KAPO - the Anti-Semitic Insult that Zionists and their anti-Semitic friends use when attacking anti-Zionists

Eli Valley’s Cartoon Highlights How Today’s Christian Fascists, neo-Nazis and Zionists have no sense of irony

The insult ‘kapo’ was first popularised by Trump’s Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. In fact he used it, not against Jewish anti-Zionists but against the liberal American Zionist group, J-Street.

Yesterday I was sent a brilliant cartoon from Jewish Currents, a paper of the American Jewish left in which he satirises those who shout ‘kapo’ whilst separating children from their parents in Trump’s concentration camps on the border.  Referring to those Jews who serve Trump faithfully, like arch-Zionist Sheldon Adelson and Stephen Miller, he observed that “kapo” doesn’t begin to plumb the depths of their betrayal.’

Zionists, like most racists, don’t do irony because if they did they would suffer the self-destruction of their own identity as they began to appreciate that if anyone approximates to collaborators, which is the essence of the charge, it is they.

I don’t mean by that just the trade agreement between Nazi Germany and the Zionist movement in 1933, Ha'avara, which broke the International Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany.

Nor do I mean the betrayal of half a million Hungarian Jews in 1944 by  the representative of Hungarian Zionism Rudolph Kasztner, whereby the Auschwitz Protocols, which revealed the existence and purpose of Auschwitz, were deliberately suppressed in order to preserve an agreement between the Zionist leaders and Eichmann.

After all Zionist collaboration with anti-Semitism was explained by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl when, at the height of the Dreyfus Affair he confided to his Diaries that:

In Paris... I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to 'combat' anti-Semitism.

The memorial to the murdered Jews of Pittsburgh

Zionism ‘pardoned’ anti-Semitism because it agreed that Jews don’t belong in non-Jewish society.  Zionism believes that Jews, all Jews, should emigrate to Israel, their ‘real home’. In the wake of the Pittsburgh massacre, Avi Gabbay, leader of the Israeli Labour Party told the Jews of America that their place was in Israel, which is what their murderer Robert Burstow also believed.

Back in 1933, as Jews prepared to campaign against the newly installed Nazi government Berl Katznelson, Ben Gurion’s deputy, founder of Mapai and editor of Davar, saw the rise of Hitler as “an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have”. [Zionism and Nazi Germany, Francis Nicosia, p.91]

Zionism opposed ‘refugeeism’ the saving of Jews for its own sake. Their ‘logic’ was that there was no point in Jews going to any country other than Palestine because that would merely stimulate fresh anti-Semitism. Hence why Ben Gurion and the Jewish Agency opposed the Kindertransport which saved 10,000 Jewish children in the wake of Kristalnacht:  Ben Gurion told Mapai that

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel. [Shabtai Teveth, the Burning Ground, p.855]

I mentioned irony.  What could be more ironic than those who belong to a movement that collaborated with Nazis and anti-Semites calling their opponents collaborators?

The kapos were themselves prisoners who were destined for extermination. They had no control over their situation and their collaboration, if that is what it was, was forced. Who knows what any of us would do in such a situation? The Jewish Agency was under no such compulsion yet it willingly collaborated lobbying the Gestapo not to allow Jewish emigration to countries other than Palestine.

Being called a kapo by Zionists reminds me of Britain First holding a demonstration outside Didsbury mosque and chanting ‘racist scum off our streets.’ Today we have the spectacle of racists calling their opponents collaborators with racism. Of course it makes no sense when the racists portray themselves as anti-racists however the National Front and BNP used to try and portray themselves as defending Whites against Black racism.

One of the ironies of the Zionist use of 'kapos' is that it is a frequent occurrence for Zionists to desire that their Jewish opponents had perished in the Holocaust. Aurora Levins Morales, a Black Jewish woman in New York, speaks of 'The Jews who write to tell me that I should have died in a Nazi concentration camp before living to denounce the crimes of Israel.' [On Anti-semitism, JVP, p.107, Haymarket Books, 2017]

James Dyer's Christian forefathers 80 years ago would have been opposing the entry of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany

I mention this because a particularly vile Christian Zionist, James Dyer, who is part of the EDL loving Sussex Friends of Israel, which is attempting to disrupt Brighton PSC stall, accused me of being a kap. My retort was that if I was a kapo be must be a Nazi! I suspect he didn’t understand why.

Dyer is part of the fundamentalist Christian support for Zionism which is based on the ‘End Times’, which is the belief that Christians will be summoned to Heaven by Christ at the Rapture. This occurs before a "Great Tribulation" prophesied in Matthew 24–25; Mark 13 and Luke 21. The Tribulation is described in the book of Revelation.  

As part of this scenario those Jews who don’t convert to Christianity will be die at the battle of Armageddon as part of the second coming. The most famous advocate of this is President of Christians United for Israel, John Hagee, who also believes that Hitler was an agent of God sent to drive the Jews to Israel! This led John McCain when standing against Obama to turn down Hagee’s sponsorship. Hagee was nonetheless one of two  Protestant Pastors invited to preside over the  opening of the American embassy in Jerusalem.  Who better to have than someone who believes that Hitler did god’s work.

