WHAT IS JEWISH VOICE FOR LABOUR FOR? When Your Strategy Has Failed It’s Usually a Good Idea To Change Direction Not Dig A Deeper Hole
 |
| Instead of criticising Starmer's refusal to confront Boris Johnson over privatisation, PPE, nurses wages etc. McDonnell praises him |
The LRC is holding its long
delayed AGM this Saturday. The Labour Left has suffered a cataclysmic defeat at
the hands of a state sponsored ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. If the LRC is serious
about reversing that defeat then it first needs to engage in a serious
evaluation of what went wrong and why.
The Labour Right demonstrated in
the past 5 years that it was happy to unite with the Tories and the Zionists in
order to defeat Corbyn and the Left. If the price of that alliance was a General
Election they were prepared to pay that price. As the Leaked
Labour Report made clear Labour’s witchhunting staff were grief stricken at
Labour’s success.
Today Labour’s witchhunters don’t
even bother to hide the fact that criticism of Israel will result in expulsion.
The ‘mistake’ as the LRC Executive Statement puts it of Labour’s adoption of
the IHRA in September 2018 was nothing less than Corbyn and the Labour Left
stabbing itself in the back. The IHRA,
by making criticism of Israel equivalent to ‘anti-Semitism’ meant that from
thereon in there was no need to find people in the Labour Party who didn’t like
Jews. It was enough not to like Israeli Apartheid.
The first thing the LRC should do
if it is serious about learning from the past is to remove John McDonnell as
its President. Instead of acting as Corbyn’s praetorian guard and spearheading the
Left’s advance, McDonnell scabbed on those who did fight. He didn’t merely
appease the Right he went out of his way to please them. Who can forget his interview with Alistair
Campbell, who was instrumental in the drive to war in Iraq, when McDonnell
supported Campbell’s reinstatement to the Labour Party, after having voted for
the Lib Dems, he supported.
I don’t recall McDonnell
supporting the reinstatement of Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson
or myself, to say nothing of the hundreds of other members who were victims of
a cruel and vicious witchhunt which literally drove some veteran members to
their deaths. McDonnell’s behaviour was unforgiveable. He demonstrated that if
he had become Chancellor of the Exchequer that he would have been putty in the
hands of the capitalists and stockmarket spivs.
Last week McDonnell demonstrated that his lurch to the
Right has not stopped. Almost alone
amongst commentators he stated
that ‘Keir’s got this exactly right.’ Starmer’s
approach to the COVID-19 crisis, has amounted to giving Johnson a free pass and
saying nothing about the thousands of uncounted deaths in care homes. The
massive failure to deliver on PPE was a consequence of privatisation but
Starmer again has said nothing. For McDonnell to praise his ‘constructive
opposition’ means he has sold the pass.
 |
| Tom Watson 'lost sleep' thinking about 'poor racist Phil' |
When it came to the fake
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign McDonnell told us Labour should take its advice from
the Tory/Trump supporting Board of Deputies. When Margaret Hodge accused Corbyn
of being a ‘fucking anti-Semite’ McDonnell
urged that she should not be disciplined. No one was keener to haul up the
white flag than McDonnell. McDonnell saw himself as the worthy successor to
Hugh Dalton, Attlee’s first Chancellor, the guardian of sound capitalist
finance.
At the very beginning of Corbyn’s
leadership McDonnell demonstrated the direction he was heading in when he
apologised on BBC Question Time for his Republican past and for having said
that the IRA were ‘brave’.
Unless
the Labour Left are capable of a serious analysis of what went wrong during
Corbyn’s leadership and wake up to the fact that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign
was a State directed campaign of destabilisation then they aren’t a serious
left. The mere fact that the racist Tory tabloids were so concerned about
anti-Semitism should have told McDonnell something. However he was so
determined that Corbyn and he should come to power through appeasing rather
than fighting the Right that he ignored all the signs that the ruling class was
determined that this would not come to pass.
The LRC Executive’s Statement ‘Learning from
mistakes of the past five years’ (paras. 12-17)
is frankly pathetic. Corbyn didn’t make
the odd mistake, he embarked on a wholly mistaken strategy of appeasement of
the Labour Right. Appeasing John Mann and Tom Watson was like appeasing a rabid
dog. They needed to be put down not stroked.
