Starmer Promised to Tear Anti-Semitism Out of the Labour Party ‘By Its Roots’

Little Did We Know That He Would Achieve This By Driving Out Mark Elf, a Jewish ambulance driver and other Anti-Zionist and Anti-racist Jews

Today we are seeing the Labour Party being purged of Jewish anti-Zionists, Black and Muslim members in order to satisfy racists like Margaret Hodge. Hodge is the Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement. The JLM describes itself as the ‘sister party’ of the almost defunct racist Israeli Labor Party.

In 2007 New Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson accused Hodge of ‘using the language of the BNP’ after she said that ‘British families had a "legitimate sense of entitlement" over immigrants.’ The BNP wrote that

‘'Labour MP Margaret Hodge deserves a word of compliment from the BNP for her efforts to raise the thorny issue of social housing for native Britons, an issue that has been in our manifesto for years,'

This is the woman who had the audacity to call Jeremy Corbyn ‘a fucking anti-Semite’.

I’ve known Mark Elf for well over a decade from our work in Jews Against Zionism. He is a working class Jew. He was one of the most active people in the campaign against the anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon. He was one of those picketed Atzmon when he spoke at an SWP meeting in Bookmarks in June 2005.

Surprise, surprise, at the end of April Mark was suspended from the Labour Party after the usual false allegations, ‘tropes’, were made against him by the usual anonymous Zionist sources.

The tax dodger who covered up child abuse in Islington and who the BNP praised for her stance on housing White people, was reborn as an opponent of 'anti-Semitism' when Jeremy Corbyn came to power

At this time Mark was working as a volunteer ambulance driver during the COVID-19 crisis. Everyday he was risking his life in order to help sick people survive. The Labour bureaucrats who were searching his social media, they went back as far as 2007 in their search for dirt, risked nothing in their attempts to purge the Labour Party of Jewish anti-racists. These pathetic worms had nothing better to do with their miserable lives than to ‘prove’ someone is racist by digging deep into their social media. 

Although Mark was finally reinstated he was so appalled by a process whereby the racists administering Labour's purge are suspending and expelling anti-racists for 'anti-Semitism' that he has now resigned from the Labour Party.

Racism exists in society such as when the Police stop Black (not Jewish) people for driving a car on the assumption that they must be up to no good.  Racism doesn’t exist on social media as an actualite.  No one has died from a tweet but they do die when American Police, thanks to training from Israeli Police, put their knees on people’s necks.

There is nothing more that Zionists hate than Jewish anti-Zionists.  In their eyes we are ‘traitors’ ‘kapos’  or their favourite term, borrowed from the Nazi lexicon, ‘self haters’. Mark’s real offence is being an anti-racist Jew.

Mark wrote a cutting and devastating reply to Labour’s pen pushers calling into question both their integrity and competence. Mark pointed out that 

‘whoever it is besmirching my character appears to have been stalking me online for some years going back at least to 2007. That being the case, they must know that my suspension has come at a time when I have been engaged in a project as an ambulance driver taking Covid19 patients to and from hospital. In my work I am more exposed than most people to a potentially deadly virus and it is known that stress makes people more vulnerable to sickness of many kinds, especially viruses, than during normal times. You are aware that your actions are intrinsically stressful because you have lately been including details of the Samaritans in case you drive people to suicide. In doing this you are confirming rumours that people are indeed taking their own lives because of the hurt you are doing to them.

You have to wonder what it is that is going through the mind of the scabs and pond life that the Labour Party employs in these investigations. Jack London summed them up best when he wrote ‘Ode to a scab’

After God had finished the rattlesnake, the toad, and the vampire, He had some awful substance left with which He made a scab. A scab is a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a waterlogged brain, and a combination backbone made of jelly and glue. Where others have hearts, he carries a tumor of rotten principles.

