Brighton and Hove Labour Party Emerges as the Largest Party in the Local Elections Despite the Best Efforts of the Zionists

Tweeting Your Opposition to Israeli Apartheid Can Get You Suspended as the racist Jewish Labour Movement makes clear their opposition to a Corbyn led Labour Party

Below is a photo of Greg Hadfield who was part of Alex's leafleting team - despite being suspended, Alex obtained the highest vote of the labour candidates 

The election results were Labour 20 (23), Tories 14 (20) and Green 19 (11) Independent 1 (0) with the 2015 election results in brackets.  

In fact Labour held 20 seats prior to the elections because there had been 2 defections to the TIG group, including former leader Warren Morgan and one councillor, Ann Meadows, crossed the floor and joined the Tories.

Meadows, a councillor for 20 years stood again for the Tories and obtained just 627 votes, 47 votes ahead of the next Tory and 23 votes below the third placed Green!  The Labour candidates all gained over 1,500 votes which demonstrated that after 20 years as a councillor she hadn’t secure a personal following, thus proving the wisdom of deselecting her.

In Wish Ward, Momentum supporter and the only Black woman standing, Alex Braithwaite was suspended. Her offence was to call into question the fake anti-Semitism campaign supported by the Tory press.  According to The Argus her offence was that

‘She retweeted an article by Vox Political entitled ‘A general election is in the offing – time for another anti-Semitism smear against Jeremy Corbyn’

According to that well known anti-racist paper, the Daily Mail Alex ‘shared messages supporting Ken Livingstone and claiming the Rothschild family controlled the European Central Bank.’

The Nazis struck a coin, with the Zionist Star of David on one side and the Swastika on the other after the Head of the Jewish Desk in the Gestapo , Baron von Mildenstein, came back from a 6 months visit to Zionist settlements in Palestine. The Zionists were delighted at the time but now referring to Zionist relations with the Nazis is 'antisemitic'

Even worse ‘she posted a cartoon which suggested the BBC was controlled by the ‘terrorist state’ of Israel.’

Supporting Ken Livingstone is now part of the definition of anti-Semitism! Suffice to say sharing a tweet five years ago about the Rothschilds hardly counts as anti-Semitism either.

The Sussex Jewish Representative Council (which is fronted by Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel) sent this tweet:

 “We are very concerned by a tweet from Labour candidate, Alex Braithwaite.

“Once again she has questioned and belittled the allegations of anti-Semitism within the Labour Party.

“More than this, she again suggests that it is concocted to ‘smear’ Jeremy Corbyn.”

So questioning the fake anti-Semitism smear campaign is itself proof of ‘anti-Semitism’. Just as challenging the claims of witchcraft in Salem could earn you a place on the gallows.

Every week the Jewish Chronicle runs a new story accusing Corbyn of ‘anti-Semitism’. This week there is a bonus. The next has been extended to John Prescott, Labour’s former Deputy Prime Minister for suggesting that the fake anti-Semitism campaign is about Israel!

John Hobson's classic book on Imperialism

And as if to prove Alex and John Prescott are correct the Jewish Chronicle Editor and former Daily Express editor, Stephen Pollard, wrote an editorial Hobson’s Voice, which openly called Jeremy Corbyn an anti-Semite. Pollard wrote

Week after week, more evidence emerges cementing the inescapable conclusion that Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite. So, once again, we pose this question to mainstream, decent Labour MPs: How can you, in all conscience, work towards making a racist politician Prime Minister?

Those who campaign to put today’s Labour into power are, inescapably, working to put an antisemite into Ten Downing Street.

Outrageous McCarthyism against someone who, unlike Pollard, has spent his whole life fighting racism, anti-Semitism included.

The subject of Pollard’s ire is the foreword that Jeremy Corbyn wrote in 2011 to John Hobson’s 1902 book, Imperialism: A Study. The book Imperialism some 8 years ago.  Hobson like so many people a century or more ago believed that Jews were the centre of world finance.  Many Zionists like Theodor Herzl also wrote about the ‘terrible power of our purse’.  However malevolent racists and defamers like the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland forget about Zionism’s anti-Semitic pedigree, included its alliances with anti-Semites like Viktor Orban and Steve Bannon today.

