Chakrabarti has been abandoned - Jenny Formby is Flying the White Flag as Labour heads back to the days of Iain McNicol

Asa Winstanley is suspended for calling the JLM an Israeli Embassy proxy and Kinnock Calls for Darren Williams' Head 
Are these the last days of Jeremy Corbyn?

The latest victim of the growing witchhunt inside the Labour Party is Asa Winstanley, a journalist with Electronic Intifada. Asa learnt of his suspension, not from the Labour Party but from the Jewish Chronicle to whom it was leaked. His offence was to call the Jewish Labour Movement a ‘proxy for the Israeli Embassy.’

Telling the truth about the JLM relationship with the Israeli Embassy is apparently 'antisemitic' & a suspension offence

Once again the Compliance Unit has leaked personal information and details of Labour’s disciplinary process to the press before the person themselves has been notified. This is in clear violation of the GDPR.  This used to be regular practice under Iain McNicol. It has now resurfaced.

It would appear that nothing has changed since the days of Iain McNicoll. After writing one strong letter to Tom Watson, Jennie Formby has now surrendered. Instead of questioning suspensions for expressing one's opinions about the witch-hunt (how is that anti-Semitic?) she has given the Compliance Unit a green light to purge the Left. The pace of suspensions is thus increasing and once again we have the situation of old tweets being microscopically examined for any signs of dissidence.

It isn’t anti-Semites who are being suspended it is journalists, activists, socialists.  Due process has gone out of the window.

The suspension of Asa Winstanley is an attack on freedom of speech. Asa has written many well researched articles proving how the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in the Labour Party has been manufactured by Israeli state front groups such as the Jewish Labour Movement. Articles such as How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis and Jewish Labour Movement was refounded to fight Corbyn. Asa has shown how e.g. at Oxford University Labour Club the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were manufactured by a former intern for Israeli propaganda group, BICOM.

The JLM is a scab organisation inviting the State to interfere in the Labour Party 

Asa’s last article, showing how the JLM had almost ceased to exist until the Israeli Embassy revived it in 2015 and injected money into it, with the express purpose of waging a war against Jeremy Corbyn, caused them particular grief. The JLM was until recently chaired by fraud and crook Jeremy Newmark who, despite being exposed in the Jewish Chronicle and being subject to a Police investigation is still a Labour councillor.

In Israel they murder journalists they don't like

I am not surprised that the Zionist movement has targeted Asa Winstanley. He should count himself lucky. In Israel they shoot disagreeable journalists!

The suspension of Asa Winstanley takes place hot on the heels of the suspension of Sean McCallum, the Mayoral candidate in Mansfield on the basis of two tweets posted two years ago.

One member of Mansfield CLP describes what happened:

‘We had already elected a prospective candidate who then withdrew, so we went through the process again. After the new candidate was chosen, someone with too much time on their hands and an axe to grind went through his social media posts and found 2 posts from 2 years ago, complained, and Sean McCallum was immediately suspended. This man is NOT anti-semitic or racist in any way, he was devastated and has resigned from the Labour party with immediate effect, he says that once his term as a councillor comes to an end he will walk away from politics.’

Sean, who is a firefighter and who served in Iraq, spelt out his feelings in a letter to members of Mansfield CLP:

‘The first, was an online article which explained the origins of an illustration used by Labour MP Naz Shah in a tweet for which she was suspended and later apologised. The article explains that the creator of the illustration was an eminent Jewish Professor Norman Finklestein, an analyst and expert in the Israeli/Palestine conflict, whose parents survived the holocaust. My comments on this article are correct, there is no evidence of anti-Semitism within it. I do not accept that this indicates that I am of an anti-Semitic disposition".

Regarding the other post he says: "I was (poorly) attempting to express my anger and frustration towards the government of Israel, and its political and military policies regarding Palestine. This does not make me an anti-Semite –it makes me someone who cares deeply about the loss of life on both sides of that conflict".

"I have no faith at all that a fair and equitable process would indeed take place-there is a battle raging within the Labour Party which has nothing to do with racism, and everything to do with power and control.

