How Leftist Intellectuals Take Fright when Zionism Wages a War on ‘anti-Semitism’

Richard Seymour and Labour’s Antisemitism Affair –straddling both sides of the fence

Jacobin is not a site that most people on the left in Britain will be familiar with. It is however a major left-wing journal in the United States.  I once contributed Rewriting the Holocaust for Jacobin, in the wake of Netanyahu's speech to the 2015 World Zionist Congress when he described how Hitler was persuaded to adopt the Final Solution by the Mufti of Jerusalem.

Richard Seymour is undoubtedly a gifted and capable writer.  He was, until the 2013 rape crisis, a member of the Socialist Workers Party when he led the resistance on his Leninology blog to the attempts by the leadership and Alex Callinicos to cover up what had happened.  Since then he has drifted politically, writing a couple of books, becoming immersed in intersectionality and flirting with Left Unity.  Seymour’s latest article in Jacobin suggests he is wandering aimlessly across the left, dragged in the undertow of conflicting political currents without neither ballast or firm conviction.

Seymour is mired in the swamp of identity politics and this is causing him to lose his political bearings. After all a Jewish identity based around Israel and Zionism, suitably dressed up as a concern with anti-Semitism, is equally as valid as a Palestinian identity based on ethnic cleansing. If Jews can claim that they are oppressed because of hostility to Israel who is going to countermand this? When class and race are removed from the equation who is to decide who is oppressed and who is the oppressor? Everything is subjective and personal. All identities are equally valid, albeit some are more equal than others.  By what criteria can one say that an identity based on Zionism is reactionary if one does not have an analysis based on class and imperialism?

Seymour’s latest article Labour’s Antisemitism Affair on Labour’s media manufactured anti-Semitism crisis proves the maxim that those who leave the SWP invariably drift to the right.  In Seymour’s case this involves a wholesale abandonment of class politics in favour of subjectivism and a crude empiricism.

Seymour’s article is a deep disappointment as he tries to bridge the gap between the two sides of what he calls Labour’s Anti-Semitism Affair.  Seymour’s purpose is blindingly obvious.  He wants to find something innovative to say.  He wants to put new wine into old bottles and thus he imagines he’s being daring and brave in seeking to break the mould of the politics of anti-Semitism.  Like those who have tried this feat of political acrobacy before him, he ends up satisfying no one. It is a tilt to the Right and an abandonment of the Left.  It stands in marked contrast to the subsequent article Corbyn Under Fire in Jacobin by Daniel Finn.

One of the hallmarks of socialist or left-wing writers is their commitment to the overthrow of the system we live under.  They employ their talents on our behalf not just their own. There should be no room to doubt where they stand on the major issues of the day.  They are against the mainstream.  People such as John Pilger, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein and Tariq Ali have demonstrated their commitment under fire.  However the Left is also plagued by opportunists and turncoats, fair weather friends and erstwhile socialists like Owen Jones, the Guardian’s resident leftist and friend of the Israeli Labour Party/JLM. Others, like Nick Cohen, simply jack-knifed to the right.  American neo-conservatism is littered with the bodies of ex-leftists such as Nathan Glazer, James Burnham and Irving Kristol. See The Neoconservative Counterrevolution

Gilad Atzmon, the anti-semitic jazz player who the SWP was associated with through the years when Richard Seymour was a member

I would have expected Richard Seymour to have put into some kind of context, in the course of his 5000+ word article, from where and why he thought that Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis arose. Or was the ‘anti-Semitism’ controversy a spontaneous eruption when the prospect of a Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party materialised?  A narrative of ‘anti-Semitism’ that is espoused by every right-wing newspaper in Britain – from the Daily Mail and Sun to the Guardian surely demands some explanation as to its origins? 

I find it wholly dishonest that when describing the fabricated anti-Semitism controversy at Oxford University Labour Club in January 2016, Seymour referred to the central villain, the Chair of the Club, Alex Chalmers, as “a former intern at the pro-Israel group BICOM.”

I wrote an article for Jacobin nearly 2 years ago

Chalmer’s resignation as Chair sparked the crisis and led to the Royall Report which in turn led to the Chakrabarti Report. The information about his links to BICOM was discovered by Asa Winstanley, a researcher and writers for Electronic Intifada, whose articles How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis and Instigator of anti-Semitism scam kicked out of Labour are indispensable to anyone seeking to make sense of what was happening.  Yet although purloining the fruits of Asa’s investigative work, Seymour deigned to give him credit. The Guardian and other papers get frequent references but the writings of a journalist on our side is simply ignored.

As people will know, I was one of the major casualties of this crisis.  I was suspended on March 18^th 2016 and expelled on February 18^th 2018.  I have detailed the various stages of my suspension from my Investigation Hearing to my successful application for an Injunction against the Labour Party on my blog.  I have tried to put what has happened to me into a wider context, for example detailing the suspension of people like Jackie Walker.

