Showing posts with label Jewish Labour. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jewish Labour. Show all posts

1 October 2026

Open Letter to Zack Polanski – Congratulations on Declaring That You Are an Anti-Zionist – Now is the Time to Show That You Mean It

If You Oppose Zionism's Genocidal Ethnic Cleansing Project You Must Support the Zionism is Racism Motion & Oppose My Expulsion




Polanski Declares that he's an anti-Zionist at the Board Of Deputies Hustings

Dear Zack,

Your clear and explicit declaration at the Board of Deputies hustings that you are an anti-Zionist is to be welcomed. I unreservedly support your candidature at the forthcoming Holborn & St. Pancras by-election and I hope that you are the successor to the detested war criminal Keir Starmer who slithered away like the snake he is.

Whereas I supported George Galloway at the Rochdale by-election in 2024 I am firmly opposed to his divisive and reactionary candidacy in this election.

Polanski opposes 'divisive' Zionism is Racism motion

However I am also aware that after winning the leadership of the Green Party [GP] so decisively last year, you equivocated on the question of Zionism and appeased the old Green Establishment of Caroline Lucas and co. So the question is whether you are prepared to break with the GP's support for NATO and imperialism?

The Daily Mail's Proprietor Viscount Rothermere waxed lyrical about the 'youthfulness' and dynamism of the Nazis

In your Zeteo interview you stated that ‘Zionism means different things to different people.’ But that is true of any ideology. Do you think that the Nazis came to power promising to wipe out all Jews? On the contrary they played down anti-Semitism.

The Nazis were seen as a vigorous, young movement that was going to do away with the old corrupt politicians and abolish unemployment. People supported them not because of anti-Semitism but their economic promises and anti-communism.

South Africa had petty apartheid, which Israel didn't have until the advent of colonisation of the West Bank where there are now roads for Jews only - they don't have signs but that is the reality

Apartheid in South Africa was not defended by its supporters as a way of exploiting and oppressing Black people but as "separate development". The Nationalists argued that South Africa was not one nation, but a multitude of ‘nations’ (Afrikaners, English-speaking whites and various Black ethnic groups).

The Apartheid leaders claimed that forcing different cultures to integrate would lead to friction and that each group should live independently within its own territory. This is no different to what Zionism argues. Jews need their own state.

Israeli Labor leaders Ben-Gurion & Golda Meir. Ben-Gurion was the architect of the Nakba & Gold Meir was famous for saying that 'It was not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away from them. They did not exist,” 

The Israeli Labor Party’s support for a two state solution was posited on the need to separate Jews from Palestinians in order to maintain a Jewish majority in Israel. Only then could Israel be both democratic and Jewish. In the words of Israel’s main opposition leader, Yair Lapid:

My principle says maximum Jews on maximum land with maximum security and with minimum Palestinians.

You went on to say that what the present Israeli government is doing is clearly racist thus implying that previous Israeli Labor governments weren’t racist. But this is not true. There is nothing that Netanyahu and Likud have done that the Labour Zionists didn’t do before them. The right-wing Zionists are just more honest.

The Nakba wasn’t organised by the Revisionists but the Labour Zionists. It was primarily the ‘left’ Zionist militias, Haganah and Palmach, who were responsible for the massacres and forcible expulsion of Palestinians in 1947/8 and throughout the 1950s.

The Apartheid structure of the Israeli state, with its confiscation of Arab land and apartheid legislation like the Absentee Property Law was created by Labour not Likud. The concept of ‘Jewish’ Labour, i.e. violently picketing Jewish employers who employed Arabs was a Labour Zionist campaign in the 1920s and 30s.

The expansion of Israel into the West Bank was under the Labour Zionists. The first settlements were created under the Israeli Labor Party and indeed the founders of the Greater Israel movement were stalwarts of the Labour Zionist movement like Yitzhak Tabenkin, Israel Galili and Yigal Allon. [See Between Land and State – ‘Greater Land of Israel’ according to Tabenkin and the United Kibbutz Movement]

Yes many Jews see Israel as a refuge from anti-Semitism but as the Jews of Argentina, 3,000 of whom were murdered, found out in the 1970s, the Israeli state will offer no protection against an anti-Jewish regime with which it is on friendly terms and doing business with the Israeli state. Israel preferred a billion dollar trade with a neo-Nazi Junta to saving Argentinian Jews from the torture chambers.

