Socialist Fight Drops Its Support for Ian Donovan’s Anti-Semitic Theories about a pan-national Jewish-Zionist Bourgeoisie – or does it?

Gerry Downing and SF Have Yet to Admit that Labour Against the Witchhunt was right in 2018 to Exclude Them

 

As Jesus remarked:

there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!

We should welcome the fact that Gerry Downing [GD] has repented of his association with Ian Donovan [ID] and his anti-Semitic theories.  However repentance, at least for socialists, is not enough. GD needs to come to terms with why he maintained an alliance with ID for at least 5 years.

In last week’s Weekly Worker, GD announced the expulsion of ID and the Trotskyist Faction [TF] from Socialist Fight [SF]. In this week’s paper ID denies that he has been expelled since it is his comrades who are in the majority. The expulsion is therefore ‘dead in the water’.

Gilad Atzmon

Where the truth lies is irrelevant since, with or without ID, SF is politically dead. GD’s letter says that for the past 5 years SF has harboured within it a key individual, ID, who is ‘in lockstep’ with Gilad Atzmon [GA] whom he describes as a ‘left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist.’ What kind of Trotskyist or Marxist organisation is it which has harboured within it a neo-Nazi and one whom, until very recently, GD himself gave uncritical support to?

ID’s defence, if that is the right word, is that GD has become a Zionist because he doesn’t support expelling all Zionists from the Labour Party. Neither do I. I am in favour of disaffiliating or proscribing Zionist organisations such as Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement not individuals per se, although clearly Zionist apparatchiks and propagandists should be shown the door.

ID’s letter also constitutes an appalling apologia for GA’s anti-Semitism, including his comments questioning the Holocaust.

What is important however are the political issues that this falling out between ID and GD involves and not who expelled whom.

When Labour Against the Witchhunt [LAW] was formed at the end of 2017, it faced an immediate problem. Set up to fight the Zionists’ fake anti-Semitism smear campaign and the ensuing suspensions and expulsions, it faced a problem. Two of those present at the inaugural meetings, ID and GD were espousing anti-Semitic politics.

The Israel Lobby at Work

Unsurprisingly LAW’s officers decided that they had no alternative but to exclude supporters of SF. We were called witchhunters and accused of hypocrisy since we were set up to protest the expulsion of Labour Party members for ‘anti-Semitism’ and yet here were we expelling SF for anti-Semitism!

The difference of course was that the target of the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations in the Labour Party were innocent. Their real ‘crime’ was being anti-Zionists. SF was guilty. The bourgeois and Zionist press however weren’t interested in such nuances.

The Independent’s ‘Group set up to protest against Labour's expulsion of members accused of antisemitism expels members for alleged antisemitism’ reported that ‘Gerry Downing, who was excluded from Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), has accused the group of conducting its own witch hunt against him.’

In the lead up to the LAW meeting on January 6^th 2018 SF appealed to its supporters to come to the all-members meeting where the question of their exclusion would be decided.  They wrote:

No one can point to a single act or political stance that is in any way racist or anti-Semitic except in the minds of those who want to appease the Labour party bureaucracy of Ian McNicol.

Our actions were compared to a ‘throwback to the Great Purges in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s’.

Gerry went even further arguing that

‘Today, he [TG] and his bed mate Jack Conrad are in a bloc with the same Iain McNichol who is framing him up for anti-Semitism. This is class treachery at its most pathetic.’

Two months later I was expelled by my bedmate! You can imagine my surprise when GD’s letter appeared in last week’s Weekly Worker informing us that ‘Socialist Fight has expelled Ian Donovan and his ‘Trotskyist Faction’ by a unanimous vote.’

This is to be welcomed but clearly it is not enough. You cannot wipe away the past 5 years through bureaucratic means. It is incumbent on Gerry to admit that we were right to exclude SF from LAW and to accept that we were not ‘witchhunters’ but anti-racists.

Gilad Atzmon - blowing his own trumpet

Gerry informs us that ID and the TF were expelled for ‘anti-Semitism and support for the racist, anti-Semitic and left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist, Gilad Atzmon.’

GD quotes from GA’s 2006 essay ‘On Anti-Semitism’: “... we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously’. GA goes on to say that whether the infamous Czarist forgery, the Protocols of the elder of Zion, are genuine or a forgery is irrelevant since “American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.”  Hitler’s take on the Protocols in Mein Kampf was that they must be genuine because they were true!

Quoting from GA’s most recent book Being in Time that ‘“Fascism, I believe, more than any other ideology, deserves our attention, as it was an attempt to integrate left and right.’ GD concludes that GA is a fascist. Furthermore, since ID has ‘developed a full-blown ideological outlook in lockstep with Atzmon’, citing Donovan’s defence of GA’s admiration for ex-KKK neo-Nazi David Duke, he alleges that ID too is now a fascist.

