We Are Witnessing the Slow Death of the Corbyn Project

Another Corbyn Own Goal

Labour Should Have Rejected the EHRC Investigation as Politically Motivated 

I sometimes feel that it would be both cheaper and more efficient if Jeremy Corbyn replaced his advisors, Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray, with a tape recorder with a few pre-recorded messages, ‘I surrender’ ‘I apologise’. ‘I promise to do better’.

The Equalities and Human Rights Commission announced on the 28^th May that it was going to hold an investigation into the Labour Party under s.20 of the Equality Act. Its terms of reference are here.

It is a catastrophic mistake to have welcomed this ‘investigation’.  It is a politically motivated establishment attack under the guise of racism. The internal affairs of the Labour Party are none of the EHRC’s business. The allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ have nothing to do with anti-Semitism, i.e. hatred or hostility to Jews and everything to do with Israel.

One of the major themes of the CAA, who made the complaint against Labour, is that most Muslims are antisemitic

That is why the main demand of the Board of Deputies and the two organisations who made the complaints that led to this inquiry – the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism and the Jewish Labour Movement – was for Labour to introduce the IHRA definition of  ‘anti-Semitism’.

This is the racist stereotype that the Campaign Against Antisemitism featured

Instead of welcoming the investigation the Labour Party should have challenged it as politically motivated, biased and tendentious. Labour should have asked why there was no equivalent investigation into Tory party Islamaphobia or into the Tory party’s anti-Semitic partners in the European Conservative Reform Group, in the European parliament.

Nothing Corbyn says will ever convince his opponents - which is why he should stop appeasing them

At the very least the investigation should have been challenged legally. The pathetic gutlessness of Corbyn’s response may yet come back to haunt him.  However given that he has conceded all along to the bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ taunts it was all but inevitable that he would lie down and accept with grateful thanks the latest humiliation.

The CAA has run over 300 anti-Corbyn articles on its website

The only photo the CAA could find for their report on Muslim 'antisemitism' was of a dark person (Muslim?) holding a Hitler was right poster

There are numerous reasons why this ‘investigation’ should have been rejected.

i.                   The two organisations whose complaints led to the investigation are part of the Zionist/Israel lobby.

ii.                The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism in particular, a so-called charity, has waged a virulent and abusive campaign against Corbyn.  It has hundreds of articles on its web site attacking Corbyn.

iii.             The CAA is a deeply racist Islamaphobic organisation. One only needs to look at their racist profile of a male Muslim to see where their politics are coming from.

The Jewish Labour Movement Boasts that the Israeli Labor Party is their 'sister party' - we should believe them 

iv.             The Jewish Labour Movement which is the other organisation responsible for making the complaint is the British branch of the Israeli Labour Party.  A party of ethnic cleansing and colonisation.  It is a party that has supported the deportation of Black African refugees from Israel because they are not Jewish.

Of course the real problem is that Corbyn should fought back against the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations, which were begun by the Daily Mail in 2015, when they started. Corbyn had enough experience in the Palestine solidarity movement to know that the standard accusation against all Palestine activists is that they are anti-Semitic. It is inexplicable that Corbyn is still incapable of understanding this simple point. 

That Corbyn did not question the motives behind this 'investigation' is inexplicable

Today denying that the Labour Party faces an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem is in itself proof of being an ‘anti-Semite.’ Yet the Zionists repeatedly allege that Corbyn is anti-Semitic and a racist. It should be abundantly clear even to the simplest mind that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations are motivated by the Zionist lobby yet Corbyn is incapable of speaking this simple truth.

Instead he and John McDonnell have behaved throughout the affair as if the Board of Deputies of British Jews were some benign organisation that was genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism, even to the extent of organising an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration outside parliament in March 2018.  This is the  organisation which has a history of telling Jews, from the Battle of Cable Street to the National Front, not to confront fascists and to keep their heads down and stay indoors.

Boris Johnson merits a slap on the wrist from this tame Tory body

Corbyn should have gone onto the offensive. The Tories are about to elect someone who believes that Black people are ‘picanninies’ with ‘water melon smiles’ and who refers to Muslim women wearing the burka as ‘letter boxes’.  This is the party of the ‘hostile environment policy’ and Windrush.  Yet it too has  condemned Corbyn as ‘anti-Semitic’.  Yet Corbyn is too spineless and feeble to rebut any of these attacks.