As Guerilla Wire points out in a 1995 pamphlet for the Fabians (page 11), Tony Blair described Hobson as “probably the most famous Liberal convert to what was then literally ‘new Labour’.” – strangely no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ there.  Likewise in his 2005 Chatham House speech on liberty and the role of the state, Gordon Brown cited Hobson with approval – also nothing was said about ‘anti-Semitism’.

Indeed despite the fulminations of the Guardian’s racist and Zionist columnist Jonathan Freedland, the cover of the 2011 edition to which Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword, carries a Guardian review which said ‘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.’

Again no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’ and in 2015 the Guardian’s former political editor Michael White wrote:

“At his Nottingham rally 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”. 

Strangely enough Michael White made no mention of ‘anti-Semitism’. 

If anything proves that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn and people like Alex Braithwaite is fake then the attacks on Corbyn over his review of a classic text on Imperialism by John Hobson proves it definitively.

It’s not surprising Corbyn didn’t mention the 10 or so anti-Semitic lines in a book of 400 pages because they were wholly irrelevant. As Guerilla Wire says:

‘Phil Miller quoted Glyn Secker, secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour:

“Daniel Finkelstein, in his scurrilous piece for the Times (April 30th), ingeniously cobbles together quotes from two different books by Hobson . . . (he) does in one passage make a reference to the Jewish element in international finance and to the Rothschilds as did many others at that time. But he also referred to JP Morgan and Cecil Rhodes — neither of them Jewish — as examples of financiers backing imperialism”.

In other words the racist duo, Finkelstein and Freedland, deliberately manufactured a story out of nothing with the sole intention of  maligning Corbyn.

The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, has form.  When the Tories formed an alliance with anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament in 2009 they were attacked by the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Who defended the Tories?  Stephen Pollard, who wrote that Michal Kaminski, the Polish Law & Justice Party MEP was “one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where anti-Semitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ And it is true.  Besides being an anti-Semite, Kaminski was, like Trump and Bannon and many others, a strong Zionist.  Because Pollard defines anti-Semitism in terms of Israel not Jews. Whereas to most people anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews to Pollard anti-Semitism is criticism of Israel.

Once upon a time Jonathan Freedland called out genuine racists and anti-Semites including Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard

Ironically on this occasion Freedland waxed lyrical about Kaminski and his fascist origins. He wrote in an opinion piece:

there was a time when no self-respecting British politician would have gone anywhere near such people. Kaminski 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" … 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.

Today Freedland sings a different tune alongside Pollard. However that is no reason why the Labour Party should sing the same song.

Alex Braithwaite’s offence was being an anti-Zionist not an anti-Semite. Hove must be one of the most anti-Semitic places in Britain! Although the Tories retained Wish Ward the other Labour candidate gained 1,107 votes whereas Alex gained 1,275, 168 or 15% more votes! Despite the false claims of Fiona Sharpe that Jewish voters in the ward would be concerned, voters made it very clear what they thought of these false allegations.

The sooner that the Labour Party begins to stand up to this bogus campaign from the Jewish Labour Movement and Zionist pressure groups, the sooner the anti-Semitism issue will be put to bed. The JLM have made it clear that they will not support a Labour Government led by Jeremy Corbyn.  This racist group should be disaffiliated immediately.

Right-wing Labour candidate defeated in Hanover - member of Apartheid supporting Jewish Labour Movement (although she's not Jewish)

The results for Labour in Brighton were mixed. In Hollingdean and Stanmer Ward, Labour lost one of its seats to the Greens. Phil Clarke, former General Secretary of the Trades Council was defeated by 56 votes. In Preston Park Ward, Labour lost its two councilors as the Green Party won all 3 seats. An excellent local activist Denise Frend was defeated but the consolation prize was the defeat of JLM member, the racist Julie Cattell who belongs with Chuka Ummuna’s TIG. Likewise in Hanover and Elm Grove, although Danielle Spencer, a Momentum supporter was defeated another JLM supporter Emma Daniels was defeated, a clear victory for anti-racism.

