Demonstrators
in Brighton and Hove see off an assortment of racists and fascists led by the
King of Conspiracy Theorist, Piers Corbyn
Bigots & Piers Corbyn
Demonstrate Against Drag Queens Reading Stories to Children
There was a demonstration by hundreds of people on Thursday
at Brighton’s Jubilee Library against an assortment of fascists, cranks and conspiracy
theorists who were attempting to prevent drag queen Aida H Dee from reading
stories to children.
They were led by Piers Corbyn who seems to take pride in his idiocy.
Leading chants of ‘your parents were
straight’ and speaking of the New World Order it is clear that Corbyn has become
gripped by a pathology that prevents all rational thought.
The pervasive idea that gripped the counter demonstrators was
that by being read stories by a drag queen the ‘innocence’ of young children
was being compromised and that they were being groomed.
Hove Bigots Demonstrate
These people have a fear of any sexuality which isn’t
straight and believe that by coming into contact with those who are gay or
transgender children will be contaminated and converted. Simply as a matter of
fact children are sexual beings. They are inquisitive about their own bodies
and that of other children. They will often play ‘doctor’ and play with
themselves. That is a normal part of
growing up. For fascists and racists, children are innocent until they
reach puberty. See Child sexuality.
The idea that children might experiment with different gender
roles is a threat to those who cannot envisage anything other than male and
female stereotypes. Anyone who has actually had children knows that they like
to experiment in for example dressing up as the other sex or playing different
roles. But for the fascists and the assorted
nutcases who gathered in Brighton and Hove this is a threat, not least to their
own identity.
Not all those who demonstrated in Brighton and Hove were
fascists but a good proportion were. I received an email a week ago from the
outright neo-Nazi Patriotic Alternative boasting
that
‘Patriotic Alternative has led the
charge to oppose this clear attempt to introduce children to sexualised
material.’
We were accused by them
of being paedophiles (a favourite accusation of neo-Nazis), grooming children and
we were otherwise subject to abuse from these low lives. The irony is that it
is the far right which has always contained within it numerous child abusers and
paedophiles.
Hove Paedophile Woman
This
should be no surprise since authoritarian political movements are a magnet for
those who want to dominate others, including children. It is the Right and
far-Right which have always supported beating children. Of course that was for their
own good! Nothing to do with child abuse or their own sexual proclivities.
The woman in the video
who accused us of paedophilia, was repeating a standard fascist trope belies
the evidence. Below are a few examples.
Child abuse, paedophilia and the far-right
Despite
his claim to campaign against child abuse, no one has been friendlier to
paedophiles and child abusers than Tommy Robinson. Robinson has repeatedly equated
Muslims with child abuse yet the statistics are quite clear. The actual
data shows that the ethnic origins of those convicted of sexual contact
with children are pretty much the same as the ethnic mix of the UK.
What is
clear though is that fascists and neo-Nazis are over represented amongst those
who are convicted. Below are a few examples:
1.In 2010 Tommy Robinsons friend Richard Price was convicted
of making 4 indecent images of children. Far from condemning Price a campaign
was launched by the EDL for his release. Robinson wholeheartedly
supported Price, claiming he had been “stitched
up” and that “Price has no idea how
they were on his computer.”
Since its formation, there have been at least 20
members and supporters of the EDL convicted of child sexual exploitation
offences. At least 10 of these were active while Robinson was still leading it.
2.The most shocking case was that of Robert Ewing, who murdered
schoolgirl Paige Chivers. He was later prosecuted for abusing
two other children.
3.Leigh Mcmillan, a senior EDL figure was sentenced to
17 years after abusing
a 10 year-old schoolgirl 100 times in the mid-1990s.
4.In 2010, EDL supporter Brett Moses was given a
12-month suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexual
grooming.
5.In 2011 John Broomfield, an active EDL supporter, admitted
20 counts of making indecent images of children. The police found 236 indecent
images depicting children and babies on his computers.
6.Also in 2011, Michael Coates was charged with a series
of sex offences, including two attempted rapes. He was active
in the EDL splinter group the North West Infidels.
7.In 2011, a gang of racists attacked Redbridge Islamic
Centre. Elliot Jones, one of the attackers on that day, was convicted
of trying to incite a child into sexual activity.
8.Mark “Archie” Sleman was an EDL supporter who was active
in London and Exeter. He was imprisoned
for nine years in 1994 for the kidnap and rape of a ten-year-old girl.
9.In 2012 EDL member Matthew Woodward was charged
with possession of images of children as young as 10.