Just as in 1920 thousands of Ukrainian Jews fleeing the pogroms were turned away by the Zionists who pressurised the British not to admit them.

Zionism is not what is in the head of some fragrant young Zionist but what Zionism does. Jewish or Zionist justifications for Zionism are about as valid as the defence of Apartheid in South Africa by its supporters.

Zionism is not a Jewish but a Christian idea. Zionism is the ideology of the Israeli state. It explains why Palestinian children are called ‘little snakes’ by former Israeli 'Justice Minister' Ayelet Shaked, legitimate targets for IDF snipers. Zionism, in all its flavours is first and foremost a movement of Jewish Supremacy, ethnic cleansing and now genocide.

Yes Zionism has had many different strands and currents but all of them were united on the need for a Jewish Supremacist state.

Supporters of South African Apartheid were divided between Jan Smuts and DaniĆ«l Malan. Both however agreed on White Supremacism. The Nazi party too was divided between Hitler and the ‘left’ represented by Gregor and Otto Strasser. However both wings agreed on anti-Semitism.

One of your objections to the ZIR motion was ‘safeguarding Jewish people’. This is wrong. Supporting Palestinians and opposing Zionism does not threaten Jewish safety. If anything increases anti-Semitism it is the Zionist claim that all Jews support the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

If some Jewish Greens are Zionists then far more are anti-Zionist. If you are a Zionist then you are supporting a racist, apartheid state. Why would such a person want to be in the GP?

Jewish people are not under attack, their homes are not being bombed, their children killed, their doctors tortured and raped to death. When the question of Palestine is raised it has nothing to do with Jews. To imply that support for Palestinians threatens the safety of Jews is to buy into the Zionist narrative. Israel is not a ‘Jewish’ state other than in a racial supremacist sense.

Those Jews at the Board of Deputies hustings who shouted that there is no genocide were no different from neo-Nazi holocaust deniers. They are racist monsters and should be treated as such.

The Jewish racists who heckled you would change their tune if it was 20,000 Jewish children who had been murdered. Jewish people in Britain are not experiencing anti-Semitism but a reaction to the carnage most of them support.

Allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are nothing more than a rationale to support the Zionist agenda. Jews in Britain who declare they are Zionists are holding hands with the far-right and people like Tommy Robinson, a self-declared Zionist.

You raised the red herring about someone who opposes genocide & apartheid but is a member of a Zionist synagogue. You said they should not be treated differently or made to feel unwelcome. I agree. People who are members of Zionist synagogues should not be held responsible for the politics of their synagogue if they oppose Zionism.

Your second objection was about supporting a single Palestinian state. You even said that there was ‘something imperialist about this’. This is untrue. Palestine today is already one state. An apartheid state. There is no possibility of a two state solution nor is it desirable since it would leave an apartheid Jewish state in place. What is required is that there are equal rights for all the inhabitants of that state. What is imperialist about equal rights?

If you ask any Palestinian whether they would prefer one state or two states the overwhelming majority opt for the former. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation only adopted support for 2 states because they despaired of achieving a single state. Today it is clear to all that, in the words of B’tselem, Israel’s main human rights organisation, Israel is a

regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid

In 1919 Chaim Weizmann, later to become Israel’s first President, stated that a Jewish state would be ‘as Jewish as England was English.’ In other words its indigenous population would have no place.

A Jewish ethno-nationalist state cannot be any other than a racist, apartheid state. By definition it is a state that privileges Jews.

Crispin Flintoff Interviews Chris Williamson and Natalie Strecker about Zack Polanski

I also wish to raise my expulsion from the GP, which you have kept quiet about. It was planned and executed by a small group on the Green Party Council [GPC] led by Laura Eccott and supported by Green supporters of Zionism and genocide like Elise Benjamin. It was agreed by the narrowest of margins 7-6.

