Is this the most trivial, trite and superficial article that the New Statesman has ever run?

Or How Karen Glaser’s ex-boyfriend had a very very narrow escape!

On her blog we learn that Karen Glaser is ‘an experienced journalist’ whose ‘journalism has been syndicated internationally.’ This perhaps tells us more about the standards of journalism today than the quality of Ms Glaser’s output.  Karen tells us that she writes on relationships and Jewish matters and that she has been a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle, which is not encouraging given the decline in the latter’s circulation and its role as a Zionist megaphone. She boasts that the guests on her Guardian podcasts have included David Aaronovitch and Melanie Phillips, which hardly gives us much confidence in her claim to be a left-wing British Jew. But perhaps she means a ‘left-wing’ Zionist which is an entirely different thing. In short Karen is just the kind of tame establishment journalist that The Staggers loves to indulge.

The New Statesman, which used to consider itself on the left, has been second only to the Guardian in its venomous attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and its indulgence of his Zionist critics (for example the abysmal article by the Jewish Labour Movement’s Mike Katz and Adam Langleben on why they supported the IHRA). My attention was drawn to what must count as just the most trivial article I have yet read of the anti-Corbyn genre. Ms Glaser’s Why I kicked my boyfriend out at 2am over anti-Semitism in the Labour party. It is the Zionist equivalent of Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster and bears about the same relationship to the truth.

The New Statesman's Bizarre anti-Corbyn Story

Apparently this tragic lonely heart had been in a relationship with ‘Sean’ for some 9 months before discovering his ‘anti-Semitism’. He is you understand a Corbynite and these people are nothing if not clever and devious.  Presumably he hid his anti-Semitism under the bed sheets for all of the 9 months until Karen had her epiphany.  Or perhaps he pretended he was a Tory? We have Karen’s assurance that Tories are never anti-Semitic so it’s no wonder that Karen was fooled by this dastardly swine.

Apparently Sean ‘gestured in exaggerated fashion’ to her many possessions. “Well, your life looks OK to me,” which is proof that she had been sharing her most intimate secrets with Himmler’s bastard offspring. How dare the upstart suggest that Karen’s life is a bed of roses when anyone can see that it consists of tears and strife, toil and trouble to say nothing of public self-humiliation. She had clearly been in bed with an anti-Semite if not a fully fledge Nazi. It is one of life's wonders that Karen is not suffering from PTSD.

When told that she seemed to be comfortably off Karen, sharp as a button, responded instantly that “Lots of Jews had nice apartments in 1930s Berlin,” and we all know what happened to Germany’s Jews. What an insensitive soul she had shacked up with not to realise that Corbyn’s Gestapo was about to nationalise her flat whilst putting her in ‘protective detention’ along with all those other Jewish capitalists.

Karen you understand was doing her best not to appear to be the ‘hyperbolic Jew of anti-Semitic ridicule.’  Rest assured Karen, only an anti-Semite could possibly suggest that you were exaggerating your pain, being hyperbolic or behaving like a typical JAP (Jewish American Princess).  After all, everyone knows that Momentum’s uniform includes regulation jackboots for the day when Fuhrer Corbyn takes control.

Karen Glaser - A Journalist Whose Talents Lie in Fiction Writing

Karen tells us, in one of those romantic moments that we all treasure, that ‘I really liked’ Sean.  After this public drubbing you wonder what exactly it was that she liked about him, apart from having the patience of a saint or two. You get the feeling that it might have been preferable to have had a relationship with a tarantula rather than take the risk of being Karen’s consort.

And when Sean told Karen ‘that Labour’s anti-Semitism had been massively overstated, that it was essentially a tawdry attempt to smear Corbyn’ you could have heard a pin drop. Its akin to taking communion and drinking the blood of Christ naked or even worse, eating a ham sandwich in an Orthodox synagogue (which the Jewish anarchists used to do!).

However Karen, a woman with a permanently shimmering halo,‘took a deep breath and answered him properly.’ as one should of course though one suspects that she must have considered reaching for the rolling pin.  Our Jewish heroine ‘explained to my lover that this is no laughing matter’.

Here we have an existentialist clash of love and life. When the jackboots are on the doorstep, the last thing you want is for your lover to question your fears of an imminent demise.  Karen was, in essence, a budding Jamal Khashoggi.