Whilst it is absolutely vital that the importance of tackling anti-Semitism is not minimised, and that my poor choice of words is acknowledged, it is also apparent to many observers and Labour Party members that the issue is also being weaponised, as factions within struggle for control and ultimately power. This in itself is cynical, and  in my view dilutes the seriousness of fighting racism in all forms."

We have to call a halt now to the suspension of people for whom anti-Semitism is a pretext. As an unnamed member of Mansfield CLP wrote:

‘So the Labour party has lost another good councillor and dedicated member and we are the poorer for it, because of this nonsense. We also have no mayoral candidate and we desperately need to remove the "Independent" mayor (basically a Tory) who seems to be able to veto everything that the council wants and control everything in a way that seems totally undemocratic.

I know he doesn’t want to challenge the Labour party on this, but I am letting you know because I really feel that it is a witch hunt, anyone who wants to discredit someone for any reason only seems to have to utter the words “anti-semitism” and that person is suspended regardless of whether they are or not. I have no idea what we can do to stop this nonsense but in the mean time, good people are being victimised and driven out of the party/politics and the real racists are still out there causing problems. In my opinion someone independent and with common sense should look at complaints like this and others such as Jo Bird and Chris Williamson and simply throw out complaints where there is no anti-semitism rather than automatic suspensions for everyone (especially the left wing members). I have no idea how we can achieve a fairer system but it can’t go on like this.

Idiot Jennie Formby has brought in Blair's right hand man Charlie 

What is even more unforgivable is that Formby has called in Blair’s flat mate, friend and former Lord Chancellor Charlie Falconer, someone who went along with all Blair’s wars and privatisations and who is a deadly enemy to the Corbyn Project.  No wonder that he is now calling for an investigation into Corbyn’s own advisers. The net is closing in and the witch-hunters are getting closer to Corbyn himself .

Coming in the wake of the suspension of Jo Bird, a Jewish councillor in the Wirral and the suspension of Chris Williamson MP we are facing a full witchhunt of anyone who dares speak out about the McCarthyist madness that is gripping the Labour Party.

None of the above have been disciplined for anything remotely anti-Semitic.  It has now become an offence merely to question the assertion that there is widespread anti-Semitism. This is Orwellian and resembles Israeli democracy.

Israeli democracy - you can vote for any party that accepts Israel is a Jewish state not a state of all its citizens

What this really is about of course is Israel.  At the moment a General Election is taking place in Israel where the main battle is between two Zionist parties – Likud and Blue & White where the main debate is as to who has killed the most Arabs. It is an election in which 2 Arab parties and a Jewish member of the Communist  Party have been banned, a decision currently under appeal to the High Court. That is what happens in an ethno-nationalist state. Israel is the most racist state in the world and this is what Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign is about, defending the West’s armed watchdog in the Middle East.

Scab MP Stephen Kinnock calls for Darren Williams to be Suspended

Darren Williams  is the latest target of son of scab Stephen Kinnock

Jewish Labour Movement MPs such as Louise Ellman have defended through thick and thin the Israeli army’s occupation of the West Bank.  This MP, who I have called the MP for Tel Aviv South, has even defended in a debate in Parliament on Palestinian child prisoners Israeli army practices such as kidnapping them in the early hours of the morning and blindfolding and beating them. 

This is what it's really about - Zionism and racism in Israel

Only yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responding to the suggestion that Israel is a country of all its citizen, wrote to actress, Rotem Sela:

"Dear Rotem, an important correction: Israel is not a state of all its citizens. According to the Nation-State Law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People - and them alone.

This is the racism that Labour’s current witchhunt is designed to defend.  We stand in full solidarity with Asa Winstanley, Jo Bird, Sean McCallum, Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson.

The leaking of peoples’ details to the press is a blatantly illegal and we demand that the Compliance Unit is closed down.  It is not fit for purpose. 