I find it difficult to empathise with so-called intellectuals who divorce themselves from that which they write about.  People who prize themselves on their detachment from the struggle and who adopt an aloof and condescending attitude to those who are involved in political battles are destined not to hang around for too long.  People like Richard Seymour believe themselves equipped to offer their advice from on high without ever getting their hands dirty.

Gary Spedding

I don't doubt that Seymour can sometimes write interesting and insightful articles but he can also be extremely arrogant. Although he has escaped from their clutches Seymour has nonetheless retained the mentality and psychology of the SWP where everything is subordinate to building the party. Perhaps having kept aloof from left sectarian politics I find myself irritated at the cynicism of a group from which I was expelled at the tender age of 19.  To repeat all its mistakes over and over again, without ever learning from those mistakes and to operate in the same way as you have always done, with front organisations which garner less and less support, merely proves Einstein's maxim that the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result. 

There is no attempt in Richard’s article to explain the origins of Labour’s 'antisemitism' campaign.  It apparently appeared as if by magic.  The idea of a deliberately co-ordinated plan to destabilise Labour doesn't even seem to have occurred to Seymour.  The possibility of state interference and involvement completely escapes him. Seymour begins with the minutae of the latest incidents of 'anti-semitism' from Jewdas, to the famous mural by Mear One, which he automatically assumes is antisemitic, to Christine Shawcroft. Seymour concludes that 'There is, clearly, a problem somewhere. Unfortunately, the way in which allegations of antisemitism have been used for party-political purposes, has tended to obscure the need to address it.'

An article in Haaretz by Gary Spedding supporting the bogus anti-semitism campaign

This is the key defect of Seymour’s article.  He accepts that ‘There is, clearly, a problem somewhere.’

Seymour’s article provides justification for the statement by Momentum that was issued in the wake of the latest episode of ‘anti-Semitism’. It bears the imprint of Jon Lansman, a left Zionist who is the head of Momentum.  Lansman has consistently refused to mobilise Momentum in the fight against the witch-hunt in the Labour Party still less to counter the activities of the Jewish Labour Movement, the Israeli state’s representatives inside Labour.  The statement reads:

Momentum’s NCG believes that accusations of antisemitism should not and cannot be dismissed simply as right wing smears nor as the result of conspiracies. Current examples of antisemitism within the Labour Party are not only a problem of a few, extreme ‘bad apples’ but also of unconscious bias which manifests itself in varied, nuanced and subtle ways and is more widespread in the Labour Party than many of us had understood even a few months ago.

It is possible to accept that antisemitism is a problem in parts of the left and needs to be loudly denounced whilst also accepting that some of Jeremy Corbyn’s political opponents are opportunistically using this issue as a way to undermine his leadership.

There is nothing in the above statement that Seymour could disagree with. 

It does not seem to have occurred to Seymour that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the second major party in the US’s closest ally in Europe, someone who was both anti-Nato and anti-US imperialism, could not but help provoke panic in the security establishment.  If the CIA and all the other spooks at the US Embassy were not discussing what to do when Corbyn appeared to be winning the Labour leadership contest they weren't doing their job. 

Perhaps Seymour believes that whilst the CIA has no compunction in destabilising governments and parties in Latin America they wouldn’t do such a thing in Britain?  Maybe he hasn’t heard of Operation Gladio. It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Seymour that the Labour Party is being destabilised via the United State’s chosen friend Israel.  It is as if the Al Jazeera undercover programmes The Lobby had not been shown and Shai Masot, the Israeli agent had never existed.

Seymour takes certain facts and ignores others, for example the attack on Corbyn even before he became leader as a holocaust denier.  He lacks any perspective, making empiricism into a fine art.  Indeed the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is all our fault.  ‘If you walk straight into the constantly whirring propellers of a hostile media with eyes wide shut, then what is the use of complaining about the “Israel Lobby”?’  So the false anti-Semitism campaign has nothing to do with the media or those who own them. The blame lies rather with the victims of the press.

Seymour’s factual grasp leaves a lot to be desired.  When talking about Ken Livingstone’s remark that Hitler supported Zionism, Seymour says of Ha'avara, the Transfer Agreement between the Jewish Agency in Palestine and the Nazi state, that: ‘Hitler was not “supporting” Zionism so much as using every expedient to expel Jews from Germany.’

This is simply not true.  The Nazi government made it clear that they did support the German Zionist movement vs  their non-Zionist German counterparts. David Cesarani wrote describing how ‘The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to further emigration.” (my emphasis) [The Final Solution (p.96)] Lucy Dawidowicz, another Zionist historian described how, on 28^th January 1935, Reinhardt Heydrich issued a directive stating that

‘the activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organizations ... prior to their emigration to Palestine lies in the interest of the National Socialist state’s leadership.’ These organisations therefore ‘are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations (assimilationists)’.  [Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, pp.118]

Francis Nicosia writes of how Berl Katznelson, a founder of the Israeli Labour Party Mapai and editor of its paper Davar saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”.  [Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p.91, CUP, 2008.]  Ben Gurion’s attitude to the Holocaust is best described by his official biographer, Shabtai Teveth: ‘If there was a line in Ben-Gurion’s mind between the beneficial disaster and an all-destroying 

catastrophe, it must have been a very fine one.’ [The Burning Ground 1886-1948, p.851, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1987].

