EXCLUSIVE - The Lies of Ruth Smeeth MP led to the suspension of Marc Wadsworth

Labour Against the Witchhunt Calls for an Inquiry as Smeeth's Claims of 25,000 Anti-Semitic Tweets are Shown to be Untrue

Smeeth has also been shown to be an informant for the US Embassy

Remember the Press Conference hosted by Shami Chakrabarti and Jeremy Corbyn on June 30^th 2016? It launched the Chakrabarti Report into Racism and Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.  Owing to the publicity-seeking antics of Ruth Smeeth, a right-wing Labour MP and officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, the main story that came out was about how a Labour MP had been subject to an anti-Semitic harangue by Marc Wadsworth.  So upset was Smeeth that the poor dear left the press conference in tears. This narrative has continued to hold sway despite the video evidence of the day.  It is an instructive story of how a media manufactured story can trump the facts.

Marc Wadsworth, a Black anti-racist activist of long standing had criticised Smeeth when he saw Kate McCann handing over a press release to Smeeth.  It was clear to those like John Pinar of the BBC and other journalists surrounding Smeeth that Wadsworth clearly didn’t know his place. His lack of deference was quite shocking.  After Kevin Schofield of Politics Home (a favourite contact with Labour Party leakers like Sam Matthews) and an ex-'journalist' on the Sun, who was sitting behind Smeeth, encouraged her to get up by saying 'I think this is antisemitism' , Smeeth, got up off her haunches and left.  Although we are told she was in tears the camera did not manage to capture any, not even crocodile ones.

What the camera did capture though were her words of haughty anguish  ‘Are you serious? How dare you, How dare you, how absolutely dare you’.  It was as if the mistress of the house was talking to her uppity Black slave.  Or maybe an insubordinate Black servant who didn't know his place. After a good 20 seconds during which she appeared to take advice she got up and left followed by the same journalists she was accused of briefing.  Marc of course was immediately demonised in the press and expelled from the Labour Party before being readmitted only to be suspended.

It was at the press conference to launch the Chakrabarti Report that Ruth Smeeth MP staged her tantrum and walk-out

This tantrum and the orchestrated hysterics which followed were deliberately designed to destabilise the Chakrabarti Report and focus attention once more on the false anti-Semitism narrative. 

Smeeth has been one of the key figures in the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement arguing that under  Corbyn the party has faced an “anti-semitism” crisis.  Smeeth claimed to be one of the prime victims of anti-Jewish abuse inside Labour. Smeeth alleged that she had personally received some 25,000 abusive messages online, most of them via Twitter, in a few days in June 2016, of which no less than 20,000 occurred within a 24 hour period.

Ruth Smeeth - an informant and possible US agent

These figures have always been suspect.  Why would 25,000 people single her out over her histrionics? It is now clear that Smeeth was deliberately lying.  Smeeth is no victim of antisemitism.  She is guilty of false victimhood.  Her purpose was to provide substance to the false anti-Semitism smears in the Labour Party, smears suspected to have originated in a deliberate campaign of destabilisation in the Israeli Embassy.  She was also an informant for the US Embassy.

Smeeth's orchestrated walk-out and tantrum was guaranteed to get maximum media coverage

There is one major problem with her claim. There is no easy way to see how it could possibly be true. A new study by the Community Security Trust, a Zionist charity, identified only 15,000 anti-semitic tweets for the whole of the UK in a 12-month period that included June 2016. Either the study was grossly flawed, or Smeeth is a bad liar.

Smeeth did huge damage both to Corbyn’s personal reputation and to the Labour party’s image. She claimed that Corbyn's followers were responsible for a wave of anti-semitism and that under his leadership the party was no longer ‘a safe space for British Jews’. A headline in the Standard quoted her saying: “I’ve never seen anti-semitism in Labour like this, it’s normal now.”

Such quotes were intended to undo the good work that the Chakrabarti report had done and damage the Labour Party. Their real purpose is to counter and undermine support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism.  The Chakrabarti Report found little evidence of anti-semitism in the party, but this was entirely sidelined, as was intended, by the media furore that ensued from Smeeth’s claims. 

