America’s Jewish Currents, of which Peter Beinart is an Editor, says it represents the Jewish Left – but which Jewish Left?

Jewish Currents refuses to print any response to Joshua Leifer’s ‘The real Corbyn Tragedy’ – finding that Corbyn should have prostrated himself to the Board of Deputies 

America’s Jewish Currents describes itself as ‘a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left.’  When Joshua Leifer penned a 5000+ word article The Tragedy of Jeremy Corbyn offering his advice as to where Corbyn had gone wrong I felt impelled to respond.

Leifer’s analysis can be summed up as saying that:

i.                   Yes there was a basis to the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, because various tropes and remarks surfaced on social media, thus completely redefining the meaning of racism from actions such as discrimination and physical attacks to the froth and foam of Twitter.

ii.                That the problem in Britain was that there was

‘no left-wing Jewish organizational infrastructure in Britain comparable to what has recently emerged in the US…. there were few progressive Jewish voices that could meaningfully challenge them.’

In fact Jewish Voices for Labour was specifically set up to address this problem and the impact it had on the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was negligible, because it was never about Jews or anti-Semitism. They were a metonym for the determination of the Right to oust Corbyn.

iii.             Leifer quotes Matt Seaton of the New York Review of Books as saying that

“the fight between Corbyn skeptics and Corbyn fans over Jews and Israel has become a ruinous proxy for what is, in its essence, a struggle between social-democrats and socialists for the soul of the party.”

Leifer drew no conclusions from this statement regarding the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.

iv.             Leifer accepted that ‘The British Jewish establishment would brook no compromise with Corbyn’. Nonetheless he argued that:

Corbyn and the left’s initial failure to adequately address accusations of antisemitism meant that when he took a stand against the IHRA definition, he had no political room to maneuver. For his protest to have had even the slimmest chance of success, he also would have needed partners within the British Jewish community: people with public respect and Jewish bona fides who were willing to challenge the notion that opposition to the IHRA definition was beyond the pale.

v.                The problem with this is that the British Jewish Establishment in the form of the Board of Deputies has hardwired into its constitution support for Israel i.e to

‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel's security, welfare and standing.’

The JLM which Leifer refers to was specifically refounded in 2015 in order to unseat Corbyn.  It is a right-wing anti-socialist group, the overseas wing of what is left of the Israeli Labour Party. In fact plenty of prominent Jews opposed the IHRA, e.g. Professor David Feldman, Sir Geoffrey Bindman, Sir Stephen Sedley and others. They too had no effect.

vi.             Leifer however had found the solution whereas those of us on the ground had completely missed it. If only Corbyn had apologised to the ‘Jewish community’ when Andrew Neil, who when Editor of the Sunday Times hired Holocaust denier David Irving, had asked him! Leifer wrote that:

Corbyn appeared stubbornly determined to insert his foot directly into his mouth. In a 2019 pre-election interview, the BBC’s Andrew Neil asked him if he would like to apologize to the British Jewish community. … With only a few words—“yes, I’m sorry”—Corbyn might have been able to avoid bad press in a crucial stretch leading up to the election.

Anyone acquainted with the situation knows that anything Corbyn had said would have been used against Labour and apologising would have confirmed the Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ myth. Leifer’s brilliant conclusion? ‘

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Corbyn’s maladroit media appearances led, at least in part, to his defeat.

vii.          Leifer concluded his article with a series of ‘what ifs’

What if, instead of retreating into defensiveness, they had moved to reconcile sooner with the British Jewish communal institutions where reconciliation was possible? What if those communal institutions had faced internal opposition to launching an all-out campaign against Corbyn? 

What if kosher pigs could fly? I wrote to JC offering the outline of a proposed reply. You can see the outline of my article, which was published yesterday on Mondoweiss. I was not the only person to respond to Jewish Currents.

Arielle Angel

Donna Nevel submitted a letter which Editor Arielle Angel, refused to print. Her excuse? That it was the only letter they have received which was being economical with the truth given my response. Mondoweiss published Donna’s letter but it should not have had to.

After waiting a week without a response I sent a follow up email and this time Arielle did reply saying that they simply did not have the ‘bandwidth’  to publish a full response article. Which begs the question why publish mediocre articles if you are not prepared to have a debate?

