Rabbi Jonathan Romain, A Senior Reform Rabbi, Urges Jews To Vote ABC – Anyone But Corbyn

This is how Zionism’s False Anti-Semitism Campaign Tries to Produce the Very Anti-Semitism it Purports to Oppose

Rabbi Romain is a senior rabbi and a former Chair of the Movement for Reform Judaism. In the eyes of my father, an Orthodox rabbi, Romain was worse than a Christian and that’s saying something!

Reform Rabbis when they are not treated with contempt by their Orthodox colleagues are considered useful fools. The half-Jewish equivalent of the Sabbath goy. Romain is just such an example though it may be an insult to the average village idiot to describe him as such.

A good example of the Orthodox attitude to Reform Jews was when a White Supremacist gunman, fired up with the racism of the Zionists’ best friend, Donald Trump, shot dead 11 Jewish worshippers at the Conservative Jewish Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The Chief Rabbi of Israel, David Blau refused to call it a synagogue. He described it as ‘a place with profound Jewish flavor’ as if it were a cafe that Jewish youngsters happen to hang out in.

In Israel Reform Judaism isn’t recognised as an authentic strand of Judaism. Reform converts are not considered Jewish and cannot marry other Jews or be buried in consecrated ground. They make up a growing portion of Israeli Jews who are Jewish enough to enter the country and serve in the army but not Jewish enough to get married, except to bastards (mamzers) like themselves. Thus Israel has its own mixed race, half-Jewish racial category just as Nazi Germany did where half or quarter Jews were termed Mischlinge.

Last week’s Jewish Chronicle reported that Rabbi Romain had

‘taken the unprecedented step of writing to his congregation urging them to vote for whatever political party stands the best chance of beating Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour candidates.’

He wrote that “a Corbyn-led government would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it.”

Over the summer in Brighton the Zionist Board of Deputies tried to stop Chris Williamson MP from speaking at a meeting. 3 venues cancelled after threats, abuse and harassment from Zionists and their supporters such as Peter Kyle MP. The President of the Board, Marie van Der Zyl even came down to Brighton in person to show her miserable face.

Despite this socialists and anti-racists ensured that Chris spoke to a meeting of over 150 people in Brighton’s Regency Square to the chagrin of local racists such as New Labour’s Cllr. Dan Yates. [See Chris Williamson MP Defies Zionist Intimidation and the Lies of Peter Kyle to Speak in Brighton]

I mention this because a few days later I happened to be in the local supermarket when I overheard a conversation between 2 people – one of whom said that ‘the Jews are trying to stop Corbyn.’  I confess to being somewhat shocked and intervened to assure them that this was untrue. That Zionist Jews opposed Corbyn but you couldn’t generalise about all Jews.

Yet there is no doubt that these two men, who weren’t racists or anti-Semitic, had good grounds for saying what they did.  Rabbi Romain has just proven them true. That the organised Jewish community, for its own narrow, selfish, political and economic reasons is doing its best to stop a radical socialist government. 

Jonathan Romain

I can’t think of any better way to create anti-Semitism in this country than to spread the idea that Jews want to keep Boris Johnson and the Tories in power, that they do not care about racism, poverty or inequality. That austerity is not something that touches Jews and that the Windrush Scandal or what happened at Grenfell is of no concern to them because Jews are not victims of state racism and do not experience poverty.

The fact that Boris Johnson is known for his racist utterances, describing Black people as having ‘water melon smiles’ or as ‘picanninies’ is of no concern to the Romains of this world.

What Jonathan Romain is doing is trying to prove that every gutter anti-Semite is correct when they say that Jews are only concerned with themselves, that they have no idea or understanding of how most people live, that they mix with the rich, powerful and privileged and that they use the Holocaust as a battering ram against their opponents.

Millions of people in this country desperately want to see an end to the Tories. They see the NHS being privatised before their eyes.  They include Jewish people, but not the sort that Romain and his congregants mix with. Jewish anti-racists and anti-Zionists know that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Corbyn and the Left aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.

When Theodor Herzl wrote in his Diaries  that

“The anti-semites will become our most dependable friends, the anti-semitic countries our allies.” [pp.83-84]

he understood better than most the common interest between anti-Semitism and Zionism. The anti-Semites wanted the Jews out and the Zionists were only too willing to go. They accepted that Jews weren’t part of the nations they lived amongst.

That was why until the second world war Zionism was a minority amongst Jews worldwide, commanding less than 3% support among German Jews.

It is no accident that fools like Romain have nothing to say about Tory MEPs having sat alongside anti-Semitic parties in the European Parliament’s ECR Group for the past decade. The fact that Robert Ziles, MEP for Latvia’s LNNK marches with the veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS doesn’t bother him at all.