The Jewish Labour Movement and the Zionist claim that ‘anti-Semitism’ is damaging Labour’s electoral prospects  is false. What has damaged Labour are these false reports of anti-Semitism. The kind of PR damage Smeeth caused the party may even have lost it a handful of seats at the last General Election – one of the closest-run in recent memory – allowing Theresa May’s Tories to stay in power.  Certainly Zionists like Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan wanted  Corbyn to lose.  Ryan even telling her electors that she understood why they trusted May more than Corbyn.

Much of the following information is taken from research by Dr Alan Maddison who has also written an article for Jewish Voice for Labour.

The public relations damage that Smeeth caused the Labour Party may even have lost it a handful of seats at the last General Election

Remember also the wider context. Labour’s Blairite bureaucrats have been waging a witch-hunt against Corbyn-supporting activists, many of them anti-Zionist Jews such as myself. We have been suspended and expelled on trumped-up charges either of anti-semitism or of damaging the party’s image.  The latest victim is the Secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour, Glyn Secker.

There can be absolutely no doubt that Smeeth did far more damage to the party’s image and standing through her allegations than any of these activists.

Will she be investigated? Will she be suspended? Will she even be criticised? Don’t hold your breath.

Evidence suggests Corbyn supporters may suffer the most abuse Dr Alan Maddison, 1^st March 2018

On-line abuse is unacceptable and causes psychological stress as well as offence and upset. There have been repeated allegations that Jeremy Corbyn supporters are the worst offenders. They are accused of frequently being abusive to Labour MPs who do not support him. Such claims are mostly anecdotal, made by those who contested his leadership, but still need to be explored.

However, recent studies suggest it is in fact the Labour MPs that have been loyal to Corbyn who get the most abuse.

Corbyn blamed for abuse received by Labour MPs opposed to his leadership

Jess Phillips asked Corbyn to distance himself from Momentum after complaining about alleged high levels of abuse against female Labour MPs (Huffington Post, 22^nd February 2017). 

Previously Phillips said that “Jeremy Corbyn should name and shame ‘ring leaders’ abusing MPs’ (Daily Telegraph, 16thAugust 2016). She also said that she had received 600 rape threats in one night, and a further 5000 twitter posts involving sexual abuse, though she did not relate these solely to Labour (Independent 31^st May 2016).         

Ruth Smeeth MP claimed to have received 20 000 abusive on-line messages within 12 hours of the Chakrabarti press conference, and a further 5000 in the following weeks (Guardian 2nd September 2016).  The implication was that these were mostly antisemitic and sent by supporters of Corbyn.  Smeeth said that antisemitism had become “normalised” in Labour and that under Corbyn there was “no safe space for British Jews” (Evening Standard, 20^th September 2016).

Referring to Smeeth’s allegations, Marie van der Zys, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said, “.....the party needs to drain the cesspit of antisemitism that has become so apparent in recent months” (Jewish Chronicle, 2^nd September 2016).

Despite these public attacks on Labour, we still don’t know how many of these abusive messages were antisemitic as implied, and what proportion were from Corbyn supporters.

A minority of Corbyn supporters may indulge in unacceptable abuse and even hold antisemitic views, but the Home Affairs Select Committee, in their report into antisemitism (October 2016), stated that, despite Smeeth’s contribution, they could find no convincing evidence that antisemitism was more prevalent in the Labour Party than in any other political party. The same lack of comparative evidence applies to other forms of abuse too.

In a recent study undertaken by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research group (1), the largest of its kind, it was clearly demonstrated that contrary to repeated claims, people on the Far Left and Left of politics have a low prevalence of strong antisemitic attitudes (3.6%), and that this prejudice is indistinguishable from those from the rest of the political spectrum, except for those on the Far Right, where it is around 4 times higher (13%). You would expect manifestations of  antisemitic abuse to correlate with antisemitic attitudes, and despite their small population size, the Far right has indeed been identified repeatedly as responsible for 60-70% anti-Semitic incidents motivated by political reasons, as reported by the Community Security Trust charity (2) shown below. Labour Party member perpetrators were never identified in these annual reports.

                 

Given this evidence, we have to ask whether these repeated and damaging allegations about Corbyn supporter and antisemitic abuse represent the true picture. Three prospective, well-designed, studies into on-line abuse are reviewed below and may help provide the answers to these questions.

1. Azmina Dhrodia, Amnesty Global Insights, September 4^th 2017 (3)

This study involved tracking on-line abuse for 177 female MPs over the 6 month period from 1^st January to 1^st June 2017. Of the total of 900 223 tweets received in total, 25 658 (2.85%) were judged abusive.