Peter Beinart - Editor-at-large at the Jewish Currents

I also copied the correspondence to the JC's Editor-at-large Peter Beinart, America’s premier liberal Zionist. Beinart famously broke with a Jewish State and supported a single binational state last July Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine.

Despite being someone who has criticised the totalitarian mentality of the Zionist lobby and its apologists Beinart, who is a Professor Journalism at the City University of NY, has not deigned to respond.

In my reply to Arielle Angel I asked exactly what the JC is for:

You say that you are a paper of the Jewish Left. If this article stands without a response and maybe more than 1 response, then you should amend this to say that you represent the non-socialist and the non-Marxist left.

JC says it is of the ‘left’ but is meaningless if it is a left divorced from socialism, anti-imperialism or solidarity with the oppressed.

Below is my article in Mondoweiss

The real Corbyn ‘tragedy’ — and ‘Jewish Currents’ refusal to publish an opposing view

In a recent article on the "tragedy" of Jeremy Corbyn, Jewish Currents overlooks the rightwing bigoted records of those criticizing Corbyn because of his support for Palestinian rights.

By Tony Greenstein December 22, 2020

At the end of November Joshua Leifer, an Associate Editor of Jewish Currents [JC], wrote an article about the “tragedy” of Jeremy Corbyn. He did not seek the opinions of any Jewish victims of the “antisemitism” witchhunt in the Labour Party. As the first Jewish member of the party to be expelled I submitted a response.

At first I was simply ignored and after a reminder, Arielle Angel, Editor-in-chief, explained that it was a lack of resources that prevented them publishing my reply. JC “simply do not have the bandwidth to publish full response articles to articles we’ve published”. So I am publishing my response here.

Who sponsored the false ‘antisemitism’ campaign against Corbyn

The first question to ask is who was behind the campaign to root out “antisemitism” in the Labour Party? Were they genuinely concerned about antisemitism or defending Israel? Were the allegations confected?

The first article exposing Corbyn as an “antisemite” came from the Tory Daily Mail. On 7 August 2015, even before Corbyn was elected, it published an ‘exclusive’ revealing that Corbyn was an associate of a Holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. It was untrue but mud sticks.

This is the same Daily Mail which, according to Professor Tony Kushner, “has been an anti-alien newspaper since the 1900s. There’s great continuity.” The Daily Mail is the paper which supported Hitler and which had an infamous front page ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’. Nor is this ancient history.  Despite this, Leifer quoted Dan Hodges of the Daily Mail uncritically accusing Labour of being a racist party. Hodges is hardly neutral, an ex-New Labourite, right-wing and hostile. 

Just three months later the Mail employed an ex-Sun columnist against Corbyn, Katie Hopkins who had previously described refugees as ‘cockroaches’. The whole of the British press, from the Sun to the neo-liberal Guardian, was mobilised in the cause of fighting ‘antisemitism’.

The Conservative Party and the Labour Right also joined hands in opposing Labour “antisemitism”. These were the same political forces that had supported the disastrous 2014 Immigration Act and the official policy of creating a “hostile environment” for immigrants that had led to hundreds if not thousands of Black British citizens being deported to the West Indies. Just 6 Labour MPs voted against the Act, including the “antisemitic” Corbyn. In fact, Labour’s Right was permeated with antisemitism. After a racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was removed from Parliament by the High Court in 2010 for election offences, which included running a campaign aimed at stirring up racial strife by “making the white folk angry” he was defended by Tom Watson, who “lost sleep” over “poor Phil.” Watson later became Corbyn’s unfriendly deputy leader and led the ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt.

Historically it was the Right of the Labour Party which was antisemitic. The Board of Deputies of British Jews, which claims to be the representative body of British Jewry (although in fact it represents at best 40% of British Jews), raised no objection when Sidney Webb (1859-1947), Colonial Secretary, founder of the Fabians and New Statesman, remarked that there were ‘“no Jews in the British Labour party” and that while “French, German, Russian Socialism is Jew-ridden…We, thank heaven, are free”, adding that was probably the case because there was “no money in it”. (Paul Kelemen, “The British Left and Zionism: The History of a Divorce”, Manchester University Press 2012)

Herbert Morrison, Home Secretary during World War 2, adamantly refused to admit Jewish refugees. Hundreds if not thousands died as a result. 