The real question is why, at no stage, has the EHRC not opened an investigation into the Windrush scandal and Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment policy’ If its concern is racism then how is it that hundreds of Black British citizens have been deported and this useless establishment body hasn’t stirred itself?  Or is it incapable of investigating the government that funds it?

The real reason is that the EHRC is not and never has been an anti-racist body. It is a body whose main purpose is to see that discrimination does not affect the workings of the market.  It is about incorporating the anti-racist struggle.  It is staffed by the great and good from the corporate world. There isn’t one trade union commissioner. In its current investigation it is using fake allegations of anti-Semitism in order to do the Establishment’s dirty work of attacking Corbyn.  And Corbyn is stupid enough to have given them a stamp of approval.

If you search the EHRC’s site under Windrush you come up with just one result which is one more than if you search under ‘hostile environment policy’.  So despite the major racist scandals of the past 5 years being none of the business of this so-called anti-racist organisation Corbyn and his supporters are incapable of calling this useless corporate ‘diversity’ organisation out.

Who are the great and good who make up the EHRC and its Commissioners?

Below are their profiles taken from the EHRC web pages:

David Isaac CBE (Chair)

David is a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons and was previously Chair of Stonewall from 2003 to 2012.

Caroline Waters (Deputy Chair)

Currently Vice President of Carers UK and Founder and CEO of CW Consulting Box, Caroline Waters was also Director of People and Policy at BT She chaired, for example, Employers for Carers from 2001 to 2013, was founder and inaugural Chair of the Employers' Forum on Belief, and Chair of the Lone Parents working group.

She is a Director of Roffey Park and a member of the Whole Education Board.

Suzanne Baxter

Suzanne is an experienced board member, finance professional and Chair. 

Suzanne has extensive FTSE 250 board experience gained in executive and non-executive roles and is currently a non-executive director of WHSmith plc, where she is also Chair of the Audit Committee. She was formerly Group Finance Director of Mitie Group plc, and her earlier career was spent at Serco and in the accountancy profession with PwC and Deloitte, where she specialised in corporate finance and assurance. 

Her other roles have included Chair of BITC in the South West and Chair of the Business Services Association. 

Suzanne is Fellow of the ICAEW and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Pavita Cooper

Pavita Cooper has over 25 years’ experience as an executive talent leader across a range of multi-sector global blue-chip organisations, including Shell, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group.

Pavita is a passionate advocate of greater diversity; she campaigns tirelessly to change the face of British business.

Alasdair Henderson

Alasdair Henderson is a barrister at 1 Crown Office Row, specialising in public law, human rights, employment law and equality law.

Rebecca Hilsenrath (Chief Executive)

Rebecca Hilsenrath joined the Equality and Human Rights Commission as Legal Officer in March 2014 and was appointed as Chief Executive in 2016.

Prior to that, she was CEO of LawWorks (the Solicitors Pro Bono Group), a national charity facilitating free legal advice to community groups and individuals in need.

After graduating from Cambridge, Rebecca trained and practiced at Linklaters, and then moved to the Government Legal Service, where she held roles in the then Department for Education and Skills and in the Attorney General’s Office.

Susan Johnson OBE

Susan Johnson was, until her retirement in July 2015, Chief Executive at County Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Service, where she was the first woman and non-uniformed chief executive to lead a Fire and Rescue Service in the United Kingdom.

Helen Mahy CBE

Helen is chair of the Renewables Infrastructure Group Limited and deputy chair and senior independent director of Primary Health Properties plc, both of which are companies listed on the main market on the London Stock Exchange.

She is also a non-executive director of SSE plc and Bonheur ASA, the latter being listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. She was, until she retired in 2013, Group Company Secretary and General Counsel of National Grid plc for 10 years. At National Grid she was also executive sponsor of inclusion and diversity, about which she is passionate.

Helen has also been on the boards of Aga Rangemaster Group plc, Stagecoach Group plc and SVG Capital plc.

Mark McLane

Mark McLane is the Head of Global Diversity and Inclusion for Barclays PLC.

Prior to Barclays, Mark was the Director of Diversity and Inclusion for Booz Allen Hamilton, a professional services firm in Washington DC. 

He also held the position of Chief Diversity Officer for Whirlpool Corporation.

