Jewish Chronicle Columnist Geoffrey Alderman Nails the Lie that Corbyn is an anti-Semite

The Goebbels/Pollard Technique of Repeating a Falsehood Does Not Make it True

Every week without fail there is another story in the Jewish Chronicle campaign to ‘prove’ that Jeremy Corbyn’s is anti-Semitic. Its editor, Stephen Pollard, is a former editor of the Daily Express and a member of the cold war Henry Jackson Society, a virulently Islamaphobic organisation whose Associate Director is the racist Douglas Murray.

Geoffrey Alderman is a right-wing eccentric and Zionist. He has been a columnist at the Jewish Chronicle since 2002. He is also an academic at the private University of Buckingham. He was rightly condemned when he wrote that ‘Few events... have caused me greater pleasure in recent weeks than news of the death of the Italian so-called "peace activist" Vittorio Arrigoni.’ Vittorio’ was a member of the International Solidarity Movement who was murdered in Gaza.

Geoffrey Alderman

He was once a member of the Board of Deputies but left to the sound of booing and hissing and was called a ‘communal gadfly’ a title that he has somewhat taken to heart since he has compiled an anthology of his writings based on this description.

Alderman’s primary claim to fame is as a Jewish historian. His book The Jewish Community in British Politics was the subject of a concerted effort by the Board of Deputies to persuade him to excise certain parts concerning racism in the Jewish community and in particular that nearly 2% of Hackney Jews had voted for the neo-Nazi National Front.

Above the Zionist Attack on the Labour Party 

When the Anti-Nazi League, a mass anti-fascist group, was created in 1977 to meet the challenge of a growing National Front, which had attracted over 100,000 votes in the GLC elections and large votes in local elections in cities such as Leicester and Bradford, the Board of Deputies attacked it, with what Maurice Ludmer, editor of Searchlight Anti-fascist Magazine described as

‘"all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots... It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerun of the 1930's, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era.’ [Searchlight 41, November 1978]

Another non-story in the Jewish Chronicle - its enemies always 'rant' - the poor dear above had to be 'consoled' after having been told by John Prescott a few home truths

Alderman was one of the few prominent British Jews who criticised the Board of Deputies for attacking the ANL rather than the fascists.

Another non-story in the Jewish Chronicle - they hate the idea that Corbyn meets Jews aren't part of the Zionist clique

What is remarkable about the current wave of anti-Semitism hysteria is the almost complete unanimity of the Zionists about Labour’s non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ and in particular Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’.

The lynch mob has been led by Stephen Pollard. Writing in 2019 in the Daily Mail he stated that ‘It took me a long time before I felt it appropriate to describe Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite.’ This is such a blatant lie that it is a wonder that Pollard's nose hasn’t already grown to twice its size!

Even before Corbyn was elected as Labour leader the Jewish Chronicle was accusing him of consorting with holocaust deniers, such as Paul Eisen. 

All the major Jewish news papers sing the same song - is it any wonder that many Jews respond that 'antisemitism' is a worry though individually they never experience it?

Last July, in their United We Stand editorials, the 3 major Zionist papers in Britain accused Corbyn of posing an ‘existential threat to Jewish life in this country’.  Who else but an anti-Semite could do this?

The Foreign Editor of the Jewish News, Stephen Oryszczuk heavily criticised the joint editorial in an interview with Canary saying that

‘The question is whether there is an intention to taint him. Some are certainly out to get him, but without revealing sources, all I can say is that it’s sometimes questionable where these things come from.’ Oryszczuk described what happened as a ‘character assassination.’

One of the emails sent out weekly by Pollard

Oryszczuk was immediately put on ‘sick leave’ and has I understand been forced out.

Alderman has never been one to pull his punches. In the Spectator he has written a devastating critique of the idea that Corbyn is anti-Semitic.

Freedland and Finkelstein join hands to demonise Corbyn

Alderman first takes issue with Danny Finkelstein, The Times Associate Editor and Tory Peer, who was a Board Member of the Gatestone Institute. The GI promotes Tommy Robinson, Geert Wilders and a whole host of racists, fascists and Islamaphobes. The Gatestone Institute, which is funded by American billionaire Nina Rosenwald, the “sugar mama of anti-Muslim hate”, described Robinson as ‘a British free-speech activist and Islam critic.’ I hate to think what they might have called Hitler. A Jew critic?

