrestricted freedom of speech.’ I moved an amendment deleting ‘unrestricted’. I do not support free speech for overt racists, fascists, war criminals or organised scabs and I gave 2 examples. A meeting which socialists and miners from Kent NUM broke up in Brighton at the 1984 Tory Party conference. Apparently the CPGB would have supported the right of the scabs to freedom of speech despite using it as part of a campaign to starve the miners back to work.

The Board of Deputies has always opposed physical opposition to fascist anti-Semitism whilst at the same time condemning all opposition to Zionism and Israeli Apartheid

The Board of Deputies 

The other example I gave was of the 43 Group of Jewish ex-servicemen who, after they came back from the war in 1945, set about destroying the attempt of Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists to regroup by holding street meetings.  By 1950 the Union Movement was finished.  Interestingly for the benefit of Socialist Action, Red Labour, CLPD and others who are complicit in the witchhunt, the Board of Deputies, which today is so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ – vehemently opposed the 43 Group. I suggest that they and LAW’s Steering Committee read this excellent article. The British Jews who fought postwar fascism on London's streets

Despite the majority of the SC opposing my amendment it passed by 35-32 votes.

What I thought was a non-contentious motion calling for no confidence in Keir Starmer, was passed by 75 votes to 8. The only opposition coming from the CPGB! Quite why the CPGB should have opposed the motion is unclear. As far as I am aware they don’t yet support Starmer though perhaps this is a sign of what lies ahead!

The main debate was on strategy. The motion from the CPGB which called for god, mother and apple pie, received 40 votes.  It called on people to do what they are already doing.

What it didn’t do was offer any strategy to take on board the fact that over a hundred thousand members have already resigned from the Labour Party, that thousands of socialists are in the process of being expelled and thousands more show every sign of deserting the good ship Labour. To these people this motion offered nothing except rhetoric about ‘continuing to campaign at a grass roots level against bans and proscriptions, and countering the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ smear campaign against the left.’

The CPGB motion was supported by 5 out of 6, ie. 84% of the Steering Committee. I moved a motion, seconded by Brighton members Dave Hill and Paddy O’Keefe and a background strategy paper written by myself and Esther Giles. Although I didn’t oppose much of the CPGB motion the problem was that it could have been written anytime in the past 5 years.

What set the cat among the pigeons was points 8 and 9 of my motion:

8.           We believe that it is essential to create a socialist movement, that encompasses people inside and outside the Labour Party, which will keep activists in the Corbyn Project together, with a view to forming a distinct socialist party in the near future.

9.           We believe that the time has come when socialists in trade unions should argue for disaffiliation from a party that is now part of the neo-liberal consensus.

In other words I called for the formation of a socialist movement which encompassed both those in and those who have left the Labour Party. It did not call for the formation of a new party today but said that that should be on the agenda in the near future. 

Of course this was anathema to the CPGB for whom devotion to the Labour Party is an article of faith. Contemplating a break from the Labour Party is akin to commiting idolatory in the temple. It is heresy in any language.

Despite my fear of being cast into perdition, the CPGB motion obtained 40 votes to 31 for my motion.  In other words 44% of those voting agreed with me that it was not enough to call people to fight in a Labour Party where democracy has been abolished.

I think I can make one prediction and that is this debate will not go away. What is also obvious is that membership of LAW’s Steering Committee needs to be doubled. Whilst I have no objection to the CPGB having representatives on the Steering Committee, it is undemocratic for them to have effectively 50% of members when they are a small and tiny group. In other words they will have to win votes by argument not force of numbers.

Tony Greenstein

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For a biography of Baldwin see here 

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

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

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

Steven Salaita settles lawsuit with Univ. of Illinois

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They say there's no Zionist lobby!

Blacks, Jews and America

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

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

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

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

Baldwin emphasised that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baldwin noted that

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tony Greenstein

Blacks and Jews – extracts – James Baldwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump Appoints an Open Anti-Semite, Steve Bannon, as his Chief Strategist

 Whilst Israel Loves Donald Trump  American Jews Loathe Him

Steve Bannon, Trump's Strategic Direct, ex-CEO of Breitbart News, a far-Right Islamaphobic and anti-Semitic site

In March Politico Magazine ran a story, Why Israel Loves Donald Trump.  Why indeed?  Well it’s not hard to discover why.  Trump is an anti-Muslim bigot.  He hates all things Muslim.  He also loves Israel since Israel knows how to deal with those Muslims and above all he admires Israel’s military strength and willinness to use it.  Gregg Carlstrom described how, a recent poll ‘found Trump was by far Israel’s favorite GOP candidate, and the second-most popular overall. A plurality even thought he would be best at “representing Israel’s interests,” better than Hillary Clinton, with her decades of advocacy at the highest levels of government.’  Strange that because Trump has also been a hero to America’s White Supremacists whose support he has consistently refused to disavow.