That is why I am moving a reference
back of the statement on Saturday. We shall see whether or not the Conference
turns out to be a lap dog or not.
Corbyn’s decision to throw his
friends abroad and act as a punch bag to the Hodges and Bergers was not only
cowardly it was insane. His inability to understand what the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign
was about was inexcusable. Corbyn was not an innocent abroad. I chaired many
Palestine meetings in the 1980’s where Corbyn spoke. There is no doubt that he knew
very well that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the first accusation that Zionists make when
support for the Palestinians is on the agenda. So why the hell didn’t he say
that instead of repeating by rote that ‘I
am not an anti-Semite’.
The LRC was well placed to make a
strategic intervention in the past 5 years. Instead it chose to do nothing. It
was capable of challenging Jon Lansman’s disastrous dictatorship in Momentum,
the primary cause of Labour’s defeat yet it kept quiet. This raises the
question as to what purpose the LRC serves.
On the eve of poll last December,
whilst Momentum, Lansman and the LRC were fooling themselves into believing
that Corbyn was on the road to victory, I penned an Open
Letter to Corbyn’s closest advisor, Seamus Milne, the architect of the
disaster on December 12th. When the government’ files are made
public in 30 years we will no doubt know who Seamus Milne, Laura Murray, Andrew
Fisher and Corbyn’s other advisers were actually working for because it wasn’t
for a Corbyn victory.
Too many on Labour’s gullible
Left like Lansman’s former poodle, Laura Parker, were taken in by the idea that
Starmer was a unity candidate who would preserve the best of Corbyn’s
Manifesto. Contrast this with a post I wrote last February Keir
Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment
want you to vote for. I wrote that
Starmer is the candidate
of MI5 and the Political Police – he is Establishment down to his manicured
fingers. ‘Sir’ Keir has pointed to his role in providing legal advice to
striking miners and print workers. This is true but it was a long time
ago when he was a socialist. Today he is the darling of the Right.
Jewish Voice for Labour
It's increasingly difficult to know what JVL's strategy is. I suspect that they don't know either. When the so-called Centre Left Grassroots Alliance met to carve up the left slate for Labour's National Executive elections, Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, both of which failed to oppose and in Momentum's case supported the witchhunt vetoed the nomination of JVL's Jo Bird. Instead of walking out there and then JVL accepted what amounted to a continuation of the witchhunt.
Because of her prominence and the STV method of election, Jo would almost certainly have secured a place. Instead JVL simply capitulated to a slate that includes at least one Lansman supporter of the witchhunt.
Jewish Voices
for Labour have absolutely no excuse for this abject surrender to Momentum Forward who include a number of witchhunters in the form of the AWL. JVL made their first appearance at the 2017 Labour Party conference at a packed meeting during which Len
McLuskey of Unite promised his union would affiliate. Unfortunately JVL, because of its political timidity and failure to understand the nature of the 'antisemitism' campaign has failed to live up
to its promise.
I didn’t join the JVL because I was sceptical about JVL being Jewish only and having a second tier of
membership for non-Jews. I’m not opposed to Jewish organisations within the Palestine
solidarity movement as a matter of principle but the Labour Party was not a
solidarity movement. It was an arena where the class struggle was reflected.
Even more
stupidly JVL declared that anyone, Zionist, non-Zionist and anti-Zionist could
join though in practice the number of Zionists who did join must be on the
fingers of one hand. What this betrayed though was a failure to understand that
what was happening had nothing to do with Jews, still less anti-Semitism. It
was a combined attack from the British Establishment and its Israeli/Zionist counterparts.