What concerns Romain and his ilk is the fact that the Left in and outside the Labour Party are no longer prepared to tolerate a situation where Israel, a so-called Jewish state, is the world’s only Apartheid state. 80% of Palestinians living within what is Greater Israel don’t have any political or civil rights.

If indeed opposition to Apartheid constitutes an ‘existentialist threat’ to Jewish life, as three Zionist papers claimed in July last year, then clearly being Jewish is so empty and meaningless that it has lost any purpose or reason to continue.

Tony Greenstein

Open letter to Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue

Dear Rabbi Jonathan Romain, 

It may not be essential for Rabbis to be fools and idiots but it is clearly, as you demonstrate, a very desirable characteristic. 
My own dad was also a Rabbi, albeit an Orthodox one. He would have considered you to be even worse than a Christian. Given that he used to spit on the ground at the mention of Christ then that should tell you something!

The reason why I am writing to you is not about your religious but your political credentials. I read in last week’s Jewish Chronicle that you had ‘taken the unprecedented step’ of writing to your congregants urging them to vote for anyone but Corbyn Labour.  I assume that includes Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.

Incidentally your letter is not that unprecedented. In the 1900 elections Rabbis also supported the anti-Alienist Tories in the East End of London.

The three examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ that you gave in the Labour Party are, as you are well aware, bogus.

1.      Tom Watson statement that he was “ashamed” of Labour being guilty of racism comes from a man who ‘lost sleep’ over the High Court’s ejection from parliament in 2010 of the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas.  This is the same Tom Watson who, as campaign manager in the 2004 Birmingham Hodshrove byelection issued a leaflet "Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers." Watson supported the Tories ‘hostile environment’ policy.  Not a good role model.

2.      You say the Equalities and Human Rights Commission are currently investigating accusations of racism against Labour. This is a body that has had nothing to say about the hundreds of deportations of Black people to the Caribbean and Africa. It is not an anti-racist body and has no record of anti-racism.

3.      You mention Louise Ellman resigning as an MP. The reason members of Riverside Labour Party detested her was not because she was Jewish but because she was, like you, a reactionary supporter of the Israeli state.  In particular she supported the Israeli military’s abuse of Palestinian children as young as 12 in a parliamentary debate on Child Prisoners under Israel’s military occupation. Many of her local opponents were themselves Jewish but perhaps they were the ‘wrong sort of Jews’ i.e. anti-racists.

The accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Labour are remarkable for the lack of evidence to support them, as the new book ‘Bad News for Labour’ demonstrates. That is why your Zionist friends threatened and abused Waterstones and forced them to cancel the book launch a month ago.

I should have thought it obvious, even to an intellectual lightweight, that if the idea gets around that Jews oppose electing a radical socialist government that is determined to make the multinationals pay their taxes, to renationalise the utilities, bring back rent controls and build housing for the homeless then there could be no greater gift to anti-Semitism.

The suggestion that Jews will leave Britain if a Corbyn government came to power is similar to what the papers such as Commentary were saying when the Sandanistas came to power. It’s not new. The argument then and now is that wealth redistribution will adversely affect Jews.  Do I need to explain why this is anti-Semitic? Of course, hopefully, Alan Sugar will depart but that will not be a loss.

Jews in this country far from being in fear of their lives or living under some ‘existentialist’ threat are living in a golden age. I’m not aware of anyone Jewish who died or was injured in Grenfell Tower.  The days when Jews lived in the East End of London are gone. Jews are twice as likely to be in social classes A or B as non-Jews. (see Geoffrey Alderman, The Jewish Community in British Politics). There is no Jewish Windrush, Jews are not deported or suffer from police violence. There aren’t disproportionate numbers of Jews in the prison estate or experiencing low wages.  In short it is not a disadvantage in Britain to be Jewish.

It is no surprise that you are so narrow minded and blinkered that you are unable to see beyond the fog of the Jewish Chronicle’s rhetoric. Your own MP is Theresa May, the very epitome of bigotry.  I read with interest your article Our Maidenhead synagogue is sad to see Theresa May go. You ‘lamented’ her passing, writing that

‘she feels an affinity with religious life in general. As a practising Christian, going to church every Sunday, she appreciates the faith of others.... Whatever history’s verdict on her as PM, she remains a good friend to the Jewish community.’

Perhaps Theresa May is a good friend to the Jewish community, at least the one that you are a member of. Anti-racist Jews however would consider her a virulent racist who introduced the ‘hostile environment’ policy that led to the Windrush Scandal, the deportation to their death of Black British citizens. Every landlord and bank official became an immigration officer. Of course Jews being White and privileged were unconcerned but these policies led to a climate of fear amongst Black people. Being a Rabbi you were completely unconcerned about this or the austerity that accompanied Universal Credit.