Daniel Yates, Blairite leader of Labour Group, member of racist JLM who banned the public from the election count for the first time ever

In Queens Park a strong challenge by the Greens meant that Labour lost one of the 3 seats and Momentum supporter Colin Piper.  A number of good socialists were elected in wards such as in Moulsecoomb where Kate Knight was elected and East Brighton where Nikki Brennan was elected. Overall the balance in the Labour Group is estimated as tilting towards the left. Currently the leader Daniel Yates is a Blairite and member of the JLM. It is to be hoped that he is replaced by a socialist.

I also found it strange that for the first time ever, under Yate's undemocratic administration, local people were refused access to the election announcements unless they had pre-existing passes. I await an explanation.

There can be no doubt that the campaign waged by the Right of the Labour Party in Brighton & Hove aimed at destroying the chances of success in the local elections. In this they were unsuccessful. Prominent amongst these were Luke Stanger, a racist who believes that Travellers are a ‘nasty blight’.  But although Stanger has been suspended the kid glove treatment he has been afforded makes it clear that ‘anti-Semitism’ is a privileged form of racism in the Labour Party today.

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to the Lying Leader of Brighton and Hove City Council, Warren Morgan

It’s Time to Make Way for an Honest and Truthful Politician

Lies come easily to Warren Morgan

30 September 2017

Cllr. Warren Morgan,

Leader Brighton and Hove City Council,

Town Hall
Bartholomew Square
BRIGHTON
BN1 1JA

To:       warren.morgan@brighton-hove.gov.uk          @warrenmorgan 

Dear Cllr. Morgan,

Sir Henry Wotton is famous for his observation that ‘an ambassador is an honest gentleman sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.’  Given that you are not a diplomat what is it that makes you feel the need to lie so often?

You have been widely quoted as saying that Labour’s conference will not be welcome in the city in the future because of ‘anti-Semitism’.  You are reported in Brighton and Hove News as having ‘singled out a local campaigner Tony Greenstein’.  You are quoted on Facebook as saying that:

 ‘We have the prominent activist and suspended Labour Party member Tony Greenstein here, who indeed was present at the fringe meeting where it was suggested that Holocaust denial should be allowed. His expulsion, in my view, is long overdue.’

The only possible interpretation of your remarks is that I am responsible for what a speaker at the meeting I attended allegedly said. Otherwise why call for my expulsion? What you are engaged in is the McCarthyist tactic of guilt-by-association. Unsurprisingly Joe McCarthy was also anti-Semitic.

The speaker, Miko Peled said that ‘‘Israel, Zionism, even the holocaust  - can these subjects not be discussed, yes or no?’  Nothing Mr Peled said disputed the holocaust. He was merely saying that all subjects, ‘even the Holocaust’ should be open for discussion. That is in fact the current legal position in the UK.  Of course we could bring in legislation to make Holocaust denial illegal, as in Germany and Austria.  However given the electoral success of far-Right, neo-Nazi parties, Alternative for Germany and the Freedom Party in both countries, this doesn’t seem a particular wise route to go down. 

All that Miko Peled was doing was to say discussion about the Holocaust is legitimate free speech.  To twist this into support for Holocaust denial is a prime example of how anti-Semitism has been weaponised by supporters of Zionism and the Israeli state.  It demonstrates your contempt for those who died at the hands of Hitler’s regime – Jewish and non-Jewish.

Unlike you I am Jewish. Unlike you half my father’s family was murdered in the gas chambers of Treblinka. For you to use the Holocaust, of both Jews and non-Jews, up to 5 million of whom also died in the Nazi concentration camps, as a cheap political device in order to gain a political advantage over your opponents in the Labour Party is despicable.  If anyone in Brighton Labour Party is anti-Semitic it is you and your followers. 

It is noticeable that you and your political soul mates have nothing to say about racism against the Roma, yet proportionately just as many Roma died in the camps as Jews. Racism against the Roma today is far higher than that against Jews today but it isn’t so politically advantageous.