Dr Lesley Sawers (Scotland Commissioner)

Lesley is currently Executive Chair of GenAnalytics Ltd, a specialist analytical and market insights consultancy focused on business performance improvement linked to equality and diversity in the workplace.

Previously Lesley was Vice Principal and Pro Vice Chancellor for Business, Enterprise and Innovation at Glasgow Caledonian University and Chief Executive of the Scottish Council for Development and Industry. She has also held senior leadership positions at Scottish Power, Royal Mail, CACI, Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and VisitScotland.

Professor Swaran Singh

Professor Swaran Singh is Head of Division, Mental Health and Wellbeing, at the University of Warwick.

In short there isn’t a radical or grassroots antiracist amongst them.  They are all in favour of ‘diversity’ and incorporating struggles against the iniquities of capitalism but you won’t find them on a picket line or demonstration.  Most of them have a corporate background and that is the main purpose of the EHRC, to advise corporations on equality and diversity.

The EHRC is completely unfit to step into the middle of what is a political battle in the Labour Party between left and right under the guise of ‘anti-Semitism’.  All those alleging ‘anti-Semitism’ are also those who pushed the fake IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’.

However the result of accepting without question the EHRC investigation will be that if they come out, as is highly likely, with an adverse report then it is going to be one more potent weapon in the armoury of the Right. 

It is an own goal to have accepted or welcomed the Inquiry.  They should have been challenged legally and there should have been fierce resistance to this attempt to neutralise the left leadership of the Labour Party via bogus complaints of anti-Semitism.

As for the Jewish Labour Movement, they should be thrown out on their ear for having done their best to undermine and destroy the Labour Party at the very moment when the Tories are facing a political crisis.

But instead, when they engaged in some grandstanding and threatened to leave the Labour Party Corbyn begged them to stay!  They rewarded his idiocy with a motion of no confidence in him.

Tony Greenstein 

Lord Eric Pickles – Why is this Racist Bigot Britain’s Special Envoy on Holocaust Issues?

Pickles is an example of anti-Semitic Zionism – Chair of Conservative Friends of Israel, anti-Gypsy and a defender of Latvia’s Waffen SS

I always felt guilty that the eviction of Dale Farm in October 2011 and the hundreds of Travellers living there had passed me by.  Not for the Gypsies the faux anti-racism that is extended to British Jews in the wake of the Holocaust.

Gypsies suffered just as much as the Jews from Hitler’s Final Solution proportionally and they are still suffering from state racism throughout Europe. See Porajmos: The Forgotten Gypsy Holocaust The World Ignored

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, to which Pickles is a delegate doesn’t so much as mention the Gypsies and why should it?  There is no Gypsy state or imperial interests to defend.

The Pew Research Centre’s 2016 Global Attitudes Survey  showed shockingly higher anti-gypsy and anti-Muslim attitudes yet we haven’t heard a whisper about the bigotry towards Gypsies and Muslims in the Labour Party. Just one person to my knowledge has been suspended for anti-Roma racism.

If you look at the top 4 countries for racism then 82% of Italians have unfavourable attitudes to Gypsies. The other countries are all in the 60s.  Hostility to Muslims is similar. Hungary is the top with 72% and the other three are in the high 60s.  With Jews by contrast with the exception of Greece at 55% then the next highest is Hungary with 32% and then Italy and Poland with 24%.

You might think that the person who has responsibility for the Holocaust as Britain’s Special Envoy would be especially sensitive to the matter of the Gypsies.  Yet Lord Eric Pickles is a prime example of an anti-Roma bigot.

Pickles it was who was integrally involved in what was the worst post-war example of racism against the Roma and Gypsy minority in this country with the eviction of Dale Farm in 2011.

Members of this Traveller community had bought up the land on which they lived.  They had settled down and their children were going to local schools but many of the residents and the local Basildon Council resented their presence because they were Gypsies.

The excuse to evict them was that the land was within the green belt. They were deemed an eyesore or a ‘blight’ and evicted using hundreds of police thugs and bailiffs. Yet today developers are buying up this land in order that they can build on it.  What is good enough for developers was not good enough for Gypsies.

It was therefore with a view to assuaging my guilty conscience that I visited the Exhibition on Dale Farm at the Tate Modern with a friend. I am glad that I did because it filled in a lot of holes.  Not least about who was culpable for what happened.