We all know that what lies behind this concern over Corbyn’s ‘anti-Semitism’ is not hatred of Jews but opposition to Zionism and Israel. As Netanyahu has explained Israel is a state of its Jewish not its Arab citizens.  It is a state where 93% of the land is controlled by the JNF for the benefit of its Jewish citizens only. It is a land where your compatriot, the Chief Rabbi of Safed, backed up by dozens of other rabbis, issued an edict that Jews must not rent homes to Arabs. It is a country where hundreds of Jews in Afula demonstrated against the sale of a single house to an Arab. It is a state where Jews demonstrate to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’.

If any of this were to happen to Jews in Britain, then you would be the first to cry ‘anti-Semitism’. That is why your letter to your congregants is so outrageous. As Attlee once said to Laski, an extended period of silence on your part would not go amiss.  In other words Rabbi, shut up.

Regards

Tony Greenstein

Rabbi Romain’s Letter to his Jewish Congregants

I am writing to all members of the community regarding the forthcoming election. 

In past elections, never have I dreamt of suggesting which way one should vote.

This election is different.

You may recall the ground-breaking decision of all three Jewish newspapers - The Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish News and The Jewish Telegraph - to publish exactly the same front cover on 25^th July 2018: taking a united stance to suggest that a Labour government under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn would prove “an existential threat” to British Jewry.

You may recall the Deputy Leader of Labour, Tom Watson saying he was “ashamed” of Labour being guilty of racism, or the fact that the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) are currently investigating accusations of racism against Labour, the first time they have done so against a political party since their enquiry into the British National Party.

You may recall the Labour MP of 49 years, Louise Ellman, resigning in October 2019, because, as she put it: “Labour is no longer a safe place for Jews and Corbyn is a danger to the country”.

These are just a handful of examples from the last three years that make me feel that normal political allegiances are superseded by the unprecedented situation we face.

I should stress that the problem is not the Labour Party itself, which has a long record of fighting discrimination and prejudice, but the problem is Jeremy Corbyn. Corbyn-led Labour, has, at best, let anti-semitism arise within its ranks, or at worst, has encouraged it. 

This has never happened under any previous Labour leader, whether under Tony Blair on the right, Neil Kinnock in the centre or Michael Foot on the left, so the finger of responsibility really does seem to point to Jeremy Corbyn

I am therefore suggesting we should each put aside all other considerations and vote for whichever party is most likely to defeat Labour in whatever constituency we are in - even if we would never normally vote for that party.

If you, too, think that a Corbyn-led government would pose a danger to Jewish life as we know it...whether it be utterances that cause Jews to feel victimised, less secure and no longer at ease...or maybe even legislation that restricts Jewish life or relations with Israel in some way, then you may wish to vote to ensure Labour does not gain your local seat.

Do not discount the power of your vote - many seats are won or lost on small majorities - while the issue of Brexit means that very different voting patterns will probably take place compared to previous elections...so do not assume that a safe Labour seat will remain Labour, or that Labour might not win a seat that previously looked safe for another party.

Please feel free to share this with any family, friend or colleagues you think might feel the same.

Let me repeat that this is suggestion I would not normally make but for the Corbyn-factor - and you are at liberty to disagree totally with my point of view. I appreciate, too, that you may feel that other criteria take priority when voting. You should vote as your conscience dictates.

..while if you wish to discuss this with me, feel free to do so.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE

Maidenhead Synagogue

Corbyn can win BUT it is unlikely without a clear position on Brexit and a clear rejection of the anti-Semitism narrative

A hung parliament is likely but 2019 will not be a rerun of 2017-Johnson is not May

On 20^th April 2017 this blog was virtually alone in predicting that a hung parliament was likely and that Corbyn could even win. In Labour Can Win if Corbyn is Bold – the Key Issue is Poverty and the Transfer of Wealth when Theresa May was being praised to the skies and her lead was over 20% I opened my article with these words:

‘It was Harold Wilson who said that a week is a long time in politics.  Seven weeks is a political eternity.  Theresa May has taken a gamble that her 21% lead will hold.  It is a gamble that she may yet come to regret.

There is only one direction that her lead can go and that is down.  Once her lead falls then a snowball effect can take over.  What is essential is that Labour marks out the key areas on which it is going to base its appeal.  The danger is that Corbyn is going to continue with his ‘strategy’ of appeasing the Right and appealing to all good men and women.  If so that will be a recipe for disaster.’

No election is guaranteed to be without its surprises.  Theresa May is a cautious conservative.  She is literally the product of her background, a conservative vicar’s daughter.  Reactionary, parochial and small-minded, she is a bigot for all seasons.  What doesn’t help is that she is both wooden and unoriginal.  The danger is that Corbyn tries to emulate her.