Karen patiently explained ‘that there is a consensus across Anglo-Jewry that there is a serious problem of anti-Semitism in Labour’.  And where there is a consensus there is eternal life and truth. Clearly this ingrate, who one assumes isn’t even Jewish, was incapable of demonstrating even the slightest empathy with Karen’t horrible predicament.

At this point I feel duty bound to point out that Israel was founded in order to stop the Karens, Beckys and Sarahs of this world bedding down with shegetzes. For those who are unacquainted with these things let me explain that the shegetz like its female counterpart, the shiksa, is derived from the Yiddish word sheketz, which roughly translated means an abomination, an unclean thing, a detested thing.  Rabbi Jack Abramowitz described it as "simply indefensible", "inherently condescending, racist and misogynistic". Nonetheless non-Jewish boyfriends are inherently risky.

This is the real racism not fake anti-Semitism

However I digress. Karen is nothing if not broadminded and despite being a Zionist had no objection to having a shegetz for a partner. One can only hope that she has learnt her lesson and that in future she keeps it in the tribe. If she were in Israel she would be known as a trollope and worse. Miscegenation is taken seriously in the Holy Land because it isn’t so much a question of religion but racial purity whereas in the diaspora these things are only too common.  50%+ of American Jews 'marry out'. 

Karen whose patience is one of the most loveable things about her, tried to explain to this non-Jewish parvenu that ‘if Tory politicians had done half the things to any other ethnic group that Corbyn has done to the Jews, leftists would be baying for blood.’

Now I know that the anti-Semites who read this blog will probably scoff and chuckle at this but Karen has a point. In fact a number of points. After all it is well known that when it comes to ‘other ethnic groups’ the Tories are a model of British tolerance and good manners. Indeed the party of the grisly May has never, as far as I am aware, ever advocated discrimination against anyone on the grounds of religion, race or sexual orientation. Enoch Powell is but a distant memory.

Yes I know that the Tory party are in alliance with a range of anti-Semitic parties (at least 3 – Swedish Democrats, Poland’s Law &; Justice and Latvia’s Fatherland and Freedom Parties) – in the European Conservative and Reform group in the European parliament.  Of course Tory MEPs voted to defend the anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a vote of censure recently. But quite rightly Karen would have dismissed this as totally irrelevant.  She’s not talking old-fashioned anti-Semitism i.e. hatred of Jews she is talking Israel and hatred of Zionism.

Perhaps someone can supply the name of Jewish people killed by the Police in custody?

The Windrush scandal was merely a figment of someone’s imagination.  ‘Hostile environment’ policy? That’s just another name for global warming.  Stop and search? That’s just the Police being helpful to Black kids who’ve lost their way in life. Black deaths in custody?  Well everyone has got to die somewhere.  Clearly Karen has got a point.  If other ethnic groups had suffered  a fraction of what Jews have had to put with under Corbyn, that pound shop British Goebbels, then us leftists would have risen up.  It could well have turned into another Peterloo such would have been our anger.

And when Sean asked, ‘as Corbynistas always do’ what Corbyn had actually done, then Karen went through her ‘grim list’.  And for the doubting Thomases here let me assure you that the list is indeed Grimm as in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. 

All of these men according to Karen Glaser have 'hook noses'

Having been provoked, beyond endurance, by her non-Jewish lover, Karen let forth: There was his absurd claim that Hamas and Hezbollah ‘are dedicated to peace and justice’ when we all know that it was Hezbollah which invaded Israel in 1982 and again in 2006.  Indeed this terror group occupied a large swathe of land in Northern Israel for years with a puppet Zionist in charge. As for Hamas, we all know what they are capable of.  They even send forth hundreds and thousands of demonstrators to the fence with Israel with strict instructions to get themselves killed, forcing the poor Israeli boys to do just that.  Because as we know ‘Hamas’s charter calls for the destruction of the Jews’ (it doesn’t!) and it would seem the destruction of the Palestinians too. Then there is Corbyn’s defence of the blood libeller Raed Salah (again not true but what’s a lie between lovers?) to say nothing of his membership of Facebook groups ‘where deeply anti-Semitic posts are the norm’ (also not true) and ‘his siding with those behind the now infamous Nazi-style mural showing hook-nosed anti-Semitic caricatures, getting rich on the backs of the world’s poor.’ The latter refers to a mural of 6 bankers, 4 of whom were non-Jewish, none of whom had a hook nose. Why let a few facts come between lovers?