The eviction cost Basildon Council £18m which was a lot of money for the Council at a time of austerity. Who should step in to help them but the Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles. He provided £9m in order that the evictions could go ahead despite the Dale Farm residents appeal to Eric Pickles to stop eviction

Vanessa Redgrave, a Unicef goodwill ambassador who lent her support to the residents, said clearing the Dale Farm site in Essex breached United Nation's children's rights and said she was “appalled that such an eviction can be upheld by our government”. None of this however moved Pickles, whose concern over the Holocaust is strictly confined to Jews and Israel.

Pickles started off his political life as Leader of Bradford Council where he achieved a reputation as a savage cutter of services and a populist right-winger. When he became Community Secretary under Cameron he took the axe to local government. His Localism Act 2011 was alleged to give powers back to the people but almost immediately he approved a planning application that allowed a massive gas plant in Gloucestershire in the teeth of opposition of the Tewkesbury Planning Committee, 12 parish councils and 1,000 local residents.

Those at Dale Farm never forgot Pickles and what he had done and the following year they tried to evict Pickles from his office. However he had a large group of Metropolitan Police there to protect him and assault the demonstrators. (Dale Farm protesters target Pickles 19.10.12. Express) Protesters' chants rang out: "One, two, three, four, Eric Pickles out the door, five, six, seven, eight, let's evict the racist state." And who was their representative but the Holocaust toting Pickles who has dined off those who died in the Holocaust.

Pickles also demonstrated himself to be a Christian bigot when he tried to overturn a High Court decision that councillors could not be forced to attend Christian prayers. His excuse was that ‘Militant atheists should 'get over it' and accept UK is Christian. Pickles forgot that unlike Israel, religion should not intrude into civic and political life.

It is therefore natural that a bigot and racist like Eric Pickles should be Chairman of the Conservative Friends of Israel.  Pickles is also a patron of the pro-Israeli ‘charity’, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Pickles was also the person who moved to depose the radical Black Mayor of Tower Hamlets Lotfhur Rahman in an early display of his racist bigotry.

As the United Kingdom Special Envoy for post-Holocaust issues you might think that Pickles would be ultra careful not to have anything to do with fascists and apologists for the Nazi era. After all isn’t that what the IHRA all about? It would seem not.

In 2009 a controversy blew up over the decision of Tory MEPs to leave the mainstream Christian Democrat European Peoples Party to join the far-right European Conservative Reform Group. The EcrG was chaired by a former fascist, Michal Kaminski of the far-Right anti-Semitic Polish Law & Justice Party, ‘whose anti-Semitic outbursts in the past have been well documented’ . Even Jonathan Freedland, a strong Zionist, wrote that  Once no self-respecting politician would have gone near people such as Kaminski. Self-respect is the least of Pickle’s worries.

The ECRG contained people like Roberts Zile of Latvia’s For Fatherland and Freedom/LNNK party. Every March Ziles goes on a demonstration/ march commemorating the veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS. It is true that only a minority, between 20% and one-third were volunteers but the fact is that they fought on the side of the Nazis. These annual marches contain primarily fascist and nationalist elements that are virulently anti-Semitic.

Roberts Zile MEP 

In David Miliband’s speech at the 2009 Labour Party Conference he accused Pickles, who was Conservative chairman at the time, of being

“a defender of the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom party (with which the Tories are now allied in the EU) – despite the fact that its members attend commemorations for the Waffen-SS.’

In response Eric Pickles according to the Guardian suggested that ‘the Latvian Waffen-SS were only conscripts fighting for their country, and to say otherwise was a Soviet smear.’

Pickles deliberately ignored the fact that not only was a substantial minority of Latvia’s Waffen-SS eager volunteers, but they included veterans of pro-Nazi death squads who had already taken part in the first phase of the Holocaust. The mere fact that this march commemorated those who had fought with Hitler should have been enough for Pickles. 

Monica Lowenberg, whose paternal family, had been murdered in the Libau and Riga Ghettos by those who later joined Latvia’s Waffen SS, attended the March 2012 demonstration in Riga. She told in an open letter how

‘At the Monument of Freedom in the center of Riga where the SS lovers congregated last year... I was jostled, harassed and made to feel unwelcome. I was told by a number of young Waffen SS supporters that even though my grandfather was born in Libau (Libava), Latvia and all of my Latvian Jewish family had lived for generations in Libau, until they were brutally murdered in the Libau massacres of 1941 and Riga Ghetto of the same year, I had no rights to be in Latvia as I was Jewish.’