It says everything you need to know about the Jewish Labour Movement that their Parliamentary Chair is someone who was praised by the British National Party

When the Labour Party ‘campaign against anti-Semitism’ involves suspending and expelling Jewish anti-Zionists then you know what this is really about. It is as if, during the years of Apartheid in South Africa, the Labour Party had applauded the Nationalist Party for the attacks it made on Whites opposed to Apartheid. The sad truth is that the Labour Party today is run by racists in the interests of racists.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the 6 pieces of ‘evidence’ that were sent to Mark, that is in any way anti-Semitic. They are all criticisms of Zionism, Israel or their supporters and lobbyists.

It is abundantly clear that Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism witchhunt is a war against discussion and a war against intellectual debate. It is Labour’s equivalent of book burning whereby any phrase or quote can be torn out of context and slotted into a compartment titled ‘anti-Semitism’.

It is a war of barbarians against any civilised discourse. It’s no surprise that one of Mark’s target, the CST, has written again to Bristol University demanding the sacking of Professor David Miller for having criticised them this week in a Zoom meeting.

The aim of the witchhunt is to prevent any discussion of Israel’s war crimes and the role of Zionism in enabling those crimes.

Gerald Ronson - owner of the largest private company in Britain - Heron - and an extreme racist and Islamaphobe

The biggest joke is where the Draft Charges state that Item 5 of the ‘evidence’ ‘Undermines Labour’s ability to campaign against any form of racism.’ What campaign?  What undermines Labour’s ability to campaign against racism is an ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign in support of the State of Israel, the most racist state in the world. By proclaiming that British Jews effectively destroyed Corbyn the campaign has done its best to aid anti-Semitism.

What has stopped a campaign against racism has been the record of previous Labour governments in demonising asylum seekers, and first launching the ‘hostile environment’ policy that the Tories under Theresa May adopted with such relish.

The Witchhunter’s Six Pieces of ‘Evidence’

1.           This is a tweet that attacks the Zionist Community Security Trust for combining security for the Jewish community with lobbying on behalf of Israel.  It was founded by anti-Muslim Zionist bigot Gerald Ronson, convicted of share-trading fraud in the 1980s and gaoled as part of the Guinness fraud trial, who is the Chair of the CST’s trustees. There is of course nothing anti-Semitic about it.

In Ronson’s 2017 address to the CST Annual Dinner, he said:

“I don’t doubt that the Labour leader opposes anti-Semitism when it comes from Nazis but when it comes dressed up as anti-Zionism he is more likely to ask if he can join in. This is far more subversive than the danger posed by Nazis.” 

And this is the Zionist attitude to anti-Semitism that lies behind the false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ that were levelled at Corbyn and the Labour Left by groups like the CST. It is not neo-Nazism or White Supremacist that is the danger, as we can see with Israel’s alliance with Donald Trump and the open admiration for Israel by neo-Nazis such as Richard Spencer, who describes himself as a ‘White Zionist’, and Andrei Brevik. It is opposition to Zionism which they fear and hate.

2.           The second item dates back 13 years to 2007.  It appears to be a comment on Mark’s blog. It talks about the ‘propensity to dishonesty’’ of many if not most Jews with respect to Israel. It says that Jews are heading to disaster as a result of a ‘culture of deceit’.

It is a discussion by one Jew about the Jewish community. In so far as most Jews in Britain are fooling themselves about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East and a light unto nations, Mark is correct.  There is unfortunately an obtuse political culture among British Jews aimed at blotting out anything unpleasant that Israel does and hiding behind a curtain labelled ‘anti-Semitism’.

It is no surprise that Labour’s tawdry investigators, who in different times would have been employed by the Stasi or Gestapo, pounce against any intellectual debate or discussion because anything cerebral disturbs them automatically. Zionism depends on people accepting its myths and bogus assertions as if they were articles of faith.

3.           Item 3 is an innocuous piece about the right-wing and pro-Zionist nature of the British press.  Presumably telling the truth is also anti-Semitic.

4.           Item  4 is a tweet about how the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign has helped genuine anti-Semites and racists, like Boris Johnson, into power. It is an expression of opinion.  Perhaps the observation that the Board of Deputies and the Zionists helped a genuine racist and anti-Semite, Boris Johnson, into power touched a raw nerve.