Below are the top five women MPs receiving the most abuse. There were two Corbyn supporter victims, with Diane Abbott MP getting around 8 times more abuse than the other four.  

                                                      

                                                                                          Amnesty Global Insights, 2017

We don’t know who the abusers were, apart from the fact they engaged in these on-line political exchanges, but it is likely many were members of political parties. As there are far more members in Labour (around 550 000) than any other political party, and as over 62% of these previously voted for Corbyn, it is likely that Corbyn supporters would dominate the membership participation in on-line exchanges. Yet as they are unlikely to attack the few Corbyn supporting MPs it seems reasonable to say that Corbyn supporters probably generate less on-line abuse than those supporting his critics, despite their greater numbers.

Jess Phillips is the only anti-Corbyn MP in the top 5, and got only 1/8^th of the abuse to which Diane Abbott was subjected, which also rather argues against Corbyn supporters issuing most of the abusive tweets.

Some complained that at last year’s Labour Conference Corbyn referred to Diane Abbott’s online abuse, rather than the alleged antisemitic abuse. However, none of the Jewish female Labour MPs appeared in the top 5. This means that they each had less than 1000 abusive tweets over the whole 6 month period, or less than 5.5 per day. This is a surprising result, given Ruth Smeeth’s  allegation that she had received 20 000 abusive messages in one day alone in 2016 , which is almost three times higher than received by Diane Abbott (by far the top scorer in this study) over the full 6 months. Perhaps Ruth Smeeth’s 20 000 abusive tweets were generated by robotic accounts and not genuine Corbyn supporters?

Jess Phillips, who claimed to have previously received 5000 ‘sexually abusive’ tweets, only received a total of 1002 abusive tweets over the 6 months of this study, an average of about 5.5 total abusive tweets per day.

Although abuses can spike significantly relating to specific events, it must be reassuring for those concerned that over the full 6 months period anti-Corbyn and Jewish MPs seem to have been rather spared. On the other hand it is of concern that Corbyn supporting MPs suffered more abuse than others, and that this is rarely mentioned in the media or the Labour Party itself.

A further analysis in this Amnesty study was made over the 6 week period up to the General Election. As shown below, we see with Angela Rayner’s inclusion there were 3/5 Corbyn supporting MPs in the top five and none of the Labour MPs opposing him.       

Over the 6 months 25 658 abusive tweets were generated by 16 707 perpetrators, the highest rate was 236 abusive tweets over 6 months from one person. The average was 1.5 abusive tweets over 6 months per perpetrator, indicating these are not chronic repeat abusers as the media has often implied. 

There was apparently insufficient data to analyse the influence of religion, but Black and Asian MPs received 35% more abuse than White MPs even when Dianne Abbott’s data was removed as shown below.     

Racist abuse is related to racial prejudice, and racial prejudice has been repeatedly shown to be about twice as prevalent with right-wing voters than with Labour voters. Labour Party members have a strong tradition as being anti-racist too, and it is reasonable to consider that such on-line abuse to Black and Asian MPs has probably come largely from those on the Right, who strangely get very little media attention.

For the full 6 months period of this study, Corbyn supporting MPs, dominated by Diane Abbott, received 76% of abuse in the top five group, and 88% in the 6 week run up to the General Election.  These findings totally contradict the allegations made in the media and by anti-Corbyn MPs.

This study involved female MPs only, but in the next study (McGoughlin and Ward) on-line abuse to all MPs were analysed.

2.     Liam Mcloughlin and Stephen Ward,  ECPR, 25th-29th April 2017  (4)

This earlier study into on-line abuse ran for 6 weeks from 14^th November 2016 to 28^th January 2017, and involved 573 MPs.  

The Table below shows the top 50 MPs having the most abuse.

Jeremy Corbyn is at the head of this list, receiving over twice the abuse of Theresa May.

If we include Corbyn, his 3 supporters (Diane Abbott, Clive Lewis, Richard Burgon), and those 3 previously cooperating with him (Andy Burnham, Sarah Champion, and Ed Miliband), then these seven had 1203 abusive tweets. Those 6 opposing Corbyn (Chukka Umunna, Ben Bradshaw, Owen Smith, Chris Bryant, David Lammy and Jess Phillips) had a total of 718 abusive tweets.