Even worse

‘another party comrade of Mr Zile told the Latvian parliament that LNNK has always been against the trial of Konrads Kalejs and other Latvians accused of Nazi crimes. Kalejs was a close assistant of Viktors Arajs, chief of the bloody Arajs Commando, responsible for guarding and finishing off those Jews who were still alive in the ditches into they fell after mass shootings. Some survived and tried to escape but the Latvians were on hand to kill them.’

The Arajs Commando worked alongside Einsatzgruppen A, the most murderous of the four death squads that operated in the wake of the Wehrmacht in Operation Barbarossa the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. They took part in mass executions in Riga Ghetto. The first transportation of 1,000 Berlin Jews to Riga along with 24,000 members of the Riga Ghetto were shot on 30^th November 1941 by the Nazis and the Arajs Commando, which joined the Latvian Legion which consisted of 2 Waffen SS divisions in January 1943.

Pickles justification for the actions of the Latvian Waffen SS were that ‘they were only following orders.’ Pickles role as an apologist for Latvia’s Waffen SS has not prevented him being a McCarthyist witch-hunter sniffing out any trace of ‘anti-Semitism’ whenever Zionism is on the agenda.

This is Part 1 of an extended essay on this Tory bigot.  Tomorrow is Part 2 and how Pickles tried to get a lecturer at Bristol University sacked for writing an article discussing how the Holocaust is used to deter people raising the question of Palestinian oppression.

Hear voices from Traveller communities in a creative response to the 2011 eviction from Dale Farm

On 19th October 2011, eighty Traveller families lost their 10 year legal battle for their homes. Dale Farm: The Eviction, explores this important event from the perspective of artists from different communities.

Artists from the Travelling community and elsewhere will present creative responses to the eviction, aiming to broaden the discussion about Dale Farm and acknowledge that not everyone backed or agreed with the eviction by the local authorities, which the UK government supported and in part financed. Against a backdrop of negative media coverage and social media attacks on Traveller communities, this event also aims to be therapeutic for the Traveller artists’ and the community members impacted by the loss of their homes.

As well as visual art, performance, music and video, audiences will have the opportunity to view unique Traveller archival material from Grattan Puxon’s archive together with artefacts from Dale Farm, removed at the time of the eviction.

This event is curated by Phien O’Reachtigan of Traveller-Art-Performance and Beverley Carpenter of Oblique Arts in association with Tate Exchange Associates 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning.

Jedwabne – The Polish Village Where Up to 900 Jews Were Burnt Alive by Fellow Poles

Michal Kaminski the Polish Zionist & anti-Semite that Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard Just Loves

Pollard – Upset by Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ but a devotee of the anti-Semitic Michael Kaminski.

The ECR Group Chairman Michał Kamiński speaking to the Global Counter-Terrorism Conference in Herzliya, Israel, September 2009.

Michal Kaminski is ardently pro-Israeli.  In 2009 he was a guest speaker at the World Summit on Counter Terrorism:Terrorism's Global Impact - ICT's 9th International Conference at Herzliya in Israel.     Kaminski did the usual rounds in Israel, including paying homage to the dead of the holocaust at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Propaganda Museum in Jerusalem.  Yad Vashem seems, over the years, to have been host to a number of anti-Semites, former Nazis and assorted racists.  John Vorster,  former Prime Minister of Apartheid South Africa, was another visitor to Yad Vashem when visiting Israel in April 1976. 

Michal Kaminski talks to Israeli ambassador to the UK Ron Prosor during the Conservative Friends of Israel lunch at the Tory Party Conference 2009

Other keen visitors included a group of Russian neo-Nazis, who were the guests of Aryeh Eldad and Ayoob Kara, two Likud MKs.  Then there was the lovely story of a group of Israeli children who were on a visit to Yad Vashem when they spotted a group of Arab women there.  They promptly started abusing them.  Clearly the children understood the message of Yad Vashem very well.  Zionism’s use of the holocaust is not to warn against the dangers of racism but to render Israel’s use of racism immune to criticism.  Yad Vashem - Israeli Jewish Teenagers AbuseVisiting Arab Women as Whores and Sluts

ECR Group Chairman Michał Kamiński does what all anti-Semites do:  he visits Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, September 2009