The Biblical 'return' of the Jews to Palestine justifies any and all human rights abuses

Indeed they were more than ironic given the history of Christian anti-Semitism. In Germany itself the German Evangelical Church installed in 1933 the pro-Nazi Bishop Ludwig Muller as Reich Bishop. In Slovakia it was the Catholic priest Father Tiso who presided over the first deportations to Auschwitz.

It is therefore no surprise that today the successors of Muller and Tiso are to be found supporting the Zionists and decrying any notion of Palestinian rights. It is even less of a surprise that they assuage their consciences with the taunt of ‘Kapo’.

Liberal Democrats Suspend British Peer for Supporting Palestinian Rights

The Anti-Semitism Witch-hunt Spreads to the Lib-Dems

On the principle that there is no purpose served by reinventing the wheel, I am reposting Richard Silverstein's excellent post on the attack, by the Lib Dems trivial and superficial Christian Zionist leader, Tim Farron, on one of the few principled people in the Lib Dems, Baroness Jenny Tonge.   Because Jenny has stood up for the Palestinians when the rest of her party collapsed into supporting the 'anti-Semitism' narrative, she was suspended and promptly quit this neo-Blairite party.

Apparently the remarks to which exception were taken were made at a meeting Jenny Tonge hosted on behalf of the Palestinian Return Centre.  A speaker compared Israel to ISIS.  What is wrong with that?  Israel is known to support Al Nusra, Al Qaeda's franchise in Syria and there is a lot of evidence that it supports ISIS too, since its main enemy is the Shia axis as it is described.

As for blaming the Jews for Hitler.  This is wrong, however Pastor John Hagee, President of Christians United 4 Israel did just that when he said that Hitler was god's agent sent to drive the Jews to Israel.  Although John McCain distanced himself from Hagee in the 2008 Presidential election, Abe Foxman of the ADL gave him support saying that

'Pastor Hagee has devoted his life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel.  We are grateful for his efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism and to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel.'

Many ultra orthodox Jews around Agudat Yisrael,  which is part of Netanyahu's governing coalition hold that it was Jewish sinfulness that caused the Holocaust.  What is that if not blaming Jews for the Holocaust?  See Sefardi Rabbi Blames Assimilated Jews For The Holocaust

Tony Greenstein

October 28, 2016 By Richard Silverstein

Baruch Spinoza, ‘heretic’

For decades I’ve joked about  an institution I “founded” called the Spinoza Society.  It’s a group of distinguished Jews who, over the ages, have been ostracized or excommunicated from their respective Jewish communities for holding views outside the mainstream.  They were dissenters who chose a different path.  One that took them outside the mainstream, but resulted in ultimate vindication.  Of course the first, and charter member was Baruch Spinoza.  He was excommunicated from the  Amsterdam Jewish Community in the 17th century for speaking heresies in which he denied the Afterlife and that God acted outside the natural order.  His co-religionists deemed such views as dangerous and sent him packing.

If we look for the first Jews expelled from the community, we need look no farther than the Bible, where women who were menstruating and all who had skin diseases like leprosy were expelled from “the camp” (i.e. the community).  They were seen as defiling the sacred Tabernacle and therefore must be set apart from it till their ailments were healed.  Some may argue that women today continued to be viewed as ‘tainted’ and certainly less valued than men, especially in the Orthodox community.  But this ostracism derived from a physical condition rather than a personal belief or expression.

Einstein was a heretic of sorts as well, because he rejected Jabotinsky’s Zionist Revisionism. He denounced Etsel and the Irgun going back to the late 1940s and called them “misled and criminal people.” He also refused to accept the honor of being Israel’s second president when it was offered to him. Einstein rejected nationalism, which was the epitome of Zionism. He too is an honored member of the Spinoza Society.

One of the most transgressive members of the club was Lenny Bruce, who was not afraid of telling all of our darkest secrets to the goyim.  His provocative comedy created a love-hate relationship both with his audience and among American Jews.  Here is one of his classic jokes about killing Christ:

“Yes, we did it.  I did it.  My family.  I found a note in the basement: ‘We killed Him–signed Morty.’
“Why did you kill Christ, Jew?”  “We killed him because he didn’t want to become a doctor, that’s why.”
…Not only did we kill him, but we’re gonna kill him again when he comes back.

Here’s another that drove him from the “Israelite” camp:

I was a Jew talking about Goyim. If I had just stuck to Moses, everything would have been cool. But, copping to being part of the whole Christ murder conspiracy got everyone goose-stepping again.

Speaking of great Jewish comedians commenting on being kicked out of the tribe, Groucho of course told the famous joke: “PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER.”

I was one of the early members of New Jewish Agenda, a progressive national grassroots Jewish organization founded in the early 1980s. The group advocated gay rights, the two-state solution, and social justice in America. That platform was considered extremely controversial both in the United States and Israel. I remember a group of Orthodox rabbis meeting in Massachusetts and convening a pulsa di nura, which was a strange Jewish ritual by which Jews would be excommunicated from the faith for heretical beliefs. The Washington Post asked Noam Chomsky’s response (he was another one of those excommunicated):

Linguist Noam Chomsky of MIT, another of those excommunicated, recalled that he shared the honor with the 17th century Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza.