As you well know I have often been the recipient of this vile Holocaust denial propaganda, as evidenced by the Argus article of 16th October 1993 as well as physical attacks by fascist groups such as the National Front. A cursory search of the Argus archive would turn up numerous articles e.g. Adam Trimmingham’s review of my book ‘Fighting Fascism in Brighton’  I confess that in 40 years of opposing fascism and racism in Brighton and Hove your name has never once come up.

My reasons for opposing Zionism and the Israeli state are the same as my opposition to fascism and racism in Britain and Apartheid in South Africa. Your use of the Jewish Holocaust for transparently cheap political purposes is contemptible.

Mega Momentum rally before last year's Brighton Labour Party AGM

Last year you lied about spitting at the local Labour Party AGM, because the candidates you supported lost a democratic election.  This year your friends had no traction at Labour Party conference and once again you have resorted to dishonest political gamesmanship, even if it is at the expense of stirring up and exploiting anti-Semitism.

The sophisticated wit of former Brighton councillor Craig Turton endorsed by Cllr Morgan

I realise that you may find this difficult to understand but even the worst political foes try to maintain a certain level of political decorum.  That however seems to elude you.  On your Facebook page there is a comment from former Brighton councillor Craig Turton:

‘Well said Warren Morgan! Greenstein is a poisonous piece of shit - the sooner he's kicked out of the Party the better! - Thursday at 10:09

Instead of admonishing Turton you respond ‘Thanks Craig, appreciate that. Hope you are well.’

It is clear that you are unfit for any public office, both because of your display of arrogant ignorance and your inability to conduct an appropriate public discourse.  You are clearly unfit to be the leader of Brighton and Hove City Council.  Singling out and defaming one Brighton Jewish resident by name is inciting hate crime. If you have an ounce of decency you will resign of your own accord.

It would also be interesting to know with what authority you wrote your letter and on behalf of whom.

Yours truly,

 Tony Greenstein 

Background

Councillor Warren Morgan is a supporter of Progress.  In 2015 he supported Liz Kendall, the most right-wing candidate for leader of the Labour Party.  Last year he supported Owen Smith.

In the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the leadership elections Warren Morgan, Peter Kyle MP and the Labour councillors have felt ever more beleaguered.  The 3 Brighton & Hove parties contain a massive 8,000+ members.  Last July 2^nd 600 people came out to vote at the AGM of the local District Labour Party.  When  Momentum supported candidates won with majorities of 2-1, Warren Morgan promptly invented an alleged spitting incident, backed up by another councillor Emma Daniels, which led to the national Labour Party and the Chair of the Disputes Committee, Anne Black, suspending the party.  Morgan thought nothing of lying through his teeth if it gave him a political advantage.  Last week he did so again.

Morgan even makes light of suggestions of a conspiracy - you don't need to be a conspiracy theorist to know that sometimes there are conspiracies - when the CCTV footage was examined and the staff member interviewed it was clear that Warren Morgan was a liar

Morgan was confident that City College would never release CCTV footage but when it did he remained silent

 The right-wing officials in the party did their best to uphold Morgan’s allegations and hatchet woman Katherine Buckingam was sent down by Iain McNicol from Labour nationally to ‘investigate’ the allegations.  Despite her best efforts, Buckingham found it impossible to find any evidence to back up Warren Morgan’s lies and when the video tape of the alleged incident was produced, courtesy of City College, where the AGM was held, Buckingham refused to view it!  [see Warren Morgan, Emma Daniels & The Spitting Incident That Never Was, My response to Katherine Buckingham, the Labour Party’s head of disputes and discipline]

At last week’s Labour Party Conference the Left was in a large numerical majority.  It is clear from the reception given to anti-Zionist Jewish speakers at the Conference, Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi and Leah Levane, that Conference was unwilling to put up with more fake allegations of anti-Semitism.  Both received standing ovations.   The loudest cheer of Corbyn’s speech was reserved for his references to Palestine.  The Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement were not best pleased.

Both the Free Speech on Israel and Jewish Voices for Labour meetings were packed to the rafters.  So an allegation was invented and I have no doubt that Zionist activists pored over the footage they took secretly of the former meeting to find anything that could possibly discredit the speech of Miko Peled, an American-Israeli and son of an Israeli General Mattiyahu Peled.  When at one point Peled said that everything, including the Holocaust, should be discussed, this was transformed by the spin merchants and cynical manipulators of the Apartheid lobby into a call for Holocaust denial!