As for the Amnesty study, these results demonstrate more abuse received by Corbyn and his team (63% of abuse to all Labour MPs in top 50) than those Labour MPs opposing him.

Of the 20/650 (3.1%) Jewish MPs in Parliament today, Ed Miliband was the only one included in the  top 50 for abuse in this study, taking a proportionate share of 161/4761 top 50 abusive tweets (3.4%), though this is not necessarily related to his being Jewish. None of the other 19 Jewish MPs appear in the top 50. So Ruth Smeeth, Louise Ellman, Luciana Berger who have frequently complained about significant anti-Semitic abuse, must have received less than 50 abusive tweets (anti-Semitic or otherwise) over these 8 weeks.

The total of 6,952 abusive tweets came from 4,775 twitter accounts, and only 28 accounts sent more than 10 abusive tweets.  Once more the media stereotype of chronic   “keyboard warrior” abusers was exposed as false.  Most abuse occurred as a reaction to an MP tweet rather than being planned in advance.  Specific events could trigger spikes of abuse, and Anna Soubry mentions this in relation to the abuse she received over her Remain position when discussing brexit, including death threats. As around 88% of Labour Party members voted Remain, it is unlikely they contributed significantly to this abuse about brexit received by Anna Soubry.

Another finding contradicted the media theme that female MPs received more abuse than their male colleagues. For male MPs 3% of their tweets were abusive, for female MPs this was 1.7%, although female Mps did receive more gender –related “hate “ messages.

The authors of this study make quite a number of observations, including that the number of MPs receiving abuse may not have increased over recent years as many have claimed, just that letters may have been replaced by social media as a medium, allowing a greater volume.

They also make the important point that we need to understand what is motivating such abuse, rather than just analysing the symptom itself. The ‘political news packaging’ by the media, becoming more punchy and emotive, with more polarisation and populism, they say, leads to a more extreme and divided climate in political journalism.

3.     “Antisemitic Content on Twitter”, 2018 Community Security Trust (5)

In this recently published study by the Community Security Trust (5) it was revealed that for the whole UK, over a 12 month period (from October 2015 to October 2016), according to the criteria employed, there were 2.7 million tweets concerning Jews, of which only 15575 (0.6%) were considered to be antisemitic. The authors found this low proportion rather reassuring.

This study covered the period in which Smeeth claimed that she herself had received 25,000 abusive messages, mostly on twitter, with 20,000 of these sent over a single 12 hour period. 

The problem is that such a large number of antisemitic tweets, allegedly received by Smeeth, were not picked up in the CST survey which ran throughout that same period. In fact the maximum peaks the CST team found were around 200 antisemitic tweets a day, and that was for the whole UK.

While it is possible that not all of Smeeth’s tweets included the antisemitic key words used in the CST search, it seems unlikely that less than 1% of them did.

More abuse seems to come from those opposing Corbyn

Many allegations of abusive behaviour have been made against supporters of Corbyn. The findings of these three studies suggest there was far less on-line abuse detected, including antisemitism, than would have been expected from the previous allegations. 

Furthermore, those MPs opposing Corbyn received less abuse than those loyal to him. This suggests that it is individuals in the groups that do not support Corbyn that are generating the most on-line abuse, which is the opposite of what had been claimed.

This is not surprising.  Corbyn and the Left has received a volume of never ending abuse from the Tory tabloid press and it is no surprise that this has encouraged abuse on social media.

Phillips once observed that she found left wing men were the worst sexists. This is a strange generalisation from somebody who claims to fight abuse!  Phillips also threatened to “knife Corbyn in the front” and allegedly brags about telling Diane Abbott to F***K off.

More recently, Smeeth is reported to have spoken at a Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) meeting at the Labour Party Conference in September 2017 (Jewish Times of Israel, 4th September 2017 ), about the need to “break and destroy” the leaders of this alleged Labour Party antisemitism. Words such as   “break and destroy” could be taken as an incitement to violence against fellow Labour members. In addition, Ella Rose, the Director of the JLM, was filmed threatening to physically attack the anti-racist supporter of Palestinian human rights, Jackie Walker (6).

Such comments from members of the JLM, an affiliate to the Labour Party, would be considered abusive by most people, yet complaints by Corbyn supporters have been ignored. 

According to McLoughlin and Ward, on-line abuse is encouraged by the sort of aggressive, emotive and divisive language described above.