10.Michael Kinnear, who was active in the EDL was gaoled
in 2015 after police found images on his mobile of a primary school aged girl
“performing a type of striptease” and in a state of undress.
11.47
year old Paul Whiteside was given
a 10-month jail sentence suspended for two years for abducting a school girl. Whiteside
had previously campaigned against ‘Muslim
grooming of young girls in Lincolnshire.’
13.More recently, Robinson once again found himself
allied with a sex offender. In June 2017, he shared a stage with William
Charlton at a rally in Sunderland at an event where the sexual abuse of
children was the key theme of the speeches. It later transpired that Charlton
was found
guilty of distributing an indecent photograph of a child.
I could go on but as I said, fascism attracts people who love
uniforms and worship authority. Children are their ideal targets because of
their vulnerability which is why their accusations of paedophilia are a means
of projecting their own inadequacies onto others.
Gender Criticism
However there is also another aspect to this fear of people
who don’t conform to ‘normal’ gender stereotypes.
As people will know from previous blogs, I do not agree with
much of transgender ideology when it comes into conflict with women’s demands
for autonomy. In particular I find it difficult
to accept the claim that a transwoman is a woman sexually when that clearly isn’t
the case biologically. Likewise I can’t
accept that mere self-definition without more therefore means that a man can
claim to be a woman.
However I have always been clear that we should not countenance
prejudice or discrimination against transgender people. I find it strange that
this debate focuses primarily on transwomen and not on transmen even though the
majority of trans people are the latter. I have no doubt that a section of
transwomen are imbued with what might be called masculinist ideology. For
example the attack
on a group of feminists by transwomen in 2017 in Hyde Park.
What has though shocked me is that someone who I know as a
gender critical feminist posted to me an article critical of the drag
queen story telling and when
I pointed out the far-right connections she was nonchalant about this.
Last year the Institute of Race Relations published an article
by Sophia Siddiqui arguing that gender critical feminists were peddling a
far right agenda. I wrote
to them at the time saying that they might find that they were embarking on
a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Feminists around Womens Place UK and other gender critical feminists
have a responsibility to clearly and explicitly dissociate themselves from the
fascist inspired demonstrations in Reading, Brighton and Hove and other
places. Otherwise their gender
critical ideology will be seen as nothing
more than an attack on trans people per
se.
Piers Corbyn
I have a few words to say about Piers Corbyn who I have just
unfriended on Facebook. I sent him a message:
After today I am removing
you as a friend. You have come a long way from a squatters leader and member of
the IMG to someone who demonstrates alongside Patriotic Alternative and
assorted fascists and bigots. I have no idea what has taken hold of you but you
are working with an assortment of cranks and conspiracy theorists. Clearly
socialism and a class analysis play no part in your world outlook or analysis.
From always being an eccentric you have made idiocy your byword.
I first knew Piers over 40 years ago when he was the leader
of the London Squatting Union as well as a member of the International Marxists
Group. Now he comes across as a deranged conspiracy theorist, a climate denier
and anti-vaxxer who happily works with fascists and other freaks. He has now decided to join these people in ‘protecting
children’. It is true that children do
need to be protected but primarily from Corbyn and his fascist friends.
Hove Paedophile Woman
The irony is that it was the parents of the children who were
taking them to the story time, so it was they who were being accused of being
paedophiles and groomers by these misfits and bigots.
This was undoubtedly distressing to the parents which was why
it was necessary that we outnumbered them. CNN quoted
one parentwho had to
pass through a Patriotic Alternative demonstration in Reading:
Rosie said she was unprepared for the vitriol she
encountered at the library, where protesters waved signs reading "Stop
grooming children" and a line of police officers ushered parents into the
building. At least one mother was crying inside as protesters played the theme
song to British TV show "Jim'll Fix It," whose late host was a notorious child sexual abuser, on loudspeakers outside the
library.
"It was just horrible. I was expecting it to be
a joyous thing, considering it had been Pride a couple of weeks ago in
Bristol." Instead, she said the harassment by protesters was "very
backwards and (I feel) naive to think there's been any progress."
Bigots and fascists chant 'Antifa Out' - an
obsession of Trump loyalists and assorted White Supremacist groups
At least one person chanted ‘antifa out’. Antifa being
an anti-fascist organisation that Trump demonised in the United States. These
are the people that Corbyn has decided to link up with. He should remember the saying about those who
lie down with dogs get up with fleas!