GD also cites ID’s defence of Atzmon groupie Devon Nola that ‘“Bolshevism was a Jewish-led form of government.’

It is to be welcomed that Gerry now repudiates use of the term, ‘the world ‘Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie’’ and the whole notion of a Jewish-Zionist imperialist vanguard as anti-Semitic tropes.’ The idea that there is a Jewish sub-set of the ruling class, still less a pan national Jewish bourgeoisie is deeply anti-Semitic and reminiscent of Nazi  world Jewish conspiracy theories. They have no place in a socialist let alone Marxist group.

However GD also has to explain why he ever went along with this nonsense. At the very least it must show some serious deficiency in his own understanding of capitalism and imperialism and leave open the question, ‘what is Socialist Fight for’?

It is equally welcome that GD now believes it is inappropriate to refer to Jews such as Kissinger and Milton Friedman as examples of Jews being

“overrepresented among the most strident spokespeople for capitalist reaction” without openly recognising that they are doing so primarily as representatives of the interests of imperialist capitalism, as in the Pinochet coup in Chile against Allende in 1973, and not as any separate Jewish influence or conspiracy.

However if this rejection of ID’s pretentiously titled ‘Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism is sincere then he must explain why SF up till now didn’t realise that they had an anti-Semitic cuckoo in their nest.

ID’s Theses argued that what is distinctive about Israel is that unlike other settler colonial states ‘Israel has no ‘mother country’ because it was populated by part of the Jewish population from several countries.’ This is one of GA’s key argument as to why Israel’s character owes nothing to its being a settler colonial state but to the fact that it is a Jewish state. And it is the Jewishness that most interests GA.

It is of course a bogus argument. South Africa’s Boers had no mother country either. Nor did the American colonists once they had rebelled. Palestine had British imperialism as its sponsor.  What distinguishes settler colonialism is not who sponsors it but what the settlers do.  It is the political economy of settler colonialism which matters.  Do the settlers depend on exploitation of the indigenous labour or do they want to exclude it?

The next best thing to the tablets of stone that Moses carried down Mount Sinai

ID explains support for Israel by the West as being on account of ‘Jewish overrepresentation in the US and other ruling classes.’ In other words Jews form an ethnic lobby. Although ID doesn’t realise it, this is what the Zionists themselves say! When arguing in support of Israel the Zionists claim to represent the whole Jewish community (apart from a few Jews of the ‘wrong sort’). No. 8 of the Board of Deputies 10 Commandments, which Labour leadership candidates were expected to endorse proclaims that

‘labour must engage with the Jewish community via its main representative groups, and not through fringe organisations and individuals.’ #

It is Zionist advocates who argue that only Jews have the right to define what is anti-Semitic. In the words of Jonathan Freedland

black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong,

Freedland was talking nonsense. There is no homogenous women’s view as to what sexism is nor is there a Black monopoly on the definition of racism whereas the Zionist movement insists that everybody accept a definition of anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is defence of Israel. And further they also insist that they, and only they, represent British Jews.

In order to understand the background to GD’s letter it is instructive to have a look at what SF said at the time we were ‘witchhunting’ them. ID’s Third-Camp Stalinoids bring Witchhunt into ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ spoke about ‘the role of Jewish bourgeois in the diaspora.’ This ‘Jewish component within the ruling classes of Western countries that exceeds by many times over the proportion of Jews in the general population’ turns a ‘normal relationship’ between states ‘into a servile relationship where states like the USA give barely critical support to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.’

Socialist Fight accused the CPGB of having engaged in the ‘indulgence of Jewish sensibilities” as if all Jews have the same sensibilities. It is a statement which could have been taken from an overtly anti-Semitic publication. SF also defended GA’s belief that the Bolshevik Revolution was Jewish dominated describing his views as ‘confused and paranoid’ rather than calling their fascist lineage out.

ID defended GA and attacked the campaign that Jewish anti-Zionists waged against him and the SWP’s toleration of him. Ours was

‘a reactionary campaign, contrary to working class democracy, and in reality constituted an anti-left witch-hunt which the SWP unfortunately capitulated to.’

Not only that but

Atzmon manages to poke holes in key aspects of Zionist ideology, and expose some of the capitulations to Zionism and Jewish communalism of some of those on the left who claim to oppose Zionism. He is a savage critic, albeit from an idealist standpoint, of Jewish identity politics, which... is the identity politics of an oppressor people, and thereby Atzmon’s critique, along with those of others such as Shlomo Sand, is essential for Marxists to engage with.