Finkelstein criticised Corbyn for not having condemned the anti-Semitism of John Hobson when Corbyn reviewed his book, ‘Imperialism: A Study’ 8 years ago. Alderman is absolutely right when he writes that ‘There was absolutely no need for Corbyn to have drawn attention to them in his foreward.’ It was as he points out 10 lines in a 400 page book.

Pollard has been waging a non-stop war against Corbyn for over 3 years

Alderman demolishes the Chair of Labour Friends of Israel, Joan Ryan MP’s fatuous assertion that

‘‘Over the past three years… the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism. This problem simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader.’  

Alderman points out that ‘leading socialist activists – for instance Sidney and Beatrice Webb’ were ‘unashamed exponents’ of anti-Semitism.  Sydney Webb described the European continental parties as ‘Jew ridden’ but fortunately this wasn’t true in the British Labour Party because ‘there’s no money in it.’ Alderman was clear:

‘The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives’

and then proceeds to reel off a whole long list of examples of where Corbyn has supported local Jewish initiatives such as saving the cemetery of the West London synagogue from the developers. Writing that

‘I could fill this entire article with a list of philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has signed since he was first elected as Labour MP for Islington North in 1983.’

Alderman ‘deliberately omitted from this discussion any consideration of Corbyn’s attitude to Zionism and whether anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.’ and he concludes that ‘the grounds for labelling him an anti-Semite simply do not exist.’

Which is a pretty damning indictment of the fallacious and dishonest campaign mounted by people like Pollard, who is the Joseph Goebbels of the British Jewish community.  Pollard has turned the JC into a Zionist propaganda rag and its circulation has dropped like a stone to less than 20,000, many of them given away.  Which is why the JC is facing severe financial problems.

Pollard made his reasons for mounting the fake anti-Semitism campaign against Corbyn crystal clear last year.  In an article Labour's new guidelines show it is institutionally antisemitic Pollard attacked the attempt to remove or neutralise some of the examples of the IHRA. The problem was that

‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

As we always said the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was about Israel not anti-Semitism. This has always been Pollard and the Board of Deputies’s only concern. If Corbyn had been genuinely anti-Semitic but pro-Zionist then Pollard would have raised no objection to Corbyn.

In just the same way, the execrable Margaret Hodge has become a hero to the Jewish Chronicle. This is the same Hodge of whom Pollard wrote in the Daily Express that ‘it’s difficult to imagine a more blatant, shameful and utterly contemptible piece of two-faced hypocrisy than the behaviour of Margaret Hodge. ” Except that he wasn’t describing her attack on Jeremy Corbyn as a ‘fucking anti-Semite.’

Of course Pollard’s description of Hodge could not be bettered when it comes to his own behaviour and his selective attitude to anti-Semitism.

When in 2009 the Tories left the European Peoples Party in the European Parliament they formed the European Conservative Reform Group. However the parties that were included in this group included the anti-Semitic Polish Law and Justice Party and Latvia’s For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK. This met with a lot of criticism.

Jonathan Freedland, who was then more vocal about genuine anti-Semitism wrote that ‘there was a time when no self-respecting British politician would have gone anywhere near such people’. He described how Michal Kaminski, the Chairman of the ECR,

began his career in the National Rebirth of Poland movement, inspired by a 1930s fascist ideology that dreamed of a racially pure nation. Even today, the PiS slogan is "Poland for Poles", understood to be a door slammed in the face of non-Catholics. In 2001 he upbraided the president for daring to apologise for a 1941 pogrom in the town of Jedwabne which left hundreds of Jews dead. Kaminski said there was nothing to apologise for – at least not until Jews apologised for what he alleged was the role Jewish partisans and Jewish communists had played alongside the Red Army in Poland.’

Freedland also pointed out that members of the Latvian LNNK party

 ‘have played a leading part in the annual parade honouring veterans of the Latvian Legion of the Waffen-SS. Lest we forget, the SS were the crack troops of Nazi genocide; the Latvian Legion included conscripts, but at least a third were volunteers, among them men with the blood of tens of thousands of Jews on their hands. It is in honour of those killers that Cameron's new buddies march through the streets of Riga.’