Warren Morgan, to whom lying comes as easily as his expenses claims, agreed to write a letter to Iain McNicol threatening the Labour Party with not being allowed to hold a conference in Brighton.  In other words for the sake of his Zionist and Progress friends he was willing to sacrifice millions of pounds in tourism money in Brighton.

Once again the fake anti-Semitism allegations have been used as the last throw of a desperate and discredited group of cynical and dishonest politicians.  And because I happened to be in the same room as 150-200 other people and even worse I spoke at the meeting, I am therefore guilty of Holocaust denial too and should be expelled immediately if not sooner.  I have no doubt that people will clearly see what has happened as the actions of desperate right-wingers trying to use the issue of anti-Semitism in order to halt the advance of the Left. 

I have therefore penned an Open Letter to Warren Morgan calling on him to do the only decent thing in his life so far and that is to resign as Leader of the Labour Group and better still as a councillor altogether.  To paraphrase Shakespeare’s Macbeth, nothing in his life would become him like the leaving of his office.

Tony Greenstein

Brighton & Hove’s Monster Demonstration Against Trump

Praise from one racist Israel's Prime Minister to Donald Trump -  it's what I've already done Netanyahu tweeted

Only Israel and Netanyahu Welcome the Mexican Wall and the Ban on Muslims

Completely blocked - the intersection of Bartholomew Square, where Brighton town hall is situated, with Prince Albert Street and The Laines, with Cafe Rouge on the corner

On the steps of Brighton Town Hall - Momentum and Brighton & Hove PSC - no Zionists or Jewish Labour Movement were to be seen - probably because opposition to anti-Muslim racism is anti-Semitic!

I have seen some large demonstrations in my time in Brighton.  Over 5,000  demonstrated in April 2003 at the start of the Iraq War.  Some 4,000 school students demonstrated in 2010 against the massive increase in tuition fees but this was the largest demonstration I can remember in 40 years.  People came from everywhere.  Bartholomew Square in which the town hall was situated was packed solid.  It was impossible to get anywhere near the demonstration as Prince Albert Street was impassable.  So too were the Laines approaches. 

What was so impressive was not only the youthful nature of the demonstrators but the fact that this represented a cross-section of Brighton and Hove.  Parents with their children, old people and of course veteran protestors like me!  The chanting focussed on the racist bigotry of Trump’s measures against Muslims.  ‘Refugees are welcome’ was the cry.  Even a few of our New Labour councillors, such as Emma Daniels, a strong supporter of Israel’s racist anti-Muslim politics, showed her face before scuttling away.  It was also good to see Brighton and Hove’s Green Mayor Pete West.

Photograph taken from Prince Albert Street which was impassable

The hypocrisy of Trump’s measures, which conveniently excluded Saudi Arabia, the country from which the 9/11 bombers had come, made it clear what the purpose of the immigration ban was – to demonise Muslims and Arabs.  It was an attempt to use the race card to divide American society.  What is gratifying, at a time when New Labour politicians are allowing Brexit to divide people in Britain, is the strength and size of the opposition to Trump in America.

We are living in new times.  The election of Trump, who received fewer votes even than the detested Hilary Clinton, has little legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of American voters.  Most American Presidents enjoy a honeymoon when elected.  Trump has started out with negative ratings.

The election of Trump is not only unpopular with the American people but also with the majority of the American capitalist class and its political establishment.  It’s not simply his policies.  There is a lot of truth in the argument that what Trump does aloud Obama did behind closed doors. That Obama too banned Iraqis from visiting America for 6 months.  That Obama also presided over mass deportations of Mexicans.  But Trump makes a virtue out of his racist reaction.  He deliberately plays footsey with the American far-Right who are in ectasy.  He deliberately stirs up racial divisions in order to prop up US corporations.  He uses race in order to satisfy his lumpen working class support.

What is appalling in their eyes is that Trump is stripping the United States of its moral legitimacy as the leader of the democratic world.  To socialists and lefties this has always been a dubious and hypocritical proposition.  Chile, Iraq, El Salvador – the list of countries that the United States has despoiled is endless.  Its support for Israel is well known.