In Defend Marxism and Labour Movement democracy against capitulators to Zionism Donovan wrote that Jews are a ‘people, who, insofar as they act in a collective manner under a quasi-nationalist leadership today, act as oppressors of another people, namely Arabs’.

The Jewish Question was confined to the feudal era and the transition to capitalism, not modern day capitalism

Yet during the debate on whether or not LAW should exclude SF ID denied that they had described the Jews as an ‘oppressor people’ which suggests that his ‘materialist’ analysis of what he calls ‘the Jewish Question’ is indefensible.

Atzmon’s ‘critique’ of Zionism includes drawing a straight line between the ‘Judaic god’ of Moses and Israel’s behaviour today. In ‘The Wandering Who’ (p.120) Atzmon writes that:

The Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses... is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. ...  Israel, the Jewish State, has been following Moses’ call. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948, and the constant and total abuse of the Palestinian people since then, makes Deuteronomy 6:10–12 look like a prophecy fulfilled.

Atzmon’s statement in his essay Truth, History and Integrity questioning Auschwitz has nothing in common with Arab or third world Holocaust denial. Yes because Zionism uses the Holocaust as a weapon many Arabs therefore query the weapon itself rather than the use made of it. But Atzmon comes from the oppressor people. His ideas are from European neo-Nazis. When GA wrote

I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators? I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws. (my emphasis)

ID merely says that

‘His sometimes-sceptical remarks about the Holocaust have an Israeli origin, and are a confused reaction to the abuse of the Holocaust to justify hideous Israeli crimes.’

The first two sentences of the above quotation are omitted from the chapter ‘Truth, History and Integrity’ in his book. Clearly GA recognised that they were problematic even if ID didn’t!

GA also went on to justify the persecution of Jews under the Nazis by conflating the Jews of Europe with Israeli Jews today. In essence he was justifying the anti-Semitism that led to Auschwitz.

65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should be able to ask – why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East (pp. 175-176 The Wandering Who)

For anyone interested in a Report of the meeting of January 6^th 2018, including a comprehensive analysis of how SF adopted the politics of anti-Semitism, as a means of explaining Zionism, you can go here.

GD has written a mea culpa of sorts, explaining that when he formed an alliance with ID ‘I did not examine too closely the politics of Ian’s Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism’. This is, to say the least, hard to take.

In an interview with GA Gerry wrote that ‘I do not agree he is either racist or anti-Semitic.’ Gerry’s explanation for his alliance with ID was that he had just lost two comrades and that

‘I desperate needed someone who understood the history of the Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism, at least to a certain level and so made that alliance with Ian, which I now recognise as opportunist.’

Opportunism is probably the least of it! The anti-Semitism inherent in what ID wrote was staring GD in the face. Even if GD didn’t have a great grasp of the history of Zionism he must have been acquainted with the nuts and bolts of Marxism and a class analysis.

In Why Marxists must address the Jewish Question concretely today ID wrote that ‘Zionism is a Jewish nationalist-communalist project’ which is not true. It became an ethno-nationalist movement in Palestine/Israel but originally it was a separatist reaction to anti-Semitism. After all Poalei Zion in Russia joined the Bolsheviks. ID describes the outcome of WWII as having led to

‘an emerging understanding that the Jewish bourgeoisie was an important reserve for the survival of capitalism itself, particularly in its ability to see beyond narrow national horizons and look out for the interests of the bourgeois class on a broader basis.

In other words the ‘Jewish bourgeoisie’ were the guardians of the rest of the capitalist class! ID went on to state

‘If Socialist Fight is right on Zionism’s special relationship to global finance capital what programmatic implications does this have?’

and asked

‘Does it mean that we specifically target Jewish capital?’ Answer: Not all Jewish capital. But we do want to expose that a specific part of Jewish capital has an ethnocentric interest in the dispossession of Palestinians.

Targeting Jewish capitalists was the anti-capitalism of the Brownshirts. It was what the Nazis and anti-Semitic movements in Europe did. I find it difficult to understand how Gerry could seriously accept this garbage.

ID has responded to his expulsion by saying that they have ‘taken on the mantle’ of Socialist Fight.’ Gerry Downing needs to ask some serious questions such as what is the purpose of a group that went down this road. Does it serve any purpose?

GD describes GA as a ‘left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist’ and by implication ID too since  he has ‘developed a full-blown ideological outlook in lockstep with Atzmon’.

I disagree. Fascism is a specific political movement aimed at not only destroying working class organisations and the left but all democratic rights. It is the last resort of capitalism against the workers’ movement. GA certainly flirts with fascists and anti-Semites, neo-Nazis included but he has also flirted with the Left, including the SWP. He is, if anything, politically promiscuous. He reminds me of Christopher Hitchens, a contrarian who would argue positions for the outrage they would cause.