5.           Item 5 simply says that most of the allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ have been made by racists like the JLM and LFI.  It is in response to a tweet by Margaret Hodge, the Islington Council leader who covered up for child abuse and who Tony Blair then made Childrens’ Minister! It was like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.

Yes she even had to pay libel damages to one of the victims who she defamed. Hodge is complaining that those suspended still have the right to vote in Labour elections.  Unfortunately no one seems to have told the Hodge that being suspended is like being charged in a court.  You are presumed to be innocent until guilty.  Presumably the Hodge thinks that the accused in the Labour Party should be treated like Arabs in Israel and that merely being charged should be evidence of guilt.

6.           Is a tweet about how someone is in denial about Zionist collaboration with the Nazis.  The Zionist movement in Britain during the Holocaust was a Quisling movement that sought to work with the Jews oppressors.  Their only aim was to create a ‘Jewish’ state.  The Jews themselves were discarded. Even an Israeli court in 1955 decided that the leader of Hungarian Zionism, Rudolf Kasztner was a collaborator but Zionists today in the JLM don’t like to be reminded of their history.

Below is the first page of Mark’s response to the witchhunters.  The rest of it, which is mainly a response to the witchhunters can be seen here.

Letter of Response of Mark Elf to Witchhunters (page 1)

Dear Comrades

This is my reply to your email of 30 April 2020 and the Draft Charge and Questions.

In my response I will be calling into question both your integrity and your competence.

First, I must say that I am disgusted that whoever it is besmirching my character appears to have been stalking me online for some years going back at least to 2007. That being the case, they must know that my suspension has come at a time when I have been engaged in a project as an ambulance driver taking Covid19 patients to and from hospital. In my work I am more exposed than most people to a potentially deadly virus and it is known that stress makes people more vulnerable to sickness of many kinds, especially viruses, than during normal times. You are aware that your actions are intrinsically stressful because you have lately been including details of the Samaritans in case you drive people to suicide. In doing this you are confirming rumours that people are indeed taking their own lives because of the hurt you are doing to them. Whoever's bidding you are doing in this is deliberately seeking to appear ruthless and they are succeeding at that. They may even cause antisemitism by their/your actions. And of course by following instructions instead of telling the complainant to consider what they are doing and to back off during this time, you are culpable for your own actions.

In my case, the false allegations against me, including your own rehashing of apparently genuine quotes to make them appear like generalisations against my fellow "Jewish people" rather than comments about a state, some people and certain named organisations which they obviously were, you aren't causing me hurt except I do find it sad that you have resorted to such dishonesty. I also worry that you can't seem to distinguish between various social media (see my take on question 2. I now realise why your reordering of my comments looks so strange with a tweet from c 2020, two blog comments from 2007 and then three tweets from c 2020). Also you might be acting on a distortion of the McPherson Principle which is supposed to arise out of offensive incidents not invented ones and it doesn’t allow for a bogus definition of any form of racism, especially one which is internally contradictory and racist in its own right.

You can read Mark's full response to Labour's witchhunters here

Cowardice and Opportunism - Counterfire Virtue Signal that they will Obey the Zionists’ 10 Commandments

Lindsey German reassures the Labour Party that Stop the War Coalition will have nothing to do with expelled members of the Labour Party

(A shorter version of this blog post, Cowardiceand Opportunism can be read in this week’s issue of Weekly Worker)

This is a meeting to defend free speech on Palestine and Zionism and to fight the McCarthyist campaign to no platform anti-Zionists - you can access is via Youtube or Facebook 

Conceding to the charge of 'anti-Semitism' against anti-Zionists

It is always disconcerting when members of groups claiming to be on the Marxist or socialist left, jettison their principles and basic solidarity for the sake of unprincipled alliances with those to their right. It is usually called Opportunism or Political Cowardice. Unfortunately that is true of the SWP break-away, Counterfire.

During the course of Labour’s leadership campaign the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which has support for Israel, right or wrong, hardwired into its constitution, issued an updated version of the 10 Commandments.  Their 5^th Commandment was a slight change on the version handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai.