The Failure of PSC to Oppose Zionism and the Jewish Supremacist
Nature of the Israeli State Renders it Politically Incoherent
Palestinian thugs attack demonstration
In 1982 I was among a group of people who founded
PSC in a meeting at the University of London Union. It was shortly before
Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. It gives me no pleasure to say that the
organisation we formed is today incapable of building a mass solidarity
organisation in the same way as the Anti-Apartheid Movement [AAM] did a generation
ago.
As Bob Dylan said The Times They Are A Changing. The old
lies about Israel being ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ or the
Israeli army being ‘the most moral army in the world’ don’t have quite
the same ring to it when you see police firing stun grenades inside a mosque or
children being battered.
Today there is a real possibility of building a mass movement in
support of the Palestinians and engaging with the thousands of young people who
demonstrated last summer for Black Lives Matter. The narrative around Israel is
changing however many times robots like Keir Starmer claim
that they are ‘Zionists without qualification.’ The production of two
reports this year, by B’Tselem
and then Human
Rights Watch, describing Israel as an apartheid state, is a game changer.
Coupled with Israel’s ethnic cleansing in East Jerusalem and its mass murder
spree in Gaza, it is no longer possible to hide the reality of Israel no matter
how many times false accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are made. There is no
longer any stopping the process of Israel’s ‘delegitimisation’.
There is no Palestine
But as long as PSC is controlled by two tiny, quasi Stalinist
groups, Socialist Action and the Communist League, Israel will have little to
fear. Both SA and CL fear, quite correctly, that if a mass movement developed
they would lose control. In short they have a vested interest in not building
a mass movement around Palestine.
You only have to ask what steps did PSC’s leadership take to link
up with Black Lives Matter or Extinction Rebellion? Or what steps did PSC take
to support the demonstrations against the Police
& Crime Bill. PSC is not interested in linking up with other movements.
Nick Georges
What is the political basis of PSC’s
failures?
Quite simply it is that PSC is not anti-Zionist. To be
pro-Palestinian and not anti-Zionist is like opposing the oppression of Black
people in South Africa without being anti-Apartheid. Zionism is the cause of
all the Palestinian ills. It cannot be ignored because it is tactically
convenient to do so.
PSC refuses to allow anything to get in the way of subordinating
its politics to the trade union bureaucracy. In practice that means supporting
the two state solution which is the antithesis of anti-Zionism. By definition
supporting 2 states means accepting a Zionist State of Israel.
If you have a look at PSC's 2020
Annual Report or the previous
one you will search in vain for the words ‘Zionism’ or 'Zionist'. It must
be a complete mystery to much of PSC’s membership why Israel behaves as it
does. Perhaps the Israelis are particularly malevolent. PSC calls Israel an
apartheid state but it never explains why Israel is an apartheid state
or how it became one.
Still less does PSC talk about Israel as a Jewish Supremacist
state ,a conclusion
that even B'Tselem came to, because of its fears of being called
anti-Semitic.
In practice, PSC has always supported a two state solution. In
1993 it supported the Oslo Accords (which didn’t even promise a Palestinian
state). As has become clear to most people, the two state solution was never
other than a smokescreen under cover of which Israel’s settlements expanded. It
was always an illusion because the Zionist movement always claimed the entire
Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael).
It was Oslo which created the monstrosity that is the Palestinian
Authority. In October 1993. In a debate
with Julia Bard of the Jewish Socialists Group I wrote:
The
agreement provides for a Palestinian police force up to 30,000 strong. Their
first duty will be to suppress Palestinian dissent and any resistance to the
Accord. Little wonder that this provision evokes such Israeli
enthusiasm....This is an agreement built on shifting sands. It represents a
massive victory for imperialism
Virtually everything that I predicted has come true. It did not
need a crystal ball to predict that Oslo would be a disaster. All you needed to
understand was the nature of the Zionist settler colonial movement.
PSC has never abandoned Oslo. Instead it accepted the ‘Peace
Process’ and the legitimacy of the PA. With the recent murder
of Nizar Banat by the thugs of the PA PSC has been forced to criticise
the actions of the PA for the first time. But it has never questioned
its legitimacy.
Even now their statement merely demands that ‘the PA should be
severing all security cooperation with the occupying state.’ It
says that ‘PSC has raised these
issues in the past with the PA and is doing so again in relation to the death
of Nizar.’ It is as if the French Resistance had written a letter to
Marshall Petain asking Vichy France to join the ranks of the Resistance!
Nowhere in its statement does PSC demand that the PA disbands
itself or even that its armed thugs be disarmed. Instead it treats the PA as a
legitimate institution rather than the bastard fruit of Oslo.
