Mogadon Man Assumes the Leadership of the Labour Party as Lansman’s candidate is crushed

The Fight against the Right begins – Inside and Outside the Labour Party – as COVID-19 Demonstrates Why Capitalism has outlived its stay

If anyone had any doubts about who and what (Sir) Keir Starmer represents, his Shadow Cabinet appointments today should lay them to rest.  Starmer represents a return of the Blairite Right. Even Barry Gardiner, a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and easily the most articulate member of Corbyn’s shadow cabinet has been sacked, as has Ian Lavery, former President of the NUM and one of the few working class members in the PLP as well as Jon Trickett.

Unity candidate Keir Starmer sacks the Shadow Cabinet's most articulate exponent

According to Momentum the election of Starmer is a victory - the capacity lying to their members is unlimited - as is the stupidity of anyone who remains in Momentum

Momentum sent out a ludicrous statement to members today suggesting that Starmer’s election is some kind of victory.  However even the most stupid and servile member of Jon Lansman’s fan club cannot disguise the extent of the Left’s defeat. Lansman writes that:

We are proud too that, in four and a half years, Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that supported him has changed our party for the better and given voice to the hopes of millions who felt unrepresented in politics.

We didn’t win – and that failure is ours collectively – but we have transformed politics for the better. ..This is our victory. And we should be proud.

In Labour, the dark days when our party cheered on privatisation, pursued illegal wars, talked about scroungers and demonised migrants are long gone.’

Jon Lansman went into bat for the world's only Apartheid state Israel and in the process destroyed Corbyn - this scab should be banished from socialist circles

Momentum’s capacity for self-delusion seems to be endless.  However socialists in the Labour Party are resigning by the thousand. No-one is fooled by this kind of bravado.

Lansman is not alone.  The socialist left in the Labour Party – the LRC, Jewish Voice for Labour and Labour Left Alliance are equally culpable in their own way. They misunderstood the nature of the attack on the Left, they failed to confront the anti-Semitism smear campaign effectively .

Debate on Labour Left Alliance Facebook page on whether to stay in the Labour Party - the LLA refuses to take on board the fact that the situation has changed

I shall devote a separate article to the question of where the Left goes from here but if the LLA is anything to go by then there is a steely determination to repeat the same mistakes of the past four years and ignore the fact that we are in changed circumstances. In the words of one contributor on the LLA’s main Facebook Group the Left in the Labour Party either adapts or dies.

As the Jerusalem Post gloated 

‘New British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer tackled antisemitism immediately upon election Saturday, as he promised to root out that scourge from the party that in the past has been charged with fostering hatred toward Jews.’

‘Anti-Semitism’ is a code word for the Left.  It plays the same role in the attacks on the Left as 'Communist' did in the days of Joe McCarthy.

Lee Rock, LLA's National Organiser asks what has changed!  Oh nothing much, just Keir Starmer has become the new right-wing leader of the Labour Party

Lee Rock, the LLA's National Organiser is adept at putting his fingers in his ears 

What Starmer is promising is a witchhunt of the Left and anti-Zionists. Opposition to the Israeli state is ‘anti-Semitism’ in the eyes of the Labour Right.  To call Israel ‘racist’ is itself anti-Semitic.  But the responsibility for that lies with Lansman and Corbyn. When they accepted the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism they accepted the terms of debate as the Right defined them.

The fact that these accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ had no foundation was irrelevant. The fact that Israel is a racist state unlike any other was also irrelevant.  

Israeli bulldozers demolish Palestinian buildings aimed at isolating people suspected of having Coronavirus - ethnic cleansing comes first

To give but one example. Half of Israel’s Arab population live in what are called ‘unrecognised’ villages, mainly in the desert south, the Negev. The Israeli state lays claim to the lands on which they are built for Jewish settlement. These villages, some of which are demolished periodically, receive no services from the state – running water, sewage, electricity or even, despite the fact that their inhabitants are nominally Israeli citizens, no polling booths are stationed in them during elections.

You might think that during the Coronavirus pandemic this might change.  If so you are wrong.  They will get no help whatsoever from the state to combat COVID-19. The Israeli state is completely unconcerned if large numbers die as a result.  Indeed Netanyahu probably secretly welcomes such a possibility. Such is the visceral nature of racism in Israel’s Apartheid society.  But according to Starmer if you call this racism then you are ‘anti-Semitic’.

According to Ha'aretz, even in recognised Israeli Arab towns and villages Israel's Magen David Adom is refusing to conduct tests for Covid-19. Israel's Health Ministry set up an emergency team to deal with the crisis but naturally it did not include any Arabs. If this is not racism then the word has lost all meaning. 

If Starmer denies that Israel's practices are indeed racist then that is because he is a racist.  What this member of the British Establishment, complete with his knighthood, is saying is that British support for the Israeli state, a vital part of the ‘western alliance’ is more important than the subjugation of the Palestinians.

According to the Zionists' 'logic' if you opposed Ayatollah's fatwa on Salman Rushdie you were an Islamaphobe

The excuse offered by Starmer and Labour’s Right is that support for Israel is part of British Jews identity. That may be true for the majority of Britain’s Jews but so what? Supporting Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie 30 years ago over Satanic Verses was part of the identity of many British Muslims. Would anyone seriously argue that support for Rushdie was therefore racism against Muslims?

If 99% of British Jews supported Zionism, which they don’t, that would still make Israel a racist and illegitimate state. It would simply prove that most British Jews have moved to the Right and instead of being victims of racism are now racists themselves.