Abusive behaviour, including that motivated by antisemitism, exists across society and all political parties. But there is no justification for allegations that abusive behaviour, or antisemitism, is more prevalent amongst Corbyn supporters than other Labour members, or indeed the general population. The allegation that most of Smeeth’s abusive messages were sent by Corbyn supporters has no foundation in fact.

The ‘training’ sessions currently run by the JLM are contrary to the recommendations of the Chakrabarti Report.  They are inappropriate. The JLM is an openly Zionist grouping, i.e. it supports the worlds only ethno-nationalist state, Israel, which is a segregated and apartheid society where Palestinian Arabs are institutionally discriminated against.

Given the serious electoral and reputational consequences for the Labour Party, its leader, and indeed the possible impact on millions of Labour voters too, it seems important that the Labour Party undertake a full and urgent investigation into the evidence for the damaging allegations and criticisms that continue to be made by MPs opposing Corbyn.

References  

1. Anti-Semitism in contemporary Great Britain” by Daniel L Staetsky, September 2017 http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/JPR.2017.Antisemitism_in_contemporary_Great_Britain.pdf

2. Anti-Semitic Incidents Report, Community Security Trust, 2017. https://cst.org.uk/data/file/f/c/Antisemitic_Incidents_Report_Jan-June_2017.1501074748.pdf

3.  Unsocial Media: Tracking Twitter Abuse against Women MPs, Azmina Dhrodia September 4th 2017

 Amnesty Global Insights.

https://medium.com/@AmnestyInsights/unsocial-media-tracking-twitter-abuse-against-women-mps-fc28aeca498a

4. Liam McLoughlin and Stephen Ward, April 25-29 2017, European Consortium of Political Research Joint Sessions, University of Nottingham, Nottingham

https://ecpr.eu/Filestore/PaperProposal/4f8bacf9-27a8-44b3-9132-dd5fa9fdf70f.pdf

5. “Antisemitic Content on Twitter”, 2018 Community Security Trust (cst.org.uk)

https://cst.org.uk/news/blog/2018/02/22/new-publication-antisemitic-content-on-twitter

6.  “Ella Rose (Israeli Martial Artist) Wanting to Take Out Jackie Walker #Israel Lobby JLM”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx6t01PHaLA

See also Recent studies question whether attacks on Corbyn supporters were ever justified

Justin Welby, The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Idiocies

ISIS like Zionism is a Secular Group that Uses Religion as Its Cloak

Justin Welby, who came from the City of London, is one of the more reactionary Archbishops of Canterbury.  Nonetheless that is no excuse for his comments as reported in Friday's Telegraph.

ISIS did not come about because a group of Islamic theologians sat down and having examined the sacred texts decided that a murderous head chopping death cult was required.  It was the product of particular circumstances such as the invasion of Iraq and the death of upwards of a million people there.  It caused a murderous reaction to the United State’s barbarities that unfortunately echoed it.  It is well known that the senior military ranks of ISIS are staffed by secular Ba’athists from Saddam Hussein.  It is also well known that amongst ISIS’s followers there is widespread ignorance of the most basic aspects of Islam.

See e.g. Leaked Isis documents reveal recruits have poor grasp of Islamic faith  Recruits ordered 'The Koran for Dummies' and 'Islam for Dummies' to prepare for jihad

Political movements often take on a religious colouring in order to legitimise themselves.  Zionism was a classic example.  Its origins were wholly secular.  Theodor Herzl its founding father had once proposed mass conversion of Jews to Catholicism.  His son wasn’t even circumcised!  It is well known that the founding fathers of Zionism based their claim to Palestine on a God whose existence they denied!

Welby’s comments on the ‘Judaeo Christian” roots of British culture to find solutions to the mass disenchantment which led to the Brexit vote in the UK and the rise of anti-establishment leaders on the continent’ suggest the Archbishop would do well to think before opening his mouth.  What Judaeo-Christian culture?  The Spanish Inquisition, Martin Luther’s ‘the Jews are our misfortune’ or perhaps the slaughter of 1.5 million Jews before the Crusaders had even set out?  It was Saladin and the Muslims who protected the Jewish community in Palestine from this supposed “Judaeo Christian” culture.  Or maybe it was the teachings that the Jews killed Christ that Welby referred to?  It just shows that being a complete idiot is no bar to the highest post in the Church of England.  What matters is that you know the right people.