The Racism of Elise Benjamin – the Green Party’s leading Zionist

According to Benjamin the Nakba is ‘Iran backed propaganda’ the Palestinians being too stupid to have thought of it themselves. She also repeats the fable of an Israeli ‘offer’ to allow the Palestinian refugees to return. Wikipedia’s 1949 Lausanne Conference dispels this nonsense. There was an ‘offer’ to accept 100,000 refugees but it was quickly withdrawn and in return Israel wanted a portion of southern Lebanon and other territories

 

Benjamin fawns over a White Israeli woman, Izabella Gandlin who was apparently killed by Palestinians (we will never know because it is likely that most Israelis who died on October 7 were victims of the Hannibal Directive. Benjamin never profiles Palestinian children or doctors like Dr Abu Safia who to this day is imprisoned and tortured by Israel. Indeed not once has Benjamin said anything about the genocide, starvation and torture.

 

In response to an article about Israel’s sexual assault on Palestinian girls, Benjamin reaches for another Zionist fabrication about Hamas intercepting aid and abusing Palestinian women. She also only has words for the fake allegations of mass rape on October 7, not the documented and videod IDF rape of Palestinians.

On April 16 I was suspended. The complainant was allowed to remain anonymous contrary to GP policy. Just 11 words justified my suspension: ‘Documented history of antisemitism, including court decisions and recent terrorism charges’

On May 7 I was expelled, the reasons being that I had:

  1.           ‘displayed no contrition or regret (or remorse)’ for ‘the repeated                instances of anti-Semitism that led to TG’s suspension.’
  2.         That I had had the audacity to publicly criticise those who had                   engineered my expulsion.   

My expulsion was based on a series of lies. ‘Repeated Anti-Semitism’ was not a reason for my suspension so how could I show contrition? If the GP wishes to expel anyone then it should be those who make false allegations of anti-Semitism - Elise Benjamin, Laura Eccott and Andrei Frieze. It is the Green racists not the Green anti-racists who should be expelled.

I was also suspended for the ‘crime’ of being charged with ‘terrorism’. Thousands of people face ‘terrorism’ charges today for supporting Palestine Action. The most recent Home Office statistics reveal that the average ‘terrorist’ is no longer a 31 year old male but a 59 year old White woman.

The GPC assumed that being charged ‘terrorism’ meant that I was guilty. GPC acted contrary to one of the most basic principles of law, the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. It is enshrined in Article 6(2) of the European Convention on Human Rights. I completely understand why Laura Eccott and Elise Benjamin prefer Israeli ‘justice’, where you are assumed to be guilty and gaoled without even the pretence of a trial (if you are a Palestinian).

On August 18 I went on trial under the Terrorism Act 2000. It ended on August 21 when the jury unanimously acquitted me after just 2 hours. They accepted that what was at stake was freedom of speech not terrorism. I was fortunate that the jury did not consist of members of Green Party Council.

My closing speech to the jury was described by the right-wing Libertarian Alliance as ‘maybe the most important speech made this century in an English court of law’. I explained why the Terrorism Act 2000 was not about terrorism but about suppressing free speech. It is something that members of GPC might take the time to acquaint themselves with.

It is bad enough that the British state accuses Palestine activists and protesters against the banning of Palestine Action of terrorism. What is grotesque is the fact that the GPC gave their support to those accusations.

Zionism is a reflection of the European racism that led to the Holocaust. The Palestinians are the Jews of Israel. Christian Zionism predated Jewish Zionism by 4 centuries. It believed in the idea of a ‘Jewish return to Palestine’ an anti-Semitic idea which assumed that Jews do not belong where they live.

44% of young British Jews now declare that they are anti-Zionist or non-Zionist. The GP no longer needs to walk in fear of the ‘anti-Semitism’ scarecrow. The GP needs to abandon support for Zionism and become an anti-racist and anti-imperialist party.

The GP has the most pro-Palestinian policy of any political party yet it is distrusted by Palestine solidarity supporters because its main interest lies in harvesting the votes of those opposed to genocide rather than putting its policies into practice.

The IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism is still GP policy and you have said nothing about this. Recently New South Wales Supreme Court Judge Desmond Fagan ruled that the IHRA:

propounds a concept different from that which ‘antisemitism’ has long been understood to describe and appropriates that word to the novel concept.... The [purpose of IHRA] is to graft onto the community’s abhorrence of antisemitism a parasitic rejection of protest against Israel.