When it comes to a genuine anti-Semite Pollard is all over him like a rash

Pollard you might think would have lambasted the Tories, such is his concern about anti-Semitism. Not a bit of it. The same man who damns Corbyn wrote a response defending Kaminski. Kaminski was

‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’

Because Kaminski was a strong supporter of Israel he had to be supported.  And this is the dilemma of Zionism. Most anti-Semites love Israel. The neo-Nazi founder of America’s alt Right, Richard Spencer, even describes himself as a White Zionist and Tommy Robinson described himself as a proud Zionist. So did Norway’s mass killer Anders Breivik. There is nothing incompatible about loving Zionism and Israel and hating Jews. Most of today’s far-Right do. Indeed if you are a genuine anti-Semite then you will also be a sincere anti-Semite.

The only ‘anti-Semites’ that Pollard and co. are opposed to are anti-Zionists.  However there are still some, a diminishing number, of Zionists, who see through their own lies.  One of them is Geoffrey Alderman.

Tony Greenstein

Is Jeremy Corbyn really anti-Semitic?

Geoffrey Alderman

Jeremy Corbyn

8 May 2019

Is Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite? I began researching the answer to this question well before Danny Finkelstein’s recent revelation in the Times that eight years ago Corbyn had written a glowing foreward to a new edition of Imperialism: A Study, written by the radical economist John Atkinson Hobson, first published in 1902.

Context is paramount. That’s why I feel obliged to censure Finkelstein’s exposé. We all know what Hobson thought of Jews and capitalism. But to conclude – as Finkelstein does – that in writing the foreward Corbyn had praised a ‘deeply anti-Semitic book’ is to give a totally false impression of what this influential study is actually about. In a text running to almost 400 pages there are merely a dozen or so lines which we would call anti-Semitic. There was absolutely no need for Corbyn to have drawn attention to them in his foreward.

It’s quite true that the Labour Party that Corbyn leads has been dogged in recent years with incidents in which a significant number of its members, after being publicly pilloried as anti-Semites, have been expelled from the party. Worse than that, earlier this year a group of MPs resigned from the party, citing rampant anti-Semitism and a failure to deal with it as one of the reasons for their departure.

The group included the Jewish MP Luciana Berger, and also the non-Jewish MP Joan Ryan, formerly chair of Labour Friends of Israel. In her resignation speech, Ryan suggested that the ‘huge shame’ of anti-Semitism did not exist until Corbyn became party leader. Criticising Corbyn for ‘presiding over a culture of anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel,’ Ryan insisted that ‘Over the past three years… the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn has become infected with the scourge of anti-Jewish racism. This problem simply did not exist in the party before his election as leader.’

Really? After all, hasn’t anti-Jewish racism existed in the party since its creation, over a century ago? In the late 19^th century, wasn’t the trade-union movement (out of ‘the bowels’ of which the party emerged, as Ernie Bevin once graphically observed) positively riddled with such prejudice? Weren’t leading socialist activists – for instance Sidney and Beatrice Webb  – unashamed exponents of it? To point to these irrefutable facts is neither to excuse such racism nor to imply that it wasn’t present in other political parties. Indeed it was and still is.

But my present concern is with Jeremy Corbyn, by which I mean Corbyn the person. For whilst it’s one thing to accuse him of being ‘soft’ on anti-Semitism, tolerating it and even befriending some of its exponents, it’s quite another to level the charge against him personally. What truth – if any – could there possibly be in such an accusation?

The fact of the matter is that Corbyn has an impressive record of supporting Jewish communal initiatives. For instance he was recently supportive of Jewish efforts to facilitate the speedy issue of death certificates by the north London coroner. In 2015 he took part in a ceremony in his Islington constituency to commemorate the founding of the North London Synagogue. In 2010 he put his name to an Early Day Motion (tabled by Diane Abbott) calling on the UK government to facilitate the settlement of Yemeni Jews in Britain. Indeed I could fill this entire article with a list of philo-Semitic EDMs that Corbyn has signed since he was first elected as Labour MP for Islington North in 1983.

In 1987 the West London Synagogue approached Islington Council with a startling proposal: to sell its original cemetery to property developers, destroying the gravestones and digging-up and reburying the bodies lying under them. This cemetery (dating from 1843) was not merely of great historic and architectural interest – in the view of orthodox Jews, the deliberate destruction of a cemetery is sacrilegious. So when Islington Council granted the planning application, a Jewish-led and ultimately successful campaign was launched to have the decision reversed. I was part of that campaign. So was Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, the then-leader of Islington Council (1982-92), whose decision to permit the destruction of the cemetery was eventually overturned, was none other than Margaret Hodge (though it is unclear whether she personally was in favour of the proposal).