You can judge Keir Starmer by who supports him - he is the poisonous legacy of the Zionists fake antisemitism campaign

In fact, according to the most recent 2015 survey of British Jews’ attitudes towards Israel, 59% identified as Zionists, down 13% since the previous survey five years previously.  31% said they weren’t Zionists and 10% didn’t know.  So what Lansman, Rebecca Long-Bailey and other Labour Zionists are really saying is that they support the most reactionary and racist section of British Jewry. That is what the Board of Deputies 10 Commandments were about.  That was why Commandment no. 8 said Labour must not engage with ‘fringe organisations and individuals’.  In other words anti-racist Jews.

I don’t want to say ‘I told you so’ but I have been warning against Corbyn’s appeasement strategy for 4 years. It could only end in defeat. The Right never accepted Corbyn’s leadership and it was tragic that this message didn’t get over to Corbyn or his abysmal advisers, notably Seamus Milne.

My blog 4 years ago - if only Corbyn had listened to me and not the useless Seamus Milne

In the wake of Corbyn’s victory against Owen Smith in 2016 I wrote that this was ‘The Calm Before The Storm – As Corbyn Wins the Right Intensifies Its Destabilisation Strategy’. The sub-headline was that  ‘It’s not an Olive Branch but the Sword of Deselection that Labour’s Right Requires’. 

If Corbyn had listened to me and not Lansman he might be Prime Minister now!

Corbyn’s Appeasement of the Right coupled with his inability to stand up to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign sealed his fate. 

Corbyn seemed to have Stockholm Syndrome - he embraced  his enemies and repelled his friends

It also wasn’t obvious to Corbyn’s pitiful advisers, not least Seamus Milne, who must take a heavy share of the responsibility for the general election defeat.

Two years ago Corbyn rejected ‘claims by close ally Len McCluskey that "Corbyn-hater" Labour MPs were using an anti-Semitism row to "smear" him.’ That is why I said that Corbyn was like a victim of Stockholm Syndrome.  If he could not see how ‘anti-Semitism’ was being used as a stick to beat him then he really was beyond saving.

Margaret Hodge should have been expelled years ago for covering up child abuse in Islington as Council leader - instead she was made Childrens' Minister by Blair

There were a number of milestones on the road to the defeat of the most hopeful left-wing movement in recent history. There was Corbyn’s rejection of Open Selection at the 2018 Labour Party Conference which meant that Corbyn willingly became a prisoner of the Right. The second mistake was not to act with a determined ruthlessness against those determined to destroy him.  When Margaret Hodge, whose only claim to fame is covering up child abuse as leader of Islington Council and then defaming one of the victims of that abuse, called him a ‘fucking anti-Semite’ she should have been fast-tracked out of the Labour Party. To show weakness in such circumstances was a recipe for disaster.

Corbyn’s other major failings included throwing his friends overboard as if they were ballast. First Ken Livingstone and then Marc Wadsworth and Chris Williamson.  When Chris was suspended, just over a year ago, I wrote a blog which asked, Are these the Dying Days of Corbyn’s Leadership?  In it I observed that ‘Appeasement of the Right, Sacrificing Political Allies and Political Indecisiveness Will be Corbyn’s Legacy.’ The past year to me has seemed like a slow motion car crash with the left looking on like rabbits frozen in the eyes of a car’s headlights.

Corbyn had been involved in Palestine solidarity work ever since I knew him in 1982 in the Labour Committee on Palestine. He was a conscientious supporter of the Palestinians but he had never taken the time or trouble to work out why it was that Israel was racist.  He never understood what Zionism was. So he supported the Palestinians whilst, at the same time, supporting the Israeli state as part of a 2 state solution. Corbyn was theoretically lazy.

Even in his early hustings with the 3 other candidates at the JW3 Centre he didn’t criticise Israeli apartheid. The same was true of the rerun of this debate with Owen Smith a year later. When the candidates were asked what they liked about Israel, instead of saying ‘nothing’ or ‘the weather’ Corbyn wittered on about the separation of state and the independence of the Israeli judiciary.   The same judges who have presided over the confiscation of land from Arabs, not only on the West Bank but in Israel itself. Judges have repeatedly disregarded the 4^th Geneva Convention on the occupying power not colonising the area they conquer.

Corbyn was never the brightest of MPs or even intellectually curious. He held positions without ever working them out.  His instincts were right but this was not enough. Of course Corbyn faced many obstacles, not least the media. The Guardian, with its relentless anti-Corbyn coverage showed its true colours and this should not be forgotten or forgiven. We should boycott Freedland's rag until hell freezes over.

Corbyn’s own supporters also bear a share of the blame. Many is the time I posted an article critical of Corbyn on a Corbyn Facebook group only to be met with hostility of the ‘why are you attacking our beloved leader’ kind?

Uncritical support was worse than the hostility of his enemies because it allowed Corbyn’s mistakes to go unchallenged. I had a post taken down from the Jewish Socialists Group because it criticised another JSG member, Jon Lansman! This was the attitude of the JSG leader, David Rosenberg.  He held that we should not criticise Corbyn whereas my take was that it was only by criticising him that we could counter the pressure from the Right. Eventually I got removed from the JSG FB group when I posted a blog asking why the JSG didn't support Jackie Walker, who was then suspended.

The last Labour Party conference merely compounded Corbyn’s failures. His inability to understand what lay behind the false anti-Semitism campaign has been his single biggest error of judgement. It has sapped his strength and drained his leadership of direction and purpose. Corbyn comprehensively lost control of the narrative.

Corbyn never seemed to understand that the more you apologise, the more you try to please, the more they will come for you.  The Zionist movement is not like a parent to whom a child apologises and all is forgiven.  They take an apology as proof that they were right. When I complained to the BBC about the Panorama programme Is Labour Anti-Semitic? (why it was a question when they thought they already had the answer is one of life’s mysteries) the Executive Complaints Unit came back and said that even Corbyn admitted Labour had an anti-Semitism problem.  How do you deal with that level of idiocy?