Ha'avara was not set up in order to help Jews emigrate from Germany.  The Jews it helped were amongst the richest, those who could take £1,000 capital out (which enabled them to enter Palestine without an immigration certificate).  They could have left anyway. Ha'avara’s purpose, from the Nazi’s point of view was to undermine the International Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany which was destroying the German export economy. From the point of view of the Zionist Organisation, Ha'avara was the sole way of bringing into Palestine the maximum amount of German Jewish capital. [Jewish Chronicle, 13^th December 1935] According to Edwin Black [Ha’avara – The Transfer Agreement, Brookline Books, 1999, pp. 257-8), Ha'avara’s main purpose was ‘saving the wealth’ of German Jewry and ‘rescuing the capital from Nazi Germany.’  The Jews themselves were a secondary matter.

Baruch Vladech, Chair of the American Jewish Labour Committee and Editor of the Yiddish Daily Forward, described Ha'avara’s purpose as 'not to rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in Palestine.' He observed that whilst

the whole organized labor movement and the progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the boycott. The Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’[Lenni Brenner, pp. 92-93, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis’, Barricade Books, 1972].

Seymour's criticisms of Jackie Walker, the Black-Jewish activist who was Vice-Chair of Momentum, are even more off beam.  By attending the ‘training session’ of the Jewish Labour Movement on anti-Semitism, she was waging a ‘factional war’.  Seymour describes her comment that Holocaust Day was not “open to all people who experienced a holocaust.” as wrong. It wasn’t, the African & Belgian Congo holocausts are absent. The extermination of the Disabled and Roma are classified under ‘Persecution’ rather than ‘Holocaust’ on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

Seymour describes Jackie’s behaviour as ‘tendentious’ and that ‘she was splitting hairs, belittling antisemitism’. Seymour describes his ignorance of the subject. Jackie was challenging the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism which conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. The IHRA is at the centre of the debate over false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.  If Seymour is so unaware of the ramifications of the IHRA then he should read the criticism of it in London Review of Books May 2017 by former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley. [Defining Anti-Semitism].

Seymour concludes by saying that ‘Walker’s tactical misadventure inadvertently damaged her own cause’ implying that it was her own fault that ‘she was drummed out of the Momentum leadership.’  What kind of socialist blames the defeat of workers on their own mistakes as a means of making a rhetorical point? It is noteworthy that Seymour has nothing to say about the Momentum leadership.

Seymour says that precisely 56 individuals have been suspended because of allegations of anti-Semitism citing Thomas Jones’ Labour and Anti-Semitism. The only problem with this is that this article was written in May 2016.  We are nearly two years down the road and the numbers are far greater.  We had thousands of suspensions in the summer of 2016 during the leadership election, many of which were based on ‘anti-Semitism’.

Seymour is right when he says that Israel has become a ‘totem issue...a displacement for other issues.’ and that this is one of the reasons for the false anti-Semitism campaign.  It is because Israel has become symbolic of the divide between right and left that we have to confront Labour’s role in supporting the world’s only apartheid state not allow ourselves to be bogged down in refuting the false allegations of anti-Semitism.  Unfortunately Seymour proposes the opposite course, namely that we should take serious that which he describes as a displacement issue.

In the section on Jewish Anti-Zionists Seymour writes that the reaction  to what he calls anti antisemitism ‘has many sources, and some of it, as Momentum suggests, might be rooted in shades and variations of unconscious antisemitism. ' Momentum’s own statement speaks of an ‘unconscious bias which manifests itself in varied, nuanced and subtle ways and is more widespread... than many of us had understood.’

Racism if it is unconscious it’s not worth the candle.  At a time when the government is stripping Black people who came here in the Windrush of their citizenship rights, when we face the continuing issue of Black deaths in custody at the hands of a racist police force and the incarceration of refugees, to talk about an invisible or ‘unconscious’ racism that is deployed on behalf of White privileged people is obscene and racist in itself.

Momentum’s statement calls for ‘unconscious bias training... awareness trainings’.  As Virou Srilangarajah wrote in an obituary for the legendary anti-racist writer and activist, Ambalavaner Sivanandan, who died earlier this year, ‘racism awareness training’, removed state and institutional responsibility for racism, instead turning it into a ‘natural’ social phenomenon independent of material conditions, a ‘white disease’. 