Instead of ‘honour your father and mother’ there is ‘thou shalt not have anything to do with those expelled or suspended from the Labour Party.’ The title of these commandments is ‘Provide no platform for bigotry’.

The Zionists’ false anti-Semitism campaign against the Labour Party has been a prime example of what Orwell termed ‘doublethink’. Racists accusing anti-racists of racism and bigots accuse their opponents of bigotry. 

This is the same Board of Deputies which has just agreed to take no position on Israel’s annexation (theft) of a third of the West Bank.  It refuses even to comment on Netanyahu’s declaration that Palestinians in the territories annexed to Israel will not be granted Israeli citizenship. That Keir Starmer takes his orders on how to fight ‘anti-Semitism’ from a group that justifies Apartheid in Israel speaks volumes about Starmer’s statement of solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

Rosa Parks in a 'white' seat on a bus

It is of course of a piece with his condemnation of the 10,000 strong demonstration in Bristol which toppled the statue of Edward Colston and threw it in the River Avon. No doubt, if Starmer had been around in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to accept segregation on a bus he would have told her that although segregation should have gone long ago the law must be obeyed.

The Daily Mail too is eager to fight 'anti-Semitism'

Don’t Leave Organise Meeting

On April 29^th at a Don’t Leave Organise meeting of 600, Diane Abbot and Bell Ribeiro-Addy were the main speakers. Jackie Walker and myself spoke from the audience. The very next day all hell broke loose with the Jewish Chronicle heading ‘Communal outrage over participation of Abbott and Ribeiro-Addy’. Of course British Jews were completely unconcerned about this contrived affair but the Zionist leaders of it were certainly ‘outraged’ at people exercising freedom of speech.

The Board of Deputies demanded that the two MPs should be suspended. Starmer reprimanded both of them for not having scoured the audience to pick out people expelled or suspended from the Labour Party. 

Speaking in the same meeting with two Jewish anti-Zionists is now defined as anti-Semitic under Sir Keir Starmer! An allegation which is about as logical as saying that the Earth is flat. But if you repeat a lie long enough, as Goebbels observed, it then becomes received wisdom. Goebbels also stated that the truth is the biggest enemy of the fascist state.

Given the numbers being expelled under the ‘fast track’, no hearing procedures that Corbyn introduced, there’s going to be very great difficulties knowing who is allowed to speak in the future!

Banned Persons Under Apartheid

What one would expect of Sir Keir Starmer QC, being a former Director of Public Prosecutions, is that he proposes draft legislation to enforce the Board’s Commandments.  If he is looking for a legal precedent he could do worse than look to South Africa’s Internal Security Act 1992 which governed the category of banned persons. Under this Act, a banned person was prohibited from attending meetings of any kind, speaking in public, or publishing or distributing any written material. It proscribed broadcasters and the press from broadcasting, publishing or reporting the banned person's words.

This would be much fairer on MPs and other Labour Party members because it would obviate the need to know the background of all those in their audience.

Original advert for Birmingham StWC Meeting

Salma Yaqoob and Stop the War Coalition

On 12^th May I was invited to speak to a Birmingham Stop the War Committee meeting along with Paul Kelemen. Salma Yaqoob was also invited to speak and the meeting was advertised as such.

Zionist ex-MP and warmonger Ian Austin attacks Salma Yaqoob

Almost immediately the Zionists, in the form of former Labour MP Ian Austin and the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism  demanded that Salma be suspended from the Labour Party. Salma herself denied having agreed to speak but given that the Right is out to get her, a tactical withdrawal in the circumstances would be totally understandable.

Which didn’t stop the New Statesman’s Ailbhe Rea pontificating that ‘Starmer is facing his first test over anti-Semitism’. The irony is that the New Statesman was founded by a genuine anti-Semite, Sidney Webb, who once exclaimed that ‘French, German, Russian socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free.’ His explanation being that ‘There’s no money in it.’ [Paul Kelemen, The British Left & Zionism – History of a Divorce, p. 20, Manchester University Press, 2012]

The vile Zionist group, CAA, are criticised by StWC as 'irresponsible' 

The reality is that Labour anti-Semitism, the genuine kind that is, has been the repository of the Right, figures like Herbert Morrison.