I’m sure that GA, an accomplished jazz player, is well aware that jazz was considered Jewish inspired ‘nigger music’ in Nazi Germany. Listening to jazz was considered an act of rebellion by rebellious youth chafing at the boring monotone culture of the Nazis. GA also works happily with Jews, converses with them and has no personal antagonism to Jews as Jews. In other words whilst his ideas are without doubt anti-Semitic, on a personal level he is not an anti-Semite. Nor is there any reason to believe that he has given his support to, still less become a member of, a fascist organisation.

Likewise ID, engaged in the hopeless task of proving that Marx and Trotsky would have approved of his batty notions that Jewish capital is responsible for the direction of US foreign policy today. Despite his many sins Ian looks to the left not the right. It would be wrong to categorise him as a fascist, if only through guilt by association.

Tony Greenstein

Tony Greenstein’s 40% vote for Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a shot across the Executive’s bows

PSC activists express their dissatisfaction with an Executive that puts a Zionist Emily Thornberry on a Palestinian platform

PSC’s November Bulletin boasted that ‘we had our biggest Parliamentary Lobby Day ever’. In ‘an incredible month for the Palestinian solidarity movement.’ there was a photograph of a PSC meeting at the House of Commons addressed by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry. Thornberry is the same person who boasted that when she became an MP in 2005 she joined Labour Friends of Israel. At the UK Israel Conference 2017’ Thornberry gushed:

‘Let me start by thanking BICOM and the Jewish News for inviting me to today’s historic event and once again for giving me the opportunity to emphasise the Labour Party’s long-standing, unstinting and unequivocal support for the State of Israel’ ‘

and she continued

‘even today despite the challenges that we must address in respect of relations and rights of the Palestinian people modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy... in a region where oppression, discrimination and inequality are too often the norm.’

Electronic Intifada said of her speech that it ‘could have been written by a pro-Israel lobbyist.’ In an address to Labour Friends of Israel annual dinner, Thornberry claimed that BDS was “bigotry against the Israeli nation [that] has never been justified.”

Today Thornberry’s beacon of freedom, equality and democracy is having a General Election. But it’s not an election based on class politics, socialism v conservatism, Green v climate deniers, poor v rich as in most western societies. It is a competition between former Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Netanyahu and the New Right of Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett as to who has killed the most Palestinians.

It features Likud MK Yaron Mazuz who teamed up with Elor Azaria, the soldier caught on camera executing a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian in Hebron.  As Elizabeth Tsurkov wrote in The Forward ‘Azaria’s military trial, conviction and incarceration for nine months were deeply unpopular among Jewish Israelis. The ad concludes with the line “Elor Azaria has joined me, you join too!”

PSC AGM: From file photo

As readers of this blog will be aware, I decided this year to stand for the post of National Secretary of PSC.  Apparently it was the first time in 15 years that an officer post was contested. I also produced a leaflet explaining why I was standing .

What led me to stand was not some unfulfilled ambition but a sense of despair at the timidity, caution and passivity of PSC in the face of the ongoing Zionist anti-Semitism campaign. Whilst I don’t think we should respond to every Zionist provocation to simply ignore our enemies attacks is and was foolish.  The failure to mount a serious campaign publicly against the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is unforgivable. 

What is unforgiveable it to put onto our platforms people who are our enemies.  Emily Thornberry is not a friend. She has made it clear that anti-Zionists should be expelled from the Labour Party.  What kind of serf mentality operates to think that giving her a platform will be of benefit to the Palestinians? Of course she will make all the right noises about Israeli human rights abuses but at the end of the day she is a signed up supporter of the Israeli State which carries out those abuses.

Razan al-Najar 21 year old medic gunned down by Thornberry's 'beacon of light' in Gaza last year

Jonathan Rosenhead and Glynn Secker of Jewish Voice for Labour defended PSC Executive at the AGM for having helped pay for the legal opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC and having mailed it out to local authorities.  Fine.  But did they hold any public meetings? Were there any lobbies of MPs over the IHRA? Did they support JVL’s own counter-demonstration outside the House of Commons on March 26^th at the height of the ‘mural’ affair? Did they support the lobby of Labour’s National Executive Committee on September 4^th? Are they going to follow up Liberty’s decision to oppose the IHRA? Or is everything going to be tokenistic?