This is what Jennie Formby’s craven cowardice and bending the knee to Tom Watson is about.  As the local elections get nearer so the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign will grow louder.  The latest potential victim is Darren Williams who is on Labour's NEC. But, as I have said repeatedly in the past, the real target is not me nor Chris Williamson or any of the people in t his post, it is Jeremy Corbyn.  Unfortunately the fool does not realise it and appointing Blair’s buddy to reinvestigate cases will only lasten the day that Corbyn is overthrown by a coup of his own  MPs.

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter: No, Jennie Formby, we will not be informers! These are the methods of the Gestapo and the Stasi!

Labour’s General Secretary writes to Labour and Corbyn Facebook Groups asking them to Report Members  to the Compliance Unit

Jenny Formby, the new General Secretary of the Labour Party, whom Tom Watson is trying to remove, has written to the Admins and Moderators of pro-Corbyn and Labour Party Facebook groups asking them to inform on members of those groups and report them to Labour’s Compliance Unit where ‘anti-semitism’ is suspected.  Naturally no other form of racism is mentioned because unlike 'anti-semitism', Islamaphobia, anti-Roma and anti-Black racism in Britain is just not a problem.


You might be forgiven for thinking that Stephen Lawrence had been Jewish.  That the Windrush victims were Jewish and had been sent 'back' to Israel, that Darren Osborne had driven his minibus at members of the St John's Wood synagogue and of course that the Jewish youth of Golders Green had held a demonstration outside the local cop shop complaining of the stop and search of people wearing kippas, to say nothing of the number of Jewish dead in police custody and of course John Mann MP had written a quasi-legal handbook explaining how to get the Police to move on Jewish pests who insisted on camping out in parks and greens.

Of course none of this happened which is why anti-semitism has been prioritised by the Labour Party. Does this privileging of a non-existent antisemitism make sense?  Yes but only if you think Israeli Apartheid needs defending.

Labour Against the Witchhunt has issued an open letter to Ms Formby deploring the culture of informing and reporting that is growing up in the Labour Party.  We do not need a Labour Thought Police.

Luke Akehurst of Labour First defends the massacre of now 160 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israel. Would Akehurst defend the massacre of unarmed demonstrators in London?  If not then he is a racist who should be immediately suspended

We have to overcome the atmosphere of suspicion and mutual distrust that has grown up as a result of the false accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ from pro-Israeli and Zionist lobby groups such as Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement.  If Jennie Formby wishes to root out racism in the Labour Party perhaps she would start with the suspension and then expulsion of Luke Akehurst, who openly defending Israel's gunning down of  unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza.  Akehurst would not do this if the Palestinians in question had been white demonstrators in London.  If Jenny really wants to root out racism she should suspended Luke Akehurst immediately.

The Labour Against the Witchhunt/JVL Lobby of Labour's NEC on 4th September

It is noticeable that Ms Formby hasn’t asked people to report those who write supporting the Israeli state and its apartheid system, including the recent murder of 160 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza.  Palestinian lives don’t appear to count.

In the Jewish religion, nothing was more reprehensible than being an informer. Tale bearing and informing, Lashan Hara, were considered by the rabbis of classical Judaism as worse than the cardinal sins of murder, immorality and idolatory. This attitude was fully borne out during the Nazi occupation of Europe when thousands of Jews who were living in hiding underground were betrayed to the Gestapo by informers, many of them unfortunately Jewish.

No one supports anti-semitism however the way to overcome it is NOT by reporting those few individuals who have made anti-semitic comments but by engaging with them.  It should only be very rarely that people are expelled for racist comments for the simple reason that racism is part and parcel of this society and the way to defeat racism is not by expelling racists but by winning them over to class and socialist politics.

Strange as it seems, John Mann's anti-Gypsy racism hasn't got him into trouble - only antisemitism counts

This is especially the case with the fake ‘anti-semitism’ controversy that has found people running for cover for fear of being accused of ‘anti-semitism’.  It is noticeable that when it comes to racism against Gypsies and Roma then the Labour Party has been virtually silent. Where was the condemnation of John Mann who in his ‘Bassetlaw anti-social behaviour handbook’, described Gypsies as just one more social nuisance?