People may remember that she was being lauded as ‘strong and stable’, a slogan that came back to haunt and mock her.

On June 3^rd, five days before the General Election, when the Tories were still tipped to win an overall majority I wrote another article

General Election - Is Labour on the threshold of victory?

I continued

‘I do not have a crystal ball.  My initial predictions, that there would or could be a hung parliament was based on my assessment of the situation.  This is still quite possible as the Tories are widely detested for  their attacks on the working poor, people on benefits and the continuous privatisation of the NHS.  They are seen as the party of a vicious class rule, which is what austerity is about.’

Ed Miliband failed to support Corbyn having been such an abysmal failure himself

In the previous General Election, in Miliband’s Labour Seeks the Safety of Consensus Politics I wrote:

In last week’s Brighton Independent I had an article which suggested that Miliband was determined to lose.  Of course he’d like to win but he refuses to break from the consensus behind austerity.  Instead of boldly saying that austerity is the road to ruin and Labour is going to reverse the welfare cuts, tax the rich at 80%, reverse major privatisations and pay no compensation bar the price which was paid (minus  profits taken), Miliband tries to present himself as the safe alternative to the Tories.

I predicted, not an overall Tory majority but that they would form the largest party.  In the event they secured a small majority which Theresa May proceeded to throw away. So what is my prediction this time around?

Ruth Smeeth is a US State Asset as Wikileaks revealed - Corbyn has been too hapless to call this 'victim' of antisemitism out

The first thing is that the ruling class and their media are not going to be complacent again. Whereas the Labour Right and the Zionists did their best to distance themselves last time around from Corbyn I would be very surprised if some of these creatures, including the Labour Right, didn’t engage in direct attacks on Corbyn and the Left.  Margaret Hodge and Ruth Smeeth for example. The far-Right Editor of the Jewish Chronicle set the ball rolling with a poisonous letter to readers, which he kindly copied to me.  It read:

Dear Reader,

Over the next six weeks we will discover if the British public are prepared to put an antisemite into Number Ten. The polling evidence to date suggests not. But that’s all it is – polls. And as we know from 2017, real voting can be very different.

Our splash this week is the unprecedented advice from Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain to his congregants across 16 different constituencies to vote for whichever candidate is best placed to stop Labour. It’s a stark illustration of the atmosphere surrounding this election in our community: a tense foreboding lest Labour win.

The Jewish Labour Movement, which is an affiliated ‘socialist’ society has openly made it clear that it won’t be supporting the Labour Party in these elections. Jewish group removes campaigning support for Labour in election

Blair made this disgusting woman Children's Minister - it was like placing a rattlesnake in a baby's cradle - Corbyn's failure to remove her is testimony to his lack of seriousness

The obvious step to take, their immediate disaffiliation has not even been contemplated yet when one thinks of how the most trivial alleged breaches of discipline have been rewarded with suspensions and expulsions, including that of Chris Williamson, then one despairs about the uselessness of the Campaign Group (which has remained silent) and what passes for Momentum’s leadership. By failing to take any stance whatsoever on the attacks on himself and the Left Corbyn has immeasurably weakened himself.

There are too many variables in this election to make a firm prediction but those who imagine that Corbyn is going to gain a majority are going to be disappointed. When you lose control of the narrative, as Corbyn has done over ‘anti-Semitism’ then the chances of regaining the initiative are slim.

Theresa May was an ideal opponent.  Everything she did turned to dust for example refusing to debate Corbyn head to head.  Johnson has no intention of making the same mistakes.

The other major failure is Brexit. Leaving aside the laughable Lexit, it should be clear to all that Brexit is a project of the nationalist Right.  Trump, Farage, Rees-Mogg are not natural bedfellows of the Left. Brexit is the last throw of the Empire Loyalists who imagine that an independent capitalist Britain can survive on its own. What it really means is serious deregulation which will make the EU seem like some form of nirvana with its Working Time Regulations and Health & Safety Directives..

Of course that doesn’t mean the European Union is a socialist paradise.  What it means is that European capitalism has laid the basis of a European unity that it cannot fulfil.  That is where socialism comes in.  To revert to the past is akin to what Marx said about feudal socialism in the Communist Manifesto. It is particularly appropriate today:

half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.

Corbyn’s dithering and indecision, his refusal to come out against Brexit and in support of the totally incomprehensible position of renegotiating Brexit and then putting it to a referendum, will appeal to no one. It is a simple fact that remaining in Europe is better than any form of Brexit and why should people believe Corbyn can renegotiate it anyway?