The adoption of the IHRA is a dagger aimed at the heart of Palestine solidarity. What it means is that you can oppose Israeli human rights atrocities but you cannot oppose the state that perpetrates those atrocities. Imagine that the Anti-Apartheid Movement had opposed the actions of the South Africa state in Soweto but had refused to criticise the State itself? That is what the IHRA does and for PSC not to take it seriously and for leading JVL members to give them their support is unconscionable.  It is also stupid politics.

My advice to JVL is some comradely advice to look to America and follow the example of Jewish Voice for Peace which has now openly declared that it is an anti-Zionist organisation.

I had considerable doubts about standing.  Firstly because becoming a national officer of PSC is not one of my ambitions! Secondly because I was unsure about how my message would go down to a conference that is not normally known for its willingness to challenge the Executive. In the end I did far better than I had expected with about 40% of the vote 67-101 (at least I think so as someone rang me as the results were being announced!). At least 50 people simply abstained. If I was Ben Soffa I would be worried having been elected with a minority of delegates, many of whom were wielding a union block vote!

My motion on Jenny Tonge received 89-129 votes and it is clear that many people were extremely unhappy at the dumping of someone who has been of the fiercest advocates of the Palestinians in Parliament and who has suffered an extraordinary amount of vilification from McCarthite smear groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Her treatment was at the hands of the new Chair of PSC, Kamel Hawash, which suggests that Hawash is going to continue where the retiring Chair Hugh Lanning left off. PSC needs to learn to stand up to its enemies not retreat at the first sound of gunfire.

There was also a soft motion from Liverpool Friends of Palestine raising the question of a single democratic state. It was soft enough for the Executive to support it. It stated that 'decisions on the strategy for Palestinian liberation will be taken by Palestinians.' which begs the point that Palestinians are in no position to take any decisions on strategy.  It is the Quisling Palestinian Authority which in practice makes such decisions.

Even more amazingly a motion from Exeter PSC which described what Israel is doing as ‘slow motion genocide’ was passed by Conference against the opposition of the Executive.  This is almost unheard of.

Given that PSC Executive can count on a block vote by affiliated unions, who possess 3 card votes it suggests that the Executive is losing the support of activists. This is not helped by the turgid format of the Conferences themselves. Year after year an Executive Report is presented to the Conference. Year after year the Report says much the same thing.  It is as if the Executive has a psychological need to have their lethargy and lack of imagination complimented.

Conference needs to be restructured with breakout sessions and workshops and a genuine interaction between delegates. At the moment it serves no useful purpose. All affiliated bodies i.e. trade unions should have only one vote not three. People should be able to vote the moment they join. Unfortunately PSC Executive is not blessed with either imagination or daring! It fears innovation.

I asked  a question on the Finance Report which was how come with an increased membership the amount of income went down! The Treasurer was unable to give an answer at least not one that anyone could understand. The membership figures were given for the first time ever.  Apparently they have jumped from 4,064 to 5,900 in the last year. I don’t believe it.  I remember Betty Hunter announcing a decade ago that PSC membership was over 5,000.

It is welcome that Jenny Lynn was reelected with the highest vote and a welcome to a Jersey PSC member, Natalie Strecker who spoke strongly in the ‘genocide’ debate of her experiences in the Zionist hell hole called Hebron. Unfortunately Monica Wusterman decided in the end not to stand.

The primary problem is that the Executive is in the political grip of Socialist Action and the Communist League, the remnants from the old International Marxist Group. Their politics are effectively Stalinist and the capitalist Chinese regime is a model of socialism to them.

More importantly they do not believe in rocking the boat and they believe in cuddling up to the Trade Union bureaucracy.  So although most Unions are affiliated to PSC they have nonetheless support the Zionist IHRA definition of anti-Semitism without a word of protest by PSC Executive. At no time has there been an attempt to win the unions to opposing the IHRA in the Labour Party or outside it.

Unfortunately Socialist Fight fall into a trap that the Zionists have laid

I carry below a report from Gerry Downing of Socialist Voice on the conference. The Report is a fair one but I have to say that their continued characterisation of the Israel or Zionist lobby as a Jewish ethnic lobby is unhelpful. The fact that the Zionist lobby describes itself as Jewish is no reason for SV to adopt this anti-Semitic meme.

It is also not true.  People like Lord Pickles of CFI are not Jewish but are nonetheless ardent Zionists. The fact that many Jews are Zionists is irrelevant. That is not the reason why the British and US states supports Israel. There is nothing Jewish about the Israel lobby.

Tony Greenstein

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign AGM 26-1-2019

27/01/2019 by socialistfight

The woman on the right on the Gaza border is just about to be shot dead by an IDF sniper in what is clearly a war crime.