However, when a Yad Vashem guide, Itamar Shapira, pointed out that Yad Vashem was established near the site of the massacre of the Palestinian village Deir Yassin (now Givat Shaul), he was immediately fired.  Clearly he didn’t understand that empathy with the Palestinians was not the message that Yad Vashem wanted to convey.  As their spokesman explained:‘The institution's position is that the Holocaust cannot be politicized or equated with any other event.’ Yad Vashem Fires Employee Who Compared Holocaust toNakba

In an article Does supporting Israel make you a friend of the Jews? Mehdi Hassan pointed out that Stephen Pollard had a strange piece in the Daily Telegraph: ‘In a surprising and misconceived attempt to defend (!) Polish MEP Michal Kaminski from accusations of anti-Semitism, the editor of the Jewish Chronicle ends up making this rather bizarre point’ that "Far from being an anti-Semite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israeli an MEP as exists."

The ECR Group Chairman Michał Kamiński with Dr Oded Eran, director of the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, Israel, September 2009.

As we all know, being an anti-Semite hardly disqualifies you as a Zionist.  On the contrary it is a positive boon.  As Israeli novellist and ideologue, A B Yehoshua pointed out, in a talk to the Union of Jewish Students ‘

"Anti-Zionism is not the product of the non-Jews. On the contrary, the Gentiles have always encouraged Zionism, hoping that it would help to rid them of the Jews in their midst. Even today, in a perverse way, a real anti-Semite must be a Zionist. "  [Jewish Chronicle 22.1.82.] 

Kaminski is a far- Right Polish MEP who opposed a national apology for the massacre of Jews by Poles at Jedwabne, in his constituency, in 1941.  The massacre in Jedwabne was the subject of a book by Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomasz Gross.[Neighbours: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, May 2000]  It led to a national apology in 2001, which Kaminski – an anti-Semite who is ardently pro-Zionist opposed.  Stephen Pollard, ex-editor of Richard Desmond’s Daily Express (a paper with a record second only to the Daily Mail in its hostility to Jewish refugees from Nazism) and now editor of the fast fading Jewish Chronicle leapt to Kaminski’s defence.

In a bizarre op-Ed piece ‘David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptible’ Pollard defended Kaminski in the Jewish Chronicle (1.10.09.) denying that he had said that he would apologise only if someone “from the Jewish side” apologises for what “the Jews” did during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland from 1939 to 1941. Mr Kaminski flatly denies this, and no one has yet produced a shred of serious evidence to contradict him.”  

Nine days later Pollard had to eat humble pie.  In a comment piece for the Guardian, Pollard explained that Kaminski, in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle, that ‘there were acts of collaboration by Jewish people with the Soviet army when the Soviet army came to Poland … If you are asking the Polish nation to apologise for the crime made in Jedwabne, you would have to require the whole Jewish nation to apologise for what some Jewish communists did in Eastern Poland." Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews 1.10.09. 

Anti-Semitic?  Perish the thought.  Of course the Polish Jews, 90% of whom were exterminated and who, if they collaborated with the Soviet Union did so because of Poland's pre-existing anti-Semitism and fears for their lives, should have apologised.  Then and only then would Kaminski consider the question of an apology for burning the Jewish residents of Jedwabne alive in a barn.  Such is the company that Pollard keeps.  Of course Pollard was keen to sniff out any hint of holocaust denial in Jeremy Corbyn.  Even if it meant accepting the word of a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen.  Allegations of being seen in the company of a holocaust denier is one thing, justifying the holocaust is entirely different!  Such is the torturous logic of Pollard.

Of course what happened is that Pollard, being a devoted Tory and free-marketeer, a member of the cold-war Henry Jackson Society, was happy to ride to the rescue of the Tory's new alliance with the far-Right European and Conservative Reform Group in the European Parliament.  Anti-semitism was and is of no concern to him compared to defend his conservative friends.

None of which prevented Pollard claiming in a Guardian CIF piece (9.10.09.) that ‘Poland's Kaminski is not an antisemite: he's a friend to Jews’.    Indeed Kaminski is ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town [Brussels] where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/oct/09/michal-kaminski-antisemitism

I have recently become aware of a Anna Bikont’s book ‘The Crime and the Silence’ which was originally published in 2004 and won the European Book Prize in 2011.  It has only recently been published in English.  In an article in The Times of Israel, Anna suggests that Gross’s estimate of 300 dead may be an understimate and that as many as 900 Jews perished in the flames.