At the time, I was proud to be one of the newly-inducted members of the Spinoza Society.
Today, Israel is vastly increasing Spinoza membership with its excommunication of hundreds of Jews thousands of Jews who show insufficient fealty to Zionist dogma. Any Jew who supports BDS is immediately beyond the Pale, if not a self-hating terrorist.  Such individuals are so dangerous that Israeli secret agents are right now burrowing into their homes and lives searching for ways to destroy them and their reputations: that means you, Ronnie Barkan!

Baroness Tonge, newest Spinoza Club inductee, addressing a Palestinian rights rally

Currently, in the UK, the Israel Lobby is mounting a scorched-earth campaign against British Jews and Palestinian activists who betray (in the case of Jews) the tribe.  One of the latest members inducted into the club was Jackie Walker, who had the temerity to question whether Holocaust Memorial Day was a day that should not also embrace other ethnic groups who were victims of the Nazis.  She also correctly claimed that some Portuguese and Brazilian Jews played an important role in financing the Brazilian leg of the Atlantic slave trade. For her trouble, she was suspended from the Labour party.  Jackie, join us, you’re welcome to the Club.

Today brings news that a new member of the club is being inducted: Baroness Tonge, a member of the House of Lords.  She chaired a parliamentary meeting about the Palestinian the Right of Return.  At the meeting, an audience member compared Israel, with its religious fundamentalist faith to Isis, and its Islamist fundamentalism. The comparison, if made in a careful and nuanced way, is a valid one.

But not for the Israel Lobby, which screamed bloody murder in the pages of the Jewish Chronicle, the Lobby’s in-house propaganda organ. As a result, Baroness Tonge has been suspended from the Liberal Democratic Party.  She has happily renounced her affiliation and become an independent member of the Lords.  Her ostracism is the Spinoza club’s gain.  Yes, the Baroness is not a certified member of the tribe.  But in this instance, I think we can make an exception.  Or perhaps declare her an honorary member of the Society.

As the Guardian's 'anti-Semitism' campaign against Corbyn continues its time to BOYCOTT the Guardian

Howard Jacobson’s blindness to Zionist racism in the cause of fake anti-Semitism

Howard Jacobson - blind to the Palestinians

Zionist lobby group boasts of its success in neutering Guardian coverage of Zionism & Palestine

There was a time when the Guardian had the best Middle East correspondent of any paper, David Hirst, who wrote an excellent book, The Gun and the Olive Branch.  Now they have Jonathan Freedland, a thriller writer, who cannot see beyond his Jewish identity to understand that Zionism is a murderous,  racist settler colonial movement.

The Guardian carries Jacobson's junk article which speaks about support for Israel and omits to mention the Palestinians

Where once the Guardian and its Comment is Free column was an arena of lively debate, today anti-Zionists are effectively barred.   A decade ago I contribute a number of articles such as an article on the Royal Family's reception for the Jewish National Fund [Israel's Royal Welcome]  Such is the state of affairs at the Guardian, that the Zionists openly boast about how they have cleansed CIF of anything remotely opposed to Zionism and the Israeli state.

French fascist leader Marine Le Pen, combines anti-Semitism with a devotion to Israel

UK Media Watch, formerly CIF Watch, which is devoted to suppressing favourable coverage of the Palestinians or unfavourable coverage of Israel and Zionism in the media, boasts of its success with the Guardian.

'partly due to our efforts, the Guardian’s malign obsession with Israel had somewhat abated, and their legitimization of antisemitic tropes (above and below the line) had at least diminished.

The latter improvement in editorial decisions... occurred both as the result of our relentless naming and shaming of Guardian contributors who expressed such Judeophobic views, and at least two important decisions by the paper’s readers’ editor which had the effect of institutionally delegitimizing these narratives.  The readers’ editor we’re referring to is Chris Elliott ."

Geert Wilders - leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, virulently anti-Islamic and sees Israel as a bastion of the West

The one newspaper which could be relied on for objective coverage of Palestine and Zionism has now gone over to the dark side.  It is time that socialists and supporters of the Palestinians boycotted the Guardian.  In many ways its coverage is worse than paper such as The Daily Mail precisely because people expect The Guardian to be more balanced and fairer.

In its latest propaganda article, The Guardian has commissioned an article, Let’s be clear – antisemitism is a hate apart, from Howard Jacobson.  In his attempt to show that anti-Zionism is really a modern form of an ancient plaint, anti-Semitism, Jacobson’s literary talents seem to desert him.  His arguments are wooden and stilted as his hackneyed phrases betray a poverty of imagination. 