But at least the New Statesman had the good grace, after complaints from Jackie and myself, to alter Rea’s abysmal piece of writing by accepting that neither of us were expelled for anti-Semitism. Even the New Statesman, mouthpiece for the Fabians and the Labour Right accepts that lies need should be corrected.

Lindsey German

Would that the same were true of Lindsey German, Convenor of Stop the War Committee and one of the founders of Counterfire. Counterfire likes to present itself as the with-it, up-to-date revolutionary and avante garde alternative to the staid and boring Socialist Workers Party from which it originated.

Stop the War Coalition Statement that Counterfire's Lindsey German Endorses 

When the furore over Salma Yaqoob erupted, Stop the War Coalition, of which she is a patron, issued a statement in defence of Salma. No one can complain of this, even though the statement was extremely defensive and goes out of its way to state that it ‘is implacably opposed to anti-Semitism’ thus lending credence to the idea that the attacks on Salma and the two Black MPs were really about anti-Semitism. It also, in the context of condemning the vitriol and abuse levelled against the three Black women said that it is ‘deeply irresponsible of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism to be adding fuel to this fire.’

Counterfire refused to stand up to the Zionist attacks on free speech

The CAA is a far-Right, Islamaphobic organisation, with close ties to the Israeli Embassy and almost certainly funded by the Israeli state.  Calling it ‘irresponsible’ for encouraging this abuse is like asking Tommy Robinson to condemn Islamaphobia. That is what fascists and racists do.

The statement strenuously avoids using the terms ‘Zionist’ or ‘Apartheid’ to describe the Israeli state instead calling for ‘justice’ for the Palestinians, which is something most Zionists could sign up to. It is a liberal phrase that avoids the political questions at the heart of the Palestinians’ Question.

The statement goes on to say that Stop the War Committee ‘refuse(s) to accept that criticism of the Israeli government and its policies can be construed as anti-Semitic.’ Again this is liberal Zionist phraseology not anti-Zionism. Even the most right-wing Zionists, including the CAA accepted that mere criticism of Netanyahu and the Israeli government isn’t anti-Semitic. The IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism is quite clear about this.  It states that:

‘criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.’

 It is only when people criticise the Jewish supremacist, i.e. Zionist nature of the Israeli state itself, or in the words of the IHRA

‘claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor’

that the accusation of anti-Semitism is levelled. Far from owing anything to a Marxist analysis this is just liberal flatulence, pure sound and fury signifying an abandonment of any class analysis of the Israeli state.  I don’t believe that this is accidental. 

John Rees

Sir Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge, who is himself Jewish, is hardly a revolutionary socialist as John Rees and Lindsey German would claim to be.  Yet Sedley in ‘Defining Anti-Semitism’ was able to deconstruct the IHRA in a way that Counterfire and Stop the War Committee seem completely unable to.  Sedley wrote that:

‘Endeavours to conflate the two [Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism] by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new.... ‘

Sedley went on to state that the seventh IHRA illustration of ‘anti-Semitism’

‘‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.’

‘bristles with contentious assumptions about the racial identity of Jews, assumptions contested by many diaspora Jews but on which both Zionism and anti-Semitism fasten, and about Israel as the embodiment of a collective right of Jews to self-determination.’

It is a sad day when so-called revolutionaries find themselves to the right of a former Court of Appeal Judge!

Why do I say that this liberal Zionist hogwash is not just accidental or sloppy wording but a deliberate attempt to accommodate to Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign and in particular the surrender of the Campaign Group of MPs to that campaign?

It lies in the final two sentences of the statement which read:

‘Local StWC groups act autonomously in deciding their platforms, but we note that Tony Greenstein has never been asked to address a national StWC meeting.  StWC rejects both anti-Semitism and abusive language in political debate.’