 It is perfectly possible to approach working class voters in the North with the clear message that it was austerity, Thatcherism and monetarism which closed the mines, shipyards  and docks not Europe. It is equally possible to point to the potentially devastating economic consequences of abandoning one’s largest market but to try and appeal to both Remainers and Brexiteers is a hopeless task. In practice Corbyn will end up satisfying no one, falling between 2 stools.

What Corbyn has done is to allow the Lib Dems, who experienced near death experiences in both 2015 and 2017 to come back from the dead. Led by Madam Austerity herself, Jo Swinson, they have gone from 7% to 20%.  That is a direct product of Corbyn’s abysmal strategy.

What it means electorally is that Labour have gone down from the mid 30s to about 23% in the polls.  No government can be formed with those figures.  Whether Corbyn can pull it back with an attack on the elites without an overall narrative is questionable to say the least.

The Lib Dems will undoubtedly pick up Tory seats though how many is anyone’s guess.  Despite Swinson talking of forming her own government I would suspect that 25-30 seats would be their realistic target.  

The other unknown is, of course, the Brexit Party. Farage has stated today that he will contest every seat without a Brexit pact.  We will see.  I suspect he will come under enormous pressure not to let Corbyn in by default. If he resists then I doubt that the Brexit party will be much more than a minor irritant.

In Scotland the SNP are forecast to pick up 50+ seats at both Labour and the Tories expense.

It is a foolish person who makes a prediction at this stage but I would hazard a guess that Corbyn will do well to achieve the number of seats he did last time around. If the SNP and Lib Dems gain seats then I expect the Tories to fall back to around 290 with Labour on 250.  However it is very early days yet.

Corbyn may pay heavily for his failure to support Open Selection which would have seen the removal of much of Labour’s right-wing. In the event of Labour gaining around 280-290 seats and being able to form a government with SNP support then we can expect a rebellion by those Labour MPs who, like Hodge and Smeeth, will never vote for Corbyn as Prime Minister.

In so far as Labour HQ are now vetoing Corbyn supporters like Jo Bird I have no great optimism, as I did in 2017, for the election.

Russell Lloyd-Moyle the Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown - his seat could be ultra marginal

On a local level I live in Brighton Kemptown.  It has always been a marginal constituency and has swung between Labour and Tory over the past half century.  It was held from 1970-1997 by the Tories and from 1997-2010 by Labour.  It was first gained by Dennis Hobden for Labour in 1964 by 7 votes and he increased that to 800 in 1966.  During the period of New Labour Des Turner never achieved more than 5,000 majority before it returned to the Tories in 2010. In short it has been held by Labour for 21 years out of 55.

In 2017 the Greens stood down and Labour’s Lloyd Russell-Moyle had a majority of nearly 10,000, which was absolutely phenomenal and unlikely to be repeated. If the Green Party stands the seat will become highly marginal.  The heaviest Labour ward, Hanover, was moved into the Pavilion constituency as part of the last redrawing of boundaries and Peacehaven was added on making it more Tory.

Why then was there such a massive majority in 2017? I have no doubt that Labour was seen as the party of Remain. Even in Rottingdean, once the safest Tory ward in Britain, my estimate is that Labour gained half the votes.  That is unlikely to be repeated given Labour’s disastrous positioning such that it has managed to simultaneously alienate both Remainers and Brexiteers. Although Lloyd RM is an ardent Remainer people are more influenced by the national party than the local candidate.

Can economic radicalism by in and of itself win out? I fear that Boris Johnson’s populism and nativism may win out. I hope I am wrong but spending the last 2 years appeasing Labour’s racist Right and the Zionists coupled with a refusal to say niet to the Brexiteers may mean that the Corbyn Revolution is coming to an end.  If so then Corbyn and his adoring fans will have themselves to blame for not having called the bluff of Tom Watson, Margaret Hodge and the rest of the corrupt and racist right-wing careerists who inhabit the PLP.

Anyone who believes that the deep state has not been plotting the last 4 years and that 'antisemitism' is part of that is either stupid or naive beyond belief

In particular the decision at the 2018 Labour Party conference by Corbyn to reject Open Selection and clear out the right-wing rabble in the PLP whilst turning on people like Chris Williamson and also Kelvin MacKenzie may have consequences at the polling booths.

At the last election Momentum was seen as having contributed significantly to the result.  This time because of its lack of democracy, in essence a plaything of its owner Jon Lansman, it is unlikely to be able to repeat the performance.  It has lost at least one-third of its members and nearly all of those who pay a nominal subscription are paper members.  No one has done more than Lansman to lose this election through his sectarian Zionism and his endorsement of the Israeli, US and British strategy of destabilising Corbyn.

I hope I am wrong but I fear I am not.

Tony Greenstein

Israel’s Racist Election - The main debate is ‘Who Has Killed the Most Palestinians?’

As the Zionist ‘Left’ Disappear will the Generals’ Blue & White Party Replace Netanyahu?