Heinz Christian Strache - leads the Austrian Freedom Party, which was formed to rehabilitate Austrian Nazis - a welcome guest of Likud to Israel recently

How can one write about Israel without once mentioning the Palestinians?  Israel is a state that receives the largest amount of aid of any country, despite its small population, from the United States.  It is a state armed to the teeth, with nuclear weaponry, whose military has ruled over 4.5 million people for 50 years.  Palestinians live in the same territory as 600,000 settlers yet unlike them they are subject to a different legal system of Military Law.  By any definition this is Apartheid.  At the hundreds of checkpoints that cover the West Bank there are separate entrances for Jewish settlers and Palestinians,  yet Jacobson has convinced himself that our reasons for opposing Israeli Apartheid is because of anti-Semitism!

Jacobson may be a distinguished novelist but there is nothing original in what he writes about anti-Semitism and Zionism.  Jacobson offers us no special insights that cannot be gained from Israeli hasbara (propaganda).  For Jacobson criticism of the Israeli state can be explained by the fact that ‘in the matter of the existence of the State of Israel... all the ancient superstitions about Jews find a point of confluence.’  Apparently criticism of Israel and Zionism has nothing to do with land discrimination and theft, the underfunding of the Arab education sector, the Judaisation of areas of Israel where there are not enough Jews, extra-judicial executions, torture of children or house demolitions.  It’s all because we are anti-Semitic!

Jacobson though is but the latest Guardian sock puppet.  In the past year it has run a series of articles about ‘anti-Semitism’ with the aim of portraying Labour under Jeremy Corbyn as a party in the grip of a tsunami of anti-Semitism.  Articles it has printed include The Left’s Jewish Problem: Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti‑Semitism and Why I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too which is a rewrite of an earlier article in the Jewish Chronicle  Hatred is turning me into a Jew by Nick Cohen, Why Jews in Labour place little trust in Jeremy Corbyn by Joshua Simons,  Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem and My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any other minority by Jonathan Freedland Antisemitism is a poison – the left must take leadership against it by Owen Jones, which he rewrites annually.  The Guardian has refused to print articles rejecting the idea in the above articles that anti-Zionism is a modern form of anti-Semitism.

Howard Jacobson made his name as a comic novelist.  It is a genre that he should have stuck to because there is little that is amusing or revealing in his discursions into anti-Semitism.  Jacobson pronounces that the Chakrabarti Report into racism and anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was ‘a soft inquiry’ and ‘was stillborn’.  Instead of explaining what it is he disagreed with in the Report he insinuates that the elevation of Shami Chakrabarti to the House of Lords was the payment of a bribe .  The Chakrabarti Report was a serious attempt to investigate the spurious anti-Semitism allegations of the Labour Right, the Tory press, and the Zionist movement.  Chakrabarti found that the Labour Party was not overrun by anti-Semitism. 

Indeed it is one of the curious aspects of the anti-Semitism allegations that no hard evidence has ever been produced.  The one serious attempt to investigate these allegations by Asa Winstanley How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis showed that the evidence for the allegations was spurious, fabricated and in the specific case of Oxford University Labour Club, set in motion by a former intern, Alex Chalmers, for BICOM, Britain’s main Israeli propaganda organisation.

Howard Jacobson’s theme is anything but novel.  It is that anti-Semitism is ‘unlike other racisms’.  It ‘exists outside time and place and doesn’t even require the presence of Jews.’  In response to the Russian pogroms of 1881, Leo Pinsker, the founder of the Lovers of Zion, likewise wrote that ‘Judaephobia is then a mental disease, and as a mental disease it is hereditary, and having been inherited for 2,000 years, it is incurable. [Pinsker, Autoemancipation,  Berlin 1882 p.5.]

The logical conclusion is that if anti-Semitism cannot be explained then it cannot be fought.  It doesn’t even require Jews.  It exists in the realm of the metaphysical like all those other racial myths.  After all ‘when Marlowe and Shakespeare responded to an appetite for anti-Jewish feeling in Elizabethan England, there had been no Jews in the country for 300 years.’  Jacobson is wrong, there were Jews in England but the memory of the Jews and the roles they performed in society had not disappeared.  It is all too easy to characterise Marlowe and Shakespeare’s productions as anti-Semitic when they simply reflected not only popular perceptions but the actual role that Jews played in medieval society.

As Abram Leon, the Trotskyist leader who died in Auschwitz observed:

‘Zionism transposes modern anti-Semitism to all of history and saves itself the trouble of studying the various forms of anti-Semitism and their evolution.’..[Abram Leon, The Jewish Question - A Marxist Interpretation, p. 245. Pathfinder, New York, 1970]

Anti-Semitism was seen by Zionism as a permanent feature of Jewish relations with non-Jews, an immutable fact beyond history and time itself.  In June 1895, barely six months after the framing of the French Jewish Captain Alfred Dreyfuss for treason, Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism wrote in his Diaries (p.6) that ‘In Paris ...I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.   Since anti-Semitism was a natural phenomenon, it could not be fought.  You might as well fight the tides.

Jacobson’s claim that anti-Semitism is a unique form of racism is a truism.  All forms of racism have unique characteristics but anti-Semitism is not a unique form of racism.  There has always been racism against groups who were seen as better off and prosperous, be it the Huguenots, the Biafrans, the East African Asians or Koreans in the United States.  The Chinese of South-East Asia were known as the ‘Jews of the East’.  Racism against the Roma is just as persistent and deadly as anti-Semitism if not more so. 