Racial awareness training, which Chakrabarti opposed but which the Labour Party has ignored, is based on the idea that racism exists inside one’s head not in society.  It reaches its apotheosis in the absurdity of the Jewish Labour Movement, the ‘sister party’ of the racist Israeli Labour Party, a party that supports the segregation of Jew and Arab and which Netanyahu’s deportation of 40,000 Black African refugees from Israel, running training sessions on ‘anti-Semitism’. You might as well have the Yorkshire Ripper give a lecture on violence against women.  This is the nonsense that Seymour is subscribing to.

If what Seymour (and Lansman) argue is correct, the false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ have nothing to do with labelling all criticism of Zionism as ‘anti-Semitic’. They have nothing to do with the Right’s use of the issue as a means of attacking Corbyn on other issues, it’s all down to the unconscious mind.  I just hope that if Seymour decides to abandon writing for a career that he doesn’t choose psycho analysis or psychiatry as his chosen profession. Freud undoubtedly has a lot to answer for but surely not the vacuity of Richard Seymour. 

There is, of course, a simpler explanation. Momentum has resolutely avoided opposing the anti-Semitism witchhunt.  This nonsense about 'unconscious antisemitism' is intended to explain why there are so few genuine examples of anti-semitism to be found.

Seymour’s description of Jewish Voice for Labour, Free Speech on Israel and Jewdas as anti-Zionist is simply wrong.  None of the groups say that they are anti-Zionist.  Although Seymour is right about the decline of left-wing Zionism I fail to understand his analogy with Wallace baiting Truman.  Seymour describes he doesn't analyse.

Seymour’s section The Limits of Anti-Anti-Antisemitism  suggests that anti-Zionists in the Labour Party are posturing as being politically tough.  He tells us that ' it is not helpful for the Left to adopt this attitude, or the performative political “toughness” that often comes with it. Defensiveness has to give way to reflexivity.' This demonstrates the superficiality of  this article and also how far removed Seymour is from that which he writes about. We are in a midst of a war, waged by the Right using anti-Semitism as a weapon and all Seymour can suggest is that we should be 'reflexive'.

What Seymour really means is that we should accept that there is some factual basis to the allegations of anti-Semitism. Seymour uncritically quotes from a survey by the far-Right Zionist Campaign Against Antisemitism without asking any deeper questions such as whether the survey was flawed, whether it was designed to produce certain outcomes or indeed anything about the CAA itself. 

In the CAA’s survey people are asked different questions relating to Jews (for example do Jews chase money) and because nearly half of the population answer positively to one of the questions they conclude that we are in the middle of a wave of anti-Semitism and that nearly half of the British people are anti-Semitic. Seymour goes along with this. 

Dave Rich, the Deputy Director of the Zionist Community Security Trust, with whom I agree on virtually nothing, observed that

‘This latest poll showed something else that is interesting... that people who believe antisemitic things about Jews rarely think of themselves as antisemitic.... It is as if antisemitic ideas circulate in society and influence the stereotypes people believe about Jews, but this does not affect how people imagine they relate to actual, living Jews who they know or might meet.... Even people who believe there is a global Jewish conspiracy or deny the Holocaust are affronted by the notion they might be antisemitic.

The normally restrained Institute for Jewish Policy Research found that the CAA’s “barometer” report was “littered with flaws” and the group’s work “may even be rather irresponsible.”  The IJPR criticized the way that the Campaign Against Antisemitism had used data to make the

“rather sensationalist claim that almost half of all British adults harbor some sort of anti-Semitic view… a far more accurate and honest read” of the data would “highlight the fact that between 75 percent and 90 percent of people in Britain either do not hold anti-Semitic views or have no particular view of Jews either way, and only about 4 percent to 5 percent of people can be characterized as clearly anti-Semitic.”

The CAA also claimed that more than half of British Jews felt that anti-Semitism echoed that of the 1930s. Anshel Pfeffer witheringly observed in Ha’aretz that if the CAA “actually believe that, then it’s hard to take anything they say about contemporary anti-Semitism in their home country seriously.” Pfeffer noted, regarding the statement that Jews talk about the Holocaust too much in order to gain sympathy  “too many Jews … are often too quick to bring up the Holocaust in order to make a point. … Holding that opinion doesn’t necessarily make you an anti-Semite.” 

According to the respected Pew Research Centre’s 2016 Global Survey of Attitudes just 7% of British people are anti-Semitic.  Compare this to 28% in the case of Islamaphobia and a 45% in the case of anti-Roma racism. 

The problem with Seymour is that he is still faithful to the SWP notion that all forms of racism are equal, even when anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice that doesn't involve power relations within capitalist society, state racism or economic discrimination.  Instead of researching the subject, Seymour reaches for Google Search and takes what the CAA says at face value without any attempt to find out what their motives might be.