I have deliberately omitted from this discussion any consideration of Corbyn’s attitude to Zionism and whether anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic. All I will say here – as a proud Zionist – is that in my view context is, again, paramount.

I will agree that from time to time, as backbench MP and party leader, Corbyn has acted unwisely. But the grounds for labelling him an anti-Semite simply do not exist.

Geoffrey Alderman is Professor of Politics, University of Buckingham.

At last Corbyn fights back against the anti-Semitism smears – now its time to junk the Witchhunter’s Charter, the IHRA

Corbyn’s Accuser Times ‘journalist’ Lord Finkelstein was a Board Member of the Racist Gatestone Institute - this is Jonathan Freedland's accomplice

Smeared by a racist

The latest episode in the fake anti-Semitism smear campaign began on April 30^th when Times Associate Editor and Tory peer Danny Finkelstein wrote Corbyn’s praise for deeply antisemitic book. The book in question was J.A. Hobson’s classic Imperialism – A Study.

Corbyn’s sin was one of omission. He had failed to comment on some 10 anti-Semitic lines in a book of 400 pages. Anti-Semitism was unfortunately not unknown a century ago.

What is good though is that for the first time instead of apologising and promising to do better and then being kicked in the teeth, Corbyn has stood up to his racist abusers. Prime amongst these being Jonathan Freedland and the Board of Deputies, a Zionist organisation which justified the cold blooded murder of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza last year.

In his letter of 2^nd May to Marie van der Zyl, President of the BOD Corbyn spoke of the ‘mischievous representation to the foreword to my book’ and the ‘false accusation that I endorsed the anti-Semitic content of this 1902 book.’

Jonathan Freedland never misses an opportunity to attack Corbyn on behalf of his Zionist friends - in this instance this establishment journalist poses as a radical

Because Corbyn has stood up to these bullies we can expect these liars to slink away because bullies are also cowards.  But it is worth noting that if one of us had accused our detractors of making false accusations, then according to the Compliance Unit that would itself have been proof we were ‘anti-Semitic’

Just tweeting that the Israel lobby is responsible for the fake anti-Semitism campaign is in itself enough to warrant somebody being suspended.

This tweet is part of the evidence for a member of the Labour Party being suspended - merely referring to an article making an allegation that the Israeli lobby is behind the antisemitism smears, which is itself based on an undercover Al Jazeera programme, The Lobby, is sufficient in itself to prove antisemitism

However Corbyn must go further. If ‘mischievous’ allegations are made about him then the same is true for many of us and who is making these allegations if not Israel’s lobbyists?

Hobson's book with a warm endorsement from The Guardian

On the front cover of Hobson’s book was a blurb from a Guardian Review: it said the book had ‘changed the course of social history.’ The Guardian seems to have gone overboard on this book. A Guardian Review described it in glowing terms:

‘Hobson's Imperialism belongs to the small group of books in the years from 1900 to the outbreak of war that have definitely changed the contours of social thought.'

Michael White, their former Political Editor, described how:

‘someone thrust into my hand a copy of JA Hobson’s influential classic, Imperialism (1902) whose 2011 edition contains Jeremy’s own perfectly decent introductory essay. Its analysis will impress many. Others will shake their heads.

However to the Guardian’s peripatetic former Comment Editor Finkelstein’s article was like a red rag to a bull. Freedland has penned innumerable anti-Corbyn articles and he immediately penned another which appeared the next day - Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to antisemitism – or he just doesn’t care.

So pleased was Freedland with Finkelstein’s ‘scoop’ that he tweeted ‘credit to @Dannythefink for exposing this deeply depressing episode, one to add to an already long list.’

And here you have a good example of how Establishment journalists feed off each other’s prejudices. Finkelstein is a Tory peer, Freedland is a ‘liberal’ journalist but when it comes to Zionism and Israel, sorry ‘anti-Semitism’, you couldn’t put a piece of paper between them. They operate within a consensus that has a very small gap between them. What they share is more important than what divides them.