Welby says that saying ISIS has nothing to do with Islam is like saying that’ Christian militia in the Central African Republic are nothing to do with Christianity, or Hindu nationalist persecution of Christians in South India is nothing to do with Hinduism.’  Welby is right.   Christian militia in the CAR does have nothing to do with Christianity.  If it did have something to do with them presumably Britain and other European countries might also have Christian militias.  Likewise with the persecution of Christians in South India.  This is not Hinduism but extreme nationalism and racism in the name of Hinduism.  Similarly the Buddhist religion, which is known to be peaceful, provides a cloak for murderous Sinhalese nationalism in Sri Lanka.

Tony Greenstein 

A small victory – I have been told the basis of my suspension!

 Labour Party is prepared to spend nearly £30K a year on a new Compliance Administrator

We can gauge New Labour’s attitude to civil liberties and the rights of the accused by the fact that it has taken two whole months before Labour’s Acting Organiser in the South of England, Harry Gregson, let me know what the basis of the charges against me are.

Labour's hapless General Secretary Iain McNicol - appointed by Miliband and sidelined thereafter

Of course 3 terse lines hardly comply with the duty of disclosure.

When the Police charged me with assaulting a violent Zionist in the course of the Sodastream protests I received full statements, documentation, film etc.  They eventually dropped charges.  That was also my experience when charged with the heinous offence of making an unauthorised collection on behalf of PSC (a collecting tin on a stall!).  In that case I was acquitted but again there was reams of paper.  Labour's Inquisition is sparse indeed.

When it comes to the instant suspensions from the Labour Party there is a point blank refusal to disclose anything, other than the practice that Blair and Alistair Campbell developed to perfection, i.e. leaking to friends in the press, in this case The Telegraph and Times.

Out go my crimes of referring to ‘Zio idiots’ and ‘Zionist scum’ as well as comparisons between the Nuremberg Laws and Israel’s marriage laws.  Preferably wiser counsels concluded that expelling me for quoting the greatest Jewish political philosopher of the last century, Hannah Arendt, was maybe not such a good idea.

Extracts from the press and their retractions

The 3 offences that I am so far charged with are:

1.         Describing the IRA attack on Thatcher as ‘obviously legitimate’.  Well the IRA were at war with the British and attempting to assassinate Thatcher, the effective commander of the British forces was obviously legitimate in the eyes of the IRA.  Let us remember that the British Army was working via its Forces Research Unit with Loyalist Death Squads who targeted completely innocent Catholics as well as people like the solicitor Demond Finucane and Sinn Fein politicians like Gerry Adams.  That was legitimate.  Given that Thatcher personally sent 750 men to their deaths on the General Belgrano, despite it steaming away from the Falklands and then her support for General Pinochet, who was responsible for the torture and murder of thousands of Chilean socialists, communists and democrats I wouldn’t have shed many tears at her demise.

2.         The second charge that Zionism is a form of Jewish anti-Semitism is a fact.  That is how Jews rightly saw it.

3.         The comment ‘'spot on re the Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.' Gives me problems as I don’t know to who I said this.  Was it in respect of Livingstone or before.   But yes the Zionist movement did indeed collaborate with the Nazis.

So although this is a step forward it is clearly not enough.

An ideal job but this fixed term contract thing seems very anti-worker to me

However given my experience at their hands I am tempted to apply for the job of Compliance Administrator.  Clearly given the number of new suspensions the    Compliance Unit is overworked and there is a need for more hands on the deck of what is, by all accounts, an extremely inefficient department.  I am sure my candidacy will be welcomed by all!  Clearly the Labour Party is in no need of extra funds if it has money to waste on jobs like this.

Harry Gregson celebrating Mrs Windsor's 90 years on state benefits - clearly no republican he!

After 2 months I've been given a glimpse of the pretext 4 my suspension

 

On 16 May 2016 at 09:24, Harry Gregson <harry_gregson@labour.org.uk> wrote:

Dear Mr Greenstein,

Thank you for your letter. You were suspended from the Labour Party as it was alleged you breached Labour Party membership rules by acting in a way that was grossly detrimental to the Party. This specifically related to the comments below that you were alleged to have made:

- 'The attack on Thatcher by the IRA was obviously legitimate. She was a military target'

- 'Zionism is a Jewish version of anti-Semitism'

- 'spot on re the Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.'

These comments were the trigger for your suspension and will form part of the interview. However you will also have the opportunity to respond to any other evidence that I have discovered throughout the investigation so far.