It is obvious that only a handful of Labour members are anti-Semitic in the sense of the Oxford English dictionary definition. How is it that in the midst of the Windrush Scandal, caused by the ‘hostile environment’ policy which New Labour was responsible for initiating under Blair’s Home Secretary Alan Johnson, that anti-Semitism could be seen as Labour’s biggest failing?

But if any one individual bears the blame for what happened it isn’t Corbyn but the owner of Momentum, property millionaire Jon Lansman. His coup in 2017 destroying democracy in Momentum and imposing a constitution that took power into his own hands was an early warning of troubles ahead.

Without democracy a movement is impotent.  Momentum was not a movement in any real sense.  It was a control and command organisation. When the omens were favourable in 2017 it believed that it was responsible for the election gains. In 2019 they learnt that pushing hundreds of young campaigners into constituencies only alienates voters.

No one did more to legitimise the fake 'antisemitism' smears than McDonnell who thought he was very clever appeasing the Right and inviting Alistair Campbell back into the party

And who supported Lansman’s coup but John McDonnell, who also bears a heavy responsibility for giving legitimacy to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. A BBC report quotes him as saying that the ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis had ‘shaken us to the core." And when the Zionists dug up the comments of Hajo Meyer, a survivor of Auschwitz, comparing Israeli policy to the Nazi regime before 1939, as many Holocaust survivors and Israelis have done, Corbyn apologised.  Corbyn said that he "completely rejects" the views of some of those he had shared platforms with in the past. This was not serious. No one believed him anyway and it simply helped to discredit him.

Instead of defending the right of Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer to compare Israeli racism with Nazi Germany Corbyn apologised - yet again

I therefore thought it right that I should write to my old friend Lansman giving him some helpful advice. I say this despite the fact that Lansman had me expelled from Momentum and then accused me of being ‘probably the rudest man I know in politics.’ Indeed I had to threaten to sue him for libel for using the weasel word ‘probably’, which suggests that I may not be the rudest man in politics!

Jon Lansman did more to undermine Corbyn by supporting the fake 'antisemitism' smears than Tom Watson 

A Letter to an Old Friend Jon Lansman

 Dear Jon,

As always at times like these my thoughts are with you.  Please allow me to offer an old friend my warmest congratulations on your achievement. The defeat of Jeremy Corbyn and the installation of Mogadon Man aka Sir Keir Starmer was a master stroke.

What David Cameron and Theresa May could not achieve you have managed single handed. Of course officially you supported the pathetic Long-Bailey, whose only comment of note during the campaign was that she was prepared to use nuclear weapons. RBL is as she has often reminded people, the working class girl who was born to the sound of the Stretford End, despite Man City playing away in Wolverhampton the day she was born.  No doubt she was born with acute hearing too.

The question that puzzles many people is why the campaign manager for Tony Benn’s leadership bid should turn into the exact opposite of everything that Benn stood for?  Why should you destroy democracy in Momentum, join the witch hunt and became an apostle of the world’s only apartheid state? Of course some believe that you were an agent of Israel or Mossad but I think the truth is simpler. It is summed up in that old saying of Humbert Wolfe that

you cannot hope to bribe or twist
(thank God!) the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there’s no occasion to.

Clearly you had an Epiphany, if that’s not anti-Semitic, and decided that your Jewish identity meant that you had to become a Zionist i.e. a racist. You kept company with the Jewish Labour Movement, the overseas wing of the Israeli Labor Party, which has virtually disappeared today. 

It is, like you, irrelevant now that the open racists are in charge of Israel rather than those who professed workers’ solidarity and practiced segregation. The ILP is now down to 3 seats in the Knesset where once it could command an overall majority.  ‘Socialist’ Zionism has died because Zionism rejected workers’ unity in favour of Jewish unity and collaboration with imperialism.

I realise that you are a fixer rather than an intellectual but presumably it must have occurred to you that there is a reason why racist and anti-Semitic figures, from Orban to Trump, Duterte to Bolsonaro love Israel? Clue, it isn’t because of Jews that the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right, Richard Spencer calls himself a ‘White Zionist’.

According to the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism that you pushed through the Labour Party, it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to state that Israel is a racist state. When the rest of the world is fighting Coronavirus, what is Israel doing? Destroying tents Palestinians have erected to isolate those infected.  Only in Israel could ethnic cleansing take priority over fighting the pandemic. And yet you support Israel and an Israeli Labor Party that has just got into bed with Netanyahu.

To call you a racist Jon would be an understatement. You have pioneered racism in the Labour Party. Not because you are another Alf Garnett but because your goal was providing support for Israel’s project in the West.

Your destruction of democracy in Momentum, your opposition to Open Selection and now putting up candidates against socialists like Jo Bird, has meant the triumph of the Right. So once again congratulations are in order.  I cannot but help wondering what the purpose of Momentum is though, apart from filling your coffers.

I don’t know why it is Jon, but you keep reminding me of a poem by Jack London, Ode to a Scab. 

The only part of the poem that I disagree is the bit about you carrying a tumour of ‘rotten principles.’  Jon, I really don’t think you have any principles, fresh or rotten. 

One wonders what Jack London would have made of the multi-millionaire property dealer who almost single handedly brought down the Corbyn Project?

Your only true friend (i.e. the only one who tells you the truth)

As ever

Tony

The fight for socialism goes on but we can have no doubt that the Right have won a significant victory. Nothing could be more futile than to spend the next 5 years in a war of attrition with the Right, knowing full well that they control the party machine. It was bad enough when Corbyn and Formby were there.  Groups like Labour Left Alliance, whose recent travails I will cover in more detail in another blog, are for standing still as members stream out of the Labour Party.