We see this today with Labour leader Keir Starmer. He has expressed his determination to “root out the poison” of antisemitism from the Labour Party. Yet Sir Keir, was unable to challenge a racist caller on the talk show station LBC, who stated that White people would be in a minority by 2066 and asked why Britain can’t be like Israel which

“has a state law that they are the only people in that country to have self-determination. Well why can’t I as a white British female have that same right?”

Perhaps it was the comparison with Israel that threw Keir!

Not once did Joshua Leifer ask simple questions as to why, if the Board of Deputies was concerned with Labour “antisemitism,” it had said nothing about Boris Johnson’s genuinely antisemitic and racist 2004 novel “72 Virgins” or about the fact that the Tories sat in the European Parliament in a “conservative and reformist” bloc with fascists and antisemites such as Roberts Ziles and Michal Kaminsky. When the Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees Mogg, spoke last year of the “Illuminati who are taking the powers to themselves,” in reference to two Jewish fellow MPs, there was no comment on this patently antisemitic reference.

John Bercow, the recently retired Jewish Speaker of the House of Commons, was asked in an interview if Corbyn was an antisemite. His response was that he had known Corbyn for 22 years and there wasn’t a ‘whiff’ of antisemitism about him. Bercow also recalled how he remembered an MP saying:  

“If I had my way, Berkoff, people like you wouldn’t be allowed in this place.” On inquiring whether  his antagonist meant being lower-class or Jewish?’ the response was ‘Both’!

The idea that the Conservative Party, the party of Empire,  is opposed to racism, including antisemitism, lies in the realm of fantasy. Yet Leifer asked no questions as to the bona fides of Corbyn’s right-wing antagonists.

Almost as soon as the ‘antisemitism’ controversy raised its head I had my doubts.  Was antisemitism spontaneously arising in the Labour Party because of Corbyn’s election or were we seeing the state destabilisation of Labour?

My answer came on March 18^th when I was suspended. All the allegations that were put to me later were about Israel. Did I compare Israel’s marriage laws to those of Nazi Germany? My answer was yes, but so did Hannah Arendt, a refugee from Nazi Germany! Did I say that Israel was hoping that Holocaust survivors would die in order they could save on their welfare benefits?  Yes I did but so did Ha’aretz!

It takes little imagination to guess at the reaction to Corbyn’s election – from the CIA HQ at Langley Virginia, to MI5 to Israel. Corbyn was a veteran anti-imperialist, anti-nuclear and hostile to NATO. He was now leader of the second party of government in the US’s closest ally in Europe. Al Jazeera’s The Lobby gave us a snapshot of what was happening when we saw Israeli Embassy operative Shai Masot being deeply involved in Labour’s ‘antisemitism’ crisis.

The facts can be true, yet the narrative can be false

Are there antisemites in the Labour Party?  Of course there will be a few. Any party of ½ million is bound to have them. Does that mean that Labour or any other political party was overrun by them?  Of course not. Yet Leifer, instead of probing beneath the surface, declares that ‘If people are exposing a valid problem, you have to deal with it’.

But there wasn’t a problem. Leifer mentioned the infamous mural, erased in 2012, that the right-wing former Director of Labour Friends of Israel Luciana Berger made an issue of before the 2018 local elections. It depicted six bankers, two of whom were Jewish. They had fat, not hooked noses.  Corbyn had opposed their erasure on free speech grounds. Opinions differ as to whether the mural was antisemitic but the real issue was why this had been raised 6 years later. No one had considered the matter important in 2012.

It was clear that sections of the press and others were researching everything that Corbyn had ever said and putting the worst possible interpretation on it. This was in contrast to ignoring the openly racist record of Prime Minister Boris Johnson who in 2002 spoke about “picanninies” and Black people having “watermelon” smiles.’

Nearly half of Conservative Party members oppose having a Muslim Prime Minister. Yet these bigoted attitudes were never problematic. Why? Because it was not antisemitism that was the real issue in Labour, but defence of Israel.