To refuse to take a question on Zionism didn’t make you stronger but weaker
ideologically.
 |
| Al Jazeera's The Lobby demonstrated that the Israeli State was up to its neck in Labour's 'antisemitism' problems - and the JLM's Jeremy Newmark (centre) is sitting with Israeli agent Shai Masot (left) who left Britain in a hurry after it was revealed that he was engaged in dirty tricks |
British Jews, or
the most reactionary amongst them, played their traditional role in the
campaign to remove Corbyn. They were the playthings of others. The Zionist
leaders of the Board of Deputies, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the
Jewish Labour Movement and Jewish Chronicle did their best to create an
atmosphere of fear amongst British Jews and it is clear that they succeeded in
that task. After all the middle class
are particularly susceptible to ideological campaigns. It was the German middle
class who voted overwhelmingly for Hitler in 1933.
In reaction to a
survey by the Israeli funded Campaign Against Anti-Semitism that suggested that
anti-Semitism in Britain was almost on a level with that in the 1930’s, Ha’aretz’s
Anshel Pfeffer, who is a mainstream Zionist observed
that:
‘Jews are
represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the
population in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in
media, academia, professions and just about every walk of public life. To
compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s
exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.
A ‘disconnect bordering on hysteria’. It’s a good summation of the
whole fake anti-Semitism campaign.
Just as Jews were the middlemen
in pre-capitalist society and in settler colonial societies like Algeria and
Morocco, so they once again became the stool pigeons for others in the campaign
to be rid of Corbyn. That was why the ‘strategy’, if one can grace it with that
term, of JVL, of being a Jewish ‘cover’ for Corbyn had no impact. The Campaign Against
Corbyn was never about Jews or anti-Semitism.
It was about defaming the Left as ‘anti-Semitic’ and JVL fell straight
for it.
Corbyn of course saw it all as a
personal attack on him, hence why he kept parroting the statement that he
wasn’t anti-Semitic. It’s not a personal attack to say that Corbyn is not the
brightest tool in the box. He never seemed to understand that when they
attacked him as an anti-Semite they were not using ‘anti-Semitism’ in its
traditional meaning, dislike or hatred of Jews but hatred of what Israel does. Corbyn
never took the trouble to understand what was happening. What is surprising is
that those who were more intelligent than him, like Seamus Milne also did not
get it. That is why I suspect that at
least one of his closest advisors were also working for the British state.
The rest is history. Led by
Lansman and the trade unions, Labour’s ‘left’ NEC decided to commit political
suicide by endorsing the IHRA
‘definition’ of anti-Semitism. You have to wonder that people who called
themselves socialists allowed themselves to endorse a ‘definition’ that allowed
critics of Israeli apartheid to be classified as ‘anti-Semites’.
It is untrue that Corbyn simply
made a mistake or two. From the moment
he was elected, indeed even before, he went out of his way to appease the
Zionists. In the debate between the four
candidates that the JLM sponsored and Jonathan Freedland chaired in July 2015,
Corbyn went out of his way to praise Israel.
It is as if 35 years of being in the Palestine solidarity movement
hadn’t left a single imprint on the airhead.
Of course there were a few
anti-Semites in the Labour Party. Always have been, always will be but the
Zionists had no problem with anti-Semites under previous leaders. Indeed they
got into bed with more than a few. When Herbert Morrison, as Home Secretary
during the war, refused to admit more than a token number of Jewish refugees
from the Nazis, the Zionists said nothing.
Indeed they endorsed such a position since they too were opposed to the
admission of refugees.
David Rosenberg of the Jewish
Socialists Group, who knows Corbyn well, was instrumental in the JVL’s
disastrous strategy. Rosenberg was happy to assure people that there was ‘some’
anti-Semitism in the Labour Party thus totally missing the point that it was
not about anti-Semitism and never had been.
Tom Watson declared that he
wouldn’t rest until every last anti-Semite was removed from the Labour Party.
This is the man who as Campaign Organiser in the Birmingham Hodge Hill
by-election in 2004 had issued a leaflet informing electors that ‘"Labour
is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."
 |
| Racist Labour MP Phil Woolas - was defended by Tom Watson and John Mann |
The same Tom Watson who, when the
racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was removed from Parliament by the High Court for
lying about his Lib Dem opponent, which was based on a strategy of ‘making the White folk angry’ declared
that he had ‘lost sleep thinking about poor Phil.’
Or there was the ‘anti-Semitism
Czar’ John Mann, who issued
a scurrilous Anti-Social Behaviour handbook in which he identified Gypsies and
Travellers as a law and order problem of anti-social behaviour.