Please can you let me know if you are now prepared to meet for an interview? I can come to Brighton if necessary.

Best wishes

Harry

 Harry Gregson

Acting Regional Director, Labour South East

07872 417312

---

On 13 May 2016 at 16:51, Harry Gregson <harry_gregson@labour.org.uk> wrote:

Dear Mr Greenstein,

I am writing to inform you that I will be carrying out the investigation on behalf of the Labour Party into the circumstances that resulted in your suspension from the Party.

I will be conducting interviews with witnesses and I will also need a time when you are available for an interview. You are entitled to bring along a 'silent friend', as am I, they must be a Party member and they cannot intervene in the interview in any way. Please provide me with the name of your ‘silent friend’ prior to the interview so I can ensure they meet these requirements. I also attach the NEC advice note on carrying out such an investigation for your information.

At the interview you can also request I interview anyone else you deem important to this investigation.

I am proposing holding this interview on Saturday 21^st May in Ergon House, Horseferry Road, SW1P 2AL.

Please can you let me know if you can make this date and if so what time works for you and I will try and accommodate it.  

Best wishes,

Harry Gregson

Acting Regional Director, Labour South East

Sent by email from the Labour Party, promoted by Iain McNicol on behalf of The Labour Party, both at Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QT Website: www.labour.org.uk to join or renew call 0345 092 2299.

Sent by email from the Labour Party, promoted by Iain McNicol on behalf of The Labour Party, both at Southside, 105 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 6QT Website: www.labour.org.uk to join or renew call 0345 092 2299.

16^th May 2016

Dear Mr Gregson,

At last, after nearly two months of being suspended, I have finally been given a glimmer of the reasons as to why I have been suspended.

I would now like to receive the full allegations, i.e. date, time and surrounding discussions, so that I can see when these quotations were allegedly said and what the context of these remarks were.  In other words the full body of evidence surrounding what are bare quotations.

I will receive this anyway via the Subject Access Request that I have submitted so it would make sense on your part to send me the full information now rather than waiting the statutory 40 days.  I cannot think of any reason whatsoever to continue to withhold such information from me.  If this were a court of law they would grant full disclosure without a second's thought unless you are claiming national security considerations for so doing.

I also note that the allegations of comparing Israel’s law on marriage to those of the Nuremberg Laws, as reported in the Telegraph and The Times appear to have been dropped.  I would be curious to know why.

You say that these remarks were the trigger for my suspension and that I will have the opportunity to respond to any further evidence that you have discovered.  Again I wish to be informed as to what evidence you  believe you have uncovered in advance of my interview with you and again the surrounding context.

Assuming that you agree to a full disclosure of the information I have requested I will of course be happy to meet with you at a mutually agreed time and place.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Daily Telegraph Prints Letter Rebutting Allegation of anti-Semitism

If the Labour Party Compliance Unit Can Leak Details of My Suspension to the Tory Press Why Can't They Send it to Me?

I am pleased to say that the Daily Telegraph, which on April 2nd led with the 'exclusive' that 'Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour in latest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party' has now, in addition to retracting the charge itself, printed my letter refuting all suggestions that I am anti-Semitic.

Of course I did have to make it clear that the original story was defamatory and if necessary, m'learned friends might wish to take this further!

The Telegraph also retracted all suggestions that I was anti-Semitic

It will be interesting to see if the Witch-hunting (Compliance) Unit of the Labour Party will now release the 'evidence' as to why they believe I am anti-Semitic.  Possibly m'learned friends will have to help them in that task too, since they don't seem to be very keen on transparency in Labour Party HQ.  Given that Cameron's now revealed the sordid details of his tax returns, possibly a little openess in the Labour Party would not go amiss?

Tony Greenstein

Comparing Zionists or Israel to Nazis is Anti-Semitic – Isn’t It?

One of the main crimes that I am apparently accused of in my suspension from the Labour Party [I haven't been informed of them by the Labour Party but by the Daily Telegraph and The Times] is that I compared Israel’s marriage laws to the Nazi Nuremberg Laws.  

The coin that the Nazis struck on the return from a 6 month visit to Palestine by Baron von Mildestein - head of the Jewish section of the Gestapo - he was a guest of the Labour Zionist kibbutzim

In Activist who derides critics as 'Zionist scum' admitted to Labour inlatest anti-Semitism scandal to hit Party The Telegraph wrote that I had written that ‘Jews supported the Nuremberg laws’.  The Telegraph had confused ‘Zionists’ with ‘Jews’.  There is no doubt historically that the German Zionist Federation did support the Nuremberg Laws.