What antisemitism there is in the Labour Party is confined to social media; and much of that, such as Rothschild/banker conspiracy theories, are a way in which people try to explain what they see as the extraordinary power of the Israel lobby to bend politicians to their will.  This is a power that Israeli politicians like Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and Ehud Olmert have openly boasted of.  Israel calls itself a Jewish state and it’s unsurprising that  lacking an understanding of how imperialism works, people can ascribe American responsiveness to Israel’s demands as the bowing to Jewish power rather than the interplay between an imperialist power and its watchdog in the region. In my own experience, people who talk of the Rothschilds don’t even realise that they are Jewish.

Antisemitism is not what some idiot writes on social media bearing in mind that one person can post a million tweets. Antisemitism is what people do to Jewish people not what they tweet about. No one died from a tweet.

Who were the victims of the antisemitism witchhunt?

Leifer failed to ask basic questions such as, who were the targets of the ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt? Not only was I expelled but so was Jackie Walker, a Black Jewish women who was utterly demonised. Jackie was active in the fight against the National Front and the far-Right UKIP.

Another person expelled was Marc Wadsworth, who criticised former Israel lobbyist Ruth Smeeth for her assisting the Tory Daily Telegraph. Wadsworth didn’t even know Smeeth was Jewish when he criticised her at the launch of the Chakrabarti Report in June 2016 into racism in the Labour Party. In the campaign against Police racism over the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which led to the Government MacPherson Inquiry that found the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist, Wadsworth introduced the Lawrence family to Nelson Mandela and put the campaign on the map. Then Marc was expelled because of the lies of an Israel lobbyist turned MP. Yet in Jewish Currents, Leifer stayed silent or oblivious of this context.

I spent most of my youth involved in anti-fascist work as first Secretary of the Anti-Nazi League in Brighton and then served on the Executive of Anti-Fascist Action. The Board of Deputies spent most of their time attacking us, not the fascists, because we were anti-Zionist!

The Board of Deputies has never opposed antisemitism

The Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle, which led the ‘antisemitism’ attacks on Corbyn, have never campaigned against genuine antisemitism. In 1936 when Moseley’s British Union of Fascists attempted to march through the East End of London the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Chronicle told Jews to keep away.  Thousands of Jews and non-Jews ignored them in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street.  After the war the 43 Group of Jewish ex-serviceman took the battle to the resurgent Union Movement and literally smashed them off the streets.  The Board vehemently opposed them.  In the 1970s and 1980s it was the same story.

As the Editor of the Searchlight anti-fascist magazine, Maurice Ludmer wrote:

“In the face of mounting attacks against the Jewish community both ideologically and physically, we have the amazing sight of the Jewish Board of Deputies launching an attack on the Anti Nazi League with all the fervour of Kamikaze pilots… It was as though they were watching a time capsule rerunof the 1930’s, in the form of a flickering old movie, with a grim determination to repeat every mistake of that era. ” (Issue 41, November 1978)

The first time that the Board held an ‘anti-racist’ demonstration was against Corbyn outside Parliament in March 2018. Who took part?  Arch Tory racist Norman Tebbit, proponent of the racist ‘cricket test’ (the idea that immigrants who support the Indian/Pakistani cricket teams weren’t really British) and sectarian bigot, Ulster Unionist MP Ian Paisley! Even the Zionist placards were antisemitic!

Antisemitism was weaponised

‘Antisemitism’ was the chosen weapon of attack on the Labour left.  It played to their weak spot, identity politics. It was easier to attack Corbyn over ‘antisemitism’ than austerity or his anti-nuclear politics. The fact that so many Jews are being suspended today over supposed antisemitism attitudes because of their criticism of Israel proves that this is not about antisemitism.  According to Jewish Voices for Labour, at least 25 Jewish members were investigated for ‘antisemitism’, and many of them suspended, in recent years, with no coverage of the purge in the mainstream media.