In most Western countries, parties compete over issues such as taxation, nationalisation/privatisation, poverty, Brexit, refugees, global warming in general elections. Political parties in most European countries, with the exception of avowedly racist parties of the far-Right, are inclusive of ethnic minorities and supporters of different religions and faiths. It is unknown in Europe, with the exception of fascist parties, for parties to frame their arguments in terms of maintaining a demographic majority of a certain section of the population.

In Israel, the self-styled ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, politics are entirely different. You have Jewish parties and Arab parties. Only the Communist Party, Hadash, and to a less extent the left-Zionist party Meretz, has a mixed membership.

Leaders of the Blue & White 'General's Party (l to r)
Moshe Yalon, Benny Gantz, Yair Lapid, Gabi Ashmenazi

The other feature of Israeli politics is its political instability.  Parties come and go virtually every election. So Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah, which was the offshoot of Kadimah and in 2009 the largest party in the Knesset, latterly in alliance with the Israeli Labour Party, will disappear.

There have been a plethora of 'centrist' parties in Israel, from the old General Zionists, to Shinui to Yesh Atid, each more right-wing than its predecessor.

Springing up out of nowhere is the Blue and White Party an alliance of the right-centrist (though in the Israeli context labels like left, right and centre are largely meaningless) Yesh Atid and Resilience, a new party formed by former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz together with two other former Chiefs of Staff Moshe Yalon and Gabi Ashkenzi. Not for nothing is it known as the General’s Party.

As Elizabeth Tsurkov of the liberal Zionist Forward observed ‘Campaign ads seem to be competing over which candidate has killed the most Palestinians.’ This is what British politicians such as Emily Thornberry and Barry Gardiner call a ‘beacon of democracy’. Presumably Jews getting to have a vote on which party can kill most Arabs is an example of democracy at its best!

Likud’s Avi Dichter, a former Director of Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of MI5, put out a video which ends with “A thousand mothers of terrorists will cry and my mother won’t.” In the minds of most Israelis every Palestinian is a terrorist. Gantz put out an ad boasting of how many Palestinian militants had been killed in Gaza in 2014. Tsurkov wrote that these campaign ads ‘demonize, ridicule and belittle Palestinians, who are presented as a people without history, pathological liars and terrorists.’ This is Israel today.

A primaries campaign video put out by Likud’s Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotoveli shows her speaking in the Knesset where she presented a book filled with empty pages. According to Hotovely, that book represents the history of the Palestinian people. She proclaimed that: “You have no Kings, no heritage sites” in Israel. An ad produced by Culture Minister Miri Regev, a self-proclaimed fascist, refers to Palestinian citizens of Israel as a “trojan horse,” and the Joint List uniting several Arab parties as a “fifth column.” Those with a sense of history will remember that accusations of being a fifth column were a favourite in the days of McCarthyism. It is a rerun of the Nazi theme of the 'stab in the back'.

Gantz boasted of sending Gaza back into ‘the stone age’ during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.  A boast not without foundation.  Netanyahu who is playing the Arab card for all its worth accused Gantz and his party of being ‘leftists’ which in Israel today is an insult.

Yair Lapid has led Yesh Atid since 2012.  In 2013 it obtained the second largest number of seats, 19, and entered into coalition with Netanyahu. In the 2015 election it fell back to 11 seats. It had been engaged in protracted negotiations with Benny Gantz regarding an electoral coalition until Netanyahu made what could be a fatal mistake in pressurising the far-Right Jewish Home party into allying with the neo-Nazi Otzma Yehudit. This resulted in the formation of the Blue and White Party. See Ultra-nationalists join forces ahead of Israeli elections as liberal and Palestinian blocs splinter

Last week Jewish Home’s Central Committee agreed to an electoral pact with Otzma Yehudit which will receive the 5^th and 8^th seats on the list making it all but certain that one of their members will be elected.

Even the worm, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, turns

Otzma Yehudit is led by an open supporter of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, former MK Michael ben Ari. The actions of Netanyahu in seeking to unify the ultra-Right with Otzma Yehudit has led to an unprecedented backlash amongst diaspora Zionist organisations.  Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has condemned this alliance as has the American Jewish Committee though this hasn't stopped AIPAC from inviting Netanyahu to its conference in March. Netanyahu’s opportunism however may backfire on him judging by the reaction amongst even loyal Zionists abroad. As Phillip Weiss and Yossi Gurvitz note

‘The outrage at Netanyahu over the move has been unprecedented, for rehabilitating the “David Dukes” of the Israeli political scene, heirs to Meir Kahane who advocate for transfer of Palestinians to other countries.’