You can imagine what it will be like when a female version of Iain McNicoll is chosen. I am told that an old witchhunter, Emily Oldknow, who featured in my SAR when I was suspended, and who like most of McNicoll’s team went to work for corrupt Dave Prentis’s UNISON, is tipped to take Formby’s place.

It is time for fresh thinking on the left.  Whether the existing groups are up for it is another question.

Tony Greenstein

The full results of the leadership contest were:

·         Keir Starmer 275,780 (56.2%)

·         Rebecca Long-Bailey 135,218 (27.6%)

·         Lisa Nandy 79,597 (16.2%)

DEPUTY LEADER

·         Angela Rayner 228,944 (52.6%)

·         Rosena Allin-Khan 113,858 (26.1%)

·         Richard Burgon 92,643 (21.3%)

·         Ian Murray Knocked out in second round with 14.3%

·         Dawn Butler Knocked out in first round with 10.9%

Full results for CLP reps:

JOSAN, Gurinder Singh – 57,361 – ELECTED

BAXTER, Johanna – 57,181 – ELECTED

TOWNSEND, Lauren – 56,929

BIRD, Jo – 46,150

DRENNAN, Leigh – 30,021

WRIGHT, Cecile – 25,008

SHERRIFF, Paula – 21,088

WILLIAMS, Trish – 10,826

APPS, Peter – 10,071

HOBSON, Deborah – 8,974

WEBB, Chris – 8,413

DENT, Fiona – 7,420

ELLISON, Adam – 6,322

COLLINS, Alexa – 5,669

MIDDLETON, Rick – 4,582

SUTTON, Ray – 4,248

JOHNSTON, Mick – 3,947

OWLADI, Peyman – 2,459

Smoke Without Fire – Anti-Semitism Without Jews

 A Critical Review of 

Antisemitism and the Labour Party 

Edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner, Verso, 2019

 

Below is a Review of Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party, an Ebook Below is my Review of Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party, an Ebook brought out shortly before the General Election and edited by Jamie Stern-Weiner. It is a critical review because the book fails to come to terms with what the anti-Semitism attacks are really about.

If, as I have argued for the past 4 years, the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks by the Board of Deputies and the Zionists are not about anti-Semitism but Israel/Zionism then it is futile ‘proving’ that only 0.06% or whatever of Labour members are anti-Semitic.  Even assuming that those expelled were genuine anti-Semites whereas of course most of those, like Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and myself are committed anti-racists, it is irrelevant.

The Labour Party is supposed to be the party of the working class. If that is true then it will also include all the mass of petty prejudices and chauvinism of capitalist  society, including racism, that circulate in the working class. What Marx called the 'muck of ages'. That will inevitably include anti-Semitism. Those who plotted and planned the Board of Deputies and Zionist campaign knew full well that if they looked they could find ‘anti-Semitism’.  It has always been there. It has nothing to do with Jeremy Corbyn and the Left. 

‘Anti-Semitism’ provided the ideal pretext to attack Corbyn and unfortunately in accepting the framework of the anti-Semitism attack, viz. that the attacks are genuinely about anti-Semitism, books such as this do little to help in the fightback.

The Zionist demonstration against 'antisemitism' outside Parliament March 2018 - it was the first 'antiracist' demonstration that Norman Tebbit, Ian Paisley and Sajid David had attended

This is the fatal mistake that Jewish Voice for Labour made. It assumes the campaign was about Jews but of course it was not. That is why you have the phenomenon of non-Jewish racists, like the hapless Lukey Stanger, attacking Black anti-racists as ‘anti-Semitic’.

This isn’t so strange as it seems.  When Donald Trump told 4 Black Congresswomen to ‘go home’ he added for completeness that they were ‘anti-Semites’ because they hated Israel. In Donald Trump and the Zionists’ eyes, Israel = Jews.

The Zionist Campaign to Paint Corbyn as an Antisemite had to overcome the difficulty that he was an antiracist activist

Jamie sent me a copy of the book on 26^th November and we engaged in a short correspondence.  I wrote that though his and Alan Maddison’s article ‘Smoke Without Fire’ was impressive, nonetheless

The point though is that however logical, fact filled etc. it is it fails to understand one point. This campaign is not based on logic or rationale.  It is a campaign in defence of ruling class capitalist interests and the Zionist leaders are quite happy to perform like dancing bears for that establishment.  It is in many ways reminiscent of the role that Jews used to play in Eastern Europe, the tools of the nobles or kings which brought so much wrath down on their heads.

The anti-Semitic slogan of the 'antisemitism' smear merchants - it implies that all Jews are of the 'few' not the 'many'

Jamie replied that

 ‘Of course, the campaign serves interests - but that does not mean its claims should not be debunked. The Iraq War also served ruling interests, but it was still important to critique the arguments for war on the evidence.’

Which is of course true but the problem is that politically the whole campaign is based on debunking the lies of our opponents rather than pushing an alternative narrative that is about Palestine and Zionism.

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, one of the weakest essays in the collection by Richard Kuper, ‘Hue and Cry over UCU’, was written in 2011 for Open Democracy on the situation concerning the University College Union. The article was relevant then and irrelevant now. Richard’s comments on the EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism now the IHRA are ill-thought out and I’m sure he would no longer stand by them, in particular his comment that refers to ‘six relatively unproblematic examples of antisemitism’ being the first 6 examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ that is given.

In one sense this series of essays, which are highly uneven in quality, encapsulate all the mistakes made by people in the ‘anti-Semitism wars’ in the Labour Party.

As these wars show every sign of continuing I can only hope that some attention is paid to this analysis.

Tony Greenstein 

Jamie Stern-Weiner did his best to avoid any serious discussion of the relationship of Zionism to the antisemitism campaign

Smoke Without Fire (this review appears in Weekly Worker)

It is said that those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. It would seem that the contributors to this title were determined to prove the truth of this aphorism.