It would also appear that Seymour has adopted or rather swallowed the concept of ‘left anti-Semitism’ that is normally associated with the pro-imperialist Alliance for Workers Liberty.  He describes the self-publicising narcissist Gary Spedding as a ‘Jewish left-winger’ citing his article in Ha’aretz We in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Have a Problem With anti-Semitism. Whatever else Spedding is, he is certainly not Jewish (nor is he left-wing) although that doesn't prevent him telling Jews just what is and is not antisemitic.

Spedding bases his experience of ‘anti-Semitism’ on being told at a Palestine solidarity meeting that the term ‘anti-Semitism’ applies equally to Arabs, since they too are anti-Semites.  This is a common fallacy which is quite easily corrected.  Words and phrases take on a certain meanings over time.  There are no such things as ‘Semites’, which are the product of Wilhelm Marr’s attempt to racialise anti-Jewish hatred in 1879. 

An example of the Palestine solidarity movement's very own Walter Mitthy

Spedding is not a Palestine solidarity activist. His claim to having spent 10 years fighting anti-Semitism in the Palestine solidarity movement is a lie. When the fight against the influence of Gilad Atzmon and Israel Shamir were at their height Spedding was nowhere to be seen. It was people like Ali Abunimah, the editor of Electronic Intifada, whom Spedding has gratuitously abused, who dealt a lethal blow to Shamir and Atzmon with the issuing of a declaration Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon, signed by over 20 prominent Palestinians and Arabs which destroyed Atzmon’s reputation.  It was at my urging that JVL expelled Spedding.

Another example of ‘anti-Semitism’ that Seymour asserts is Annie Kehune of Jewdas who ‘writes of being “fed up of having to follow ‘I’m Jewish’ with ‘but I’m not a Zionist’ in left-wing circles.  It may well annoy Annie but unfortunately the leadership of the British Jewish community claim that all Jews support Israel and its actions against the Palestinians. It is no surprise therefore that people associate being Jewish with being a Zionist.  I see nothing wrong with Jewish people making their position clear just as one would have expected White opponents of Apartheid in South Africa to have made their views clear.

Spedding gave support 2 years ago to the false and bogus claims of Angela Eagle, who was then trying to be the Right's candidate against Corbyn, that she had been subject to homophobic abuse in her party.  Wallasey CLP was suspended because of these lies.  It is no secret that Spedding peddled these lies but it is some what surprising that Richard Seymour considers him an ally

Seymour quite unbelievably concludes by arguing that 'However, while every claim has to be evaluated carefully, a precondition for that is that they should be taken seriously in and of themselves, and not merely and a priori as a manifestation of the “Israel Lobby.” Why, when these allegations are made maliciously, should we take them seriously?  If allegations of anti-Semitism are made to deflect from support for the Palestinians then they should be seen for what they are.  So when Jonathan Arkush of the Board of Deputies claims that Jewdas are a “source of virulent antisemitism” and goes on to claim that their members “are not all Jewish” should we investigate such matters?  Perhaps we should take a blood test just in order that the matter can be resolved conclusively!

Like most SWP exiles Seymour is trying to find a progressive space between the politics he once espoused and their right-wing critics today.  He doesn't even like talk of the Israel Lobby and would prefer if we would simply turn a blind eye to the activities of the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel. 

Seymour ends in true SWP fashion that 'At a time when nascent far-right movements are surfacing, with antisemitic tendencies linked to state power in Hungary and the United States, the Left has a particular responsibility to lead on this issue.'  Yes indeed and who is it, in the USA and in Hungary, who is hand in hand with these anti-semites if not the Zionist movement?  I can only presume that Seymour in his ivory tower is unaware that the founder of the alt-Right himself, the neo-Nazi Richard Spencer has declared himself a White Zionist. Or that Jonathan Arkush, one of the main players in the false ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign welcomed Donald Trump’s election with all its anti-Semitic dog whistles?

The last thing we should do is to be diverted into every alleyway that the Zionists want us to go down.  What Seymour is really proposing is that the Zionists be allowed to set the agenda.

Seymour is isolated from the movement he writes about which is why he thinks Spedding is representative. Yes of course antisemitic nonsense should be countered. However it endangers not a single Jew because racism against Jews is a matter of prejudice, not of life and death.  As I wrote over a decade ago, opposition to anti-Semitism has become the "anti-racism" of the political right.’  No one has died from a tweet or social media post.

The irony is that it was the SWP itself, when Seymour was a member, which was allied with Gilad Atzmon. In June 2005 Jews Against Zionism picketed a meeting of the SWP at Bookmarks where Atzmon was giving a talk on Otto Weininger. I wrote Blind eye to anti-semitism attacking the SWP’s support for Atzmon. Although Richard was not happy about their position he wasn’t exactly outspoken either and tellingly he chose to remain a member of the SWP. It is not for Richard Seymour to now lecture us on the evils of anti-Semitism.

I was surprised that Jacobin had published Seymour’s article but reassured that the current editor Bhaskar has responded to me that he completely disagreed with the thrust of the article.  The previous editor, Max Ajl told me that he would never have published ‘such a Shoddy piece!’  I still find it puzzling why Jacobin thought it worthy of publication when there are so many right-wing sites would have welcomed what they would consider a repentant sinner!