‘The
PA police arrangement in fact replicated, and was perhaps inspired by, the
South African apartheid state’s
use of the Black police to suppress Black resistance before 1994, an arrangement that reduced the danger to the lives
of white policemen.
If you compare Massad’s incisive analysis to PSC’s statement it is
clear that PSC has no analysis. PSC is not only politically but intellectually
bankrupt. It treats what is happening in Palestine as a human rights not a
political question. PSC fails to understand that the PA is an adjunct to
Israel’s occupation. It is its military subcontractor.
PSC
should sever all relations with the Palestinian Authority, which is a quisling
government, whose role is to police the Palestinians on behalf of Israel.
Betty Hunter, the General Secretary and now President of PSC, blew
a gasket at my describing the PA as a ‘quisling’ organisation. In her view and
PSC’s, the PA was a legitimate representative body of the Palestinians.
Compare this with what Ali Abunimah, the editor of Electronic
Intifada,wrote
in the wake of Abbas’s withdrawal of support from the Goldstone
Report following Operation Cast Lead:
Naming
collaboration — even treason — for what it is has always been a painful taboo
among Palestinians, as for all occupied peoples. It took the French decades
after World War II
to begin to speak openly about the
extent of collaboration that took place with the Nazi-backed Vichy government.
Tommy Robinson is welcomed onto the pro-Israel demonstration
PSC – An Ideas Free Zone -
The internal publications of PSC are an ideas free zone. They do
nothing to educate or raise people’s consciousness. Palestine solidarity for
PSC is a human rights issue not a political issue. It campaigns on human rights
abuses but never connects them. There is no explanatory narrative.
The word ‘Zionism’ never crosses the lips of the PSC leadership
and its Director Ben Jamal or Chair Kamal Hawwash. The obvious conclusion is
that Israel is a legitimate state which can be reformed.
This has major implications for the solidarity movement. Israel
can withstand criticism of its human rights record (using ‘security’ as its
excuse) but it reacts wildly to those who question its legitimacy.
The
assault is increasingly perceived to be a strategic concern for Israel,
with potentially existential implications. This understanding
underlies the recent mobilization by the Government of Israel (GOI) to offer a
systemic response to this challenge.
What the Zionist movement and the Israeli state fear most of all
is the questioning of the very concept of a Jewish state. To them this is an
‘existential’ problem. PSC simply ignored this document. And because there is
no forum within PSC to debate or discuss such issues, the organisation
continued to blunder along blindly.
The Zionist response to questioning ‘Israel’s right to exist’ as a
racist state was to launch the campaign to paint Israel's opponents as
‘anti-Semitic’. It didn’t begin with Jeremy Corbyn but his accession to the
leadership of the Labour Party lent a new urgency to the Zionists campaign.
Jeremy Corbyn
Corbyn himself is an example of the poverty of PSC’s politics. He
was extremely close to PSC’s leadership. He attended every AGM for a decade or
so. He was PSC's human rights ambassador but he simply mouthed 2 state
platitudes. PSC never provided him with any explanation of Zionism.
I knew Jeremy well in the early 1980s when I was Chair of the
Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine. He was a sponsor. Our motion to the
Labour Party conference in 1982 supporting a Democratic Secular State in
Palestine passed. Jeremy chaired the Labour Movement Conference on Palestine
which called for the disaffiliation of Poale Zion (JLM).
Thornberry at LFI
When the right-wing in Labour under Kinnock and Blair took over
the LMCP disappeared. PSC took Corbyn under its wing and he began spouting 2
States nonsense. Jeremy too treated Palestine as simply a human rights
question. Hence when he took part in the JLM leadership
debate with Owen Smith he praised the independence of Israel’s judiciary!
The very judges that have legalised the theft of Palestinian land since 1948.
PSC depoliticised a young and enthusiastic MP because it had no anti-Zionist
politics.
PSC engages in routinism. It is happy for people to stand on
street corners handing out leaflets and lobbying MPs. All very worthwhile as we
have to win public support but it is not enough.
We have to transform support on the streets into political support
and on this PSC has hopelessly failed. In fact PSC hasn’t even tried.
PSC has a ‘strategy’ of mainstreaming Palestine which has led it
to putting Emily Thornberry, a patron of Labour
Friends of Israel, on its platforms. Thornberry is a vitriolic Zionist who declared
that those who deny Israel’s right to exist as a racist state should be
expelled. In a groveling
address at Labour Friends
of Israel annual dinner’ in November 2017, Thornberry declared that
‘even
today... modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and
democracy, particularly in respect of women and LGBT communities.’