The centrepiece of this Internet book is Smoke Without Fire, referring to the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against the Labour Party: Their conclusion being that:

‘no persuasive evidence has been presented to demonstrate that antisemitism within the Labour Party has increased since 2015..’

How then to account for the widespread perception to the contrary? Why is it that between 15 June 2015 and 31 March 2019 there were five and a half thousand articles on Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ in the national press? [1]

Or to put it another way. How is it that the Windrush Scandal, when dozens of Black British citizens were illegally deported to the Caribbean has garnered only a fraction of such coverage? Why is it that genuine racism is a matter of indifference for the British media but ‘anti-Semitism’ garners such attention?

Jamie Stern-Weiner and friends have consciously avoided the question of Israel and Jamie clearly harbours illusions in Zionism as an ideology

Weiner and Maddison’s observe that:

‘There were no witches in Salem; Jewish elders did not gather in a graveyard at night; a Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy did not target Nazi Germany. The allegation that Labour is rife with antisemitism is of a piece with these fantastic antecedents.

But if the allegations of anti-Semitism against the Labour Party are of a piece with the belief that Salem was host to a coven of witches, then what were they about?  Where did they come from?  On this Weiner and Maddison and indeed virtually all the contributors are silent.

If Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ affair was not about anti-Semitism then what was it about? Virtually no one in this collection is prepared to call out the BBC/Daily Mail smear campaign for what it was. A vicious, right-wing campaign, using bogus allegations of anti-Semitism as a stick to beat a left-wing leader of the Labour Party who was held to represent a threat to all that the British Establishment held to be dear to them.

When the Daily Mail and the BBC are concerned about racism, then surely it cannot be too difficult to figure out what has happened? There seems to be a reluctance amongst these luminaries of the left elites to say what is or should be obvious namely that we have just witnessed the destabilisation of a political party by state actors, British and foreign.

At the beginning of 2017 Al Jazeera broadcast a four-part programme, The Lobby, which provided a snapshot of what had been happening.  Clearly the Israeli state and its surrogates, Labour Friends of Israel and the Jewish Labour Movement, were actively organising for the overthrow of Corbyn using anti-Semitism as their chosen weapon.

Equally clearly the British and American states were also involved. That is why there was no interest by the British government in inquiring as to why an Israeli intelligence operative, Shai Masot, was plotting the downfall of Britain’s Deputy Foreign Minister, Alan Duncan. Anyone acquainted with the actions of the CIA and the intelligence agencies, as documented by ex-CIA agent Phil Agee in Inside the Company, should not have been surprised. 

Just contrast this with the reaction should Al Jazeera’s programme have focussed on the activities of an Iranian political agent seeking the downfall of particular government ministers.

In Jeremy Corbyn we had the election of someone who was anti-Nato, a supporter of the Palestinians and a well known opponent of US foreign policy, to the leadership of the second major party in the US’s closest ally in Europe. Why would the Americans not intervene to prevent Corbyn becoming Prime Minister? Do the left social democrats and liberals who contributed to these essays really believe that the United States wouldn’t intervene in British politics if its interests were at stake?

In 20 or 30 years, when the present furore has died down, some enterprising young researcher or journalist, perhaps on The Guardian, will obtain details under freedom of information legislation about what really happened, which was a conspiracy against democracy.

Antisemitism and the Labour Party was distributed as an EBook two weeks before December 12^th. It claimed to ‘bring(s) together the most rigorous and penetrating analytical writings on the ‘Labour antisemitism’ affair.’ Unfortunately, with the exception of two articles by Norman Finkelstein and that by Justin Schlosberg, all the contributions suffer from the same fallacy, namely that what it calls the ‘strange events that have warped British politics since 2015’ are actually about anti-Semitism.

Finkelstein in his chapter on the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism points the finger at Zionism and Israel but others seem strangely reluctant. Daniel Finn’s Corbyn Under Fire concludes that if Chakrabarti’s  recommendation

‘to ‘use the term “Zionist” advisedly, carefully and never euphemistically ... and to ‘resist the use of Hitler, Nazi and Holocaust metaphors, distortions and comparisons in debates about Israel/Palestine’

had been heeded then ‘some of the controversies of the past two years could have been avoided.’ Complete nonsense. Indeed the exact reverse of the truth. Far from avoiding the use of the term ‘Zionist’ people should have emphasised that the attacks on the Labour Party came from the Zionist

If Luciana Berger could resurrect a six year old long erased mural in the East End to attack Corbyn with then why would Hitler comparisons make any difference?

But if people had fought back and not accepted the ‘anti-Semitism’ framework.  If they had argued that ‘Zionism’ meant a political settler colonial project that anti-Semites like Trump and Orban were only too happy to support then perhaps some much needed political clarification might have been injected.

Is it seriously suggested that when the Israel State funds campaigns against miscegenation and when mobs chant ‘Death to the Arabs’ or when Israeli law recognises the right of Jewish communities to bar Arabs as members, that comparisons with pre-Holocaust Nazi Germany are inappropriate?  That when Israel uses the Holocaust to justify its barbarism that it is inappropriate for us to respond in kind?

Was it anti-Semitic for Hannah Arendt in ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem: the Banality of Evil’ to compare Israeli laws forbidding marriage between Jew and Arab with those of the Nuremburg Laws? Was Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, an expert on fascism and a childhood survivor of the Polish ghetto of Przemyśl, wrong to write that in Israel there is a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’?

Jamie Stein-Werner continues where Finn left off with his report on the 2017 Labour Party Conference. He says that

‘whereas ‘Nazis[m]’ and ‘apartheid’ unambiguously refer to extreme oppression, ‘Zionism’ might denote any one along a spectrum of beliefs ranging from the harmful to the benign (e.g., support for the right of Jews to collective self-determination.’