Jacobson tells us apropos of anti-Zionism that ‘The presence of a Jew in any movement no more guarantees it to be innocent of antisemitism than guilty.’  The same can be said, with somewhat more justification of Zionism.  Anti-Zionism was a product of Jews not non-Jews.  It is noticeable that far-Right and fascist groups are some of the most ardent supporters of Zionism.  As Ruth Smeed, a spokeswoman for the Board of Deputies of British Jews admitted ‘‘The BNP website is now one of the most Zionist on the web – it goes further than any of the mainstream parties in its support of Israel.  Members of the English Defence League combine the Hitler salute with flying the Israeli flag at its demonstrations.[2] 

Far-Right European parties such as Geert Wilder’s Dutch Freedom Party, Heinz-Christian Strache’s Austrian Freedom Party and Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale all combine virulent Islamaphobia and anti-Semitism with support for Zionism, without a murmur of concern from Jacobson and the witch finder generals of Zionism.   Was it not Pastor John Hagee, President of Christians United for Israel who informed us that Hitler was a hunter sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel?  Although John McCain was forced to disavow Hagee when he ran against Barak Obama in the 2008 Presidential election this did not stop Abe Foxman, of the Anti-Defamation League praising Hagee. ‘We are grateful’ Foxman said, ‘that you have devoted your life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel,” 

Nor was Foxman alone.  One of the leaders of the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is the neo-con editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard.  Pollard sees no contradiction between attacking Corbyn for ‘anti-Semitism’ and defending Michal Kaminski, former MEP for Poland’s far-Right Law and Justice Party.  Kaminski opposed, in 2001, a national Polish apology for the burning alive of up to 900 Jews by fellow Poles in the village of Jedwabne in 1941.  Kaminski suggested it was the Jews who owed the Poles an apology.  Pollard however insisted that Kaminski was ‘one of the greatest friends to the Jews’ because ‘Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.’

Far from anti-Zionism being a disguise for anti-Semitism it is Zionism which has most in common with anti-Semites. From Edouard Drumont, the leader of the anti-Dreyfussards to Alfred Rosenburg to the BNP’s Nick Griffin, anti-Semites saw no contradiction in supporting Zionism.

Jacobson and the Guardian have great difficulty in accepting that criticism of the State of Israel is not on account of some ancient hatred of Jews but because it is a state that has racism woven into its DNA.  A ‘Jewish’ state in the context of settler colonialism means a Jewish supremacist state.  Whereas Britain being a Christian state is a constitutional adornment, in Israel Jews have real privileges over non-Jews.  Israel is a state where the ‘demographic question’ is the engine of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians. [see When will Israel stop seeing Palestinians as a 'demographic threat?']

Jacobson is not above deploying his literary skills in order to misrepresent his adversaries.  He says that according to anti-Zionists ‘Jews have only one motive in labelling anti-Zionism antisemitic and that is to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel. This assertion defames Jews’.  Well it would if it were true but it ignores that foremost amongst these defamers are Jews themselves!  It is the Zionist movement, Jewish and non-Jewish, who use ‘anti-Semitism’ as a weapon to deflect criticism of Israel.  Just as anti-Semites use the term ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ interchangeably so too do Zionists.

Jacobson says that ‘Zionism originated as a liberation movement’.  Perhaps he could enlighten us as to when Zionists first described themselves so?  When Herzl founded the Zionist movement he wrote to Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist after whom Rhodesia was named asking ‘‘how then do I happen to turn to you since this is an out of the way matter for you.  How indeed.  Because it is something colonial.’ [Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p.1,194].  In ‘Rebirth and Destiny’ [New York 1954] David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, refers throughout to colonization and colonies.  This was because, in the first half of the last century, colonialism was seen as a good thing.  Today’s zeitgeist demands that colonialism is transformed into national liberation. 

Jacobson says we need to talk of Zion.  I disagree.  We need to talk about Zionism and what it has done to the Palestinians.  The Holocaust is no excuse for the dispossession of the Palestinians.

Tony Greenstein

Jeremy Corbyn and the Retreat from Palestine

Elected as supporter of the Palestinians - beating the retreat

Jeremy Corbyn's recent statements to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which is a wholly Zionist and establishment group, that he recognises Israel's 'right to exist' [no one doubts the State exists, the question is what type of State it is] is a formula indicating acceptance of Israel's right to be an Apartheid state. When this is coupled with Corbyn's appointment of an overt Zionist Fabian Hamilton, to join Hilary Benn in the Shadow Foreign Office team, it is clear that Corbyn has retreated in regard to his previous support of the Palestinians.

Stephen Pollard - Jewish Chronicle Editor, launched attack on 'anti-Semitic' Corbyn.  Has no problem defending real anti-Semites like Michal Kaminski

Corbyn's overt support for a 2 States solution, which no Israeli government minister supports and which no observer believes is possible, given the extent of colonisation and settlement of the West Bank, is a code for accepting the current status quo. Over 4 million Palestinians are subject to a different legal system (military) from that of the Jewish settlers (civil Israeli law) in the same area, the West Bank. This is Apartheid.