But today people identify the United States with a loud-mouthed bigot, who wears his racism on his sleeve, who is on record of boasting about sexual attacks on women, who has called all Mexicans rapists and who has appointed open racists and anti-Semites like Steve Bannon of Breitbart as his Strategic Advisor.  Tonight his immigration ban has been countermanded by the Acting Attorney General, an almost unprecedented action.

Brighton's Bartholomew Square

I predict that  Trump may serve one of the shortest terms of any American President.  It is almost certain that evidence is going to be provided of his many misdemeanours and crimes – from rape and sexual assault to fraud in the way his charity operated to tax evasion.  New York State already has an investigation into Trump’s charity underway.  I think it is odds on that Trump is going to be impeached.  At the end of the day it will only be America’s far-Right Zionists, White Supremacists and Fundamentalist Christians who will be his supporters.  Although Republicans have lined up in his support for the moment that is unlikely to last.

The fact that  Theresa May went to pay homage to Trump in America without saying a word about his anti-Muslim rhetoric and  racist tirades against Mexicans says everything you need to know about this tawdry woman who goes begging, from one tyrant to another, seeking a way out from her ‘hard Brexit’.  May is demonstrating, despite her fine words on succeeding to Cameron, that she is willing to support anything and anyone who provides her with an economic escape route from her difficulties on Europe and Brexit.  It was toe curlingly embarrassing to see her hand in hand with a man who boasts about grabbing women by the ‘pussy’.  It is or should be a good example to those who believe that having a woman in power is a good thing in itself.

Brighton's Bartholomew Square

There was, not surprisingly, just one voice in the world that welcomed  Trump’s anti-Muslim directives.  That was the State of Israel which has pioneered racial profiling.  Israel has, as Netanyahu boasted, constructed its own wall on the Egyptian border to keep out African refugees.  Israel has refused to accept any Syrian refugees and has called those refugees who did manage to gain entry before the Egyptian wall ‘infiltrators’ (a comparison with Palestinian refugees from 1948 who sought to return to their lands).

Israel has followed a policy of ‘encouraging’ the 60,000 African refugees who did obtain entry in the early years of this decade, to leave.  Methods include indefinite imprisonment in the Holot detention centre in the Negev Desert.  A number of those who were forced out of Israel ended up dead at the hands of ISIS in Libya.  Israel refuses to recognise that Eritrea, where most refugees come from, is a country with a horrific human rights record.  

Ha’aretz described how 'On Saturday, the Israeli prime minister applauded Trump’s decision to set up a wall with Mexico, with the disputable claim, phrased in Trump-style syntax, “I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.”  Netanyahu’s arguments in opposing the entry of refugees were explicitly racist.  It wasn’t about terrorism or lowering wages but identity – admitting non-Jewish refugees would dilute the Jewish majority:

"If we don't stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state," Binyamin Netanyahu said at Sunday's cabinet meeting. "This phenomenon is very grave and threatens the social fabric of society, our national security and our national identity." Israel PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state]

In an interview with the BICOM journal Fathom, Isaac Herzog, Leader of the Israeli Labour Party  put it more elegantly than Netanyahu but he sang from the same hymn sheet:

‘It’s complicated because one doesn’t want to create a precedent which could affect the equilibrium of the nation. There are millions out there who may want to come to Israel.’

In 2012 in an Op Ed ‘The next national target: Eritrea in the Jerusalem Post Herzog urged that Eritrean refugees, who form 2/3 of Israel’s refugees be sent back.  He repeated this on the eve of the 2015 elections. 

Theresa May has also invited Trump to visit Britain later this year.  A petition opposing the visit has already garnered 1.5m signatures.  It is a sign of the opposition that there will be on the streets when or if Trump shows his face.

Netanyahu’s anti-Jewish support for Trump’s anti-Muslim decree

Banning Syrian refugees and Muslim immigrants will help anti-American propaganda more than U.S. national security.