Freedland wrote that

In today’s Times, [it was the previous day’s] the columnist Daniel Finkelstein has dug out a 2011 reissue of JA Hobson’s 1902 work, Imperialism: A Study. The foreword was written by Jeremy Corbyn in 2011.’

According to Freedland this mural contains Jewish bankers with 'hooked noses' - if so I can't find them!

So blatant is Freedland’s dishonesty that I penned an Open Letter to Jonathan Freedland. I was particularly taken with the idea that Finkelstein just happened to come across Corbyn’s 8 year old Review, that he dug it up much like you might dig up a few weeds. No doubt Luciana Berger also just happened to ‘dig up’ a mural dating back to 2012 last year!

One can only await with bated breath what will be on offer next year.  Judging by present trends it will be at least a decade old by then!

Andrei Brevik, the Norwegian fascist who killed over 70 young socialists, is quite clear that anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews are the enemy of both him and the Zionists 

We can assume that the ‘digging up’ was done by others, whether they are at the Israeli Embassy or MI5 is irrelevant. But given that Freedland at least pretends to be a democrat, I wrote that

[if what was happening to Corbyn] happened to any other politician then we would have no one in public life and you know it. You are an integral part of a concerted attempt by powerful forces in the British State to discredit a radical politician. Of course the Right would like to attack Corbyn for his economic proposals or his opposition to austerity but that wouldn’t play well. Hence the ‘anti-Semitism’ card which you use.

Freedland quickly passed over Hobson having been a political correspondent for the Manchester Guardian! It’s quite a tradition that Freedland has to live down. Ted, the son of C.P. Scott, the Guardian’s most revered editor, even married Hobson’s daughter, Mabel!

Corbyn’s crime was that he hadn’t mentioned that Hobson was anti-Semitic. It is as if a mention of T S Elliot’s anti-Semitism is compulsory before you can discuss his poetry. And not only Elliot, but Virginia Woolf, Jack London, Dickens, Shakespeare and Orwell too. Although anti-Semitism has all but disappeared today, other than as a stick to beat the Left, it had an inglorious tradition amongst the British ruling class. People like Freedland and Finkelstein.

What is also true is that people like Hobson tended to abandon such views when the reality of the society they lived in changed. Even T S Eliot seems to have become a reformed character.

On the 7^th June 2003 Zionist solicitor Anthony Julius wrote that

‘Eliot was not a typical anti-semite. He was instead an extraordinary anti-semite. He did not reflect the anti-semitism of his times, he contributed to it, even enlarged it.’

Six months before Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University ‘in a ground-breaking essay’ in the January 2003 issue of "Modernism/ Modernity", refuted the charge of Eliot's anti-Semitism, backing his claims with a cache of new documents.

As Paul Kelemen showed in The British Left and Zionism – History of a Divorce (MUP 2012) anti-Semitism was far more deeply entrenched in the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party in years gone by. Sydney Webb, founder of the Fabians and later Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield, wrote that ‘French, German, Russian socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free.’ And why? ‘There’s no money in it.’ 

During the war years Attlee, Morrison and Bevin supported Churchill and Eden in their implacable hostility to the entry of Jewish refugees. They even worried when they learnt that Jews might be extruded by Germany’s allies rather than exterminated. But Freedland and Finkelstein have no complaints because the Zionist movement, led by President of the Board of Deputies Selig Brodetsky was also opposed to the entry of Jewish refugees. Their argument being that Jewish refugees should go to Palestine if they were to go anywhere.

It was left to Professor Donald Sassoon, in a letter to the Guardian, to explain that Hobson’s book has been taught for years in universities without anyone feeling the need to highlight the 10 anti-Semitic lines.

Sassoon also makes the point that ‘Far less marginal are Hobson’s comments about the “lower races” (ie black Africans) and what to do with them’ but anti-Black concern is of no interest to Freedland or Finkelstein. Only anti-Semitism concerns them.

Freedland also failed to mention that Gordon Brown also failed to mention Hobson’s anti-Semitism when wrote that

‘in Britain, this idea of liberty as empowerment is not a new idea, J A Hobson asked, "is a man free who has not equal opportunity with his fellows of such access to all material and moral means of personal development and work as shall contribute to his own welfare and that of his society?"