Tony Greenstein

Jewish Voices for Labour Expels Gary Spedding & its Zionist wing (or some of them) - after much Blood, Sweat & Bile

JVL faces a choice – Jewish anti-Zionism or Jewish Identity Politics

I have to confess that getting the leadership of Jewish Voice for Labour to see sense and remove some of its Zionist members was like drawing teeth.  A few days ago I was contacted by members of Jewish Voice for Labour, which sees itself as an alternative Jewish group in the Labour Party to the Jewish Labour Movement.  Why they wondered had the Steering Committee decided to accept Gary Spedding in its Facebook group and as an associate member?

It was only after an Open Letter to JVL that Arik Moshe, author of this vitriolic attack on Jackie Walker was removed

It was a good question.  Why had they also included Arik Moshe, a particularly vitriolic Zionist who had tweeted in respect of Jackie Walker, the former Vice-Chair of Momentum:

‘Has anyone else noticed how Jackie Walker only really mentions being Jewish when accused of #AntiSemitism?  Funny that...#Jackie out’

A post on the JVL Facebook group as a result of having forced it onto their agenda

A Zionist who believes that people who are Black cannot be Jewish, because that is what the political on Jackie is about, surely has no place in a group like JVL.  No one ever challenges the credentials of white people who say they are Jewish by virtue of their father, which is Jackie’s situation.  This has long been accepted in Reform Judaism.

Spedding has a long pedigree purporting to be a Palestine solidarity activist whilst echoing all the talking points of the false anti-Semitism attacks.  In 2016 he wrote an article for Ha’aretz echoing all the talking points of Zionist propagandists to the effect that the Palestine solidarity movement is riddled with anti-Semitism. We in the Palestinian Solidarity Movement Have a Problem With anti-Semitism

Just some of Gary Spedding's fan mail

Spedding also criticised Ken Livingstone as ‘anti-Semitic’. He has also accused me of ‘anti-Semitism’.  Lacking all self-awareness, since Spedding suffers from an extreme form of narcissism, he didn’t understand why it is not a good idea for someone who isn’t even Jewish to call Jewish people anti-Semitic. In his Ha’aretz article he wrote that 'Anti-Zionist Jews are also not immune from being complicit in, and promoting, anti-Semitism.'  Less considerate people than me might say that that is a good example of anti-Semitism.

 

Spedding is one of the few people to have given credence to the lies of Angela Eagle that she was subject to homophobic attacks at a meeting she didn’t attend in Wallasey CLP.  These lies were used to suspend Wallasey CLP.  Most people discounted them, but not Spedding.  So although being a socialist or a Corbyn supporter isn’t an absolute condition of membership of a non-Zionist Jewish alternative to the JLM being a witch-hunter should certainly debar you.

I first encountered Spedding when he messaged me furiously after I had criticised an Early Day Motion on anti-Semitism that he had drawn up.  This EDM talked about

‘the single biggest contributing factor to[anti-Semitic incidents] have been anti-Semitic reaction to the armed violence between Israel and Gaza in July 2014’ 

It is a curious phrase ‘armed violence’ to describe the one-sided attack by Israel on the defenceless Palestinians of the Gaza.  It suggests that Spedding was deliberately seeking to minimise the one-sided nature of that conflict by equating Palestinian defence with Israel’s armed aggression on a people under occupation.  In stating that anti-Semitism ‘has no place in campaigns of solidarity with the Palestinians’ Spedding implied that anti-Semitism had such a place.

Some examples of why Spedding should not have been allowed to join JVL

Early Day Motion that Spedding claims to have drafted for the SNP - John Mann signed it

i.   Drafting an EDM which SNP MPs and John Mann signed linking opposition to Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, when 2,200 Palestinians were murdered, with anti-Semitism.  This lie provided the pretext for the formation of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, a far-Right Zionist group which even other Zionist groups keep their distance from.

ii.  Spedding attacked as anti-Semitic both Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker.

iii.  Spedding attacked Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada.

iv.  Spedding was a member of the liberal Unionist Alliance party in the North of Ireland.

v.  Spedding has given full support to Owen Jones’s campaign, alongside the Jewish Labour Movement, in its attacks on Jackie Walker and Ken Livingstone.

vi.  Spedding has praised the Community Security Trust, a Zionist vigilante group that specialises in conflating anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.  Its Deputy Director Dave Rich recently brought out a book, The Left’ Jewish Problem.

Jackie Walker belongs to Momentum Thanet

Unfortunately not only the SNP but the JVL took Spedding seriously as a Palestine solidarity activist.  I’ve  posted a number of articles on his antics including:

Gary Spedding - The Zionist Cuckoo in the Palestine Solidarity Nest

Gary Spedding Calls in the Police - I have been harassing him!