Israel Hayom, an Israeli free-sheet which is owned by Sheldon Adelson, one of the largest donors to Trump’s election campaign, had a screaming headline calling AIPAC ‘irresponsible’ for getting involved in domestic politics.

Netanyahu’s rationale was that Otzma Yehudit might, as in the 2013 and 2015 elections ‘waste’ votes by standing and thus imperil the election of a Likud government. His solution was for Jewish Home to form an electoral pact with Otzma Yehudit because a party now needs 3.25% to enter the Knesset.

The Jewish Home Party is already in an electoral alliance with Bezalel Smotrich MK’s Tkuma party. Smotrich describes himself as a ‘proud homophobe’ and openly supports the segregation of Israel’s Arab citizens. He has defended the practice of Israeli hospitals which separate Jewish and Arab women in maternity wards.

Israel’s General Election is impossible to call at the moment because there are a number of variables, not least the impact if Netanyahu is indicted for corruption. In most countries this would be a death sentence for a candidate but Israel is not most countries.

According to polling from Israel’s Channel 12 in Israel (tweeted by Lahav Harkov) the following is how the parties fare:

Blue and White 36
Likud 30
Labor 8
UTJ (religious party) 7
New Right 6 (Shaked/Bennett)
Ta’al Hadash (Tibi/Odeh) 6
Joint List 6
Shas (religious Mizrahi party) 5
Yisrael Beytenu 4
Bayit Yehudi (including Jewish Power) 4
Meretz 4
Kulanu 4

It is clear that the Israeli Labour Party is heading for disaster.  The ILP formed every single government from 1948 to 1977 as well as the 1992 and 1999 governments. It was last in a coalition government in 2011. Since then Netanyahu has formed every government. In 2015 under Isaac Herzog the ILP ran on a joint electoral list with Tzipi Livni’s Hatnuah and gained 24 seats. 

In 2017 the ILP elected a new leader, Avi Gabbay, a former Minister in Netanyahu’s government, who immediately decided to move the ILP several degrees further to the Right.  Among his policy innovations were to support Netanyahu’s attempt to deport Israel’s 40,000 Black African refugees on the grounds that they were neither White nor Jewish. He also supported the retention of the settlements. Gabbay, who was Chief Executive of Israel’s largest company, Bezeq International, a telecommunications giant, from 2007-2014 echoed Netanyahu when he declared that:

"In 1997, Bibi [Benjamin Netanyahu] said that 'the left has forgotten what it means to be Jewish.' Do you know what the left did in response? Forgot [how] to be Jews,"

This is the pathetic level of the ideology of the Israeli Labour Party. It is a sign of desperation of a party which has no purpose and it would seem no social base in Israel.

Gabbay at the beginning of the election campaign, in front of the TV cameras, publicly humiliated Tzipi Livni by announcing that their electoral pact was over. Livni, although a horrendous racist and a war criminal in her own right, is nonetheless seen as on the left in Israel, which is an indication of just how far right-wing Israeli politics are today. But if Gabbay thought that he would receive an electoral boost from this he was soon to be disappointed. The ILP ‘strategy’ of moving further and further to the Right simply alienates those Israelis still on the Left without appeasing those on the Right. Gabbay is yet to learn that however fast and far he moves to the Right Netanyahu can move even faster, even to the extent of taking genuine neo-Nazis on board.

At the moment although Blue and White is estimated to gain 36 seats to the Likud’s 30, Netanyahu still has the greatest chance of forming a government coalition. Gantz’s B&W, even if it receives the support of Meretz, the ILP and Kulanu will still only have 52 seats. Given their refusal to contemplate a coalition with Arabs, Netanyahu is likely to be able to form a coalition with the religious parties (12) and the far-Right parties (15) making a total of 57.

If current projections are correct then the Jewish Orthodox parties will go down from 13 to 12 seats, Kulanu - a Likud offshoot - will decline from 10 to four - and the far-Right will increase from 11 to 14.

Netanyahu and Mendelbit in happier times

However this is to miss out one factor. The Police long ago recommended that Netanyahu should be indicted for corruption and it is likely that before the election campaign finishes Attorney General Avichai Mendelbit will charge Netanyahu.  In most states purporting to be democratic and a few which are not, that would spell the death knell of a candidate.  However in Israel nothing is guaranteed.  There has been a systematic campaign of intimidation against Mendelbit including the desecration of his father’s grave.  Such is the nature of Israeli politics.

Meretz, which originates in Ratz, the Civil Rights Party and Mapam, the United Workers Party, had 12 seats in 1992.  Today they have five seats and are hovering on the brink of extinction with a predicted 4 seats. If Meretz do fail to get candidates elected to the Knesset it will be the end of a long tradition of left-Zionism, the most hypocritical face of Zionism. They talked socialism but practised segregation. Mapam talked about co-existence but their Kibbutzim were not only Jewish only but were established on the ruins of destroyed Arab villages.