Report by Gerry Downing

Approximately 250 in attendance. Most of the AGM was routine apart from some questioning of the finance report – how come with an increase of 31% in membership income receipts from members declined from £84,142 in 2017 to £80, 775 in 2018? Answer: If you joined in August only that portion of your membership from August to January would be counted. Satisfied?

Four contested events: two motions and the elections for the Secretary and for the eight lay members of the Executive.

The first controversial motion was that from Exeter PSC on the Nation State law. The Executive wanted to remove that part of the first paragraph which said, “which in relation to Palestinians in Israel or Occupied Palestine Territories can be described at best as apartheid … and at worst as attempted (slow motion Exeter addendum) genocide … These are both crimes under international law.”

So, the Zionist lobby attacked the PSC Executive viciously, expecting a robust response, but the Executive cleverly fooled them by running away.

Exeter accepted the addendum of the Executive but not the deletion.  A heated discussion took place, Socialist Fight’s two delegates strongly defending the Exeter designation of the actions of Israel as genocide. We pointed out that South African apartheid was different to the intent and actions of Israel. The South African racists wanted to exploit the labour of the oppressed black population, Israel wanted to get rid of the Palestinians. The Naqba had ethnically cleansed up to 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, the Nation State Law showed its intent to legally designate the remaining Palestinian who were citizens of Israel as second class and the constant bombing of Gaza was another strong indication of their intent. Supporters of Exeter’s motion defeated the Executive amendment with no count of the votes necessary and so their designation of Israel’s actions as ‘slow motion genocide’ stands.

The desire to conciliate Zionist reaction was even clearer in the other controversial motion, Motion 3, proposed by Tony Greenstein. This defended Jenny Tonge against the action of the Executive in forcing her resignation because, in response to the Zionist use the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania on 27 October she tweeted: “Absolutely appalling and a criminal act, but does it ever occur to Bibi and the present Israeli government that its actions against Palestinians may be reigniting anti-Semitism? I suppose someone will say that it is anti-Semitic to say so.”

They did, beginning with the right wing Tory bigots, Conservative Friends of Israel Lords Pickles and Polak. The motion pointed out that “nothing that Jenny Tonge said was antisemitic” and that Israeli Minister Naftali stated that “the hand that fire missiles is the same hand that shoots worshippers”.

The debate was heated, with all defenders of the Executive’s appalling treatment of Jenny essentially arguing that we had to bow to the Zionist onslaught, and she said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Basically, you could no longer speak the truth about Israel during a vicious Zionist campaign of lies and slanders against the left. So, the Zionist lobby attacked the PSC Executive viciously, expecting a robust response, but the Executive cleverly fooled them by running away. The motion was lost by 89 votes to 129 with 22 abstentions because it was basically a vote of no confidence in the Executive and they would have been forced into a humiliating climb down and the new Chair, Kamel Hawwash, who took the main responsibility for the conduct of the affair, would have to resign.  But 89 thought he should and 22 were not sure about him at all.

Tony Greenstein stood for the Secretary’s position against Ben Soffa but lost by 67 votes to 103, a creditable performance. Socialist Fight putout a leaflet critically defending him (he did motivate our expulsion from Labour Against the Witchhunt). In his blog and in the leaflet he put out at the conference he attacked the PSC Executive because their: “Self-congratulation, timidity and caution bordering on obsequiousness is not the stuff of a solidarity campaign! He goes through their list of failures, failure to defend Jeremy Corbyn and the left anti-Zionists in Labour against the bogus charges of left anti-semitism. “Israel is NOT a democratic state – that should be our message” so why did the PSC Executive have “a PSC meeting in the House of Commons with Emily Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary addressing the meeting. This is the same Emily Thornberry who is quoted as stating that:

‘People who believe Israel does not have the right to exist should be drummed out of the Labour Party.’

Far from challenging Thornberry to disavow her support for Labour Friends of Israel PSC uncritically gives her a platform. In an interview with The Standard she boasted that “I joined Labour Friends of Israel when I became an MP in 2005. I support the Palestinians’ right to have a state and I support the state of Israel.’

The meeting was addressed by His Excellency Husam Zomlot, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK. Tony’s flyer correctly states that “the Palestinian Authority is a Quisling authority”:

“The PA openly collaborates with Israeli security forces, something which Mahmoud Abbas has described as ‘sacred’. The PA is an enemy of the Palestinian people, yet PSC has never uttered even one word of criticism. On the contrary it maintains close relations with the Palestinian ‘Embassy’ in London.”

The National reported that Mr Zomlot told Sky News on Tuesday (2 October 2018) that,

“Mr Zomlot said the UK should take on the role of lead mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis for the benefit of both the US and Britain. Best friends are there to fill the vacuum, if the vacuum is going to be dangerous for your old friend which is America, fill it. This is a moment of leadership.”