Tony Blair also described Hobson as “probably the most famous Liberal convert to what was then literally ‘new Labour’.” in a pamphlet for the Fabians.

Daniel Finkelstein – Board Member of White Supremacist Gatestone Institute

According to Powerbase Finkelstein was a founder member of the board of Gatestone

Finkelstein is or was a member of the Board of Governors, as of October 2015 of the Gatestone Institute.  What is the Gatestone Institute?  Well according to Wikipedia

the Gatestone Institute is a right-wing anti-Muslim  think tank with a focus on Islam and the Middle East. The organization has attracted attention for publishing false articles and being a source of viral falsehoods.

Gatestone was founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, now national security advisor, was its chairman from 2013 to March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir Taheri. Its authors include Nonie Darwish, Alan Dershowitz, Raymond Ibrahim, Denis MacEoin, Daniel Pipes, Raheel Raza, Khaled Abu Toameh, and Geert Wilders.

Finkelstein is recorded in the House of Lords Register as having spoken and been paid at a number of its events. The engagements are listed below. It is clear that he is a regular speaker for the GI.

Speaking engagement, 27 October 2016, Gatestone Institute

Speaking engagement, 20 November 2015, Gatestone Institute

Speaking Engagement, 14 October 2014, Gatestone Institute

Speaking engagement, 10 March 2014, Gatestone Institute

Daniel Finkelstein is a member of what is, according to the article White supremacists at the heart of Whitehall a racist organisation with strong international links and ties with other anti-Muslim Groups.

One key figure is neo-con Douglas Murray, Associate Director of the cold-war Henry Jackson Society. According to Nafeez Ahmed  ‘

Behind the facade of concern about terrorism is a network of extremist neoconservative ideologues, hell-bent on promoting discrimination and violence against Muslims and political activists who criticise Israeli and Western government policies

Another prominent figure in the HJS is Baroness Cox, a former Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords. She is a virulent Islamaphobe and all round bigot. According to Ahmed in 2007, she told the Jerusalem Summit – an anti-Palestinian network of which she has been co-president since 2005, that “Britain has been deeply infiltrated” by Islamist extremists, who have converted the country into “a base for training and teaching militant Islam”.

“They are using our institutions to recruit young people, and preventing any critical analysis of Islam,” she added. “Britain’s cultural and spiritual heritage are under threat.”

Later that year, Cox told the Jerusalem Post she was concerned about “the disturbing alliance between the Islamists and the Left in the UK,” On the presidium of the Jerusalem Summit alongside Cox was another well-known anti-Muslim hate-monger Daniel Pipes.

According to former British ambassador Craig Murray, Cox is “a prominent supporter of organisations which actively and openly promote the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza.’

According to James Bloodworth in  Labour should cut its ties with the illiberal Henry Jackson Society Murray wrote that the problem was skin colour not religion or colour:

"We long ago reached the point where the only thing white Britons can do is to remain silent about the change in their country. Ignored for a generation, they are expected to get on, silently but happily, with abolishing themselves, accepting the knocks and respecting the loss of their country. 'Get over it. It's nothing new. You're terrible. You're nothing'."

Bloodworth wrote that in 2013 11 Labour MPs were members of the HJS. He wrote to all 11 with his concerns about the HJS but none replied. Gisela Stuart is no longer an MP. Solomon Hughes in the Morning Star this March wrote describing how right-wing MP and friend of Tom Watson, John Spellar, is a member and how both Yvette Cooper and Shadow Defence Minister Nia Griffiths had co-operated with HSJ over a conference they held in Oxford. Margaret Beckett was also a member as I understand was Chris Bryant.

In 2009 Murray described Robert Spencer, the leader of a group calling itself "Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)", as a "very brilliant scholar and writer". He is so brilliant that along with Pamela Geller he got himself banned from entering Britain. He is responsible for Jihad Watch which is allied to David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre and Frontpagemag.com which as I write is busily peddling Israel’s line that it is under attack from Hamas.  Nothing about Israeli military strikes and bombing are allowed to come between it and the truth.

Bloodworth described how Marko Attila Hoare, a former senior member of the Henry Jackson Society was driven out of the organisation in 2012 because of his opposition to Murray's anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views.