What JVL should have done, but it
was left to the Anti-Zionist Jewish Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt,
was to demand that the racist Jewish Labour Movement should be disaffiliated
from Labour. Despite its claim that it was a Jewish section of the Labour Party
it is affiliated
to the World Zionist Organisation. Jewish anti-Zionists are not welcome whilst
non-Jewish racists are.
JVL and the LRC, together with
Red Labour (which only exists on social media) instead of teaming up with the
Labour Left Alliance decided instead to organise separately in Don’t Leave
Organise.
At a meeting on April 29th
with Dianne Abbot and Bell Ribairo Addy on the platform, Jackie Walker and
myself spoke from the floor. Immediately
the Zionists demanded
that the two MPs should be suspended. Unfortunately the MPs caved in to Starmer
and apologised. Whilst JVL was right to issue a statement
in solidarity with Abbot and Ribeiro-Addy they omitted to stand up for the
right of Labour Party members and MPs to speak with and on the same platform as
those unjustly suspended and expelled.
They also had nothing to say
about Abbot and Bell Ribairo-Addy caving in and apologising to Starmer. If JVL
is not prepared to encourage Labour MPs to develop a backbone who will?
Campaign for Free
Speech
It is because of the failure of
both the LRC and JVL to campaign against the Board of Deputies’s McCarthyite 10
Commandments that four of us – Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson
and myself, teamed up to organise a series of meetings on the subject of Free
Speech.
The first
meeting in June included Max Blumenthall and largely escaped Zionist
censure, apart from the authentic representative of the fascist wing of
Zionism, David Collier.
The second meeting in July,
which apart from the four of us included Professor David Miller of Bristol
University, who was himself suspended, Tariq Ali and Norman Finkelstein proved
somewhat more controversial. Since the
meeting was about free speech Norman Finkelstein decided that he would be his
normal controversial self in the course
of which he praised David Irving, the holocaust denier as a good historian and
also asked the rhetorical question of what actually is the Holocaust. He also,
somewhat facetiously, said he didn’t know who had killed Christ, missing the
point that that was not the point.
 |
| The Don't Leave Organise meeting where Dianne Abbot and Bell Ribaire Addey were reprimanded for appearing with Jackie Walker and myself |
Norman was certainly being his
normal provocative self. That was why he was invited! When I came back at the end of the meeting I
pointed out that Irving had falsified and tampeed with his sources to fit in
with his thesis that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust and I also added a
rider to Norman’s comments about Christ Killers.
However there is no doubt that Irving,
who is undoubtedly a neo-Nazi, is a good German military historian. At least that’s what the experts say! In the
famous libel trial Irving v Penguin which Rosenberg
and others relied on, Judge Gray found,
in s.13.7 that:
as a military historian, Irving has much to
commend him. For his works of military history Irving has undertaken thorough
and painstaking research into the archives. He has discovered and disclosed to
historians and others many documents which, but for his efforts, might have
remained unnoticed for years. It was plain from the way in which he conducted
his case and dealt with a sustained and penetrating cross-examination that his
knowledge of World War 2 is unparalleled. His mastery of the detail of the
historical documents is remarkable. He is beyond question able and intelligent.
He was invariably quick to spot the significance of documents which he had not
previously seen. Moreover he writes his military history in a clear and vivid
style. I accept the favourable assessment by Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan
of the calibre of Irving's military history (mentioned in paragraph 3.4 above)
and reject as too sweeping the negative assessment of Evans (quoted in
paragraph 3.5).
Of course the Zionists exploded
in their normal hypocritical manner. What is surprising is that the Zionist
attacks were taken up by Rosenberg in an article published on the JVL blog, Who is David Irving? Rosenberg
wrote that:
Even more shocking was after Finkelstein spoke not
one of the other panelists, some of whom have played a significant part in
anti-racist campaigns, used any of their concluding remarks to challenge
Finkelstein’s praise for Irving. Disgraceful. I hope they will do so now.