Before her appointment, Jennie Formby was being accused of 'antisemitism' by the far-Right Labour Against Antisemitism

Ironically, it is the false antisemitism witchhunt, which is now targeting Jeremy Corbyn himself, which is responsible for increasing antisemitism.  Many people will see organisations, which say they represent British Jews, attacking Corbyn and make the assumption that all British Jews which are responsible for this shameful campaign.

Tony Greenstein

Sign this open letter here:
No, Jennie Formby, we will not be informers!

We, the undersigned, are greatly concerned about recent communication from Labour’s General Secretary Jennie Formby aimed at Facebook groups which have ‘Labour Party’ or ‘Jeremy Corbyn’ in their title (the full letter is here). We are particularly outraged by the following passage which states “posts and conversations with antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory content” should be emailed to “complaints@labour.org.uk with screenshots and links […] if you believe the individual who has posted them may be a Labour member so that this can be investigated by the Party.” As Facebook users, we reject any attempt to make us informers to Labour’s dysfunctional disciplinary processes. Social media and Facebook are effective because they allow the exchange of ideas, even if at times clumsily expressed. Most Facebook groups police themselves adequately, without the assistance of a compliance unit, whose targets to date have almost exclusively been on the left of the Party supporters of Palestinian rights critics of Israel and Zionism and disproportionately black and Jewish Given the Labour Party’s recent adoption of the ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism published by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which in the words of the Jewish former Court of Appeal judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, is “calculatedly misleading" and the IHRA’s purposeful conflation of criticism of Israel and Zionism with anti-Semitism, we have no confidence that free speech to criticise Israel will be guaranteed, if this approach is accepted across social media. What constitutes anti-Semitism remains disputed. The traditional definition, as per the Oxford English Dictionaryis, "hostility to or prejudice against Jews". The IHRA definition on the other hand takes up over 500 words, many of which refer to Israel. For example, John McDonnell stated in a recent interview with Jewish News: “What we’re saying is it’s anti-Semitic to oppose a Jewish state". We disagree. Opposing a state that systematically, and constitutionally, marginalises and demonises Palestinians while subjecting them to discrimination is by definition a form of apartheid. It is not ant-Semitism to state this fact. Your letter, as an attempt to make Facebook users responsible for the conduct of other group members, displays the same method used by the media to smear Jeremy Corbyn when he did not speak up against (the very few) people posting nonsense in a group he happened to be a member of. We believe the ongoing witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters is bringing the party into disrepute. Your email will yet again fan the flames of this toxic climate, leading to ever more malicious and vexatious allegations and complaints. We believe that open and democratic debate, without fear of being reported, is the best way to educate people and fight prejudice and racism. This new intrusion on free speech can only undermine the extraordinary effectiveness of social media as a tool to support the leader and the left in the party. We will oppose any attempt to outsource education on anti-Semitism to the Jewish Labour Movement, which is the British wing of the Israeli Labour Party and covertly filmed and leaked a video of Jackie Walker at a closed training event in order to damage the party. We remain determined to eradicate all forms of discrimination from our Party. When we see prejudice or hate, we always speak up. When we see discrimination, we always oppose it. When we are asked to behave unjustly, we always refuse. SIGN THIS OPEN LETTER HERE.