Gary Spedding – the Self-Proclaimed Expert on ‘anti‑Semitism’

Spedding Attacks Black and Jewish anti-racist activist Jackie Walker

SNP MPs Don’t Take Kindly to Criticism over Palestine ^ 'anti-Semitism'

Open Letter to SNP Members of Parliament – Don’t Be Fooled by False Accusations of anti-Semitism

JohnMann MP, Zionist Chair of Parliament’s ‘anti-Semitism’ Sub-Committee Joins the Signatories

What is particularly outrageous is that I and others were excluded from JVL because of political disagreements with the Steering Committee whereas open Zionists seemed able to waltz in with the blessing of the FB moderators– Messrs. Kuper, Cushman and Saville.

I was particularly critical of the fact that it had avoided open support for the Palestinians in its Statement of Principles in favour of an anodyne ‘We stand for rights and justice for Jews everywhere and against wrongs and injustice to Palestinians.’.  The Right of Return, a basic democratic demand or even opposition to the bogus anti-Semitism witch-hunt were not mentioned.  Whereas the JLM is an explicitly Zionist group, the JLV prefers not to even mention the word.  I therefore penned an open letter to JVL about what was happening and sent it by Messenger to all 160 or so of their Facebook group.  This led to my exclusion from their Facebook group. Such is the price of free speech (although all the moderators are members of Free Speech on Israel!).

The Jewish Socialist Group Take My Criticism Particularly Badly

The JSG, a group which barely exists today (its last magazine came out over a year ago) have taken my criticisms particularly badly. This is because I called on them to distance themselves from Jon Lansman, the Momentum proprietor and dictator, who is also a member of the JSG.  Lansman bears most responsibility for the suspension of Jackie Walker. 

When the JLM attacked Jackie after last year’s Labour Party conference, Lansman immediately leapt to their defence.  He told the Independent that their Chair Jeremy ‘perjurer’ Newmark was  ‘very upset and I can understand that – I work closely with Jeremy, I’ve been meeting with Jewish organisations to talk… I’ve been outspoken. I was very, very unhappy about… and I did comment on it, about it, what she had previously said.’  Lansman joined in with the political lynching of a Black comrade who was his own Vice-Chair without once asking for her opinion.  Newmark is a paid propagandist and Israeli state agent.  The idea that he was ‘upset’ is fanciful.  He was probably delighted to have a pretext for attacking Jackie.  Lansman scabbed on her and the JSG refused to call him out on this.

When a member of the JSG, Ruth Appleton, signed a joint letter to the Guardian as a member of the JSG, she was told to take it off by Julia Bard

In a number of posts I called on the JSG to distance themselves from Lansman, e.g.

Jewish Socialist Group Cowardice Over the Zionists' Racist Attacks on Jackie Walker

An Open Letter to the Jewish Socialists Group

The Strange Silence of the Jewish Socialists Group

I initiated a campaign in October 2016 to get the JSG to come off the fence.  Some 5 months later the JSG finally caved in to the pressure.  But they did so with little grace.  David Rosenberg, who previously I have known as affable and mild mannered, the leading light of a progressive if somewhat ineffective Jewish group, had taken any criticism of Corbyn for his backtracking on Palestine to heart. 

 

David Rosenberg's response to queries from Debbie Fink re their stance on Jackie Walker's suspension

Dave Rosenberg’s vituperative response to Debbie Fink of Free Speech on Israel and J-Big was indicative.  Her queries were

‘‘based on ignorance and vituperation, they were not worth responding to. The JSG is solely accountable to its members, not to you, nor to FSOI, nor to any other groups we may or may not be connected with or work with.’ 

Realising that this was hardly an adequate response, Rosenberg issued a ‘Statement of Clarification re Debbie Fink’s questions re JSG, Jews for Jeremy, and John Lansman. This is for information. We won’t be making further comment on this matter as we have more important work to do.’

Unfortunately the 'Statement of Clarification' was anything but clear:

'Our group is anti-Zionist but does not go in for gratuitous and childish demonisation of those who identify as Zionists’. 

David Rosenberg's response to my campaign to have Gary Spedding barred from the JVL Facebook

 What Rosenberg defined as ‘demonisation’ most people would call criticism.  The JSG have always been wary of being seen to be an anti-Zionist group.  Rosenberg explained why someone who had previously criticised the lack of democracy in the Jewish community had become a petty dictator in his own right: 

‘'we have, reluctantly, had to block people for misusing our page by posting anti-Corbyn material, abusive sectarian political material, or re-posting material by those who they know have been blocked from the page. [me!] It is for these reasons that J4J collectively decided to block Debbie Fink.'

Jews 4 Jeremy was set up by a number of people, Debbie Fink and me included, not just JSG yet Rosenberg referred to it as ‘our group’.  They had deliberately let it run down, opposing it doing anything collectively about the witchhunt. Like Debbie I was also removed from JSG's Facebook Page for Asking Awkward Questions about Lansman.