It’s no wonder that the JLM had it so easy when even our supporters fail to understand that Zionism was a reflection of anti-Semitism and is the ideological font of racial supremacy in Israel.

This acceptance of Jewish racism originated with Jon Lansman’s Left Futures and Why the Left Must Stop Talking About ‘Zionism’. The fact that every act of racism in Israel is justified by reference to the ‘ideals’ of the Zionist vision is simply obliterated.

When appeals were made for the right of African refugees to stay in Israel Interior Minister Elli Yishai was quoted as saying that ‘The migrants are giving birth to hundreds of thousands, and the Zionist dream is dying’ [2] The whole debate around these refugees was conducted in terms of Zionism’s desire for as Jewish a state as possible and a permanent Jewish demographic majority.

Every act of racism in Israel is carried out in the name of preserving the ‘Jewish’ state and its majority. It is the failure to take this on board in their critique of Israel and Zionism that lies behind much of the failure of the opposition to the anti-Semitism witchhunt.

Only Finkelstein raised the issue of genuine racism against Black people which should have been the major plank of our fightback.

How many Jews have been shot dead by police or railroaded into jail? Whereas being Black or Muslim closes doors, being Jewish opens them.

Where was the anger with those, Tory and New Labour, who had introduced a ‘hostile environment’ policy which led to Windrush? Not one contributor pointed the finger at the Labour Right’s complicity in supporting the 2014 Immigration Act and in playing the race card.

I have long campaigned to highlight Tom Watson’s support for Labour MP Phil Woolas who was removed as an MP by the High Court after having waged an election campaign based on ‘making the white folk angry’. Or Watson’s role in the 2004 by-election in Hodge Hill where he issued a leaflet ‘"Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."

There was a total failure by Corbyn to call out the Daily Mail and Sun, who employed Katie Hopkins, who described refugees as ‘cockroaches’. This is also reflected in the contributions to this book.  We should have responded to the hypocritical nature of the attacks on us rather than scurrying to find ‘evidence’ of how many anti-Semites there were in the Labour Party.

Sentiments that Rebecca Long-Bailey finds difficult to endorse

6 days before the General Election I wrote Expect the worst, hope for the best. The night before the election, whilst campaigning for Chris Williamson, I penned an Open Letter to Seamus Milne which read that ‘the strategy of apologising for ‘anti-Semitism’ and appeasement of the Right had led to Disaster’.

I had sleepless nights asking myself how Corbyn could win. ‘What’ I asked myself, ‘had I missed’?  People were confident. Hundreds of Momentum supporters were flooding marginal constituencies. Was I a natural born Jeremiah, forever a Cassandra? It was clear to me that Corbyn Labour’s inability to stand up for its beliefs and to rebut the smears were going to result in an election defeat. The only question was ‘how bad it was going to be’. In 2017, when even my closest comrades in Brighton and Hove Momentum were gloomy I had been optimistic. In two blog articles I had predicted a hung parliament and even victory.

It was the inability of Corbyn and McDonnell to fight back against this state-inspired campaign, including throwing Chris Williamson to the wolves, that spelt the end. It was not that ‘anti-Semitism’ was raised on the doorstep, rather that his permanent apologising, temporising, failing to answer questions and an inability to go on the offensive and face down his critics that was not only depressing but demeaning. Corbyn appeared weak and it was this that led to the low opinion of him on the doorsteps. After all how would Corbyn and McDonnell stand up to a much fiercer onslaught when in government?

When I had been suspended in March 2016 for ‘comments you are alleged to have made’ (I only learnt what these comments were when I read The Telegraph and Times two weeks later) it was immediately clear that the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. In 2018 I was expelled as part of the ‘anti-Semitism’ moral panic as was Marc Wadsworth and then Jackie Walker. Ken Livingstone was forced out too and yet Corbyn failed to speak out

Anti-Semitism and the Labour Party contains 20 different contributions and there are 21 different testimonies from Jews in the Labour Party. The most obvious lacuna is that nowhere in the nearly 300 pages is there any contribution from someone, Jewish or non-Jewish, who has been the victim of Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.  Neither Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, Marc Wadsworth, Asa Winstanley or myself was invited to contribute. It is as if the testimony of those who were at the sharp end of what happened was of no account.

This arrogance reminds me of the question posed by Rudolph Vrba, the Jewish escapee from Auschwitz in April 1944. Vrba was deliberately ignored and rendered anonymous by Israel’s Holocaust historians, because what he had to say did not accord with Zionism’s holocaust narrative. Vrba asked who was the better historian: ‘those of us who saw the Nazis in action in Auschwitz’ or ‘those who did not have direct experience with the Nazis’? [3]

This book contains many good essays but there are also a considerable number of mundane stocking fillers. One of the worst is by David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialist Group. Appearing in July David spoke of ‘improvements’ in Labour’s procedures for handling complaints of anti-Semitism. David imagined that Labour’s right-wing had

‘been pushed back. The detail will be discussed more and refined before Labour Conference. And it has been confirmed that antisemitism will not be separated out but these processes will apply to all complaints that discrimination/abuse has occurred against members across the range of protected characteristics.

This is a pure flight of fantasy. At the Labour Party conference it was agreed that people would be expelled by a fast track procedure without so much as a hearing. In practice any statement critical of Israel can and does lead to expulsion. David was also silent on the unlawful suspension of Chris Williamson.

In reality this campaign was not about procedures. The focus on that was another red herring which unfortunately David and much of the JSG swallowed. However good the procedures (to do what?) they could never have satisfied Labour’s opponents.

Meanwhile all other examples of racism have been ignored. Black and Muslim people have been primary targets of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.  Anti-racist campaigner Marc Wadsworth, who played a pivotal role in the Stephen Lawrence campaign was expelled at the behest of Ruth Smeeth, a former Israel lobbyist for BICOM.