Full communication from Jennie Formby I’m writing to you as I understand that you are an admin or moderator of a Facebook group which refers to the Labour Party or Jeremy Corbyn in its title. The use of the Party’s name or Jeremy Corbyn’s name can give the false impression that the Party is responsible for these groups and that they have some kind of official status. We are therefore writing to request that – if your group has not already done so – you: Make clear, in the “about” section or title of the group, that the group is unofficial and not affiliated with the Labour Party and/or Jeremy Corbyn. Take active measures against antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory content, which can make Jewish people and others feel unwelcome in these spaces. Antisemitism is an evil that permeates our society, and our Party is not immune from that. We have seen members make disgusting antisemitic comments and promote antisemitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories in relation to left wing discourses, particularly around Israel and Palestine, and capitalism and globalisation. They may be a small proportion of our membership, but one is too many. Recently Labour staff have seen examples of Holocaust denial, crude stereotypes of Jewish bankers, conspiracy theories blaming 9/11 on Israel, and even one individual who appeared to believe that Hitler had been misunderstood. Some comments and images propagating such antisemitic tropes have been posted in a number of Facebook groups. The majority of posts in Facebook groups that have been reported to us are made by people who are not Labour members. However, where the Party is notified of such posts made by Party members, we investigate and take action as appropriate. As Jeremy has said, we all have a responsibility to help drive this evil out of our movement. And, of course, the vast majority of members want to use Facebook groups and other forums to share ideas and experiences about campaigning, debate Party policies and discuss current affairs. Effective moderation is essential to providing welcoming and respectful environments in which such discussions can take place. We understand that you are engaging in these online communities voluntarily, and the sheer number of posts and comments may be hard to moderate. However, we would like to emphasise the utmost importance of ensuring that fellow party members and supporters feel welcome and respected, and of rooting out any antisemitism or otherwise discriminatory comments and behaviour. Here are suggestions about ways you can effectively moderate your groups to ensure that these online spaces do not tolerate or enable the promotion of antisemitic or otherwise hateful or discriminatory views. Add more administrators/moderators so that there is greater capacity to monitor posts and comments. Try to check posts and comments in the group every day, or more as required. Use Facebook’s group moderation options to create up to ten rules for your group. These should clearly set out that antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory content will not be tolerated and those making such comments will be removed from the group and reported to the Labour Party. Set the tone of the debate you’d like people to engage in: friendly, open-minded, fair and respectful. Take seriously all reports and complaints about comments which are seen as misogynist, racist, antisemitic, Islamophobic, homophobic, discriminatory towards people with disabilities, or otherwise prejudicial. Be proactive: screenshot then remove posts and conversations with antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory content, and block individuals from the group who post such content. Encourage group members to use the “Report to admin” feature, and take these reports seriously. Frequently review the reported content using Facebook’s moderation sidebar. Screenshot then delete posts with antisemitic or otherwise discriminatory content, and block the user responsible. Email complaints@labour.org.uk with screenshots and links to antisemitic or prejudicial comments or posts if you believe the individual who has posted them may be a Labour member so that this can be investigated by the Party. Change settings if necessary to allow administrators to approve or deny requests to join the group, so that you have greater control over who is in the group. Comment or post in the group regularly reminding people that posts or comments which include antisemitic or otherwise hateful or prejudicial content will be removed and the users will be blocked, and encourage members to report any posts they see which are offensive or inappropriate. Maintain a pinned post in the group explaining the above policies and emphasising the importance of maintaining a welcoming and respectful environment. To reiterate, please email complaints@labour.org.uk with screenshots and links to antisemitic or prejudicial comments or posts if you believe the individual who has posted them may be a Labour member. This will then be investigated by the Party. The Party will soon be launching a political education programme to foster deeper understanding and awareness of antisemitism within our movement. This will include videos and other online resources. We would greatly appreciate if you could share such content, once published, in Facebook groups and other forums, to help us raise greater awareness about this important issue. Please reply confirming receipt of this letter and confirming that the requests the Party has made will be adhered to. If they will not be adhered to, I request that you remove any reference to the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn from the title of your Facebook group. Please get in touch if you have any questions. Yours sincerely, Jennie Formby General Secretary The Labour Party

A Comedy of Errors from the Jewish Chronicle – Marcus Dysch in Another Fine Mess

Jewish Chronicle Report of Labour Against the Witch-hunt takes Fake News to Trump Levels

Dysch is a Zionist clown who confuses Moshe Machover with me - but at least he got Jackie Walker right!  