Of course there will be some cynics reading this who will be credulous at this point but I ask you to restrain your laughter.  This is a serious and difficult matter for Karen who ‘tried to explain to the man with whom I’d just shared my bed just how painful this all was.’ Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity will by now realise the difficulty poor Karen was in.  The conflict between her love and lust for Sean and her horror at his clear anti-Semitism posed a dilemma that no woman should have to undergo.

Karen however was nothing if not patient with her errant Sean.  She explained that in the past decade some 40,000 Jews had emigrated from France to Israel.  Of course, like all Zionist statistics this is somewhat misleading. After the murder of 4 Jews in the Hypercacher supermarket in 2015 Israel did its best to stimulate the emigration of Jews.  Netanyahu came over to Paris to tell the Jews there that their ‘real home’ was Israel but not only did they not come in the expected numbers but of those who did come ‘many of them are also returning to France in greater numbers’ according to Andy Semotiuk. Zionism’s answer to anti-Semitism has never been to fight it but to do what the anti-Semites want, which is to leave and set up their own racial state. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2014 there were 6,547 Jewish emigrants from France and in 2015, despite the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher murders the number rose only to 6,628. In 2016, the number dropped to 4,239 and in 2017 there were only 3,157. In the first five months of 2018 there were just 759 emigrants. In short there are lies, damned lies and Karen’s statistics. Why the Expected Wave of French Immigration to Israel Never Materialized

Karen, whose patience with her shegetz, was almost superhuman, explained to the anti-Semitic misfit that ‘mocking Jews when they call out anti-Semitism, is analogous to white people telling black people they are imagining their experiences of racism.’ Well put. Read from the crib sheet with perfection. The only problem is that Jews in Britain are White not Black.  Not only White but the most privileged section of the White community in terms of socio-economic status. It was noticeable that in all her examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ none of them actually related to anything that has actually disadvantaged British Jews.  They all related to Israel. Strange that.

Even worse poor Sean then blurted out that ‘Jews have money, don’t they?’ whilst hastening to reassure Karen that he wasn’t talking about her.

By this time, you will understand that Karen Glaser had just about had enough of Sean and quite understandably she exploded. Anti-Semitism in her boudoir was really too much. Since Jews don’t have saints, one almost wonders whether Pope Francis might help out and canonise the Blessed Karen Glaser.  I realise that you have to be dead before the process of beatification begins but I’m sure that Karen, halo intact, could be made an exception. She patiently told the miscreant that:

‘the point is that anti-Semitism is never about Jews and the actual lives they lead, and one of the central tropes of anti-Semitism is the pernicious association between Jews and money. It never, ever goes away. For many on the left this means that the Jews can never be oppressed or exploited but are, in fact, the source of others’ oppression and exploitation. That’s why Corbyn couldn’t see anything wrong with that vile mural. It matched his world view.

You will understand I am sure the magnitude of young Sean’s offence. Indeed I am surprised that Karen didn’t pick up her phone, dial 999 and report him for a hate crime.  I should imagine that 6 months in the clink might be the best cure (since being deprived of Karen’s nocturnal favours probably won’t be punishment enough).

Before m’lud pronounces sentence it is probably fair to quote a couple of Jewish experts who can be witness to Sean’s anti-Semitic crimes.

The first is William Rubinstein, a past President of the Jewish Historical Society. In his book The Right, Left and the Jews, (Croom Helm, 1982) Rubinstein writes that

the rise of Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status has led to the near disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size : indeed the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working class of any size.... it has made Marxism, and other radical doctrines, irrelevant to the socio-economic bases of Western Jewry, and increasingly unattractive to most Jews.

While there have been many wealthy and powerful Jewish individuals and dynasties throughout modern history, only since the 1950s has Western Jewry as a whole risen into the upper-middle class. And the Jewish proletariat transformed itself into a near-universal Jewish bourgeoisie.’ p. 51

Perhaps we should quickly pass on since it’s obvious that this Rubinstein fellow is also anti-Semitic. How about the much more reasonable Geoffrey Alderman, who is a right-wing columnist for the Jewish Chronicle?  In his book ‘The Jewish Community in British Politics, Clarendon Press 1983, Alderman writes (p. 137)

the tendency for British Jews to be found in the higher social classes is very evident. In 1961 over 40 per cent of Anglo-Jewry was located in the upper two social classes, whereas these categories accounted for less than 20 per cent of the general population. The electoral consequences of this trend become clear when it is remembered that , at the time of the 1964 general election which Labour won, three -quarters of the top two social classes supported the conservative party.