In Brighton and Hove notorious right-winger, Lukey Stanger, who stated that Travellers were ‘frequently a nasty blight on communities’ has been suspended for months with no sign of an impending expulsion. Stanger was protected by Tom Watson.

Luke Akehurst, the Director of We Believe in Israel who openly campaigned to defend Israel’s murder of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, including children, in Gaza by Israeli snipers,[4] has not been disciplined.  We can only assume that Palestinian lives are worth less than Israeli or Jewish lives.

David Rosenberg bears a greater responsibility than most. He lives in Corbyn’s constituency and knows Corbyn personally. David did his best to ensure that there was no criticism of Corbyn’s feeble tactics even though it should have been obvious that it was only counter-pressure that might have led to Corbyn fighting back.

Even worse Jon Lansman was (is?) a member of the JSG. When I posted an article on the Jewish Socialists’ Facebook Group it was removed by David’s partner, Julia Bard. When I persisted in criticising the JSG’s refusal to support Jackie Walker I was removed altogether.

David has been pivotal in the formation of Jewish Voice for Labour. I refused to join JVL because I opposed a Jewish only group when the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks were not about Jews or anti-Semitism. The first rule of any political campaign is not to accept your opponents’ terms of reference.

That is why JVL has failed to make any impression on the witchhunt or anti-Semitism campaign. The attacks were always about Israel, Zionism and wider British foreign policy, not Jews or anti-Semitism. JVL consistently refused to criticise Corbyn’s weak leadership or raise the wider question of racism in the Labour Party.

In the Chimera of British Anti-Semitism Norman Finkelstein notes that the fear in the Jewish community of an impending Corbyn government did not mean they had anything to fear.

If residents of Salem, Massachusetts, experienced deep anxiety about witches; if Americans experienced deep anxiety about Communists; ... if, for that matter, Christians experienced deep anxiety about Jewish ritual child-murderers – if an anxiety is widespread, surely it doesn’t necessarily, or even probably, follow that it is a rational fear. It could just as plausibly have been induced by powerful social forces standing to benefit from a deliberately contrived paranoia. (p.41)

Instead of tackling head on reports of the disaffection of British Jews the Jewish Chronicle’s campaign to instil fear was simply ignored and allowed to fester.

Where I disagree with Finkelstein’s is his references to an ‘outsized Jewish political power’. It is true that Zionist groups such as the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute boasts of such power. It is also true that Jews are disproportionately represented amongst the wealthy, in the media, politics and academia.

But does this therefore translate into Jewish Power? Do all Jews possess the same class interests? Unless we believe that Jews are acting in concert, as an organised block or caste, then we should avoid the ethnicisation of what are historic, political, social and economic phenomenon.

There is no separate Jewish interest or lobby in society. Of course the Zionist lobby purports to represent all Jews but we should not accept their claim. In the United States politics is ethnicised precisely because of the weakness of class politics. Lenni Brenner is another American anti-Zionist who falls into this trap.

Finkelstein is a brilliant writer however he is not infallible. Although he is not using the concept of ‘Jewish power’ in an anti-Semitic sense there is no doubt that ‘Jewish Power’ is both an anti-Semitic and a Zionist concept. It suits Zionism to pretend that Jews worldwide, apart from us ‘self haters’ all support Israel. It suits anti-Semites to make ‘Jew’ and ‘Israel’ synonymous.

It was Paul Eisen, whose alleged association with Corbyn first began the anti-Semitism campaign, who published ‘Jewish Power’, the first of 3 articles which mapped his coming out as a holocaust denier.[5]

Being Jewish is no barrier to being accused of 'antisemitism'

When Finkelstein says that ‘Were it not for the outsized power of British Jews, it’s hard to conceive that British society would be interminably chasing after a hobgoblin’ he has completely missed the point.  Just as there can be anti-Semitism without Jews, as in Eastern Europe, so there can be an anti-Semitism smear campaign without Jews as the United States may be about to prove with Bernie Sanders.

Daniel Finn got it right when he wrote that ‘Israel’s supporters are not an external force that has bent the British ruling class to its will. They are the outriders of that class.’ Zionism is the ruling class’s cutting edge. The fake anti-Semitism campaign had nothing whatsoever to do with ‘Jewish Power’. Daniel is also right when he wrote that ‘A narrative can still be false even if it contains truthful elements: in fact, there are very few that don’t.’  Indeed I would argue that in that one sentence Daniel summed up everything about the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears. Yes there were anti-Semites in the Labour Party. There always have been. The campaign was not however about them.

Of course there will be people with anti-Semitic or conspiracy ideas in their heads in the Labour Party. There always have been. But it was only when Corbyn was elected leader that the hunt began to find them. Such people are not a threat to Corbyn or even anti-Semitic in any meaningful sense. They are certainly no threat to Jews.

There will also be people in Labour who support racist immigration controls, who believe that migrants take British jobs and who believe that Gypsies are a social nuisance. The way to deal with them is by way of education and debate.  If Labour is to be the party of the working class then it cannot exclude those who offend its middle class sensibilities.

It is a sign of the theoretical and political poverty of the Labour Right that it resorted to disciplinary measures and it is equally a measure of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Labour Left that it has given way to the Right on this. This book does not challenge that vacuum.

Jews in Britain were the alibi, the pretext for the British Establishment. It was extremely useful to be able to wage the war against Corbyn in the name of Britain’s Jews. In much the same way that British imperialism justified its occupation of India by reference to its campaign against Suttee not the exploitation of the Indian peasantry. Opposition to anti-Semitism had a ring of moral righteousness that support for austerity lacked!