Bikont concludes that Thomasz Gross’s belief that the murders were carried out by the poor and working-class are wrong.  ‘“There is a mythology out there that the people who committed these crimes in Jedwabne were the poor and the marginalized. Sure, there were also some people who were criminals who joined in on the pogroms. But it was not organized by them. It was organized by the local nationalistic Polish elites.”  That ties in with the fact that the main anti-Semitic groups in pre-war Polish were groups like the Endeks and middle-class Polish university students.  The Polish working-class voted for the Polish Socialist Party which allied with the anti-Zionist Bund in the local authority elections in 1938 and jointly fought against the pogromists.

However to Pollard, what matters is whether you support Israel not whether you hate Jews.

Author Anna Bikont (Marcel Lozinski)

Polish author reopens minefield of who killed Jedwabne’s Jews

In an English translation of her book ‘The Crime and the Silence,’ journalist Anna Bikont sheds more light on the WWII massacre of hundreds of Jews in occupied Poland

By JP O’ Malley October 15, 2015, 4:15 am 9

LONDON — In 2001, American historian Jan T. Gross set off a maelstrom of passionate historical debate upon the publication of his book about the massacre of hundreds of Jews during World War II, “Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland.” There were already numerous history books about WWII’s brutal atrocities, but what set Gross’s book apart was its revelation that these murders were not committed by the Nazis, but by the Poles themselves.

While this came as a shock to the world at large, years prior to “Neighbors” publication, Polish-Jewish journalist Anna Bikont had been eager to report on the crimes of Jedwabne. But her editor, Adam Michnik — one of Poland’s most prominent Jewish writers and public intellectuals — didn’t want her to write the story.

“At the time he was afraid because Poland was coming into the European Union and NATO,” says Bikont, who helped found the left-wing newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in 1989. “He thought this could promote an anti-Polish feeling with our European neighbors, and that it was better not to write about it.”

“Michnik also told me he didn’t believe so many people could be burnt in a barn, that it simply wasn’t possible,” she tells The Times of Israel.

‘Many Jews were burned. But also many were shot one-by-one when they tried to hide. So it’s very difficult to give an exact figure’

Based on Bikont’s extensive research, on July 10, 1941, the Jews of Jedwabne, a town in northeast Poland, were herded into a barn and burned alive by their Christian neighbors. The numbers of Jews murdered in the massacre has been widely contested over the last few decades, but Bikont believes it’s likely to be between 600 and 900.

“Many Jews were burned. But also many were shot one-by-one when they tried to hide. So it’s very difficult to give an exact figure,” she says.

As part of her research surrounding that fateful day, Bikont interviewed the few survivors from Europe, the United States, South America and Israel, and scoured museums and national archives for written testimonies from people who survived the war.

Published in Polish in 2004, “The Crime and The Silence: Confronting the Massacre of Jews in Wartime Jedwabne” is a mixture of journalistic memoir and historical analyses. It includes in-depth interviews from both the victims and those who carried out the crimes.

The book was re-published in French as “Le Crime et le Silence” in 2011 and won the European Book Prize. It has recently become available in English for the first time.

Bikont tells The Times of Israel that to properly understand how hatred against the Jews manifested so intensely before the war and the Nazi occupation, one must understand the connections between anti-Semitism and the Catholic Church.

“Poland is a very Catholic country, so the Catholic Church has had a huge impact on the anti-Semitism that happened before the war, especially in east Poland in places like Jedwabne,” she says.

In the 1930s, with anti-Semitism raging across Europe, Bikont claims Polish Catholics organized their entire social fabric around a deep mistrust and hatred for the Jews.

“Even children at the time would play anti-Semitic games such as the ‘Jew is the thief,’” she explains. “So the Church taught Poles to have hostility and contempt for Jews from early childhood.”

Soviet occupation of Poland’s mixed ‘blessing’

Bikont documents in her book how the Soviet occupation of wartime Poland also played an important role in stirring up a strong anti-Semitic feeling, especially in Jedwabne.

The ‘Road of Bones’ constructed by inmates of the Soviet Gulag prison camps, including those of Polish citizenship. (public domain, via wikipedia)

In 1939, both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia invaded Poland, carving up the country between them. The two occupying armies coordinated their efforts against Poland until 1941’s Operation Barbarossa in which Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, causing a complete shift in their relationships.