There also followed an article by Rob Ferguson of the
SWP. Ferguson pontificated about anti-Semitism and holocaust denial whilst
claiming that but for the SWP we would already have been overrun by neo-Nazis.
I sometimes feel that people like Rosenberg and
Ferguson live in a time bubble. Holocaust denial and people like Irving were
dominant in the fascist scene 30 years ago.
That was the time when holocaust denial groups like the BNP and the
National Front were the main fascist organisations. That is not true
today. Today’s far-Right accept the holocaust
as part of the price for their alliances with the Zionist movement and the Israeli
state. It clearly has not yet dawned on both Rosenberg and Ferguson that people
like Tommy Robinson are admirers of the Israeli state. Holocaust denial is irrelevant
to them.
In any event the responsibility for holocaust denial
having spread beyond a small coterie of neo-Nazis is that of the Zionists who
have continually used the holocaust as justification for Israel’s crimes.
 |
| Mike Rosen's letter to the Socialist Worker protesting about their alliance with Gilad Atzmon |
 |
| The response defending the SWP linkup with Atzmon came from Lindsay German and Hannah Dee of their Central Committee and a former member Viv Smith |
Rob Ferguson, a loyal SWP member, kept quiet for over
5 years whilst the SWP dallied with an open anti-Semite and someone who dabbled
in holocaust denial, viz. Gilad Atzmon. In a series of articles in the Weekly Worker,
Socialist Unity
such as Time
to say Goodbye I asked why it was that a so-called Marxist organisation was
in alliance with someone who spoke about ‘Jewish Marxism’? No answer was ever received.
Rob Ferguson also kept quiet during the SWP’s
rape scandal when four different women accused the SWP’s National Secretary
Martin Smith of having raped them. A Disputes Committee accused the woman of
effectively lying and asked her about her past sexual history. To put it
bluntly Rob Ferguson is a died-in-the-wool SWP hack but it seems that JVL has
taken him to its bosom.
 |
| When the SWP worked, for over 5 years, with Gilad Atzmon, Rob Ferguson kept his mouth shut |
. In the Guardian’s Comment
is Free I wrote about how
‘when the Socialist
Workers Party first invited Atzmon to give a talk at their Bookmarks
bookshop in London in June 2005, a large picket was organised by Jews Against
Zionism.’
I can’t remember Ferguson ever protesting at the time but then given
that the SWP has erased the whole episode from their collective memory that is
not surprising. When Mike Rosen wrote
to the SWP protesting about their alliance with Atzmon Hannah Dee, who was on
the Central Committee and Viv Smith, who was on the CC, wrote
to defend him. Lindsay German, now of Counterfire, also joined in pointing out
that anti-Semitism is not the main form of racism today. Which was true but why should that excuse the
SWP’s link up with Atzmon?
You can see a timeline here
detailing Atzmon’s links with the SWP.
Neither Rosenberg nor Ferguson ever protested about their tie up. And
here is an interview
with Atzmon in Socialist Worker.
Deborah Maccoby intervened in the discussion on the JVL
Blog to explain that Rosenberg was wrong when he said that no one had
challenged Finkelstein’s comments: I certainly took them up and more
importantly Deborah pointed out that Finkelstein was a fierce critic of Irving notwithstanding
his comments at the Zoom meeting.
But in fact Tony Greenstein did
take up Finkelstein’s comments on Irving. This is what Tony said: “ I agree
[David Irving] is a historian – one can’t take it away from him. The problem is
that his politics has got in the way of his history and his research – and he
clearly did tamper with his sources, if my reading of the libel trial is
correct”.
This is not so much a challenge
as an expansion, qualification and clarification – but in fact all Finkelstein
said was that, in his view, Irving is a real, substantial historian – a
judgment with which Tony agreed. This doesn’t mean that Finkelstein does not
agree in his turn with Tony that Irving has tampered with sources and that his
politics have got in the way of his history and research.
In The Holocaust Industry (p.71,
footnote 60), Finkelstein states clearly that Gordon Craig is right to dismiss
“Irving’s claims on the Nazi holocaust as obtuse and quickly discredited”, but
goes on: “Craig nonetheless continues: ‘He knows more about National Socialism
than most professional scholars in his field and students of the years
1933-1945 owe more than they are always willing to admit to his energy as a
researcher and to the scope and vigour of his publications….his book Hitler’s
War remains the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War,
and, as such, indispensable for all students of that conflict.”