Fabian Hamilton - Zionist who calls Palestinian supporters 'anti-Semitic' - appointed by Corbyn as junior Shadow Foreign Office Minister

“This land is ours. All of it is ours. We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere.” Tzipi Hotoveli, Deputy Foreign Minister, Israel

In the words of Israel’s religious nutcase and Deputy Foreign Minister, Tzipi Hotoveli, “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere.”

Bishop Desmond Tutu - calls Israel worse than Apartheid in South Africa - obviously anti-Semitic!

Giving lip service to a '2 States solution' provides a pretext for the continuation of the present Apartheid situation. Israel cannot grant the right to vote or any other civil or political rights for those living under Israeli military rule because this would threaten Israel's Jewish majority in the Jewish State. The 2 States formula is a means of avoiding having to confront the fact that there is a conflict between being a Jewish State and a Democratic State.

Michal Kaminski - fresh from calling on the remnant of Polish Jews to apologise to their oppressors, pays tribute to the holocaust dead at the Yad Vashem propaganda museum in Jerusalem

My article details the recent history of Zionist attacks on Corbyn and how he has responded by trying to appease those critics. Of course appeasment only whets the appetite of the aggressor, witness the recent attacks on Oxford University Labour Club for 'anti-Semitism'

No backtracking on Palestine

Unfortunately the Labour leader appears to be beating a retreat, writes Tony Greenstein

Jeremy Corbyn: long and consistent record

I first met Jeremy Corbyn over 30 years ago when I chaired the Labour Committee on Palestine/Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine.¹ It would be no exaggeration to say that Jeremy, along with Ken Livingstone and the late Joan Maynard, were the most consistent supporters of the Palestinians. He later became a patron of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and a regular fixture at PSC annual general meetings.

Hilary Benn - Shadow Foreign Minister who believes Saudi allies in Syria are part of a socialist, anti-fascist struggle

The policy of the LMCP, which Jeremy Corbyn sponsored, was to support a democratic, secular state in the whole of Palestine rather than a two-state solution. We did not support the ‘right to exist’ of the apartheid state of Israel, for whom its Palestinian citizens are a demographic threat. We supported the creation of a unitary state of its own citizens, regardless of ethnic or religious affiliation, rather than a state of the Jews.

The 1982 Labour Party conference, held in the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, passed an emergency resolution calling for a democratic, secular state in the whole of Palestine. People forget the international reaction to an invasion which killed over 20,000 people. Two thousand Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps were butchered with medieval savagery by Israel’s Phalangist allies. The Israeli army lit up the night sky in order that they could kill their victims, mainly women and children, more efficiently. The Labour Party reaction mirrored that of British society, which was one of horror. In Britain a group of us formed the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

It was therefore no surprise that the Zionist movement, when it was obvious that Corbyn was heading for victory in the Labour Party leadership contest, pulled out all the stops to prevent it. Together with the Daily Mail, Zionists attempted to brand him a holocaust denier. This is somewhat ironic, given that in the 1930s the most pro-Hitler paper was the same Daily Mail. Citing a magistrate who had complained that “The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage”, the Mail commented that “the number of aliens entering the country through the back door [is] a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed”.²

Jonathan Arkus of the Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews

On the basis of an article alleging that Corbyn had attended a concert organised by a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen,³ the Zionist movement engaged in a conscious and sustained smear campaign. Leading the pack was the editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard, a member of the cold-war far-right Henry Jackson Society, who posed a series of questions to Corbyn.⁴

Unfortunately, instead of responding with a few questions of its own, Corbyn’s campaign decided to treat them as genuine queries. Needless to say, their answers were never going to satisfy the Zionists. Those of us with experience of the Zionist attack dogs know that they cry ‘anti-Semitism’ whenever support for the Palestinians is on the agenda. Only last month Oxford University Labour Club was the subject of vicious attacks - it was labelled anti-Semitic after it decided to support Israeli Apartheid Week.⁵

Stephen Pollard - Editor of the Jewish Chronicle and friend of anti-Semites who support Israel

It is no accident that the Zionist movement in this country acted as the outrider for those who wanted to keep the Labour Party safe for capitalism. It is an article of faith for New Labour that they must stand firmly alongside US imperialism - which means unquestioning support for the Israeli state. ‘Anti-Semitism’ has become the rallying cry of The Guardian, its Comment is free editor Jonathan Freedland and liberal bourgeois opinion in general.

‘Anti-Semitism’ is today’s false anti-racism of the right.⁶ It is sometimes called ‘new anti-Semitism’ to distinguish it from the traditional variety. ‘New anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with hatred of, discrimination or violence against Jews. It is about opposition to Zionism and the state of Israel.
According to Abe Foxman, former national director of the Anti-Defamation League (which specialises in defaming its opponents), Israel has become “the Jew among the nations”.⁷ Criticise Israel and you are criticising the collective Jew, which makes you an anti-Semite! If you criticise Israel for its confiscation of land or locking up Palestinian children and torturing them, then you are a vicious Jew hater. Telling the truth can be equivalent to anti-Semitism where Israel is concerned.