Hmm. Maybe not. So it seems that not only is Sean right about Jews being more prosperous than the average Gentile but we have also stumbled on the real reason why so few Jews vote Labour today. Nothing to do with that left-wing Adolf Corbyn.  It would seem that it’s no longer in their interest to do so, as just about anyone who has lived in a Jewish community will tell you. They are insufferably bourgeois.  It was not for nothing that in Thatcher’s constituency of Finchley Jews constituted one of her main support bases.

The ever patient Karen, who truth be told wanted to hang on to Sean if at all possible, then got on to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. I know what some of you malcontents are going to say. That people like Geoffrey Robertson QC have slagged it off as being not fit for purpose but as Karen explained the IHRA

‘was written in response to this hatred, a definition to help European police forces and prosecutors better understand it. That’s why the Labour Party’s refusal to adopt it in full for so long caused huge hurt and pain.’

And nothing defines our Karen so much as pain.  Her article oozes the stuff. The fact that the IHRA mentions Israel more than Jews is completely irrelevant. Its sole concern is anti-Semitism. After all it’s a Working Definition on Anti-Semitism and has been for the past 14 years. What further proof do you need of its relevance than the fact that all those Tories support it? There is barely an anti-Semite in the world, Orban, Trump, Netanyahu, who doesn’t support it.

Up piped our irrepressible Sean ‘“Britain has hate speech and anti-discrimination laws.  Why do Jews need additional protection?” A good question you might think but I beg you to understand that this last, flippant comment was what we in the trade call the straw that broke the camel’s back (if comparing a Jew to a camel isn’t anti-Semitic).

The legendary Robert Fisk of The Independent

You will now understand why Sean’s insolent and brazen refusal to emphathise with his erstwhile lover led to the breakdown of a beautiful relationship. One can only imagine the pained expression on Karen as she barked ‘I think it’s time for you to leave’.

As St. Karen of Golders Green explained to The Stagger’s readership

‘Corbynistas’ standard response to Jews is that they know their claims of anti-Semitism are false and that they make them to smear the Labour leader. Of course this doesn’t explain why this woman threw her (now ex) lover out of her freshly painted flat at 2.30 am.’

Never a truer word spoken in jest.  Karen is right. Sean’s impudence doesn’t explain why ‘this woman’ behaved as she did.  I can only presume it was a product of the fact that for all her wittering about ‘anti-Semitism’ she could not explain how it was that anti-Semitism had only risen since Jeremy Corbyn had become leader of the Labour Party and why Tory links with genuine anti-Semites never seemed to get a look in.  Or indeed why, if Labour was indeed anti-Semitic  it was the papers of the Right, like the Daily Mail, the paper that supported Hitler in the 1930’s and which opposed the immigration of Jewish refugees from Nazism, who were hottest on Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’.

One of a rare breed - Robert Fisk - The Independent's Legenday Middle East correspondent

There is only one moral one can draw from this story and it is an old one.  Hell has no fury like a woman scorned. Karen Glaser deserves to be scorned and treated with complete disdain and contempt for the dishonesty of this account, from beginning to end. If it did indeed occur then we can rest assured that it is a parody of the breakdown in her relationship with ‘Sean’.  I suspect, like the odyssey of the Children of Israel in the Sinai desert it is a comfortable myth which hides more than it reveals about Karen’s personal life.

It would of course be interesting to hear Sean’s account of this fairy tale but for the New Statesman to do that would be to break a habit of a lifetime.  It would mean conceding a right of reply to someone who had been abused and traduced. Even if his name has been changed there is no doubt that there will be people who know of Karen’s ex-partner and will think worse of him as a result.

However that is as nothing when one considers that Sean should count himself extremely fortunate to be free of this hectoring, bullying, self centred and superficial woman. That she is probably typical of British journalists and the staff on the New Statesman is indeed a cause for reflection if not concern. Pundits and commentators today are little more than prostitutes doing their proprietor’s bidding. Their opinions are for sale and any journalist with an independent streak is unlikely to gain and retain employment on most newspapers.