Called “the reign of terror,” the Soviet occupation destroyed the entire fabric of social life built up by the Jewish community for centuries — the Jewish municipal government was liquidated, Hebrew schools were closed, Yom Kippur became a normal work day, political parties were dissolved and Zionist activists were put on deportation lists.

But the occupation was beneficial for Jews too, says Bikont. Many began to experience equal rights for the first time in their lives and were given the right to attend public school, to study, or to pursue professional careers in medicine or education.

“Many young Jews were particularly happy about the Soviets coming into Poland,” says Bikont. “But when the Poles saw these Jews who had a normal life, that was not full of humiliation, they really resented that. So hatred for Jews from the Poles became far greater in the Soviet times.”

During this time, many Poles were involved in the Soviet underground, where Poles often betrayed other Poles. But, Bikont says, it was easier for many to say that it was the Jews who denounced the Poles, so it didn’t look like Poles were betraying each other.

“Jews were given the blame for a lot of things in these paranoid and suspicious times,” she says.

This helps to explain why the Jews, who were systematically rounded up to be torched alive in the barn on July 10, 1941, were paraded around the marketplace in Jedwabne beforehand. Crucially, though, they were made to carry a statue of Bolshevik Revolution leader Vladimir Lenin, just before they perished. This was seen both as a sign of humiliation, and to indicate Jewish-Soviet collaboration.

Memorial in Jedwabne, dedicated to murdered Jews: ‘In remembrance of the Jews from Jedwabne and surrounding areas, men, women, children, co-habitants of this earth, murdered, burned alive here on July 10, 1941.’ (Fczarnowski, CC-BY-SA, via wikipedia)

The Soviet iconography was extremely significant in representing feelings of far-right Polish nationalism at the time, says Bikont.

“All of the propaganda was anti-Bolshevik propaganda. So the Polish nationalists wanted to associate Jews with this statue of Lenin and to make these links between Jews and communists,” she says.  

In all of the accounts that Bikont heard — both directly from her own research and from secondary sources about the Jedwabne massacre — the names of Zygmunt Laudański and Jerzy Laudański were always mentioned as the most active participants in the crime.

Both brothers were sentenced to prison for the massacre. Zygmunt was sentenced to 12 years, but served just six, while Jerzy served just eight of a 15-year sentence.

As part of her research Bikont interviewed both brothers.

“It was the most horrible thing I have ever had to do in my career,” she says, looking extremely distressed as she thinks back to the interviews.

Meet the murderers

“Both brothers seemed very content in what they saw as achievements in their lives,” Bikont tells The Times of Israel. “I saw that they were happy remembering how they raped and killed Jewish women. They showed no remorse in these interviews and they were completely cynical.”

Even though both brothers served time in a communist prison, Bikont says after their release they were greeted as heroes in their local community.

‘This is very difficult to think about for a Polish person, to be both a victim and a perpetrator at the same time’

“The Laudański brothers were liberated because most people who were in the prison were involved in anti-communist activities. It’s very difficult for Polish people to admit to any of these things, because all the time during the war the narrative was the same: that it was the Germans who committed the crimes, and not the Poles, who were always seen as the victims.”

Many people in Jedwabne think that the Germans ordered the Polish to carry out these crimes, Bikont notes. But she says it’s untrue.

“This is very difficult to think about for a Polish person, to be both a victim and a perpetrator at the same time. In Poland especially because we are used to thinking about ourselves as a nation of victims throughout history. This is why I think it’s so difficult for Poles to admit what happened in Jedwabne.”

In Jan Gross’s book, “Neighbors,” the historian writes that the murderers of the Jedwabne massacre were ordinary people. But Bikont believes that such a description has led to many academics and journalists claiming, falsely, that it was the Polish working class who predominately carried out the murders.

‘We are used to thinking about ourselves as a nation of victims throughout history’

In her book Biknot quotes a prominent Polish sociologist, Antoni Selek, who wrote on this period of history that “the most active participants in the atrocity were from the lower rungs of the social hierarchy, unsettled, unfettered by bonds of family.”

“This is simply not true,” says Bikont. “There is a mythology out there that the people who committed these crimes in Jedwabne were the poor and the marginalized. Sure, there were also some people who were criminals who joined in on the pogroms. But it was not organized by them. It was organized by the local nationalistic Polish elites.”