"It rapidly became clear that Murray had not tamed his politics, and that actually they were becoming the politics of the whole organisation,"

In an otherwise appalling apologia for Finkelstein on the Barrister’s Blog, Matthew describes how, in a 2006 speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference Murray demanded that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”:

“All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed. And of course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the West (not just the country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the West or Western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin.”

Abbi Wilkinson, who has come in for criticism from Finkelstein's elite barrister friends, nails the simple truth about Finkelstein - an upper class racist

Abbi Wilkinson’s article Danny Finkelstein And The Bigots refers to Murray’s statement that ‘There are certain things in Britain about which it is impossible to speak frankly. The birth rate of the Muslim population is a prime subject”. In either of those cases, had he used “Jews” and “Jewish”, he’d have been denounced for anti-Semitism.

Finkelstein however disagreed. As far as he was concerned, Douglas Murray was both ‘stimulating and worthwhile and often right.’ Nor did he agree with the ‘characterisation of Gatestone’ which he found both ‘stimulating and worthwhile and often right’ indeed ‘Gatestone acts as an excellent platform …”.

Finkelstein’s admiration for Murray in 2015 should be seen in the light of the decision of the Tory Party leadership to cut its links with Murray. Paul Goodman, a former MP and editor of Conservative Home wrote on October 17 2011 Why the Conservative frontbench broke off relations with Douglas Murray – and what happened afterwards.

In 2006 Murray made a speech in the Dutch Parliament "What are we to do about Islam?" His answers were what most normal people would describe as racist. To Finkelstein they were ‘stimulating’ and ‘worthwhile’. Murray declared:

"Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition... all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop"

Muslims who

"take part in, plot, assist or condone [my italic] violence against the west must be forcibly deported to their place of origin".

So someone whose parents or even grandparents came from Bangladesh, who supports Palestinian resistance against Israel, which Murray sees as ‘part of the West’ should be deported ‘back’ to a country they have never seen. Or someone who supports resistance to French troops in Africa should be deported. One wonders what part of this Finkelstein finds stimulating?

Goodman therefore went  to see Murray to ask him to disown his remarks.  He refused and therefore relations with the Tory Party were broken off.  Later Murray claimed to have recanted ‘years earlier’ but this was clearly untrue.

Murray is listed as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the GI whose Board he sat on until late October 2014. John Bolton, now Trump’s National Security Advisor, chaired the GI from 2013 to 2018. Gatestone’s board also included Baroness Cox. The GI proudly lists all of Murray’s writings. They make interesting reading.

Finkelstein claims not to support Wilder's views but he defends Murray whose views are similar and he was part of the Gatestone Institute which did share Wilder's views

Wilders in court in The Netherlands on charges of racial discrimination

Geert Wilders - Gatestone's favourite fascist

In his article on Gatestone’s site The Guilty Verdict Dutch Politicians Wanted So Much Murray rails at a Dutch court for having convicted Geert Wilders of inciting discrimination and fostering hatred of Moroccans. Apparently all poor Geert did was to ask a crowd of his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans and they responded ‘fewer’. In fact the transcript is damning. EuroNews describes how Ronald van Vliet a parliamentary member of his far-right Freedom Party resigned in protest against the speech.

During the meeting Wilders encouraged supporters to chant racist slogans against Moroccans before he addressed them:

“So I ask you what do you want in this city more or less Moroccans?”

The crowd chants, “less. less.”

Wilders continues: “We will fix it.”

The crowd laughs.

Finkelstein changes his story & lies through his teeth

Ahmed described how Finkelstein was ‘promoting far-right politics, and in the name of freedom itself.’

When his membership of GI’s Board was raised Finkelstein lied, lied and lied again. When three years ago, Nafeez Ahmed asserted “you are on the board of [Gatestone]”, he replied

“I naturally don't (and didn't) say that I didn't know who it was or what it publishes or who it hosts. Of course I do. Being on the Board doesn't mean I agree with every article or every speaker, nor does it imply that I don’t”

He went on

I don't accept your characterisation of Gatestone. I find Douglas Murray stimulating and worthwhile and often right, without always agreeing. I think Gatestone acts as an excellent platform …(my emphasis)

Yet on 1^st August 2018 Finkelstein tweeted

‘I do not serve on the board and have never had any role of any kind running Gatestone or supervising it in any way. They listed me on the board, until I told them to stop. I have spoken to them as have many distinguished guests.’