Patrick Cockburn - part of a journalistic dynasty

I can think of just two, possibly three, journalists who retain any credibility or independence today.  Patrick Cockburn, the legendary Robert Fisk and John Pilger. The first two are employed by The Independent and Pilger has no regular paper.  Instead we have a succession of mediocrities flitting between The Guardian, New Statesman and BBC, none of whom challenges the neo-liberal view of the world that sees capitalism as a good thing and inevitable and which is incapable of marrying up things like poverty, global warming and climate change with the social and economic system that produces these phenomenon.

Perhaps I have wasted too much time on Karen Glaser, who is really just an insipid and insignificant reflection of other peoples’ thoughts. Someone who retails hasbara  as her own original thought and whose view of the world is coloured by her own perception of her ‘oppression’.  At the end of the day Karen Glaser’s article says as much about the editors at the New Statesman as it does about her.

Below is a letter I rushed off to the New Statesman. It will not of course be published.

Tony Greenstein

letters@newstatesman.co.uk, comments@newstatesman.co.uk

Attacking Jeremy Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ is of far more interest than an article explaining why Donald Trump, Israel’s best friend, bears the political and moral responsibility for Pittsburgh

Or why Karen Glaser’s boyfriend should count himself extraordinarily lucky to have escaped the clutches of this stupid woman

New Statesman Limited
John Carpenter House
7 Carmelite Street
Blackfriars
London EC4Y 0BS

Dear Editor,

Are there no limits to the New Statesman's shallowness?  It seems that the Staggers is determined to plumb the depths of the sewer in order to attack Jeremy Corbyn.

Even by your abysmal standards 'Why I kicked my boyfriend out at 2am over anti-Semitism in the Labour Party' reaches new heights of absurdity.  We expect this kind of trivia from the Establishment’s Guardian but is this all the New Statesman can contribute? A sly and snide article signifying nothing other than your own miserable fury?

Simple questions such as why is it that 'antisemitism' is of such a concern in the Labour Party at a time of the ongoing Windrush scandal (i.e. real and genuine racism) are too much for you. Or how about asking why it is that the Tories’ alliance with 3 antisemitic parties in the European Parliament - the Swedish Democrats, Poland's Law & Justice Party and Latvia's Freedom and Fatherland Party - is of such little concern? 

Of course I understand that the habit of Latvia's MEP Robert Zile in marching alongside the veterans of Latvia's Waffen SS each March is not in the same league as Corbyn’s iniquities but then we have Israel to defend.

Saying that Jews have money i.e. they tend to be privileged is clearly more important than Tory MEPs voting to defend the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban. After all Orban is best friends with Benjamin Netanyahu, even if Holocaust survivors picketted him when he paid homage at Israel’s Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem in July. 

The fact that Orban described the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary during the war, Admiral Horthy, as an 'exceptional statesman.' pales into insignificance compared to Corbyn’s mural. Presiding over the deportation of half a million Jews to Auschwitz bears no comparison to meeting with Hamas and, god forbid, Hezbollah.

Let us not get hung up on the little white lies that Karen Glaser managed to insert into her article.  Raed Salah has always denied the blood libel allegation and it is interesting that the Jerusalem magistrates court acquitted him of this accusation before the higher colonial District Court overturned his acquittal. Or that the famous mural did not have any hook nosed Jews in it.  Or that Hamas has changed its Charter but that in any case when Israel commits mass murder in the name .of ‘the Jews’ it is unsurprising that they might consider their enemy ‘the Jews’.

Even stranger how these genocidalist anti-Semites condemned the murder of Jews at Pittsburgh. But why should you let facts get in the way of your campaign against Corbyn?

The New Statesman was born in the womb of Fabian imperialism.  Trusteeship rather than exploitation was its watchword.  Hence why it was an early supporter of Zionism. However under Lord Passfield and Clement Attlee Fabian imperialism demonstrated that it was no different to that of Tory imperialism. 

Karen Glaser's boyfriend should count himself extraordinarily lucky that he has managed to free himself from the clutches of this stupid woman.

Tony Greenstein

Tony Greenstein

Fabian Imperialism is alive and kicking at the New Statesman

The Staggers Support for Zionism and Apartheid is bolstered by the fake anti-Semitism narrative

 

Emblazoned across the New Statesman’s masthead is the slogan ‘Free thinking since 1913’. Unsurprisingly it is a lie but all organisations like to wrap themselves in a comfort blanket. In the 1930’s it was best known for its support for Stalinism, the purges included. Its commitment to ‘free thinking’ did not extend to publication of George Orwell’s dispatches from the Spanish civil war, because they criticised the Stalinist attacks on the Anarchists and POUM.