In March 2018 Tamar Zandberg replaced Zehava Gal On as leader of Meretz. Tamar Zandberg was elected after having hired a right-wing election fixer Moshe Klughaft as an adviser to her campaign. Klughaft was previously a strategist for Jewish Home and had targeted left-wing activists and NGO’s.  

Under Zandberg Meretz has focussed mainly on peripheral topics such as the environment, cannabis legalisation, civil and gay marriage to the exclusion of the major issue in Israel which is the Occupation of the Territories and the racism and discrimination against Israel’s Palestinian citizens.

Avi  Gabbay (Israeli Labor Party) and Tamar Zandberg (Meretz)

Zandberg is on record as stating that she would join a government coalition with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu. Lieberman is an open advocate of the transfer of Israel’s Arab population out of Israel and the imposition of a loyalty oath on Israel’s non-Jewish population. Galon called this ‘flushing ideology down the toilet” though to be fair Meretz has long ago dispensed with anything in the way of ideology.

Zandberg also called on the Israeli Labour Party to form a joint party or electoral pact, which would save Meretz from extinction but Gabbay rejected this out of hand.

The other major development is the splitting of the Joint Arab-Jewish List into two. Previously the Arab parties have run separately but in 2014, on the proposal of Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s fascist Defence Minister, the threshold for election to the Knesset was raised from 2% to 3.25%. The purpose was to eliminate the Arab parties from the Knesset but what happened was that they unified in one Joint List.  Ironically Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu nearly didn’t qualify!

Ahmad Tibi (Ta'al) and Aymen Odeh (Haddash)

However this time around the Joint list has split into two separate electoral alliances. Ahmad Tibi’s Ta'al has combined with Haddash (Communist) and Balad (National Democratic Union) has united with the United Arab List (Ra’am). Tibi, a veteran member of the Knesset, believed that his group, was underrepresented in the Knesset.

According to the Channel 12 poll above both alliances are scheduled to get 6 seats each though according to Channel 13’s poll, as reported in The Times of Israel, the Hadash-Ta'al group will get 10 seats and Balad and Ra’am will get 4 seats, which if true would be an improvement of one over the present situation.

I hesitate from this distance to make any predictions about Israel’s General Election.  My hunch is that Likud will be rocked by Netanyahu’s indictment and that this may propel the General’s party into power. What isn’t in much doubt is that the Zionist ‘left’, if it can be called that, is going to be heavily defeated. It is quite possible that Meretz, whose raison d’être has long since vanished will disappear and the Israeli Labour Party will pay a heavy price for trying to imitated Likud.

On the Israeli Palestinian front it is regrettable that the Joint Arab List split. It is entirely possible that Balad and Ra’am will also fail to make the minimum of 4 seats and thus be eliminated from the Knesset. It is a great pity that firstly Ahmad Tibi put the interests of his own party above Arab unity and secondly that Hadash and the more nationalist parties were unable to unite.

Hadash has always had a Jewish member of the Knesset even though it receives very few Jewish votes. The days have long since gone when Israel’s Jewish voters would elect communists to the Knesset.  However the replacement for Dov Kheinin, Dr Ofer Cassif, a lecturer at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University is a far more dynamic character. He has had no hesitation in describing Israel today as politically similar to Nazi Germany in the 1930’s.

In a lecture to his students, which was secretly recorded he stated that

‘"those who refuse to see the similarities between what is happening in Israel, specifically in the past two years, and Germany in the 1930s, has a problem and will be responsible for the potential situation of the state."

Dr Ofer Casif, Hadash's Jewish candidate and lecturer at Hebrew University

Cassif also called Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s ‘Justice Minister’ and a member of Jewish Home (now the United Right) Party a ‘filthy neo-Nazi’ Which is about right. Shaked has previously declared that Israel should abandon universal values of human rights in favour of ‘Jewish values’ and that the Torah and halachah should form part of the jurisprudence of the Israeli legal system. Shaked also called for the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in a (now deleted) Facebook post where she wrote, quoting Uri Elitzur, a settler leader, speechwriter and close advisor to Netanyahu, who had died a few months previously that:

‘What’s so horrifying about understanding that the entire Palestinian people is the enemy? Every war is between two peoples, and in every war the people who started the war, that whole people, is the enemy....

They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there....

There is nothing more just, and probably nothing more efficient. Every suicide attacker should know that he takes with him also his parents and his house and some of the neighbors. Every brave Um-Jihad who sends her son to hell should know she’s going with him, along with the house and everything inside it.”

No doubt if Dr Casif was a member of the Labour Party he would have been suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’ for having dared to compare Israel to Nazi Germany!

Tony Greenstein