Realising that that might not sound all that convincing Finkelstein clarified 7 minutes later in response to a query from kadhim:

‘To clarify, are you saying that you never served on the board and that they listed you as such (for two years) in error?

To which Finkelstein replied

‘Essentially. I realise that sounds like a weasel word so let me unpack it. They listed me on a board and I didn’t actually know at first. The board never met or was asked to meet or had any role and rather lazily, once I do know, just left it.’

As clear as mud. Four minutes later

‘More recently, I thought, mmm, being listed on a board is different to making a speech or two and I don’t want to be responsible for everything they do with no actual control so I’d better not continue lazily ignoring this. So I asked to be taken off. That, I’m afraid is the

And knowing he was being caught in a trap of his own making tweeted ‘‘unheroic truth’

But 8 hours later, realising that nothing he said had made sense Finkelstein tweeted

Yes I’m sorry I was on it and I apologise for the error. Worst of all it gives the legitimate impression that I support ideas that I think are completely wrong and rightly thought offensive

But was it an error? For at least two years Finkelstein sat on the board of an openly racist and Islamophobic organisation, spoke at their meetings, defended people like Douglas Murray who the Tory front bench had dissociated themselves from and then expects us to believe that this worldly wise man, who goes around on the lecture circuit explaining the political climate to people was unaware of who he was mixing with?  And worse can then call anti-Semitic a man who has fought racism his whole life.  As Private Eye used to say ‘pass the sick bucket Alice’.

The reality is that Finkelstein sat on the Board of an organisation which consciously promoted the writings of Geert Wilders, an open fascist whose racism is such that even members of his own misnamed Freedom Party have resigned.

Gatestone Institute defend Geert Wilder's racist views

The  Gatestone’s response to this was an article Who is in More Trouble: Wilders or The Netherlands?

According to the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, Nina Rosenwald and the foundations controlled by her and her family are part of “a small, tightly networked group of misinformation experts” that “peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam.” This is the organisation Finkelstein has such close connections with and who Jonathan Freedland, in his battle against ‘anti-Semitism’ considers a trusted ally.

The GI has repeatedly endorsed the myth of “Muslim no-go-zones” in Europe that caused David Cameron to describe a Fox News pundit echoing the same views as an “idiot.”

Freedland's email to me as the antisemitism smear campaign began

There is also a good article in the Morning Star The Times launches yet another desperate smear against Corbyn

I have one more question to Freedland, Finkelstein and all the other obsessives who are willing to chase down anti-Semitic opinions expressed over a century ago.  You describe yourselves as Zionists.  When are you going to distance yourself from the anti-Semitic opinions of Zionism’s founders. Unlike Hobson’s views they are still relevant today because Israel is in a de facto alliance with white supremacists the world over, from Trump to Orban.

Freedland doesn't care what company he keeps when
attacking Corbyn

Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, railing against 'the terrible power of our purse'

I am referring for example to Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism, who wrote about the Jews in the pamphlet which started off the movement, The Jewish State:

When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; and at the same time, when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.

Or Jacob Klatzkin, join editor of the Zionist paper die Welt, who wrote that the Jews were

 ‘a people disfigured in both body and soul – in a word, of a horror… some sort of outlandish creature… in any case, not a pure national type... some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name of Jew.

Or how about Israel’s first Justice Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth who described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’

There are many more such quotes I can dig up if necessary. Zionism began with a rejection of the Jewish diaspora. It's called 'negation of the diaspora.' Zionism literally hated the Jewish presence outside Palestine. Many Zionists considered themselves proud anti-Semites.  For example Arthur Ruppin, one of the most important Zionist figures in the last century, after whom streets and boulevards are named in Israel and the Father of Land Settlement:

We can rely on Aaronovitch, a former communist who went to the neo-liberal right, to defend Finkelstein

When a friend of Ruppin called him an anti-Semite he retorted ‘I have already established here [in his diary] that I despise the cancers of Judaism more than does the worst anti-Semite.’ Ruppin associated Judaism with capitalism and his writings reflected his belief in the identity between anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism. [Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism, parallels and influences’ (1883-1914), Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983]

Compared to Ruppin and Herzl, John Hobson was a very mild anti-Semite.  Perhaps we could see some explanations from Jonathan Freedland as to why he has said nothing about the origins of Zionism up till now?

Tony Greenstein