Once you become a witch hunter you develop a logic of your own.  Everyone else but you is a sectarian.  David Rosenberg and his partner-in-crime Julia Bard, were extremely angry after having been backed into a corner over Jackie Walker.  See Better Late than Never - Jewish Socialists Group Finally Supports Jackie Walker

Although, they grudgingly agreed to oppose Jackie’s suspension they did it very reluctantly.  Hence when I launched a campaign against the JVL admitting Zionists whilst excluding anti-Zionists as well as criticising JVL’s chauvinist membership structure, Rosenberg resorted to the kind of language that Stalinism was famous for.  He informed members of the JVL, most of whom are in no position to know any better, that I was barred because of my ‘serial abuse of people within those groups whom he disagrees with, his lying about and smearing of other left wing Jews.’ As a final flourish, apparently ‘The Zionist establishment should thank him.’

As I wrote in my second letter to JVL, this kind of response was knockabout stuff designed to avoid debating the real issues.  A large number of people on the JVL Facebook page agreed with my comments with one resigning.  With difficulty I persuaded two others not to resign. 

David and the JSG have no analysis or understanding of Zionism.  They have done little in the Palestine solidarity movement and nothing around BDS.  What surprised me was David’s resort to outright lies. Far from my being excluded from the JVL FB group for lying, smearing etc. Ian Saville, who is appropriately a magician, wrote informing me that:

‘Your posts attacking the steering group ... and other people posting on the page seem provocative and divisive, and have caused concern to other members. If you persist with such posts you will be removed from the group. It seems also that even before joining the group you circulated some of its members with unsolicited material attacking the JVL and disparaging the process of its formation.’

Nothing here about lies or smears but plenty about ‘attacking’ (i.e. criticising) the steering group and even worse circulating those criticisms to JVL members.

It was because I circulated Saville’s warning, coupled with my own response, JVL – What are they afraid of that I was removed.  What the JVL chiefs couldn’t stand was criticism!  Ian Saville then wrote to me privately complaining about my having called him a Stalinist!  He also added that ‘the fact that you chose to make public other people's private correspondence without even seeking permission was a breach which couldn't be tolerated. Some people saw your final post as a challenge to the Steering Group to exclude you, given that you chose to quote the warning you were given.’

The correspondence in question was anything but private.  It was part of a political polemic between Rachel Lever and others regarding the formation of the JVL.  The real reason why Rosenberg and Saville indulged in these transparently poinless lies is political. Rosenberg and what’s left of the JSG believe that we should be completely uncritical of Jeremy Corbyn, his retreat from Palestine and appeasement of the JLM. I take the view that if we don’t exert counter-pressure on Labour’s leadership then the JLM will triumph by default.

JVL’s Apartheid Membership Structure - Only Jews can be full members – non-Jews are non-voting ‘associates’

From the day that I was first asked to sign up to the JVL’s principles I have argued that the group should not be Jewish only.  JVL’s Steering Committee has decided that whereas Jews can be full members, non-Jews can only be Associate Members.  The Steering Committee, whose composition hasn’t been made public, but which is believed to include Jenny Manson as Chair, Mike Cushman as Treasurer/Secretary, Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi, Joseph Finlay, Miri Franklin, David Rosenberg and Richard Kuper, has taken leave of its senses.  They seem incapable of understanding or appreciating that they are effectively setting up a group with an apartheid structure.  Again they were not prepared to debate this.

JVL should be a political group in opposition to the Zionist politics of the JLM.  What it is doing is pretending that it is a broad based ethnically Jewish group and smuggling its politics in by the backdoor.  Hence its Jewish only structure.

Non-Jews are made to feel guilty by being less than full members or participants in JVL - either JVL is a political group or it is a specifically ethnically oriented one -  even the JLM admits non-Jews into full membership because it is a political Zionist group

 Everything I predicted about this decision has come to pass.  Jewish members of the group have expressed their resentment at non-Jews participation and made the latter feel guilty.  There were even suggestions for a non-Jewish FB group!  After a woman (Jo) expressed her hostility to the involvement of non-Jews in the Facebook group, one woman Eleanor promised to take ‘more of a backseat’.  Another non-Jewish member John reacted by saying ‘I’ll shut up then.’  Yet Jo and others began to whinge that I had publicised what they thought were their private discussions!  Yes it’s unfortunate that some members of the group have enough courage and principle to leak information to me.

Shlomo Anker's contribution to a discussion group - he is still a member

However all’s well that ends well.  After having defended Gary Spedding against all comers in the end the JVL moderators bowed to the inevitable and removed both him and the even more vitriolic Ari Moshe.  However that still leaves Shlomo Anker, who has even posted a report on the JLM’s recent conference on the JVL site.  Rob Abrams is another Zionist who has been left untouched. 

Tony Greenstein