The British Jewish Community is not the American Jewish Community

Leifer operated under the belief that the Jewish community in Britain and the United States are comparable.  They are not. American Jewry is not centrally directed by Zionist bodies like in Britain. I am the son of an Orthodox Rabbi.  I knew the Jewish community and modern Orthodoxy pretty well. Former Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz visited my house. It is a deeply conservative and racist community (anti-Arab/Muslim). There is no comparison with the American Jewish community which is largely Reform/Conservative. The British Jewish community is far more insular.  It is a community which has for the last 50 years voted Tory by overwhelming majorities. Even under Labour’s first Jewish leader Ed Miliband, it voted by more than 3-1 for the Tories. The days of the Jewish workers in the East End joining and voting Communist are long gone.

Leifer mentions a letter from 60 rabbis attacking Corbyn. What he doesn’t mention is the letter signed by 29 Ultra Orthodox rabbis dissociating themselves from the Board’s attacks saying they did not represent the Ultra Orthodox community, which is the fastest growing part of the British Jewish community.

Would Jewish groups like If Not Now or JVP have helped?

Leifer argues that if there had been similar Jewish groups in Britain to America’s If Not Now or Jewish Voice for Peace then things might have been different.  I don’t believe so. American Jewry is more liberal. This was why Jewish Voices for Labour was formed in Britain. But they were ignored during the antisemitism controversy because the campaign was not about either Jews or antisemitism. The proof of this lies in the fact that the Board of the Deputies and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement focused on the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism and anti-Zionism.  It is the same IHRA that the antisemitic Trump and the equally antisemitic Viktor Orban of Hungary have taken to heart.

The EHRC report on Labour ‘Antisemitism’

Leifer quotes uncritically the recent report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission that concluded that “there were unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination for which the Labour Party is responsible” and identified “serious failings in leadership and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”  

The EHRC is hardly a reliable source. The EHRC is a state-appointed, state-funded body that has refused to investigate Tory Party Islamophobia.  It has an abysmal record on racism and has recently come in for criticism by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights. Until recently it didn’t have a single Black or Muslim Commissioner. Leifer might have mentioned the author of the report. The Anti-Semitism Report on Labour was produced by Alasdair Henderson, a supporter of fascist Roger Scruton and Douglas Murray, whose book “The Strange Death of Europe” articulates the White Replacement Theory. The EHRC is held in contempt by Black people yet Leifer said nothing about this miserable record.

Leifer quotes Britain’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis who issued a statement attacking Corbyn during the General Election over Labour ‘antisemitism’. Leifer failed to tell his readers that Mirvis trained at a yeshiva on a West Bank settlement, Alon Shvut. Mirvis joined in and encouraged others to march, in Jerusalem’s annual March of the Flags, when thousands of settler youth parade through Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’. Mirvis marched despite appeals in the Times of Israel and Ha’aretz.

Leifer gives as examples of Labour ‘antisemitism’ former London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s assertion that the Nazis supported Zionism in the 1930’s. Even were this untrue it wouldn’t be antisemitic. But a Zionist historian, Professor Francis Nicosia, has spoken of the ‘illusory assumption’ of German Zionism that Zionism “must have been well served by a Nazi victory.” Another Zionist historian, David Cesarani wrote in his book “Final Solution” that “The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to promote emigration.” It may be inconvenient today to remember Zionism’s record during the Nazi period, but to tell the truth is never antisemitic.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism

It should be obvious that the IHRA definition of ‘antisemitism’ is about Zionism not antisemitism. What has comparing Israel to pre-war Germany got to do with antisemitism? Was the late Professor Ze’ev Sternhell, a child survivor of the Holocaust, also antisemitic for making such a comparison? Was Knesset member and former deputy chief of staff Yair Golan antisemitic when he made the same comparison?

Leifer quotes uncritically the assertion of the Zionist Board of Deputies that ‘Jeremy Corbyn, simply had no right to argue with Jewish organizations over the definition of antisemitism’. Why not?  No one has a monopoly on the definition of racism.

Not once did Leifer ask why British Jews and Zionist groups had the right to define antisemitism in terms that rule out the Palestinian expression of their experience of racism.