It was however the weakness of the Labour Left and this book reflects that weakness, that it failed to draw any conclusions from who supported the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. The same Daily Mail which supported Hitler and the British Union of Fascists and which campaigned against the admission of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Then there was the BBC and the Sun. Yet not once did Corbyn or Lansman point out these basic facts.

The ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was adopted by a Tory Party which has historically been riddled with anti-Semitism and which even today sits, in the European Parliament in the ECR group with fascists and anti-Semites.

Justin Schlosberg and Laura Laker’s article ‘Labour, Antisemitism, and the News - A Disinformation Paradigm’ is well worth reading for the detail it provides on the overwhelming bias, not only of the printed press but the broadcast media and the BBC in particular. They are the only contributors to refer to the outrageous and unlawful suspension of Chris Williamson MP.

Richard Kuper’s outdated Hue and Cry over the UCU adds nothing to the criticism of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism by Hugh Tomlinson QC, Geoffrey Robertson QC and Sir Stephen Sedley. It is truly abysmal. It is difficult to know why it was included. Kuper refers to ‘six relatively unproblematic examples of antisemitism’ amongst the 11 illustrations of ‘anti-Semitism’. In fact they are all problematic. His first example is

‘Calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion.’

Is Richard seriously suggesting that calling for the killing of Jews in the name of a ‘moderate’ ideology or religion is acceptable? Clearly what this ‘illustration’ is about is demonising Muslims.

Richard also says that ‘using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism’ – could hardly be anything but anti-Semitic.’ Where has Richard been? It is part of Zionist hasbara (propaganda) to associate criticism of Israeli practices today with medieval anti-Semitism. When criticism is made of documented examples of settlers poisoning Palestinian water sources, this is compared to medieval allegations that Jews poisoned wells. As Finkelstein notes:

Israeli hasbara (propaganda) itself promiscuously exploits the ‘blood libel’ charge (i.e., that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes) in order to silence critics by reversing its sting. mere mention of Palestinian children killed by Israel typically prompts accusations of a ‘Global Blood Libel against Israel’

Richard says that another example ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination’ ‘could be antisemitic.’ I disagree. There is no scenario in which this is anti-Semitic. It is the concept of a single Jewish people, in practice a Jewish race, which is anti-Semitic.

In what is a far more well thought out analysis of the IHRA Finkelstein argues that socialists, who for too long have sought to restrict free speech on the grounds of not ‘hurting the feelings’ of one group or another or because of a desire to achieve a ‘safe space’ (are there any under capitalism?) have colluded with the government’s attacks on free speech.

It is on the grounds of free speech that the Left should have made its stance, instead of being the censorious, nannying busy bodies that too many on the left have become. Instead of banning or expelling people for transphobia we should have encourage debate on the issue.

Finkelstein quotes Marx saying that ‘You must have doubts about everything’. This should be emblazoned on the Left’s banners.

Finkelstein also points to the problems with Brian Klug’s alternative definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ as

‘a form of hostility to Jews as Jews, where Jews are perceived as something other than what they are’.

I agree that anti-Semites often take issue with Jews for what they are, not for what they are not.  So someone who hates Jews for being too clever or good businessmen is not anti-Semitic! Brian’s definition is too clever by half and we would do better to rely on the OED definition of anti-Semitism: ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’

Only Antony Lerman makes the point in When Jews Are Just Fodder for the Tory Propaganda Machine that when Tories, like Jacob Rees-Mogg make reference to Jews as the ‘Illuminati’ pulling the strings, a genuinely anti-Semitic remark, no one criticises him. The same could be said of Boris Johnson’s book 72 Virgins which is replete with racist and anti-Semitic comments. This and the Tories support for Viktor Orban in the European Parliament

Jeremy Gilbert’s trite Antisemitism, Cosmopolitanism and the Politics of Labour’s ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Right-Wings is another Xmas stocking filler. Jeremy tells us that ‘there will be no more suspensions of party members simply because they support Corbyn and the party machinery think they can get away with suspending them.’ Where has Jeremy been?

Tom Mills and David Miller’s article for Ceasefire ‘Notes on Power, Elites, and Anti-Racism’ is a useful corrective to the idea that seems to have gotten hold that criticising elites in society is now anti-Semitic (presumably because Jews make up most of the elites!). According to Siobhan McDonagh MP, not the sharpest tool in the Labour Right’s toolbox, anti-capitalism is anti-Semitic because Jews are capitalists!  Thus the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ comes full circle.

The final article is ‘Jews, Antisemitism and the Law’ by Naomi Wayne who works for the Equal Opportunities Commission for Northern Ireland. It is a timely reminder of the pending investigation by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, who have made a partisan political intervention in Labour’s internal affairs launching an Inquiry into the accusations of anti-Semitism. 

When all the candidates for Labour leadership have committed themselves to accepting the EHRC investigation report we should be clear that this is a ruling class stitch-up.

Unfortunately this Ebook is less than the sum of its parts. I recommend that those interested in this subject read Bad News for Labour, whose book launch the Zionists tried unsuccessfully to stop at the Labour Party Conference and the earlier Labour’s Anti-Semitism Wars, to which I contributed.

Tony Greenstein

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[1]               Philo, Berry Schlosberg, Lerman & Miller, Bad News for Labour, p. vii,Pluto Press, London, 2019.

[2]           Israel PM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state, Guardian 20.5.12.

[3]           Ruth Linn, Escaping Auschwitz: A Culture of Forgetting - p. 108.

[4]               https://twitter.com/lukeakehurst/status/996742505193525248?lang=en

[5]           You can read Eisen’s article here and a response by Joel Finkel here. You will not that at this stage Finkel did not call Eisen a holocaust denier but it was clear, not least from his defence of Israel Shamir, that he was on the road to becoming one.