Zionist anti-Semitism

Of course, if you hate Jews but love Israel then there is no problem. Even English Defence League thugs understood this when they physically attacked the stall of Birmingham Palestine Solidarity Campaign, carrying an Israeli flag in one hand, whilst giving Hitler salutes with the other!⁸

Christian Zionism provides the best example of this form of anti-Semitism. According to pastor John Hagee, president of the million-strong Christians United for Israel, Adolf Hitler was not so much a genocidal anti-Semite as a hunter, sent by god to drive the Jews to Israel!⁹ According to Hagee’s interpretation of Jeremiah, Hitler was an agent of God! Abe Foxman, always eager to detect signs of ‘anti-Semitism’ when criticism of Israel is involved, leapt to Hagee’s support: “Pastor Hagee has devoted his life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the state of Israel.”¹⁰

Stephen Pollard is a British replica of Foxman. In 2009, the Tories left the European People’s Party in the European parliament, and joined the European Conservative and Reformist Group. The ECRG contained far-right politicians such as Michał Kamiński of Poland’s Law and Justice Party and Robert Zile of Latvia’s For Fatherland and Freedom.

Both Kamiński and Zile had a record of support for fascism and anti-Semitism. On July 10 1941, up to 900 Jews were burnt alive in a barn by fellow Poles, under the approving eye of the SS, in the village of Jedwabne. Although the majority of Jedwabne’s population was Jewish before World War II, today there are no Jews left in what was a 300-year old community.¹¹ Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomasz Gross estimated that 300 Jews had been burnt alive,¹² but a subsequent book by Anna Bikont¹³ revises these figures to over 900. The massacre led to a national Polish apology in 2001.
Jedwabne was represented by Kamiński in the Polish parliament from 1997. He vigorously campaigned against any apology. In an interview with the nationalist Nasza Polska newspaper in March 2001, Kamiński argued that Poles should not apologise for Jedwabne until Jews apologised for “murdering Poles”.¹⁴ Kamiński had previously worn the Mieczyk Chrobrego - the Chrobry sword, symbol of the National Radical Camp, which “practised violent anti-Semitism, including attacks on Jewish students, buildings and businesses, organised boycotts of Jewish businesses and attacks on leftwing groups”.¹⁵

None of this, however, stopped Pollard, who led the campaign to smear Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite, from defending Michał Kamiński. In a quite extraordinary article for The Guardian¹⁶ Pollard claimed that Kamiński was “one of the greatest friends to the Jews in a town [Brussels] where anti-Semitism and a visceral loathing of Israel are rife”. Note the sleight of hand. Kamiński is a “friend to the Jews” because of his support for Israel, notwithstanding the fact that he is an anti-Semite.

Historically anti-Semites have been some of the strongest supporters of Zionism, from Édouard Drumont and Heinrich Class to Adolf Eichmann and Alfred Rosenberg. Next year the Zionists will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when Britain, in the form of its foreign secretary, Arthur James Balfour, agreed to sponsor the Zionist settlement in Palestine. Balfour was also the home secretary who, in 1905, introduced the Aliens Act, whose aim was to prevent Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia entering Britain.

Kamiński has been feted in Israel. Not only has he made the ritual trip to Yad Vashem, the holocaust propaganda museum in Jerusalem, but in 2009 he was a guest speaker at the World Summit on Counterterrorism conference at Herzliya.¹⁷

Robert Zile is also a fully paid up anti-Semite. Every March he marches with the veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS in Riga. Yet like Kamiński he is a strong supporter of Israel.

Appeasement

Instead of responding to the Zionist attacks on him by pointing to their hypocrisy, Corbyn has chosen to appease his critics by playing down his support for the Palestinians and retreating into meaningless soundbites.

For example, Corbyn sent a letter to a Zionist heckler at the Labour Friends of Israel meeting he addressed at Labour Party conference, reassuring him that he was pleased to “have the opportunity to express how I felt about progressing the peace process in the Middle East … Israel has always, and will continue to be, recognised by both myself and the Labour Party.”

Last week, following talks with Corbyn, the Board of Deputies of British Jews was quoted as saying that they “were pleased that Mr Corbyn gave a very solid commitment to the right of Israel to live within secure and recognised boundaries as part of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict”, whilst demanding “more clarity” that the Labour Party “will maintain its longstanding opposition to boycotts against Israel”.¹⁸

People need to face up to the fact that one of the consequences of the attacks on Corbyn has been a retreat from his previous political positions. I have never heard Corbyn previously speaking about the need to recognise the state of Israel. He used to be more concerned about recognising its repressive qualities. Instead of distinguishing between the oppressor and the oppressed, the coloniser and the colonised, Corbyn has depoliticised the issue, calling for peace in the abstract.