The junk Zionist article that Jasper Jackson refused to allow a reply to

Born in the womb of Fabianism, the New Statesman soon abandoned even a token relationship to socialism, hence why its current editor Jason Cowley claims it is ‘celebrated for its progressive and liberal politics.’ The New Statesman does not do socialism or anti-capitalism, though a couple of its contributors would probably claim a passing attachment to socialist politics.

The New Statesman was formed in 1913 by Beatrice and Sydney Webb and it was as devoted to the British Empire as the Tories. Unlike the Tories who made no secret of their belief that they intended the Empire to last forever, a source of perpetual unearned riches, they were the moral wing of imperialism which held that colonialism was an act of self-sacrifice. The New Statesman believed that Britain was holding the colonies in trust for the natives as and until they had reached the requisite stage of civilisation.

Laurie (Red) Penney has been defanged - a lifestyle columnist

Sydney Webb was the prime representative of this wing of moral imperialism. As Lord Passfield, he was Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Dominions in the 1929-31 MacDonald government. In this capacity he issued the Passfield White Paper in response to the Report of the Hope-Simpson Report which arose out of the 1929 Arab riots. It recommended drastic reductions in Jewish immigration to Palestine. For anyone wanting to understand the background to the apartheid nature of the State of Israel today then this Report is required reading.

Crossman was the most ardent Zionist of all the New Statesman's editors

In A Nation Reborn Crossman regrets that the Zionist settlers didn't achieve their goals earlier since then they could have wiped out 'the aboriginal population'

The New Statesman has a long and inglorious record of support for Zionism. Perhaps its most openly racist editor was Richard Crossman (1970-72, though Paul Johnson runs him a close second), who served as Housing Minister in the Wilson government. In a memorial lecture to Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President, in 1959 Crossman regretfully noted in respect to the colonists, that “No one”, at least until the 20th century, had 

“seriously challenged their right, or indeed, their duty, to civilise these continents by physically occupying them, even at the cost of wiping out the aboriginal population”. 

If only the Zionist settlers had “achieved their majority before 1914, they would have been accepted without any compunction of any kind”.  

Owen Jones - the Guardian's tame left correspondent plies his wares at the Staggers

Crossman’s views about the rights and duties of settler colonialism fitted in with the moral debt that the civilised nations owed to their backward brothers. Settler colonialism, be it in southern Africa or the Middle East was seen as the most efficacious means by which the natives might be civilised. If that meant wiping out some of them, as a way of teaching good manners, then that was a price worth paying.

Sydney Webb/Lord Passfield the New Statesman's founder later became Colonial Secretary

Zionism was the bastard offspring of the New Statesman’s political and cultural outlook. It was seen as redressing an age old wrong, fitted in with the romantic imperialist view of the ‘restoration’ of the Jews and of course was of benefit to British imperial interests in the Middle East. 

Kingsley Martin -   The New Statesman's longest serving editor

It was only under the editorship of Bruce Page (1978-82) and his successor Hugh Stephenson (1982-86) that the Palestinians began to get more sympathetic coverage in the New Statesman, in part because of the Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 when over 20,000 Lebanese were killed. 

Supporting Zionism today

Although the New Statesman carries a few articles today on particular Israeli outrages, it is a firmly Zionist publication. What the New Statesman will never do is question the reasons why Israel behaves as it does.  It will not question Zionism, the ideology and movement that  created the Jewish, i.e. Apartheid nature of Israel. It is perfectly happy to carry articles on the Gaza massacres, when Israel gunned down over 120 unarmed Palestinians, especially when penned by the far-Right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, but it won’t ask why there is land and education segregation in Israel.

The New Statesman really think its being clever to get the Jewish Chronicle's far-Right editor to issue a mild rebuke to Israel - the New Statesman preferred White liberals to Black spokesmen for the liberation movements in South Africa too

Pollard is well qualified to write articles on the murder of Palestinians being a member of the cold war Henry Jackson Society, former Editor of the Daily Express and someone who declared that Polish anti-Semite Michal Kaminski was ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town where antisemitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife.’ 

Kaminski supported the campaign to rehabilitate the name of Jedwabne, a village in Poland where, in 1941, up to 1600 Jews had been herded into a barn which was then set alight, by their fellow Poles.  As Pollard explained, although an anti-Semite Kaminski was also a strong supporter of Israel.

