Whilst the GMB Claims to
Support the Palestinians in practice it is a Supporter of Israeli Apartheid
Bert Schouwenburg
On
January 26 the Walthamstow branch of the GMB unanimously passed a motion which stated that
the decision
to work with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) runs contrary to GMB’s support
for Palestine, has brought the union into disrepute
and that
the JLM
is effectively
the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party, a racist organisation that governed
Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly responsible for the massacre or the
expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians
The
motion noted that the ‘JLM conflates
anti-Zionism with antisemitism’ and that by continuing to support the JLM
the ‘GMB is leaving itself open to
accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of Palestinian people.’
It therefore called on Congress to ‘instruct(s)
the General Secretary and the CEC to sever all ties with JLM forthwith.’
It is a
perfectly reasonable motion. There is nothing in the slightest anti-Semitic about
it. Proposer, Bert Schouwenburg, was an organiser for the GMB’s London Region before
taking up the post of International Officer until he retired in 2018 after Tim
Roache, the General Secretary, who was alleged to have raped and molested
female members of the GMB, took over. Roache was forced to resign and was in
turn succeeded by Gary Smith, who is both a Starmer supporter and a racist Zionist.
Smith is
such an ardent supporter of the Israeli state that even the far-right Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, praised
him. The CAA, an Israeli state proxy, was set up specifically to counter
solidarity with the Palestinians with accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’. It is so
far to the Zionist right that even Margaret Hodge, the parliamentary
representative of the JLM, attacked
the CAA as being more interested in attacking the Labour Party than opposing
anti-Semitism.
As Skwawkbox noted Smith
was a key participant in the campaign against Scottish Labour leader Richard
Leonard.
He also led a campaign against Scottish First Minister Nicola
Sturgeon
on the same issue.
The CAA’s
Chairperson, Gideon Falter, is Vice
Chair of the Jewish National Fund UK. The JNF funds the building of settlements
in the Occupied West Bank. The JNF only allows
Jews to rent or lease its property and it owns or control 93% of Israeli
land. The JNF has consistently
fought the idea that Jews and non-Jews should have equal access to its
land. Faltiel is also a supporter of Hindutva, Hindu Supremacy as espoused by
the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi (who is also an ardent admirer of
Zionism).
Gary Smith is praised by the CAA, whose Chair Gideon Falter is Vice-Chair of the JNF which refuses to lease land to Arab citizens of Israel
Hardeep
Matharu wrote
about how
In 2018, the Hindu Forum of Britain arranged a private meeting
with Gideon Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA). The
chair – none other than Conservative MP Bob Blackman, who has a history of hosting
Islamophobes – declared that there was a need to “learn from the way the
CAA had got the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition
of antisemitism passed in the Labour Party” with regards to supposed anti-Hindu
sentiment.
A year later, two weeks before the 2019 General Election, a
spokesperson for the Hindu Council UK supported Rabbi Mirvis’ claim that the
Labour Party is antisemitic and added
that it is anti-Hindu too because a conference resolution had criticised
Modi’s policies in Kashmir.
Amrit
Wilson described
how Falter assured the meeting that he and his supporters
would do all
they could to help eradicate the ‘duty’ on the
government to make Caste an aspect of race in the Equality Act of 2010.
In other
words the CAA supports discrimination against Untouchables or Dalits. This is
where the campaign against ‘anti-Semitism’ has ended up.
The far-right misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism loves Gary Smith because they recognise a fellow racist
The same CAA
described some of Gary Smith’s notable achievements noting that
he has spoken out against Richard
Leonard, the former Scottish Labour leader, for failing to support the International
Definition of Antisemitism.
The International
Definition (the IHRA)
has one purpose. Conflating support for the Palestinians and anti-Zionism with
anti-Semitism. The GMB has also adopted the IHRA. As Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former
Court of Appeal judge observed the 500+ word IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is
indefinite.’
The CAA recalled
how, in March 2019, during the fake anti-Semitism campaign against the Labour
left and Jeremy Corbyn, Smith
‘labelled the Labour Party’s handling of antisemitism
“disgraceful” and revealed that he even thought about leaving the Party
himself.
In a
private email, Bert described how
‘for reasons I
have never fully understood, there has long been a reluctance to fully embrace
the Palestinian cause [in the GMB] despite numerous resolutions.’