Jump forward a  few months and Israel’s headlines scream that ‘Netanyahu hails Donald Trump as a ‘true friend’ of Israel.  We read that Israel’s far-Right, in the form of Education Minister Naftali Bennett for the religious settler party, HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) is in ectasy.  Trump’s election is an ‘opportunity’ to scuttle Palestinian statehood’  It is ‘“Trump’s victory is an opportunity for Israel to immediately retract the notion of a Palestinian state in the center of the country, which would hurt our security and just cause,” Bennett said in a statement.

Hilary Clinton - a creature of Wall Street she had nothing to offer bar the fact that she is a woman - Democratic National Committee rigged the contest against Bernie Sanders

Yitzhak Herzog, leader of the Israeli Labour Party was no less effusive.  Herzog extended ‘warm congratulations to the president of the strongest and most powerful nation in the world: Donald J. Trump,” in a Facebook post published shortly after Trump celebrated his victory. ‘  Herzog went on to say that ‘“The American democracy today chose to place at its forefront an American leader who taught the analysts and doubters that we are in a new era of change and a replacement of the old ruling elites! You did the unexpected against all the odds, the polls, and the research, and the prophets of the old era,” he said. “I am sure that the defense and economic cooperation with our strongest and most important ally will continue even more so during your presidency.”

If you were to substitute Hitler for Trump you might savour the full effect of Herzog’s absurd statement.  But it is a different matter in the Jewish diaspora .  Trump has just appointed an anti-Semite, ex-Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon, to the post of his chief strategist.  How is this possible?  Well dear reader it’s very simple.  Despite the nonsense that Zionists indulge in, accusing their opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’, in fact the best friends of Zionism have always been anti-Semites – from Edoard Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards to Alfred Rosenberg and Adolf Eichmann.  Today it is the far-Right – Pastor John Hagee, Glen Beck, Marine Le Pen, Nick Griffin – who are the best friends of Israel.

A B Yehoshua, a famous Israeli novelist and poet explained this very well in a lecture to the Union of Jewish students, which was reprinted in the Aliyah Edition of the Jewish Chronicle on 22^nd January 1982:  Yehoshua has no time for the lies of hasbara, the make believe propaganda that most Zionists indulge in.  He says it as it is and the whole lecture is well worth reading.  In it he said that:

A B Yehoshua's lecture to Zionist students - he explained to their naive ears that Zionism and anti-Semitism had always been best of friends.

Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real antisemite must be a Zionist.

So there is really no contradiction between not liking Jews and wanting to be rid of them and being a Zionist – in fact it is rather a advantage to be an anti-Semite if you are a Zionist.

But of course American Jews are in shock because of the appointment of Steve Bannon,  Breitbart is about as nasty a site as you can get.  The overtly Zionist Anti-Defamation League in the United States, which itself has covered for anti-Semites likes Pastor John Hagee in the past, has described Breitbart as ‘as "the premier website of the alt-right" representing "white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists."

Below is an article from Israel’s Ha’aretz. See also a perceptive article in Mondoweiss Trump is bad because Israeli Jews will love him and US Jews will see it which sees the phenomenon of Trump, ardent Zionist and anti-Semite as increasing the gulf between America’s liberal Jews and Israel’ love of all things right-wing and fascist.

Aftershock President Trump Has Shattered Jews' American Idyll

American Jews have transformed virtually overnight from insiders to outsiders; the appointment of ex-Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon, an accused anti-Semite, as chief strategist, is bound to exacerbate the tensions.

Chemi Shalev (Washington) Nov 14, 2016 12:07 PM

Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Naples, Florida, October 23, 2016.Evan Vucci, AP

WASHINGTON – Those were the best of times, arguably, but these may be the worst of times. That’s the way most American Jews must feel as they wake up with a massive hangover from the shock election results and the reality that Donald Trump will soon be President of the United States.

Whatever differences American Jews may have had with Barack Obama over the Iran nuclear deal and Middle East peace, they’ve never had a president who was more in tune with their Jewish and liberal essence.

Obama was the realization of the American Jewish vision of a multicultural society, a dream come true for a generation of civil rights activists. He promoted and embodied the liberal ideals that American Jews are more attached to than any other religious group in America. And he was more knowledgeable about American Jewish culture and Yiddishkeit than any previous president, bar none. Even when they disagreed with him, most American Jews, with the exception of the vocal minority that hated his guts, viewed Obama as a mensch.