That must seem like a sick joke to those who are being evicted in
Silwan and Sheikh Jarrar today as part of the Master
Plan to increase Jerusalem’s Jewish majority. Or those who are confronting
pogromists in Bat Yam. Thornberry is an open racist. Yet PSC put both
her and Lisa Nandy, a self-declared Zionist on its platforms.
Trade unions and Two States
PSC says that it doesn’t support any solution – 2 States or 1
State. Its excuse being that it’s up to Palestinians to decide what they want.
This is a problem because when people ask what we want to see in Palestine PSC
has nothing to say. PSC has no vision to offer whereas the AAM had no
hesitation in declaring that it wanted a unitary South Africa.
It is also disingenuous since Palestinians today have no
representative organisations. The PA, which PSC supports, believes in 2 states.
Indeed it believes it has already achieved a Palestinian state!
Yet all surveys of Palestinians show
that today a very clear majority – 66% in the West Bank and 56% in Gaza support
a unitary state compared to 14% in the West Bank and 31% in Gaza supporting
a 2 state solution. But even if Palestinians still supported a two state
solution a solidarity movement should reject it. The reason why some
Palestinians support 2 states still is because they are desperate for anything
that relieves their plight.
A two state solution is an apartheid solution which leaves Israel in place as a Jewish Supremacist state. We
speak to British supporters of the Palestinians not the Palestinians. Our job
is to persuade people here that Israel is illegitimate. Our end goal must be a
state where all people live together not a continuation of apartheid by other
means.
But PSC leadership are dishonest. They are not concerned about
Palestinian opinion. Some 53% of Palestinians now support
Hamas compared to 14% for Abbas and Fateh. The real reason why PSC clings to a
2 state solution is that the affiliation of trade unions to PSC has been
obtained at a political price. That price is not adopting a position which
opposes Israel’s right to exist as a ‘Jewish’ ie racist state. The trade unions
support 2 states. So does LFI and the JLM because they know it won’t happen!
The trade union leaders support 2 states because they want to
support both sides of the ‘conflict’. It’s as if, 30 years ago, they had
supported the White Nationalists and the Black liberation movements. In
situations of colonisation you can’t support both sides and supporting 2 states
is exactly that.
PSC or rather Socialist Action, is happy to cuddle up to trade
union leaders and accept their money in return for silence. It is a faustian
bargain, a deal without principle or any semblance of morality.
An article in Oxford Student in response to the attempt to ban Ken Loach from speaking at St Peter's college
The IHRA
The IHRA was drawn up at the initiative of Dina Porat of the
Stephen Roth Institute at Tel Aviv University in 2004. Kenneth Stern, its
principal drafter, described at a conference in 2010 in Paris ‘The Working
Definition of Anti-Semitism [WDA] and Six Years After’ its genesis in an article
‘The Working Definition – a Reappraisal’. As Stern makes clear the
intention all along was to redefine hostility to Zionism as anti-Semitism. What
Stern didn’t support was using it to brand individuals as anti-Semites,
especially on campus and chill free speech. Whether Stern was naive or duped is
an open question.
The IHRA has been the main instrument by which anti-Semitism has
been weaponised. It has been the sword of defamation and has been responsible
for numerous anti-racists and anti-Zionists being traduced as racists. It is an
example of racists accusing anti-racists of racism in an Orwellian world where
words have lost all meaning.
PSC has dropped any campaign against the IHRA. It is difficult to
understand what exactly PSC has done apart from funding a legal opinon from
Hugh Tomlinson QC and writing a round robin letter to local authorities.
Perhaps the one initiative they did take up was when the Big Ride was banned
from meeting in a park in Tower Hamlets by their Blairite Mayor. That was a
brief respite from doing nothing.
However PSC has not taken up the IHRA on campus. At the end of
last year Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, threatened
that Universities who refused to adopt the IHRA would have their funding cut.
PSC has been completely inactive over this. It isn’t a priority.
The IHRA has been used to attack anti-Zionist academics at a host
of universities including Bristol, Sussex, Leeds, Warwick. There are more. At
Warwick at least 4 staff have been targeted by the Union of
Jewish Students as ‘anti-Semites’. The University adopted
the IHRA in October of last year. The attack on the staff prompted the Warwick
Assembly, which over 200 staff attended, to reject the IHRA by over 93%. As a
result the adoption of the IHRA has been suspended.