Nor did Leifer ask, Why the need for a definition. The Oxford English Dictionary defines antisemitism as ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews.’ Why the need for a 500+ WORD definition? My dad took part in the Battle of Cable Street. He didn’t need a definition of antisemitism! Even the principal drafter of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, has condemned the definition’s weaponisation and chilling of free speech, yet Leifer was seemingly oblivious to the motives behind the Zionist demands to accept the IHRA.

Should Corbyn have ‘apologised’ to the Jewish community?

Quite amazingly Leifer suggests that during the election Corbyn should have apologised for Labour’s ‘antisemitism’ to the Jewish community when asked to do so by BBC interviewer Andrew Neil. The proper response would have been ‘Apologise? What for?’ However, by that time Corbyn too had accepted the false narrative of ‘antisemitism’ and the more people he expelled the more ‘proof’ there was that Labour had an ‘antisemitism’ problem.

That was the real tragedy of Corbyn, not that he put up some resistance to the narrative.

Corbyn’s failure was to refuse to go on to the offensive. When Neil, a former editor of the Murdoch Sunday Times, asked Corbyn to apologise Corbyn should have asked Neil why he was so concerned by antisemitism when he had employed a Holocaust denier, David Irving, to interpret the Goebbels Diaries! Neil as Chairman of the Spectator also agreed to keeping the openly antisemitic Taki Theodoracopulos on as a columnist. (Taki openly praised the Greek Nazi party Golden Dawn and described himself as a “soi-disant anti-Semite”.) Corbyn had an easy response but he was incapable of punching a paper bag. His reformist politics were the problem, not his inability to apologise.

Leifer correctly criticises Corbyn for having ‘no real strategy for pursuing a boldly anti-imperialist, pro-Palestine politics or skillfully parrying the inevitable attacks from his opponents” but the criticism is rich coming from him. His only suggestion for how Corbyn should have parried is to ask ‘What if, instead of retreating into defensiveness, they had moved to reconcile sooner with the British Jewish communal institutions’

He can’t be serious. The answer to his suggestion lies in section 3(d) of the Board of Deputies Constitution which states that the  Board shall

‘Take such appropriate action as lies within its power to advance Israel’s security, welfare and standing.’

The Board of Deputies is an Israel, right or wrong, group. An organisation that tweets its support of the Israeli military when its snipers are mowing down children, is hardly likely to be won over to pro-Palestinian politics!

Appeasement is not a useful strategy. Labour’s Leaked Report makes it clear that Corbyn sincerely believed that if he offered Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself up as sacrificial lambs, the Board would be appeased. On page 306 it tells how

Jeremy Corbyn himself and members of his staff team requested to [the Governance and Legal Unit] that particular antisemitism cases be dealt with. In 2017 LOTO [Leader of the Opposition] staff chased for action on high-profile antisemitism cases Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker and Marc Wadsworth, stressing that these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”.

Well we were expelled but was trust reestablished?  Of course not. They simply demanded more victims like the one honourable MP Chris Williamson. You have to fight a wild animal and Corbyn was not prepared to do that. That was the problem which the ever clever Leifer wasn’t able to discern.

Corbyn’s period as leadership and his demise was indeed a tragedy, one which is now resulting in mass expulsions from the Labour Party. It is or should be crystal clear that the ‘antisemitism’ campaign was never about antisemitism and always about the threat that a party led by a socialist represented.

In 20-30 years some enterprising young journalist will no doubt use the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the names and details of who was at the centre of the anti-Corbyn campaign, orchestrating the different parts.

As for Jewish Currents, it describes itself as ‘a magazine committed to the rich tradition of thought, activism, and culture of the Jewish left.’ I was left wondering what it means to say that you stand in the tradition of the Jewish left?  It seems for many on the passive left this comprises a mixture of romantic kitsch and schmaltzy memories.

The traditions of the Jewish left – the Bund, the Communists, Socialists and Anarchists –can be summed up in one word – solidarity. An injury to one is an injury to all. It was in solidarity with the murdered millions of Jews of Poland that Shmuel Zygielbojm, the Bund representative in the Polish Government-in-exile, committed suicide in London in 1943. This was at the same time as his Zionist counterpart Ignacy Schwarzbart, was playing down the extent of the Holocaust.