This is, as I told Lindsey German, nothing less than political scabbing. Political and class treachery. It is saying to the Labour Right and Ian Austin that unfortunately local Stop the War groups are autonomous and the national group can do nothing about them.  However the National Stop the War Committee is more responsible and has never had and never would have Tony Greenstein on its platforms.

Why else advertise the fact that I’ve ‘never been asked to address a national StWC meeting’? Does StWC regularly publish lists of people who they are not going to invite to address them?!

The final sentence makes it even clearer.  The statement had already said that the StWC was ‘implacably opposed to anti-Semitism’. Why repeat it? It is abundantly clear that it can only refer to me. It also refers to ‘abusive language’.  This was precisely the charge or should I say pretext that was levelled at me during my expulsion.

Permit me to give a few examples of ‘abuse’ that I was guilty of. The first was when I used the term ‘crooked McNicol’ about the Labour Party’s General Secretary, Iain McNicol. My charge sheet stated that

‘Mr Greenstein uses the word "crook" or "crooked" to describe Mr lain McNicol no less than 17 times’ .

It went on to explain that ‘A crook is a dishonest or criminal person. Mr Greenstein uses the work to abuse Mr McNicol.’ I agree with their definition! The reason I called McNicol crook was that thousands of Labour Party members had been suspended for the sole ‘crime’ of voting for Jeremy Corbyn.  My own vote, as a registered supporter, was fished out of the electronic ballot box. 

Calling McNicol ‘crooked’ was not abuse but an accurate description. Well after Labour’s leaked report this was precisely the adjective that Len McCluskey used!

Another example of the ‘abuse’ I was guilt of was when, according to the same charge sheet,

‘In the same article, Mr Greenstein insults Tom Watson MP by saying that his behaviour reminds him of the comment that he has "every quality of a dog except loyalty"

Was this abuse? After Corbyn was elected leader Watson pledged his undying loyalty. I think we know how that turned out.

The CAA, in its attack on Salma Yaqoob noted, the ‘second charge’ at my expulsion hearing

‘related to abuse, including calling the Jewish then-Labour MP Dame Louise Ellman a “supporter of child abuse”

 The CAA is, for once, correct. In January 2016 and again in February 2018, in debates in the House of Commons on Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children, Ellman defended Israel’s abuse, including sexual abuse, blindfolding, torture, beatings and isolation of Palestinian children on ‘security’ grounds. Nothing moved her. Is it seriously suggested that my description of Ellman was abuse?

The Origins of Counterfire

Counterfire’s repetition of this charge is truly shameful. And why has it done so?  Because it seeks the patronage of Labour MPs and other worthies. Rather than standing up for its principles it bows to their prejudices and what is the received wisdom of the ruling class that the Labour Party is overrun with anti-Semitism.

The behaviour of Counterfire, which effectively controls StWC, is not accidental.  Counterfire came out of the SWP. It was a right-wing split. When the SWP’s coalition with George Galloway in Respect collapsed in 2008, John Rees took the blame.  It was he who had led the break-up of the Socialist Alliance in order to form a cross-class non-socialist party, Respect, based on communalism. In Respect’s founding conference in 2004 Rees had argued that

“We … voted against the things we believed in, because, while the people here are important, they are not as important as the millions out there. We are reaching to the people locked out of politics. We voted for what they want.”

The things the  SWP voted against in Respect included a woman’s right to choose in deference to Galloway’s anti-abortion views.

There was also what Socialist Unity called John Rees and the Tory Money. In essence a cheque for $10,000 was sent to Respect by Khansaheb Civil Engineering, a Dubai-based subsidiary of Interserve plc private finance experts.

Interserve managed a number of PFI-backed schools and hospitals in the UK. The boss was Lord Blackwell, head of the Conservative government’s policy unit from 1995 to 1997. When Galloway insisted the money was sent back, since he could smell a rat, Rees got the donor to make it out to a now long forgotten SWP front, Organising for Fighting Unions.