The most egregious case of a witchhunt is at Bristol University.
Four years ago the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism targeted
a Jewish lecturer, Rachel Gould over an article she had written. They called
for her dismissal. Tory Cabinet Minister Eric Pickles called her a holocaust
denier. The attack on her was described by Kenneth Stern in testimony
to Congress as ‘egregious’ ‘chilling and McCarthy-like.’
On 13 February David Miller, a Professor at Bristol University, called for an end to
Zionism and described how Zionist organisations were using Jewish students as
pawns. Immediately the the Zionists demanded that Miller be dismissed. Two
weeks later 100 MPs and Lords, including Caroline Lucas MP, wrote
an open letter to the Vice Chancellor of Bristol University demanding that
Miller be removed.
Caroline Lucas’s Tory friends on the Education Select Committee
then demanded
that Miller be sacked. These McCarthyists called Bristol University a “hotbed
of antisemitism” and fostering a climate similar to “1930s Nazi Germany”.
If anyone else made comparisons with Nazi Germany they would be called
anti-Semites! Jonathan Gullis MP went further attacking Goldie Osuri at Warwick
University. ‘“We need to start sacking people’ Gullis said.
I wrote to Ben Jamal demanding that they issue a statement
supporting David Miller. Well they issued a statement Protecting
Palestinian Rights and Academic Freedom but they offered not a word of
support or solidarity. Instead PSC accused David Miller of failing
‘to
apply depth, context, and clarity, and to avoid narratives that oversimplify
the interlinks between groups which oppose actions in support of Palestinian
rights, and Israeli state actors.... it can risk drawing on anti-Semitic tropes
about Jewish power.’
They didn’t even have the courage to make these criticisms
directly. Instead the following weasel words appeared:
‘Whilst
some have criticised Professor Miller for lacking such depth and clarity in the
way he has couched his remarks...’
The push by the Tories for the adoption of the IHRA has gone hand
in hand with a campaign by various Zionist organisations - the Board of
Deputies, UJS and the CST to target
anti-Zionist academics.
Compare PSC’s response to the forthright statement of BRICUP:
BRICUP
is not qualified to comment on Professor’s Miller’s scholarly work but affirms
the responsibility of all academics, irrespective of discipline or political
view, to defend his right to teach and research without the threat of external
intervention.
PSC has forgotten what the word solidarity means.
Trade unions
In 2010 PSC refused
to support a resolution to boycott Histadrut, Israel’s Apartheid Union. From
its inception in 1920 Histadrut supported a policy of Jewish Labour i.e. a
boycott of Arab labour. It took 39 years to admit its first Arab member. Even
then Arabs were put into a separate section. Histadrut was, with the JNF, one
of the main organisations of Zionist colonisation.
Whilst UNISON voted to boycott Histadrut, PSC and its trade union
officer Bernard Regan opposed boycotting it.
PSC, far from encouraging unions to take the boycott of Israel
seriously is happy to confine boycott to settlement goods only, which is a
nonsense since they are marketed as the produce of Israel.
PSC has refused to raise the IHRA in the unions. When I leafleted
delegates at PSC’s trade union conference, I was told to leave by Ben Jamal.
PSC refused to include the IHRA on the agenda. If PSC had campaigned for the
unions to oppose the IHRA then Labour would not have adopted it. The witchhunt
of Palestinian supporters in Labour would have been halted in its tracks.
I wrote on behalf of my union branch to Len McLuskey asking that
Unite’s Executive stop supporting the IHRA. On 16 May 2021 McLuskey wrote
back indignantly stating that:
‘In
the meantime Unite will continue to support PSC and I dismiss out offhand your
suggestion that we are betraying PSC.’
The strange thing is that I had not mentioned PSC. What had
triggered this response? Clearly McLuskey believed that PSC supported the
IHRA. This is understandable because PSC had refused to campaign in the unions
against the IHRA.
The Labour Party and the False Anti-Semitism Campaign
Throughout his leadership Corbyn and the Labour left was accused
of anti-Semitism. The purpose of the campaign was to brand anti-Zionism and
support for the Palestinians as anti-Semitic.
Yet as activists were being picked off PSC kept silent. It never
defended Corbyn from allegations of anti-Semitism. It issued no leaflets
explaining why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism. I wrote
to Secretary Ben Soffa on 11 April 2016 asking why the silence. Ben responded
on 20 April in what was a master class in complacency. He wrote that ‘I make
no apology for the fact that we do not engage in every debate some would wish
to involve us in.’