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is the President of the Palestine Authority recognised by the ‘International Community’ i.e. the USA and its global stooges, including in this instance, the EU, Russia and China. He abolished elections when his term of office expired 15 January 2009. He is a member of the Fatah party and was elected Chairman in 2009. On December 16, 2009 he was voted into office indefinitely by the PLO Central Council. Why hold elections you would certainly lose to Hamas when you have the backing of Israel and the USA and the acquiescence of the entire imperialist world?

Lastly, we were entertained by a dance troupe trio from the Palestine Hawiya Dance Company just after the break, who put on a really excellent show for us all.

A Comedy of Errors from the Jewish Chronicle – Marcus Dysch in Another Fine Mess

Jewish Chronicle Report of Labour Against the Witch-hunt takes Fake News to Trump Levels

Dysch is a Zionist clown who confuses Moshe Machover with me - but at least he got Jackie Walker right!  

The Jewish Chronicle under Stephen Pollard, a former editor of the Daily Express, has been the main vehicle spearheading the fake anti-semitism witch-hunt.  Pollard is a member of the cold-war Henry Jackson society.  He is a far-Right Zionist whose concern over anti-semitism is entirely cynical.  Pollard has no hesitation in supporting anti-Semites like the Polish MEP Michal Kaminski on the condition that they are supportive of the Israeli state.

Debate between Pollard and Freedland in which Pollard supports a far-Right anti-Semitic Polish MEP Michal Kaminski on the grounds that he is an ardent supporter of Israel - today over 90% of fascist and anti-Semitic parties support Zionism and hate Jews

Marcus Dysch is the Jewish Chronicle’s Political Editor and a devoted Zionist.  Dysch seems to have chosen the wrong career.  He would have been much better suited to creative writing and fiction than news, which requires at least a modicum of truth.  His latest effort is an article ‘Labour activists to picket party’s Jew-hate hearings.’ 

What I wondered was a ‘Jew-hate’ hearing.  Is it something Jackie Walker and me are expected to go to where members of Labour’s National Constitutional Committee can tell us how much they hate us?  Hardly seems worthwhile going to let alone picketing.  Maybe our placards should say ‘Jew haters out of the Compliance Unit, McNicol out of Southside’ (Labour Party HQ).

Dysch and Pollard

Laurel and Hardy

Compared to Dysch, the previous Political Editor of the JC, Martin Bright, was a paragon of virtue.  In line with editor Stephen Pollard’s determination to take the JC down market and at the same time reduce its readership to the bare minimum, Dysch has decided that he will take to inventing the news.

The two photographs accompanying his piece are headed ‘Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker’.  However the photographs themselves are those of Moshe Machover and Jackie Walker.  I guess having got one of them right Dysch will be perfectly happy .  After all 50% is better than nothing!

Or perhaps Dysch was subconsciously trying to pay me a compliment by confusing me with Professor Machover. 

Dysch alleges we are fighting charges of ‘Jew hatred.’  Not true we are challenging fake allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance i.e. hatred of Zionism and Israel’s racist state.  Dysch however can’t even get the IHRA right.  He describes it as the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance. 

Marcus Dysch - not one of the great intellects in the Zionist firmament

The nice thing about the Jewish Chronicle is that it doesn’t pretend to be neutral.  The idea that there might be a Chinese wall between comment and news is quite a quaint concept at the JC.  Fact and fiction are mixed up with commentary with gay abandon.

Thus Dysch writes that Marc Wadsworth ‘was suspended from the party in July 2016 after verbally abusing Ruth Smeeth, a Jewish MP.’  No Mr Dysch, this is an allegation.  It is not yet proven.  Indeed film of the incident proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there was no abuse.  In most areas of the world you are innocent until proven guilty but at the house journal of Britain’s Zionists it is the opposite way round.  Dysch probably thought he was on the West Bank when he wrote the article and thought this was the same as Israeli style military justice where there is a 99.74% chance of being convicted.

But what is one lie amongst many?

Dysch also manages to get the date of my proposed hearing wrong, it was supposed to be the 26^th not the 25^th.  It is also untrue that I was suspended ‘for writing offensive blogs about Louise Ellman, another Jewish MP.’  The blog in question, Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces was written on 20^th June 2016 whereas I was suspended on March 18^th 2016.  Predicting the future is not one of the things that Crooked McNicol’s Compliance Unit is best known for.

Join Labour Against the Witchhunt and help organise a meeting in your CLP against McNicol's attack on supporters of Palestine

It is also untrue that we debated whether saying the United States is ‘servile’ to Israel is anti-Semitic.  It was accepted by virtually everyone at the meeting bar Gerry Downing, who came up with the phrase and Ian Donovan that of course it was anti-Semitic and also ludicrous.