It is probably no coincidence that during his tenure, American Jews reached a pinnacle of social and cultural acceptance. Being American Jews was hip. It was cool. It was the thing to be. From Jon Stewart to Jerry Seinfeld, from Joe Lieberman to Bernie Sanders, Jews seemed to be more entrenched than ever before in the American mainstream.

Priebus and Bannon are the two most senior members of Trump's staff

Pew Research Polls repeatedly confirmed that Jews were the most loved and most admired religious group in all of America. Mashiach-zeit, old timers would say, but with a note of caution, because if Jewish history teaches anything, it is that all things must pass.

The election of Donald Trump has shattered the Jewish idyll, all across the board. Although one must give the president-elect the benefit of the doubt that he is not an anti-Semite himself, he has frequently promoted disparaging Jewish stereotypes in his personal statements.

Sunday evening’s appointment of former Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon as chief strategist in the White House is bound to exacerbate Jewish tensions. He is considered the standard bearer for the racist, anti-immigrant alt-right movement and has been accused of harboring anti-Semitic sentiments himself.

Trump has repeatedly and unapologetically disseminated white supremacist tweets. His campaign has used anti-Semitic symbols that Trump has failed to disown even when advised of their offensive content. He has distanced himself from his neo-Nazi supporters only under duress. And under his wings, America has seen an unprecedented outburst of blunt and naked hatred of Jews, which has only gotten worse since his election.

In recent months, most prominent Jewish journalists and other public critics of Trump have been harassed by anti-Semites on social media, in their mail at home and, in some cases, in close physical contact. Swastikas have been painted at schools. Jewish students have been threatened, taunted, told that Adolf Hitler was right all along. Along with Muslims, Hispanics, and African Americans, they are being targeted as the sworn enemies of the America First Weltanschauung that Trump is bringing with him to the White House.

The shock that many Jews are feeling now is partly of their making. In recent years, the American Jewish establishment has willingly enlisted in the Israeli government’s effort to depict ever-widening circles of anti-Israeli agitation on the left as anti-Semitism. The fight against BDS and the efforts to portray it as hatred of Jews in another form has consumed the time, energy and resources of the American Jewish leadership, with the possible exception of the Anti-Defamation League.

Meanwhile, virulent and classic anti-Semitism lurking just under the radical right’s surface was virtually ignored, concealed by the mainstream right-wing’s overwhelming support for Israel. Even mentioning it was considered to be an anti-Israeli provocation.

Trump’s triumph has unleashed the pent up resentment against Jews. His reluctance to tackle manifestations of racism and white supremacism among his supporters has energized and empowered it. If he and his advisers don’t take assertive steps soon, anti-Jewish agitators will feel they have a license from the White House to do as they please. They will get bolder, grow stronger, recruit new adherents and increasingly resort to violence: we’ve seen it before.

But even if brazen anti-Semitic incidents are quelled or die down by themselves, there is no denying that Jews have transformed virtually overnight from insiders to outsiders. Not only did they vote overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, prominent conservative Jews who could have allayed their concerns are the ones who have distanced themselves from Trump over the course of the campaign and will play no role in his administration.

American Jewish liberals are bound to feel alienated from their own government in way they’ve never felt before. Most of the values, goals and policy objectives of the Trump administration, even if they turn out to be a paler and more palatable version of his campaign rhetoric, are diametrically opposed to those of most American Jews. They support immigration, pluralism, multiculturalism, social reform, government intervention, separation of church and state, gay marriage, abortion rights and on and on. It is easy to see, in fact, why so many of Trump’s radical supporters would view the Jews as their mortal enemies.

As Shmuel Rosner rightly points out for the wrong reasons, Trump may ultimately divide Israeli and American Jews. But the reason for that is not limited, as Rosner asserts, to the yet to be proven assumption that American Jews will resent their Israeli counterparts for liking Trump because he is pro-Israel. It is because Trump’s core message, his reactionary, nativist, chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant and mainly anti-Muslim worldview is shared by far too many, though far from all Israelis, and is embraced by its ruling coalition. And because many Israeli Jews are indifferent to right-wing anti-Semitism and indeed share right-wing disdain toward the liberalism of American Jews.

Of course, all may not be bleak. Perhaps Trump will fight the anti-Semitism on his radical fringe with increasing vigor. Possibly his policies will be less offensive to American Jews. Perhaps the American Jewish establishment will produce a leadership capable of meeting these trying times. Who knows, maybe some American Jews will finally realize they should support Israeli Jews who share their worldview rather than a government that doesn’t.

And if worse comes to worst, to paraphrase Casablanca, liberal American Jews will always have Israel itself.  Moderate, liberal Israelis, beleaguered and on the point of despair, will flock to the airport to welcome them with open arms. Mashiach-zeit, they will tell themselves, in awe.