Supporting the Anti-Semitism Witchhunt in Labour 

It is no surprise that the New Statesman has been one of the most fervent supporters of the right-wing Labour Zionist campaign to paint the Labour Party as overrun by anti-Semitism. What is surprising is that this dedication extends to providing PR coverage for different factions within the Jewish Labour Movement, the British wing (or sister party) of the racist Israeli Labour Party.

Early last week a report appeared in the Jewish Chronicle stating that  the JLM’s war criminal Chair, Ivor Caplin (Defence Minister at the time of the Iraq War), after having met with Labour’s General Secretary, Jennie Formby, was happy with the Labour Party’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct.  And so he should have been since it rested on an amended form of the fake IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

However when news of this leaked out Caplin was subject to furious attacks by his fellow Zionists. What his opponents objected to in the new Code was best put by Pollard:

‘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.’ [The Jewish Labour Movement did not approve Labour’s anti-Semitism guidelines. Here’s why]

The Staggers Corporate Editor - Jason Cowley

Caplin had clearly forgotten that the anti-Semitism witchhunt had nothing to do with anti-Semitism as opposed to Zionism and Israel. Even worse he didn’t seem to grasp that the purpose of the anti-Semitism witch-hunt was that it had to continue unti Corbyn’s resignation.

You might expect that the New Statesman would cover these things fairly and accurately.  That would be naive.  Instead it ran a PR puff on behalf of Caplin’s critics The Jewish Labour Movement did not approve Labour’s anti-Semitism guidelines. Here’s why.

The article by Katz and Langleben, the latter a councillor who had managed to wage a successful campaign to convince the electors in West Hendon that Labour was anti-Semitic.  So successful was he that they decided to oust him! Their article is a classic example of what Noam Chomsky called the manufacturing of consent. It rests on the taken for granted assumption that there is, what the authors call an ‘anti-Semitism crisis’ in the Labour Party.  The only crisis is the continuing levelling of false accusations by the Israeli states surrogates.

For the past three years the Labour Party has been the subject of a concerted campaign of false and bogus accusations of anti-Semitism.  It began with allegations that Corbyn had associated with a holocaust denier and its most recent manifestation was the bogus issue of Corbyn having defended an allegedly anti-Semitic mural on the grounds of free speech.

What is the role of the New Statesman?  Has it ever critically evalued the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign which stretches from those well known anti-racist papers, the Sun and Mail to the neo-liberal Guardian and the BBC? Is the New Statesman’s role simply to echo the ‘anti-Semitism’ drumbeat of the mass media?

There seems to be an open door in the New Statesman to any propaganda which reinforces the wall to wall media consensus that the Labour Party is overrun with anti-Semitism.

It is no surprise that in the wake of the attack and pending demolition of Khan al-Ahmar, to say nothing of Israel’s gunning down of over 120 unarmed Palestinians in Gaza, that Zionist organisations should resort to the tried and trusted tactic of alleging anti-Semitism. 

The JLM, of which Langleben and Katz are senior officers, is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation, whose Land Settlement Division funds the settlement expansion in Palestine that dictates the demolition of Palestinian villages. Did it ever occur to the New Statesman that this might have some bearing on the PR puff that constituted Langleben/Katz’s article?  Did it ever occur to Jasper Jackson. who commissioned the article  to ask how the JLM’s affiliation to the WZO squares with their professed support for a  two state solution?

When I spoke to Jasper he didn’t seem to have a clue about the issues.  He was unable to even comprehend what the significance of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism was and why Zionist groups were so keen on it rather than the 6 word definition in the OED.

I therefore submitted a response to the Katz/Langleben’s PR puff.  According to Jasper it was unsuitable.  Why?  Well of course he had no answer.

Tony Greenstein 

Although flawed Labour’s Anti-Semitism Code at least makes an attempt to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism

I can quite understand why Mike Katz and Adam Langleben of the Jewish Labour Movement are busily trying to repair the damage caused by their Chair, Ivor Caplin giving his assent to Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct.  However the internal difficulties of the JLM are less important than the principal issues at stake such as the weaponisation of anti-Semitism in the battle against the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party.

Anti-Semitism is remarkably easy to define. It is not a mystery. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’.  According to the definition drawn up by Oxford academic Dr Brian Klug “Antisemitism is a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are.”  If you ask the man (or woman) on the Clapham Omnibus what is anti-Semitism they will tell you that it is someone who doesn’t like Jews and they would be right.  Anti-Semitism has nothing to do with opposition to Zionism or criticism of Israel.