What Dysch goes to great lengths to avoid telling his readers though is that the first half of the meeting was devoted to telling a small anti-Semitic group, Socialist Fight, that they were unwelcome in Labour Against the Witchhunt.  The reason being that they confuse the number of rich Jews in America with the reasons for American foreign policy namely its support for Israel.  Socialist Fight aren’t ‘Jew haters’ but their politics are without doubt anti-Semitic.

Looking on the bright side however, it is true that Dysch not only got the day of the meeting right but also the fact that Jackie and myself chaired the meeting!  He also correctly reported that Moshe Machover had been elected as Honorary President of LAW.  In the circumstances Dysch should be given a medal for at least getting some things right!  I therefore thought it only right that I write a letter congratulating him on these things.

Tony Greenstein 

Marcus Dysch,

Political and Creative Writing Editor,

The Jewish Chronicle,

28 St. Albans Lane
London NW11 7QE

mdysch@thejc.com

Dear Marcus,

Please allow me to congratulate you on your most recent article for the Jewish Chronicle, ‘Labour activists to picket party’s Jew-hate hearings.’  (12.1.18.).  It was, for you, a model of accuracy and perspicacity.

Not only did you get the date of the meeting of Labour Against the Witch-hunt correct but you also accurately reported the fact that Jackie Walker and myself chaired the meeting.  Indeed, you even managed to get right the fact that Moshe Machover was elected as Honorary President of LAW.

Unfortunately, from there on in it was all downhill. The caption to the photographs accompanying the article said ‘Tony Greenstein and Jackie Walker’.  Unfortunately the photograph that was supposed to be me was in fact Moshe Machover.  I realise that compared to some of your howlers this was small beer but I thought I’d mention it all the same.

Similarly the Zionist IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ stands for International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (not International Holocaust Memorial Alliance). 

I know that you will think me churlish and pedantic but I was not suspended for ‘writing offensive blogs’ about Louise Ellman MP, the despicable supporter of the Israeli military’s child abuse. My blog Time to Deselect Louise Ellman MP for Liverpool Riverside and Tel Aviv North – Apologist for Israel's Occupation Forces was written on 20^th June 2016 whereas I was suspended on March 18^th 2016.  To the best of my recollection, June usually comes after March in the calendar year unless there is a new Zionist calendar. I am also told that she is the MP for Tel Aviv South not North (as well as the part-time MP for Liverpool Riverside).

I realise that you made your mind up long ago that we were all guilty but Marc Wadsworth was not suspended from the Labour Party ‘after verbally abusing’ the detestable Ruth Smeeth MP.  This was an allegation that Marc denies so any journalist worth his salt would have put the words ‘alleged’ before your phrase.  I realise that in Israel’s military courts you are guilty until proven innocent (and just 0.26% of the accused are found not guilty) but in Britain the burden of proof is still on the prosecution to prove guilt.

I also note your curious header ‘(Labour) party’s Jew-hate hearings.’ Does this mean that when Jackie and I attend our hearings people are going to tell us how much they hate us because we are Jewish? I realise that you find the concept of journalistic ethics somewhat alien but could I remind you that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ against us are denied?

You also got the date of my hearing and that of Marc Wadsworth wrong, but what is one mistake amongst so many?

Gerry Downing was not excluded because his website carried ‘anti-Zionist conspiracy theories ‘.  He and Socialist Fight were excluded because they were anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.  Anti-Semitism, White Supremacy and White Zionism aka Richard Spencer we leave to you and your Zionist bedfellows.

Can I also remind you that Jackie Walker was not suspended for comments about Jews being the chief financiers of the slave trade?  I realise, following the teachings of a certain Mr Goebbels that the more often you repeat a lie the easier it is to believe it, but the fact that Jackie did not include one word in what was a private conversation does not mean she subscribes to the view that Jews were the main  financial sponsors of slavery. Jews, being White, played a significant part but they were by no means the only people involved in this deathly trade.  Jackie was suspended for being a Black Jewish anti-Zionist.

Apart from these minor errors of fact your article was a model of accuracy.  You were also right to say that Professor Moshe Machover was reinstated to the Party but wrong to say there were any ‘concerns’ about the article he wrote.  It was a model of historical accuracy.

I never thought the day would come when I would begin to miss your predecessor as Political Editor, Martin Bright.  I hope you won’t take offence at my suggestion but have you ever considered writing fiction?  Creative writing can, I am told, be very fulfilling, personally and career wise.  I suspect with your imagination you would be a best seller.

With kind regards

Tony Greenstein

Vice-Chair