As activists were being picked off for any mention of Israeli
Apartheid many others were intimidated into silence. The campaign against
‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party spread into virtually every area of
society. PSC still seems unable to come out and say that the ‘anti-Semitism’
campaign had nothing to do with anti-Semitism.
PSC has nothing to say about Zionism since it is afraid of being
accused of anti-Semitism. It has never mentioned the links between the Zionist
movement and the far Right, people like Viktor Orban, the anti-Semitic Hungarian
Prime Minister and friend of Israel or the support of Germany’s neo-Nazi party
AfD or even Tommy Robinson’s recent appearance
on a pro-Israel demonstration. PSC is unable to go on the offensive against the
Zionist lobby. It resembles David Low’s depiction
of the TUC as a slow-witted carthorse.
PSC is an ideas free zone – a political
vacuum
The campaign against Israel is different in one crucial respect
from that against Apartheid in South Africa. Whereas the latter had no domestic
support base apart from the capitalists, right-wing Tories and fascists, the
Israeli state has a lobby that is strong and powerful.
Israel has support in the Jewish community. The last
survey by Yachad
of British Jews in 2015 found that 59% identify as Zionists. However 31% said
that they weren’t Zionists. This was down 13% on a similar survey 5 years
previously.
Despite the attempt to label BDS as anti-Semitic 24% of British
Jews support some form of sanctions on Israel. Among secular Jews this rises to
40% and among the under 30s it is 41%. Compare this with the Board of Deputies
which purports to speak for British Jews, which never criticises Israel.
Zionist organisations have hijacked the voice
of British Jews. British Jews are in the words
of Barnaby Raine the Establishment’s ‘favourite pets: heroic colonists in
the Middle East and successful citizens in the West.'
British Jews are, as David Miller asserted, treated as pawns by
Zionist organisations. They fulfil the same role in support of Israel as
Algerian Jews did under French colonialism. What is surprising is not that
there is anti-Semitism as a result of the identification of British Jews with
Israel but that there is so little anti-Semitism.
PSC could, if it had any internal democracy or discussion forums,
take advantage of these divisions amongst British Jews to challenge British
Zionist organisations. But since there is no discussion of strategy in PSC
there was no discussion about how to combat the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign except
maybe inside Socialist Action or the Communist League.
There is a great deal of debate about Palestine in Britain yet
within PSC there is no attempt to debate strategic issues such as how how to
advance BDS. There is no internal discussion bulletin or forum to debate how to
combat the pro-Apartheid lobby.
Discussion about strategy or tactics is left either to individual
branches or ad hoc groups like Palestine Action.
There was a strategic review some years ago by Ben Jamal but it was top down.
When it comes to internal debate PSC is an arid desert.
In 2020 a staff member of PSC and former student activist, Huda
Ammori, was forced to resign. She alleged bullying by the Director Ben Jamal
that forced her to go sick with depression. When she submitted a grievance
letter she was pressurised by PSC Chair Kamel Hawwash into withdrawing her
complaint.
In the wake of Huda being forced out 4 members of PSC Executive
resigned. Quite amazingly at its 2021 Conference there was no mention of
the resignations in the Annual Report, presumably on the basis that if it
didn’t get mentioned it didn’t happen!
Huda and others then formed Apartheid on Campus which PSC did its
best to destroy despite doing nothing on campus itself. The failure of PSC to
make any impact amongst students is itself a disgrace.
PSC and Palestine Action
Palestine Action was formed late last year with a focus to campaign against
companies complicit in Israel’s colonisation of Palestine, Elbit Systems in
particular. Elbit has some 10 factories in Britain. You will have seen news of many of its actions. The
state has spent enormous resources trying to criminalise its activists.
Having done little itself you might imagine that PSC would welcome
a group campaigning against Elbit. Wrong. In February PSC circulated a bogus
piece of legal advice to branches warning against supporting PA. It warned that
those who supported it financially could be prosecuted. This was nothing more
than scare mongering. The real reason for PSC’s hostility was its opposition to
direct action and confronting the British state. In addition to its fear of
competitors.
PSC contacted the Boycott National Committee and got them to warn
PA not to use the term BDS!! Despite PA receiving massive support PSC has not
let up in its hostility. When Brighton and Hove PSC wanted to move an emergency
motion at PSC AGM supporting PA
Socialist Action’s Louise Regan ruled the motion out of order. Regan, PSC’s
Vice-Chair, told the AGM that people had a choice – they could support PSC or
Palestine Action. They could not do both.