When the SWP Central Committee found out it insisted that Rees return the cheque again! It is clear that Rees was quite prepared to make a bonfire of his principles in order for Respect and now Counterfire to succeed.  In essence there are no principles that he isn’t prepared to sacrifice.

Solidarity or a lack thereof

Perhaps the most fundamental of all socialist principles is solidarity against the common enemy.  Whatever our differences as socialists when we see fellow socialists under attack from the capitalist state or their lackeys in the Labour Party socialists express solidarity and give support.  This is really the ABC of socialism. 

The SWP were therefore quite right to remove John Rees from their Central Committee although they were clearly to blame for ever having agreed to the Respect Party in the first place. Lindsey German accompanied and supported Rees throughout, resigning from the Labour Party with him.

When I first read the statement on Salma Yaqoob I assumed that the references to me were penned by an office novice. Perhaps naively I assumed that wiser heads would delete the sentences in question.  I therefore wrote on 23 May and when there was no reply I wrote again a week later asking that the statement be amended. On 4 June Lindsey German responded in her role as Convenor of StWC: It was short, sweet and to the point:

‘In response to your communications: We are not changing the statement issued, which made no allegations against you.  We will not engage in any further correspondence on this issue.’

It was, as they say economical with the truth! It is true there was no direct allegations against me but, as libel lawyers will argue, there was an innuendo meaning which made it quite clear that allegations were being made. The sole reason being to placate and reassure Labour MPs and trade union bureaucrats that StWC would not be taking up the cudgels against the false anti-Semitism campaign that led to Jeremy Corbyn’s removal.

What is truly pitiful is that Counterfire’s Lindsey German, and presumably Counterfire itself, sees no connection between preventing imperialist wars and the Zionist use of ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon of political war. Indeed it seems to see no connection between Zionism and imperialism, not least because it doesn’t seem to acknowledge there is such a thing as Zionism.

The Irony of John Rees, Lindsey German and Gilad Atzmon

The irony is that if anyone was guilty of tolerating and condoning anti-Semitism it is Rees and German. Between 2005 and 2010 the SWP had a close working relationship with Gilad Atzmon, an open anti-Semite who has doubted the veracity of the Holocaust.

In June 2005 Jews Against Zionism held a picket of an SWP meeting with Atzmon as the speaker at Bookmarks. You can read the statement we issued after the picket on Labournet.  It is headed The Socialist Workers Party - Apologists for Racism?

Atzmon has written so much anti-Semitic material it is difficult to know where to start.

In Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman I noted that Atzmon subscribed to the world Jewish conspiracy theory, the kernel of Nazi anti-Semitism, when he wrote

‘we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously.’

Even more disgustingly Atzmon wrote that

‘‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war?... Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next-door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East.’

For over 5 years the SWP worked with Atzmon, defending him throughout as an Israeli anti-Zionist. Rees and German said nothing.

Throughout this time I wrote more than a dozen articles for Weekly Worker attacking the SWP’s links with Atzmon and calling on them to cut them. For example in February 2008 I wrote Time to say goodbye, the subtitle of which was ‘Why does the SWP not break its links with holocaust-denier Gilad Atzmon?’

As Asa Winstanley, the Associate Editor of Electronic Intifada tweeted, I was Atzmon's nemesis.  I made it my mission to purge the Palestine Solidarity Campaign of all traces of his influence. Not because Jews would suffer as a consequence of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism but because the Palestine solidarity movement would. 

Yet despite this I do not accuse either Rees or German of anti-Semitism. What they are is political opportunists, who use revolutionary rhetoric to cover up their reformism and complete lack of socialist principles. Even to the extent of working with a well-known anti-Semite. What I cannot accept is their innuendo allegation that I have ever tolerated anti-Semitism.

It is this opportunism, the desire to have the name of an MP adorn their notepaper that leads to them being willing to concede to the Zionist anti-Semitism campaign, to the point where they echo the witchhunters’ accusations. Likewise their decision to frame their own criticism of Israel not in terms of an anti-Zionist, settler colonial analysis and anti-apartheid perspective but in terms which even liberal Zionists could accept.

Tony Greenstein