In the main text, Finkelstein
calls the politics and motivations of writers like Irving as “scurrilous” and
describes Irving as “notorious as an admirer of Hitler and sympathizer with
German national socialism.”
There is no sign that Finkelstein
has changed the views expressed in The Holocaust Industry.
Despite
Debbie’s comments above Rosenberg simply lied in his final comment that
I was so surprised that they didn’t react after he
said these things. I did not attend the event at the time but heard about the
comments first through a third party, so I then sat down and watched and
listened, and was duly shocked.
Of course I accept that only Finkelstein himself is
responsible for those words. There is no absolute obligation on others to
comment one way or another about his words. But it still surprises me that as
far as I know the other panelists haven’t condemned them.
Why do I mention these things?
Because the meeting was organized in the context of the Zionist demands
to shut down free speech in the Labour Party and in particular that of
anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters.
On this Rosenberg has nothing to
say.
David Rosenberg boasts about his friendship with Corbyn being a
constituent of his. There is no doubt
that he has been in frequent contact over the past 5 years. Unfortunately rather than providing a corrective
he simply reinforced Corbyn’s errors by accepting the Zionist narrative that anti-Semitism
in the Labour Party was a problem. If
the Labour Party had a problem with racism it was over its previous support for
the ‘hostile environment’ policy not anti-Semitism. Yet Rosenberg was happy to reinforce the
mainstream narrative.
David throughout the past 5 years treated the Jewish Labour Movement as
if it were a legitimate organisation. As Chair of the Cable Street Memorial Committee
he gave it a speaker at the Cable Street Commemorations four years ago. As Asa
Winstanley wrote
on Electronic Intifada and as most of us understood long before this, the JLM was
revived by the Israeli Embassy and its operatives as the chosen instrument to
bring down Corbyn. Unfortunately, because
of his Jewish chauvinism Rosenberg was unable to see or comprehend that the Zionist
movement was acting as a coherent political force with the aim and intention of
forcing Corbyn out and that the JLM was part of it.
When I was a member of the Jewish Socialist Facebook group I had a post criticizing
Jon Lansman, a member of the JSG, removed by Rosenberg’s partner, Julia Bard.
The JSG these days seems to resemble a family business more than a political
organisation. When I posted a blog criticizing the JSG for not having supported
Jackie Walker I was removed altogether.
The JSG also took over the Jews for Jeremy Facebook Group and promptly
stifled any attempt to develop an organisation of the same name. Throughout the
past 5 years Rosenberg argued against anyone on the Left criticizing Corbyn.
The result has been that apart from the far left, there was no countervailing pressure
on Corbyn. It is little wonder that he
ended up surrendering to the Zionist narrative.
In his latest post on his blog Rosenberg writes about Irving’s friends in
the National Rebirth Poland – NOP, a neo-Nazi group. It is well known that the
NOP have a branch in London and have worked assiduously with a range of
far-Right groups.
Unfortunately Rosenberg demonstrates that his political analysis is bankrupt
when he describes
the NOP as ‘Far-Right anti-Zionists who describe Zionism
as “a power structure of colossal proportions that straddles the globe.’
This is not a minor mistake. It goes to the heart of why, despite his
pretensions, Rosenberg and the JSG are not
anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-racism. It is the ideology of opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism.
To be an anti-Zionist is to be an anti-racist. Poland’s NOP and Greece’s Golden
Dawn are amongst the few fascist and neo-Nazi groups these days who purport to
support the Palestinians. However these
groups are bitterly Islamaphobic and racist towards Arabs. They are is anti-Semitic
not anti-Zionist. When they use the term ‘Zionist’ what they really mean is ‘Jew’.
To give them credibility as anti-Zionists simply demonstrates that Rosenberg
and by extension the JSG does not and never did understand what anti-Zionism was.
I did point this last point out in response to Rosenberg on his blog but
since he doesn’t take criticism lightly it was not published!