Katz, Langleben and the pro-Israel Board of Deputies are insistent that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism is the only definition that matters. Why?  It is a strange definition that is over 450 words long. As Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote, the IHRA definition ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’

The reason why the IHRA is so long is because it attempts to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. It is therefore not at all surprising that the Zionist movement in this country has reacted furiously to Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct which removes 4 of the 11 ‘illustrations’ of anti-Semitism in the IHRA.

In the words of Jewish Chronicle editor Stephen Pollard, the problem is that instead of adopting the complete definition ‘Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’ For all of Katz and Langleben’s sophistry, their concerns relate to this one central point.

Katz and Langleben refer to the widespread adoption of the IHRA whilst failing to mention that the University College Union and Liberty have both rejected it because of the threat to freedom of speech that it poses.  Anti-racist and Muslim groups have also opposed it because it does nothing in the fight against racism.  The fact that the College of Policing has adopted it, given the record of police racism in this country, is not encouraging.

Yes it is true that 31 countries have adopted it, but the fact that these countries include the anti-Semitic governments of Hungary and Poland, to say nothing of the V-4 Visegrad Group should be a source of shame not pride.  What conclusions should we draw about a definition of anti-Semitism that Viktor Orban can sign up to?  This is the same Orban who believes that Admiral Horthy, the pro-Nazi ruler of Hungary during the war, who presided over the deportation of nearly half a million Jews to Auschwitz, was an ‘outstanding statement’.

The government of Poland too, which made it a criminal offence to mention the fact that thousands of Poles collaborated with the Nazi murder of Jews is also happy with the IHRA.

Perhaps Katz and Langleben would care to read Chemi Shalev’s, Menachem Begin Would Be Ashamed of Netanyahu’s Whitewash of Hungary’s anti-Semitism, Poland’s Holocaust Revisionism?  in Ha’aretz.  Shalev was referring to the recent endorsement, by the Prime Minister of Israel, of an accord with Poland’s anti-Semitic government which endorses a policy of  covering up small matters like the burning alive of 1,600 members of the Jewish community of Jedwabne , who 77 years ago were herded into a barn by fellow Poles. This is the real anti-Semitism that Katz and Langleben are silent about.

I don’t hear the JLM protesting about the invitation that Netanyahu has extended to his friend Viktor Orban, to make a state visit to Israel later this summer.  Meanwhile Jan Tomasz Gross, Anna Bikont and the other historians who uncovered what happened in Jedwabne, Radzilow and other villages in Poland face being sued in Polish courts.

Katz and Langleben’s allegation that ‘The Jewish community have clearly outlined their own definition of Jew hatred’ by which they mean the IHRA is simply untrue.  If you were to stop most Jewish people in the street and ask them what anti-Semitism was they would say hatred of Jews not criticism of Israel. What Langleben and Katz mean refer to as the Jewish community is the Zionist movement.

Nor is it true that Poale Zion/JLM have been the Labour Party’s Jewish affiliate since 1920.  It has been Labour’s Zionist affiliate. This is part of the shameful record of Labour’s support for the British Empire.  Unfortunately the Labour Party supported the colonisation by the Zionist movement of Palestine as it did many other colonial adventures.  The JLM is not a group that anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews are able to join.  Indeed the JLM is open to non-Jews who are Zionists.

Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct has many flaws, not least the fact that it rests on a cut down version of the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism.  You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Instead of amending the definition they should have junked it altogether. Anti-Semitism is not a mystery that needs a special definition.

At a time when the far-Right in Britain, Europe and America overwhelmingly supports the Israeli state and Zionism and when the founder of the alt-Right, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer declares himself a White Zionist the attempt of Katz and Langleben to pretend that their opposition to Labour’s new Anti-Semitism Code of Conduct has anything to do with fighting hatred of Jews is risible.

Tony Greenstein  

The original article by Mike Katz and Adam Langleben is The Jewish Labour Movement did not approve Labour’s anti-Semitism guidelines. Here’s why

See also:

New Statesman Bows to Zionist Censorship as they Delete Article on Israel’s Occupation

New Statesman Feels the Heat as Hundreds Protest The Censorship of Palestinian Article - Zionist UK Media Watch Denies Its Role