The GP Establishment has mobilised against the Zionism is Racism motion and you Zack have equivocated. It is time for you to come out in its support now you are an anti-Zionist.

James Baldwin

The West’s support for Israel has nothing to do with the Holocaust. Jews are the moral alibi for a racist state guarding Western interests in the Arab East.  As James Baldwin remarked:

But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests.

The real problem is the GP’s fear of breaking with the foreign policy consensus between Labour and the Tories. The question is whether you want to break from that or adapt to it.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Polanski opposes 'divisive' Zionism is Racism motion

Green leader Zack Polanski describes Zionism as racism

Polanski sparks anger after declaring himself ‘anti-Zionist’ at packed communal hustings

Israel lobby group CAA threatens Greens over ‘Zionism is racism’ motion

WATCH: Zionists heckle Polanski even though he’s gone soft on anti-Zionism


6 August 2015

Tom Watson MP - Supporter of Israeli Apartheid

Tom Watson MP - Candidate for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; Supporter of Israeli Apartheid

Tom Watson - right-wing candidate for Labour Deputy leader

Many people will heard of Tom Watson MP, one of the candidates for Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, from his work campaigning against child abuse, Murdoch etc.  However there is a darker side to Tom Watson.  Contrary to popular belief he is firmly on the far-right of the Labour Party.  He was Political Advisor to the last General Secretary of the Amalgamated Union of EngineeringWorkers, Sir Ken Jackson.  Those with long memories will remember that Sir Ken stood for General Secretary in 2002 and was defeated by a Broad Left candidate, Derek Simpson.  Jackson did everything he could to avoid accepting the verdict of the AUEW electorate for what was the first election for a new union, Amicus.  As his Wiki entry says:

David Ben-Gurion - Histadrut's First Secretary-General - As Israel's Prime Minister he was a devoted supporter of the Expulsion of the Arabs of Palestine
‘Throughout his career, Ken Jackson was on the far-right of the union movement. He was a vice-president of the Trade Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU) - an organisation with close links to NATO and the CIA. He became a close associate of Tony Blair - in fact, he is often described as "Tony Blair's favourite trade unionist" - and received a knighthood in 1999, an unusual honour for a trade union leader…. He found himself at odds with his counterparts in the movement due to his support of issues such as private-public partnerships and US aggression.’  
Buy Local Goods - i.e.  Boycott Arab Goods (this was a time when Zionists were fully in support of Boycotts)
Watson could not have been his political advisor if they hadn’t shared the same politics and agenda.  He later became a supporter of Gordon Brown and he is thoroughly New Labour.  He is also Vice President of the Trade Union Friends of Israel.  In 2012 he wrote the article below in support of ‘the new Histadrut’.  The ‘new Histadrut’ is in fact very much like the old Histadrut except that it has been shorn of its vast conglomerate of industries and enterprises.  Yes that’s right, the old Histadrut was the second largest employer in Israel after the State itself and as such was no union.  It was a corporatist body.
Histadrut picture - In the style of Stalinist art
That is why its Secretary General, the former Defence Minister Pinhas Lavon could say of it in 1960 that Histadrut was '“a general organization to its core. It is not a trade union.' 
Histadrut poster in the 1930's - urging boycott of Arab melons
However in the late 1980’s its enterprises began to go bankrupt and in 1985 the Stabilisation Pact in Israel forced it to sell off its companies, relinquish its health care system (Kupat Holim) and basically confine itself to representing its members.
Even so Histadrut was a unique institution.  You join the federation first and then you are allocated to a department or union.  It’s like joining the TUC and then being placed in UNISON. 
TUFI - an Organisation of pro-imperialist trade unionists
But Histadrut was, from its very beginning in 1920, a racist body.  It campaigned for Jewish Labour (Avodat Ivrit) and Jewish produce (Totzeret Haaretz), i.e. a Boycott of Arab Labour and Produce.  It sought to divide Arab from Jewish workers and set up a tame Arab section, the Palestine Labour League.  David HaCohen, former managing director of Histadrut’s building company, Solel Boneh, described what this meant:
Histadrut logo - Zionist to the core
“I had to fight my friends on the issue of Jewish socialism to defend the fact that I would not accept Arabs in my trade union, the Histadrut; to defend preaching to housewives that they should not buy at Arab stores; to defend the fact that we stood guard at orchards to prevent Arab workers from getting jobs there … to pour kerosene on Arab tomatoes; to attack Jewish housewives in the markets and smash Arab eggs they had bought … to buy dozens of dunums [of land] from an Arab is permitted but to sell God forbid one Jewish dunum to an Arab is prohibited; to take Rothschild the incarnation of capitalism as a socialist and to name him the ‘benefactor’ — to do all that was not easy.”
The New Histadrut - much like the old one but a bit leaner
David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister was also became the first Secretary General of Histadrut in 1921.  He followed a rigorous policy of Jewish labour mounting pickets of employers who continued to employ Arabs.  Arabs were being driven out of the labour market as a prelude to being drive out of their land.  As Ben-Gurion noted of employers who continued to employ Arabs:  ‘it is for this petty profit, not a twentieth of net income, that he would foist on the colonies the evil of mixed labour, which can only provoke trouble on national and social fronts alike.' (my emphasis) [Rebirth & Destiny pp. 73-4]