PSC should have welcomed Palestine Action. They weren’t obliged to
fund them but there was absolutely no reason to try and destroy them. PSC
objected to the minor criminal damage that PA caused to Elbit’s factories like
breaking windows or painting its buildings red!
I wrote
to Omar Barghouti of the BNC in March this year suggesting that Palestinians in
Gaza were unlikely to protest at PA damaging Elbit Factories given the reign of
terror they face from its drones.
If PSC prioritised Palestine solidarity rather than empire
building they would have offered legal help to PA. They could have publicised
PA actions and begun a campaign themselves against Elbit, which boasts that it
is the backbone of Israel’s military. They could have supported the pickets of
courts where defendants, myself included, have been arraigned to face trial. Instead
it has done nothing.
During the recent attack on Gaza PA activists occupied the roof of
the Elbit factory in Leicester. The occupation received massive publicity both
nationally and internationally from the BBC, TheIndependent,
Al
Jazeera, Jewish
News, Novara
Media and Electronic
Intifada to name but a few. When the Police arrested those involved
hundreds of local people surrounded the police vans to prevent them being taken
away. The Fire Brigades Union refused to aid the
police attempts to bring down the occupiers. When have PSC ever gained the
support of workers on the ground for an activity?
The occupation of Elbit, like the refusal of dockers in Italy, South
Africa and California, to unload ships belonging to Zim, was a concrete act
of support for the people of Gaza. What was PSC’s reaction? Nothing except
embarrassed silence. Not one word emanated from PSC nationally. The only emails
I got during the Gaza attacks from PSC were appeals for money. The attack on Gaza was its opportunity.
Solidarity there was none.
Why then the hostility to PA? There was similar hostility to InMinds. PSC wants to
preserve Palestine as its monopoly. It therefore resents other groups
trespassing on what it considers its territory. This is a product of the
political sectarianism of those who control PSC.
Mainstreaming Palestine
But it’s more than this. PSC’s whole strategy is what it calls
‘mainstreaming’ Palestine. In other words winning over the British
Establishment. PSC doesn’t understand why the British government supports
Zionism and Israel. The reasons, as anyone who has any awareness of the linkup
between British and Israeli political and military echelons knows is because of
shared interests between British imperialism and Israel. Israel is the West’s
strategic watchdog in the Middle East. It conducts joint exercises with NATO.
That is what lies behind the support of the most reactionary sections of the
Tory Party, Eric Pickles et al – for Israel. It certainly isn’t love of Jews.
Direct action that involves spraying blood red paint on a factory
goes against PSC’s ‘strategy’ of winning over the Establishment. PSC have
difficulty understanding that British imperialism has no principled objection
to Israel’s human rights abuses. The British Army hardly had a spotless record
in Iraq, Afghanistan or Ireland. Human rights abuses and imperialism go
together.
PSC’s mainstreaming ‘strategy’ has been a disaster. Apart from
Corbyn it has no MPs as sponsors. It got rid of Baroness Tonge sometime ago. It
has not even tried to persuade MPs to
form a BDS lobby. It lacks support from the Establishment yet it attacks direct
action.
Since May there have been two huge demonstrations in
support of the Palestinians, the last one 200,000 strong. They were called by 6
organisations including CND, Al Aqsa, Stop the War Coalition and the Muslim
Association of Britain. MAB in particular mobilised huge numbers. It is
doubtful, given its previous record, that PSC would have mobilised even a tenth
of these numbers by itself.
What it does prove is that the cause of Palestine has massive
potential. If PSC were a genuine solidarity organisation then membership would
be 20,000 not around 5-6,000. It would be a movement at the forefront of direct
action, linking up with groups like BLM, Xtinction Rebellion and the recent
Campaign Against the Police Bill.
What PSC does have is a number of active branches nationally. It
would have even more if there was an effective branch development policy. The
list of branches on its website is hopelessly out of date.
Branches receive little support from the national office. When
Brighton and Hove PSC waged a 2 year long campaign against Sodastream in
Brighton, which successfully closed the shop down, we received no support from
PSC nationally. The same was true of the successful campaign against Ahava in
Covent Garden. PSC nationally mobilised nobody. Direct action simply does not
fit into PSC’s plans.
The question is whether sufficient branches will be the kernel of
a new and healthier Palestine solidarity movement which can build on the
enormous support for the Palestinians today. A group which isn’t controlled by
tiny sects, leftovers of the International Marxist Group, who believe that
China is a socialist utopia. The question for activists is how to go about
building such a movement.
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