On 28
April 2023 Schouwenburg received a letter from London Region Secretary Warren
Kenny suspending his GMB membership because of the motion on the JLM. As
Schouwenburg noted
I do not think
that he [Warren] is capable of sufficient independent thought to have made the
decision to suspend me himself though I can only speculate as to why it was
considered necessary to shut me down
Speculating
that ‘I needed to be made an example of pour encourager les autres.’ In other words anyone who decides that in
order to support the Palestinians one needs to oppose Zionism, the Jewish
Supremacist ideology that has led to the Palestinians dispossession, needs to
be aware that they will be expelled.
In his
barely literate letter, Kenny alleged that the motion ‘contained several factual inaccuracies. The motion also contains
serious, potentially legally actionable, and antisemitic allegations.’
However
there was nothing in Warren’s letter explaining what these inaccuracies were or
why the motion was deemed anti-Semitic. Nor did Warren explain what was ‘potentially legally actionable.’
The reason
why Warren’s assertions were unsupported was because they were false. Bert was
immediately suspended from benefit, banned from holding any GMB office and
banned from taking part in any GMB business and affairs.
The motion passed by the branch contained not a
hint of anti-Semitism nor was it inaccurate. It read:
Congress accepts that the
decision to work with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) runs contrary to GMB’s
support for Palestine, has brought the union into disrepute and should never
have been countenanced.
Congress notes that the JLM is
effectively the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party, a racist organisation that
governed Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly responsible for the massacre
or the expulsion of three quarters of a million Palestinians. Today, some of
their Knesset members support the most right-wing Israeli regime in history.
JLM conflates anti-Zionism
with antisemitism and by dint of its support, GMB is leaving itself open to
accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of Palestinian
people. Therefore, Congress instructs
the General Secretary and the CEC to sever all ties with JLM forthwith.
In an article
on Schouwenburg’s suspension Skwawkbox noted that the GMB officially supports
the ‘Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions’ movement, which the JLM opposes and in
both 2011 and 2013 passed resolutions not to allow its members to travel to Israel on delegations organised by
‘Trade Union Friends of Israel’.
There is
very little on the GMB website concerning Palestine and no mention at all of
BDS. Under the heading GMB Policy on Palestine we learn that the ‘GMB is a long-standing
supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Western Sahara Campaign and
supports the statement below.’
The
statement mainly opposes the Abraham Accords and for some reason includes GMB policy on the Sahrawi
people of Western Sahara. The policy condemns Israel’s ‘continuing to flout international law through its ongoing occupation
and colonisation of Palestinian land’, the expansion of settlements and the
denial of the Palestinian right to self-determination. The policy states that:
global
civil society must redouble its efforts to stand in solidarity with the
Palestinian and the Sahrawi people until freedom, justice and equality are
realised.’
Yet when Schouwenburg
proposed a motion putting some teeth into this policy he was suspended which
suggests that the GMB’s policy on Palestine is merely declaratory.
Were there any ‘mistakes’ in the
Walhamstow motion and why was it anti-Semitic?
The motion from
Walthamstow branch noted that ‘the JLM is
effectively the UK wing of the Israeli Labour Party’ [ILP]. If you go to
the JLM website it states explicitly that the ILP is its ‘sister party.’ The motion described the
ILP as
‘a
racist organisation that governed Israel from 1948 to 1977 and was directly
responsible for the massacre or the expulsion of three quarters of a million
Palestinians.’
This too is a fact? The
motion could have said that it was the ILP which kept Palestinians who weren’t
expelled in 1948 under military rule from 1948 till 1966 and that it
confiscated most of their land too.
The motion stated that
the JLM
conflates
anti-Zionism with antisemitism and by dint of its support, GMB is leaving
itself open to accusations that it is supporting the racist treatment of
Palestinian people.
This too is a fact.
Anyone doubting this should read Asa Winstanley’s new book ‘Weaponising Anti-Semitism – How the Israel
Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn’.
The JLM were refounded
in 2015 solely in order to spearhead the
attack on Corbyn using anti-Semitism as its weapon. The JLM joined the CAA
in making a complaint to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission about the
Labour Party.
The
unspoken assumption running through Kenny’s letter is that the JLM is the
Jewish section of the Labour Party but this is not true. One of the JLM’s Values is
To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life
and its development on the basis of freedom, social justice and equality for
all its citizens.
Promoting
the centrality of Israel among Jews is a Zionist not a Jewish principle. The
JLM is a Zionist group which no Jewish person who is not a Zionist would join. The
JLM is affiliated to the UK
Zionist Federation and the World Zionist Organisation.
The
hypocrisy of the JLM is proven in their assertion that they support equality
for all Israel’s citizens but that they also support a Jewish state. An
ethno-nationalist state based on the religion of only some of its citizens cannot,
by definition, be a state where all its citizens are equal.