It is as if Corbyn had called for peace between white proponents of apartheid and black South Africans rather than supporting the abolition of apartheid. This is one of the political liabilities of Corbyn’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-style politics. Instead of opposing imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism, Corbyn imagines that ‘conflict resolution’ via United Nations diplomacy will solve what is at heart a political problem - the racist oppression, dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians.

No-one in Israel seriously believes that a two-state solution is achievable. There is not one government minister who supports it. The leader of the Israeli Labour Party, who is more hawkish than prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, also opposes a two-state solution. In the words of Israel’s religious nutcase and deputy foreign minister, Tzipi Hotoveli, “This land is ours. All of it is ours. We expect as a matter of principle of the international community to recognise Israel’s right to build homes for Jews in their homeland, everywhere.”¹⁹

Corbyn retreats into the weasel words of Israel’s ‘right to exist’. The problem is not Israel’s rights, but the lack of Palestinian rights. Israel defines itself as a Jewish state. What does that mean? It is a state which counts how many Jews it has compared to non-Jews. It is an ethno-religious state, in which Jews have privileges compared to non-Jews. So, for example, because I am Jewish, I have an automatic right to ‘return’ to a state where I have never lived. Palestinians who were born in Jerusalem have no such right. But like all settler states, Israel is very good at portraying itself as the victim. Corbyn pays homage to Israel’s right to ‘secure borders’ (Israel frames its racism in terms of its own security needs), while it seems Palestinians have no need of security.

Not only is partition - a two-state solution - neither desirable nor feasible, but it serves as a pretext for Israel’s continuing denial of even the most basic civil or political rights for Palestinians in the occupied territories. ‘Two states’ provides a justification for a situation where there are two legal systems - military law for the Palestinians and civil Israeli law for Jewish settlers on the West Bank. The idea that Israel is going to withdraw over 600,000 settlers behind an imaginary green line is the stuff of dreams.

Jeremy Corbyn, as a patron of PSC, was a supporter of boycott, divestment and sanctions. But this is an issue over which he has recently gone very quiet. Corbyn has forgotten that Israel is a Jewish supremacist state, which defines its Jewishness in terms of maintaining an 80% Jewish majority population. It is a state where virtually all areas of public life, from housing to education and employment, are segregated. A symptom of Israel’s Nuremberg mentality is the decision of the education ministry to ban a book, Borderlife, from the high school syllabus because it depicts a romantic relationship between Jewish and Arab teenagers. In an ethno-religious state, inter-marriage is seen as equivalent to national treason, a betrayal of one’s racial kith and kin.²⁰

Corbyn’s retreat from the Palestinians is best demonstrated by the appointment of a rightwing Zionist, Fabian Hamilton, as a junior shadow foreign office minister. In a recent article Hamilton was quoted as saying that boycotting the Jewish state without taking action against other countries is “simply anti-Semitic”.²¹Perhaps Bishop Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kasrils (a Jewish member of the African National Congress and former government minister in South Africa) are also anti-Semitic for supporting a boycott of Israel?

Hamilton said that he was “staggered” to have been appointed and that when he initially asked if his support for Israel was a problem, he was “told by Corbyn’s office in clear terms it wasn’t”. I was also staggered by this totally unnecessary concession to the Zionist right. The appointment of an open Zionist suggests that Corbyn has effectively decided to abandon his previous support for the Palestinians.

Appeasement of Labour Friends of Israel will not serve the cause of either socialism or peace in the Middle East. Nor will it help Corbyn’s own precarious position as leader. Quite the contrary.

Notes

1  . In 1982, following the passing of our successful amendment at the 1982 Labour Party conference, the Labour Committee on Palestine was taken over by the Workers Revolutionary Party, with the help of our Treasurer, Ted Knight.
2 . Daily Mail August 20 1938.
3 . Daily Mail August 7 2015.
4 . Jewish Chronicle August 12 2015.
5 . See letter from 22 Jewish people:
6 . See T Greenstein, ‘Redefining anti-Semitism - the false anti-racism of the right’ Return No5, December 1990.
7 . Israel now Jew Among Nations - Foxman
8 . The Fascist EDL Attacks Birmingham Palestine Solidarity Campaign Stall
9 . Hagee: Pro-Israel, Anti-Semitic?  The Nation  23.5.08.  Max Blumenthall.
10 . www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/hagee-still-sells-controv_b_107545.html.
11 . Pastor Hagee Still Sells Controversial 2005 'God Sent Hitler' Sermon, Apologizes To ADL For Wrong Sermon  Huff Post Politics 23.5.11.
12 . T Gross Neighbours: the destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland London 2000.
13 . The crime and the silence, which won the European Book Prize in 2011.
14 . The Observer October 11 2009.
15 . Jewish Chronicle October 10 2009.
16 . The Guardian October 9 2009.
17. World Summit on Counter Terrorism: Terrorism’s Global Impact - ICT’s 9th International Conference
18 . Jewish Chronicle February 9 2016.
19 . The Guardian May 22 2015.
20 . ‘Marriage to an Arab is national treason’ Ynet 27.3.07.  Roee Nahmias
21 . Jewish News January 13 2016.