The article below is a typical propaganda piece.  Histadrut has refused membership to Palestinian workers in the West Bank whilst taking, courtesy of the military occupation which has never opposed, 1% of their wages even though it offered nothing back in return.  After extreme pressure, what Watson calls ‘a groundbreaking agreement in 2008’ it returned a small fraction of what it had stolen.

Unsurprisingly the main concern of Watson’s ‘review’ of Alan Johnson’s propaganda  pamphlet was opposition to the Boycott of Israel.  Like propagandists for South African apartheid, Watson argues that it ‘set back the cause of peace’ whereas what has set back the cause of peace is the theft of Palestinian land, settlements, settler violence etc.

Tom Watson MP - candidate for Deputy Leader

The New Histadrut: Peace, Social Justice and the Israeli Trade Unions

At a time when those opposed to a two-state solution are calling to break the relationship between British and Israeli trade unions, BICOM Senior Research Fellow Professor Alan Johnson has written an important new pamphlet, published by the Trade Union Friends of Israel, which provides a unique insight into the history and activities of the Histadrut. The pamphlet details the Histadrut’s progressive aims and values and its cooperation with the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU). Professor Johnson lays out the origins of the Jewish labour organisation, their role in the foundation of the State of Israel, the subsequent creation of an Arab workers section, and the groundbreaking agreement in 2008 between the Histadrut and the PGFTU. The pamphlet highlights the Histadrut’s inclusivity as a powerful champion of vulnerable workers, its positive working relationship with its Palestinian counterparts, and why this relationship should be strengthened, not undermined, by UK trade unions. The pamphlet also details why boycotts damage Palestinian workers, set back the cause of peace, and risk isolating British trade unions from the wider international trade union movement, which has chosen engagement, practical solidarity and critical dialogue.

As Vice President of TUFI I’m pleased to endorse the pamphlet, The New Histadrut: Peace, Social Justice and the Israeli Trade Unions. Its contents and recommendations are a powerful source of information for all those wanting to engage with the Israeli and Palestinian trade unions.  If we want peace in the region then surely we should be nurturing and supporting trade union dialogue. A pathway to the goal of two states needs the support of mainstream Israelis and Palestinians. Who better than trade unions to facilitate this to build confidence and understanding.”
Rt Hon.Tom Watson MP 20.6.12.

As someone who had not yet decided which candidate to back in the Deputy Leadership ballot, I was interested in whether or not it is true that you are a supporter and indeed Vice President of Trade Union Friends of Israel and therefore the Israeli union Histadrut?

If this is true then I am surprised because Histadrut is an Apartheid union which began life campaigning for Hebrew Labour (i.e. a boycott of Arab labour) and anyone acquainted with the subject will know that they effectively campaign for a colour bar in the civil service when Britain was the Mandatory power.  Something Ernest Bevin vehemently rejected incidentally.

Until 1959 Histadrut didn't accept Arab members and even then it separated them into a separate Arab section.  It has also never opposed building settlements in the West Bank, which is not surprising since the building firm they owned, Solel Boneh, built  most of them.

Tony Greenstein

To read more see Histadrut: Israel’s racist “trade union”, Tony Greenstein Electronic Intifada 3.3.09.