By Chemi Shalev | Jan. 29, 2017 

U.S President Donald Trump is a hero now for Muslim-haters who, in some countries, might even be the majority. He is being lauded by the hard-right in America, extolled as a man’s man in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, glorified as a god among racist parties in Europe and enjoys wall-to-wall support from his groupies in Israel, who are now being led, unabashedly, by Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Saturday, the Israeli prime minister applauded Trump’s decision to set up a wall with Mexico, with the disputable claim, phrased in Trump-style syntax, “I built a wall along Israel's southern border. It stopped all illegal immigration. Great success. Great idea.” Netanyahu’s intervention on a topic that is in sharp political dispute in the U.S. is questionable enough, but the timing of his decision to identify so strongly with Trump, just after the president issued his executive order on Syrian refugees and Muslim immigrants - a move viewed widely as a declaration of hate against Muslims - is a reckless gamble. For no discernible rhyme, reason or political imperative, Netanyahu has placed himself - and Israel, by extension - solidly behind a morally dubious move and a leader who could soon become the world’s most hated.

Trump’s spokespersons claim that the move is aimed at countering threats to U.S. national security, but that’s an obvious ruse. The U.S. already conducts the world’s most stringent screening for refugees. To this day, not one Syrian refugee or immigrant from any of the seven blacklisted countries has engaged in terrorist activities - while those who did attack America, including the terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks, came from countries that were not included in Trump’s list, either because they’re too vital to U.S. interests or too lucrative for Trump’s business empire.

On the other hand, the damage that Trump’s move may cause, directly or indirectly, in the short term or in the long, is undeniable. The reports of refugees stuck on their way to the U.S. or in American airports, along with the shocking announcement by the Department of Homeland Security that green-card holders who are abroad will be barred from rejoining their families or their jobs, place a disturbing human face on the bureaucratic jargon of Friday's executive order. Much of Muslim public opinion is likely to be outraged by Trump’s actions - and they will be aided and abetted by hostile governments and jihadist groups eager to stoke the flames of hate. Friendly regimes, in places such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, will be under pressure to distance themselves from Washington. Preachers of radical Islam will be able to use the photo of Trump signing the order as proof of their age-old claim that America and the West are on a crusade against Islam. ISIS, which has been on the defensive for the past year and, according to some experts, on the verge of collapse, has been handed a propaganda victory and a new slogan for attracting new recruits.

Trump’s decision is bound to increase polarization between left and right, between liberals and some, but not all, conservatives. What supporters of the move will portray as a defensive imperative, its opponents will view as institutional discrimination and an assault on values. “Tears are running down the cheeks of the Statue of Liberty,” Senator Chuck Schumer said. The famous line of American-Jewish poet Emma Lazarus' The New Colossus “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” which is engraved in stone at the footsteps of Lady Liberty, will now need an asterisk that clarifies “  *Unless they happen to be Muslim.”

Trump’s decision is also bound to increase tensions in the American Jewish community, between the right wing that has adopted and compounded their Israeli counterparts’ anti-Muslim narrative and the more centrist and moderate elements - including most of the Jewish establishment - that remains loyal to the community’s traditional liberal values. Most Jews still view themselves as a vulnerable minority, just like Muslims. Most are deeply committed to the values of immigration and sanctuary. Most still carry the traumatized memories of their parents and grandparents of an America that locked its gates for Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. Netanyahu’s imprudent encouragement of Trump, along with the overzealous welcome that Trump has received from the Israeli government, further expand the growing divide between the Jewish State and the world’s biggest Jewish diaspora.

One wonders of course about the silence of the GOP chickens, who were quick to blast Trump’s offer to ban Muslims when his prospects to become the party’s presidential candidate looked slim but who are now laying low out of fear and expediency. First and foremost of these is House Speaker Paul Ryan who was rightfully enshrined for a few hours on Saturday on the Wikipedia page for spineless invertebrates. Photos of Likud lawmakers who have been similarly struck dumb when asked about Netanyahu’s corruption charges and other shady shenanigans also deserve a place of honor in the same gallery of cowards. They and their patrons, Trump and Netanyahu, are the proverbial birds of a feather that mock us together.

See also The Death of an Eritrean 'Infiltrator'