When Israeli
actor Rotem Sala posted
on Instagram:
When will anyone
in this government tell the public that this is a country of all its citizens,
and all people are born equal. “Arabs are also human beings. And also the
Druze, and the gays, and the lesbians and… gasp… leftists.
the reaction
of Prime Minister Netanyahu was swift. He stated
that:
Israel is not a
state of all its citizens. According to the basic nationality law we passed,
Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it.
The ILP
did not contradict him. That is why ‘Jewish
Settlement’ is one of the ‘values’ outlined in the racist Jewish Nation State Law,
a principle that the Israeli Labor Party adheres too.
Kenny
also doesn’t explain why Schouwenburg has been suspended and not all those
present at the branch meeting where the motion was passed unanimously. When a
motion is passed it is the property of the meeting not one individual. Why was Schouwenburg
singled out?
The GMB’s
defence of a Zionist group which supports a state which has been condemned as
committing the crime of apartheid suggests that under Gary Smith the GMB is supporting
Israeli Apartheid.
That
Israel is an apartheid state is not a matter of dispute. Every major human
rights organisation – Israel’s B’tselem,
Human
Rights Watch and Amnesty
International have condemned Israel as an apartheid state.
The only conclusion
that can be draw from Bert Schouwenburg’s proposed expulsion is, in his own
words, that the
‘GMB
are trying to shut down any voices that dissent from their newly-found
enthusiasm for Israel’s apartheid regime. Under Gary Smith, a union that once
backed the call for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS) is now
supporting the most vicious, right-wing government in Israel’s history.
It
is not Bert Schouwenburg who should be suspended pending investigation but Gary
Smith and his poodle, Warren Kenny.
Smith was instrumental in having Black rapper Lowkey banned
from the Tolpuddle Festival at the behest of various Zionist organisations. See
my blog of January 1 2023 detailing how Gary
Smith acted as a messenger boy for the Apartheid State’s lobby groups.
Gary Smith's love affair with Zelensky, a Jewish fascist who has no problem with a national holiday for a mass murderer of Jews during WW2
Smith’s opposition to ‘anti-Semitism’ doesn’t prevent
him from being an ardent supporter of Zelensky who has banned
Ukraine’s leftwing parties and has also abolished
the right to strike, using the war as a pretext. Zelensky is a fervent
Zionist and supported Israel’s attacks on Gaza. His support for self-determination
doesn’t include the Palestinians. Yet the GMB is fundraising to buy a vehicle
for the Ukraine military and London Region has, I understand, handed them a
donation of £5,000, as if the billions from Joe Biden and Boris Johnson/Sunak
weren’t sufficient.
Stepan Bandera's Ukrainian Insurgent Army
(OUP) played an integral part in the massacre of 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar in
1941. He is a national hero in Ukraine & the Zionists say nothing
Zelensky may be Jewish but he is also a Zionist and
that explains why it is that he has formed alliances
with Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militias. He has done and said nothing about the fact
that Stepan Bandera is the only Nazi collaborator in the world to have a national
holiday in his honour. Bandera’s Ukraine Insurgent Army murdered some 200,000 Jews as well as 100,000
Poles.
The GMB
is affiliated to Palestine Solidarity
Campaign. The silence of PSC in the face of Smith’s support for Israel and the
Zionists, in blatant contradiction of his own union’s policy on Palestine,
should have been called out. Instead PSC has remained silent as Smith and the JLM
target Palestinian supporters like Bert Schouwenburg.
Members
of PSC should be asking what is the purpose of a union’s affiliation if that
union acts as an extension of the apartheid regime? I know that Barbara Plant, the
GMB’s President is a genuine supporter of the Palestinians. PSC should be
working with her to confront Smith and his Zionist sycophants like Warren
Kenny.
Even past
General Secretary Tim Roache, put his name to an advertisement in the Guardian
in 2017 calling on the British government to apologise for the Balfour
Declaration.
The British Brothers League was set up to campaign for
anti-alienist legislation which Arthur Balfour, the Zionist hero, introduced in
1905. William Evans Gordon MP was a friend of Zionist Organisation President
Chaim Weizmann and a supporter of the Zionist movement
Arthur
Balfour was a dedicated anti-Semite who proposed the first immigration
laws, the Aliens Act, against Jewish refugees in 1905.
Weizmann, srael’s first President, described a conversation he had had with
Balfour, who told him that he had met with Cosima Wagner, the anti-Semitic widow
of Richard Wagner. Balfour explained that ‘he
shared many of her anti-Semitic postulates.’ One suspects that Smith and
Balfour would have got on quite well.
Tony
Greenstein
.jpg)