The Jewish Chronicle under Stephen Pollard, a former editor of the Daily Express, has been the main vehicle spearheading the fake anti-semitism witch-hunt.  Pollard is a member of the cold-war Henry Jackson society.  He is a far-Right Zionist whose concern over anti-semitism is entirely cynical.  Pollard has no hesitation in supporting anti-Semites like the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski on the condition that they are supportive of the Israeli state.

Debate between Pollard and Freedland in which Pollard supports a far-Right anti-Semitic Polish MEP Michal Kaminski on the grounds that he is an ardent supporter of Israel - today over 90% of fascist and anti-Semitic parties support Zionism and hate Jews

Marcus Dysch is the Jewish Chronicle’s Political Editor and a devoted Zionist.  Dysch seems to have chosen the wrong career.  He would have been much better suited to creative writing and fiction than news, which requires at least a modicum of truth.  His latest effort is an article ‘Labour activists to picket party’s Jew-hate hearings.’ 

What I wondered was a ‘Jew-hate’ hearing.  Is it something Jackie Walker and me are expected to go to where members of Labour’s National Constitutional Committee can tell us how much they hate us?  Hardly seems worthwhile going to let alone picketing.  Maybe our placards should say ‘Jew haters out of the Compliance Unit, McNicol out of Southside’ (Labour Party HQ).

Dysch and Pollard

Laurel and Hardy

Compared to Dysch, the previous Political Editor of the JC, Martin Bright, was a paragon of virtue.  In line with editor Stephen Pollard’s determination to take the JC down market and at the same time reduce its readership to the bare minimum, Dysch has decided that he will take to inventing the news.

The two photographs accompanying his piece are headed ‘Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker’.  However the photographs themselves are those of Moshe Machover and Jackie Walker.  I guess having got one of them right Dysch will be perfectly happy .  After all 50% is better than nothing!

Or perhaps Dysch was subconsciously trying to pay me a compliment by confusing me with Professor Machover. 

Dysch alleges we are fighting charges of ‘Jew hatred.’  Not true we are challenging fake allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance i.e. hatred of Zionism and Israel’s racist state.  Dysch however can’t even get the IHRA right.  He describes it as the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance. 

Marcus Dysch - not one of the great intellects in the Zionist firmament

The nice thing about the Jewish Chronicle is that it doesn’t pretend to be neutral.  The idea that there might be a Chinese wall between comment and news is quite a quaint concept at the JC.  Fact and fiction are mixed up with commentary with gay abandon.

Thus Dysch writes that Marc Wadsworth ‘was suspended from the party in July 2016 after verbally abusing Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish MP.’  No Mr Dysch, this is an allegation.  It is not yet proven.  Indeed film of the incident proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no abuse.  In most areas of the world you are innocent until proven guilty but at the house journal of Britain’s Zionists it is the opposite way round.  Dysch probably thought he was on the West Bank when he wrote the article and thought this was the same as Israeli style military justice where there is a 99.74% chance of being convicted.

But what is one lie amongst many?

Dysch also manages to get the date of my proposed hearing wrong, it was supposed to be the 26^th not the 25^th.  It is also untrue that I was suspended ‘for writing offensive blogs about Louise Ellman, another Jewish MP.’  The blog in question, Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces was written on 20^th June 2016 whereas I was suspended on March 18^th 2016.  Predicting the future is not one of the things that Crooked McNicol’s Compliance Unit is best known for.

Join Labour Against the Witchhunt and help organise a meeting in your CLP against McNicol's attack on supporters of Palestine

It is also untrue that we debated whether saying the United States is ‘servile’ to Israel is anti-Semitic.  It was accepted by virtually everyone at the meeting bar Gerry Downing, who came up with the phrase and Ian Donovan that of course it was anti-Semitic and also ludicrous.

What Dysch goes to great lengths to avoid telling his readers though is that the first half of the meeting was devoted to telling a small anti-Semitic group, Socialist Fight, that they were unwelcome in Labour Against the Witchhunt.  The reason being that they confuse the number of rich Jews in America with the reasons for American foreign policy namely its support for Israel.  Socialist Fight aren’t ‘Jew haters’ but their politics are without doubt anti-Semitic.