In the printed version of the Telegraph it alleged that I had ‘compared Israel’s views on inter-racial marriage to the Nazi party’s Nuremberg laws on race.’

Daily Telegraph 2.9.16. 'Corbyn told to exorcise anti-Semitism in his party'

The  Times wrote that I had compared an Israeli soldier, who 50,000 Israelis had proposed for a military award to the honour attached to the SS.  

The Times, 2.4.16. 'Labour welcomes back blogger who compares Israelis to Nazis'

And telling the truth is anti-Semitic

Indeed I did both of these things.  The soldier, Elor Azarya, deliberately shot in the head a Palestinian who had stabbed a soldier, when he was lying wounded on the ground, already severely injured by a bullet.  The Palestinian had been shot but not killed.  Elor Azarya told another   soldier that he ‘deserved to die.’  Later inspection of the soldier’s Facebook page revealed he was a supporter of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, who founded Kach, a neo-Nazi Jewish terrorist group.  Kach campaigns for the compulsory expulsion of Palestinians from Israel and for imprisoning Palestinian males who have sexual relations with Jews (just as with the Nazis, it isn’t an offence if it is a Jewish male having sex with a non-Jew). 

In Israel though the soldier is not considered a murderer, other than by 5% of the Jewish population.  A full 57% believe his actions, deliberately executing a wounded Palestinian, were justified, even though the soldier was in no danger.  50,000 people have signed a petition calling for him to be given a medal!

How do I plead to all these charges?  Absolutely guilty.  But it wasn’t me who compared Israel’s racial laws to the Nazi’s Nuremberg laws.  That honour belongs to the greatest political philosopher in the last century, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany by the name of Hannah Arendt.  In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem – The Banality of Evil she compared Israel’s marriage laws, which prevent a Jew marrying a non-Jew (because there is deliberately no civil marriage in Israel) to the Nuremberg laws, which also forbade the marriage of a Jew with an ‘Aryan’.  She wrote:

Hannah Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem - The Banality of Evil p.7 compares the prohibition of marriage between Jew & non-Jew in Israel to the forbidding of marriage or sexual relations between Jew & 'Aryan' in Nazi Germany

 But it was even worse.  As Francis Nicosia, the Raul Hilberg Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University noted, Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai and editor of Labour Zionism’s daily paper, Davar, second only to David Ben-Gurion, saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”. [Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.91]

Francis Nicosia, Zionism & Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p. 91.

The Zionists were a tiny minority amongst German Jews, most of whom were horrified at the formation of a Nazi government on January 30 1933.   The reaction of Jews internationally was equally one of horror and they determined on an international Boycott of Nazi Germany.  The Zionists, both in Germany and internationally were fiercely opposed to a Boycott.  Instead they concluded, in August 1933, a trade agreement, Ha'avara with Nazi Germany.

The German Zionist Federation wrote to Hitler in June 1933 (they never got an answer)  that:

‘On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race... fruitful activity for the fatherland is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group…. The realisation of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build. [Lucy Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.150-153]

Excerpts from letter the German Zionist Federation wrote to Hitler

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, the President of the ZVfD and later Vice-Chairman of the World Jewish Congress, wrote an article ‘Zionism Under the Nazi Government’ in The Young Zionist, November 1937 (cited in Lenni Brenner, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators, p. 52) that:

‘Everyone in Germany knew that only the Zionists could responsibly represent the Jews in dealing with the Nazi government.  We all felt sure that one day the government would arrange a round table conference with the Jews… there was no country in the world which tried to solve the Jewish problem as seriously as did Germany… It was our Zionist dream!… Dissimilation?  It was our own appeal!…’ [Joachim Prinz, ‘Zionism under the Nazi Government’, Young Zionist, London Nov. 1937 p.18].     

Rabbi Joachim Prinz, President of the German Zionist Federation and later Vice-Chairman of the World Jewish Congress

So my disciplinary hearing faces a problem.  Is it going to constitute itself as a historical investigation?  Surely not something it is equipped to do or is it going to make it an expulsion offence under the Labour Party's rules to tell the truth on a matter of historical fact?

Tony Greenstein