Looking on the bright side however, it is true that Dysch not only got the day of the meeting right but also the fact that Jackie and myself chaired the meeting!  He also correctly reported that Moshe Machover had been elected as Honorary President of LAW.  In the circumstances Dysch should be given a medal for at least getting some things right!  I therefore thought it only right that I write a letter congratulating him on these things.

Tony Greenstein 

Marcus Dysch,

Political and Creative Writing Editor,

The Jewish Chronicle,

28 St. Albans Lane
London NW11 7QE

mdysch@thejc.com

Dear Marcus,

Please allow me to congratulate you on your most recent article for the Jewish Chronicle, ‘Labour activists to picket party’s Jew-hate hearings.’  (12.1.18.).  It was, for you, a model of accuracy and perspicacity.

Not only did you get the date of the meeting of Labour Against the Witch-hunt correct but you also accurately reported the fact that Jackie Walker and myself chaired the meeting.  Indeed, you even managed to get right the fact that Moshe Machover was elected as Honorary President of LAW.

Unfortunately, from there on in it was all downhill. The caption to the photographs accompanying the article said ‘Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker’.  Unfortunately the photograph that was supposed to be me was in fact Moshe Machover.  I realise that compared to some of your howlers this was small beer but I thought I’d mention it all the same.

Similarly the Zionist IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ stands for International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (not International Holocaust Memorial Alliance). 

I know that you will think me churlish and pedantic but I was not suspended for ‘writing offensive blogs’ about Louise Ellman MP, the despicable supporter of the Israeli military’s child abuse. My blog Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces was written on 20^th June 2016 whereas I was suspended on March 18^th 2016.  To the best of my recollection, June usually comes after March in the calendar year unless there is a new Zionist calendar. I am also told that she is the MP for Tel Aviv South not North (as well as the part-time MP for Liverpool Riverside).

I realise that you made your mind up long ago that we were all guilty but Marc Wadsworth was not suspended from the Labour Party ‘after verbally abusing’ the detestable Ruth Smeeth MP.  This was an allegation that Marc denies so any journalist worth his salt would have put the words ‘alleged’ before your phrase.  I realise that in Israel’s military courts you are guilty until proven innocent (and just 0.26% of the accused are found not guilty) but in Britain the burden of proof is still on the prosecution to prove guilt.

I also note your curious header ‘(Labour) party’s Jew-hate hearings.’ Does this mean that when Jackie and I attend our hearings people are going to tell us how much they hate us because we are Jewish? I realise that you find the concept of journalistic ethics somewhat alien but could I remind you that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against us are denied?

You also got the date of my hearing and that of Marc Wadsworth wrong, but what is one mistake amongst so many?

Gerry Downing was not excluded because his website carried ‘anti-Zionist conspiracy theories ‘.  He and Socialist Fight were excluded because they were anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.  Anti-Semitism, White Supremacy and White Zionism aka Richard Spencer we leave to you and your Zionist bedfellows.

Can I also remind you that Jackie Walker was not suspended for comments about Jews being the chief financiers of the slave trade?  I realise, following the teachings of a certain Mr Goebbels that the more often you repeat a lie the easier it is to believe it, but the fact that Jackie did not include one word in what was a private conversation does not mean she subscribes to the view that Jews were the main  financial sponsors of slavery. Jews, being White, played a significant part but they were by no means the only people involved in this deathly trade.  Jackie was suspended for being a Black Jewish anti-Zionist.

Apart from these minor errors of fact your article was a model of accuracy.  You were also right to say that Professor Moshe Machover was reinstated to the Party but wrong to say there were any ‘concerns’ about the article he wrote.  It was a model of historical accuracy.

I never thought the day would come when I would begin to miss your predecessor as Political Editor, Martin Bright.  I hope you won’t take offence at my suggestion but have you ever considered writing fiction?  Creative writing can, I am told, be very fulfilling, personally and career wise.  I suspect with your imagination you would be a best seller.

With kind regards

Tony Greenstein

Vice-Chair