The state-sponsored attack against Jeremy Corbyn and the movement that he led is a litmus test of whether or not you are a socialist. Joshua Leifer’s article was an attack on all those who have been victims of the Right’s heresy hunt, not least the Palestinians. I therefore wrote back to the editor suggesting that if Arielle Angel was going to refuse a reply to Leifer’s article then it would be more honest for JC to declare that it represented the non-socialist and non-Marxist left. It seems that to JC being on the ‘left’ is a lifestyle statement.

I have also sent an Open Letter to Peter Beinart.

The Political Lynching of Ilhan Omar – Telling the Truth About Zionism and its Lobbies is NEVER anti-Semitic

Ilhan Omar had nothing to apologise for and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‏ should have supported her not applauded her forced apology

The past few days have seen the equivalent of what socialists in the Labour Party have experienced but it has taken place in the United States. Like Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Ken Livingstone and myself, Ilhan Omar has experienced hypocrisy, double-speak and pure unadulterated racism from America’s Zionist lobby. All in the name of fighting ‘anti-Semitism’ of course! All too many people have fallen for this 3 card political card trick.

Why even that well known anti-racist Donald Trump has joined in!  Did you remember in Trump’s abysmal State of the Union address recently, whilst spending 17 minutes attacking refugees at the border and accusing them of all being criminals, he had time to condemn ‘anti-Semitism’.

Ilham Omar

What is amazing is that there are still those who don’t understand that when creatures like Margaret Hodge or Luciana Berger talk about ‘anti-Semitism’ they don’t mean hatred of Jews but hatred of Zionism and the Israeli state.

It's about the Benjamins i.e. money - in the final analysis that is exactly what it's about

Batya Ungar-Sargon playing stupid - AIPAC exists for no other reason than to pay off politicians and bribe its way across the political circuit

The attack on Ilan Omar began with a race baiting article by the Opinion Editor of The Forward Batya Ungar-Sargon. On Sunday Ilhan responded to a tweet by The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald, who remarked on how Kevin McCarthy, the  Republican leader in Congress, was threatening Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib with punishment for criticising Israel.  Greenwald observed that it was ‘stunning how much time some US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation’ even if it is at the expense of free speech for Americans.

Obama's Ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro clearly has forgotten the time when he was called a Jew-boy by Aviv Bushinsky, Netanyahu's former spokesman for mildly criticising his ex-boss. Note how 'this tired antisemitic trope about Jews and money' has become the accepted wisdom despite the subject never having been mentioned!

Of course it’s not really remarkable because Israel is the United States’ closes ally, it forward base in the Middle East. In response Ilhan posted a reply ‘It’s all about the Benjamin’s baby’ (a reference to Benjamin Franklin’s picture on US $100 bills).

Immediately Batyar couldn’t resist the temptation to attack one of Congress’s only two Muslim women, asking ‘Would love to know who @ilhanomar thinks is paying American politicians to be pro-Israel.’ when the answer was obvious. Ilhan came back with a one word reply – AIPAC. This is 100% correct. What would be wrong or misguided would to be suggest that US Foreign Policy is a consequence of AIPAC’s bribes to politicians. AIPAC’s bribes are part of a seamless web of political corruption. AIPAC stands for American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

To which Batty responded that ‘freshman Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted something anti-Semitic.’ For Zionists, even the truth can be anti-Semitic. It is an incontrovertible fact that AIPAC sponors and bribes US politicians.  Batty claimed that ‘AIPAC does not endorse candidates, nor does it make campaign contributions, though its members and employees do.’

 This is a straightforward lie. AIPAC does little else. It runs hostile campaigns against those it doesn’t like.  It takes all elected Congressmen on a free trip to Israel after they have been elected.  It speaks volumers that The Forward’s Opinion Editor feels the need to lie so blatantly in order to sustain her allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.  Like Margaret Hodge, Luciana Berger and others of her ilk in Britain, lying is second nature to the apologists for Zionism.

Anyone who doubts this should read the painfully honest article by Ady Barkan ‘What Ilhan Omar Said About AIPAC Was Right - I’m ashamed to admit that endorsing AIPAC positions was all about the Benjamins for me and my candidate.’

Ady is a former Israeli lobbyist who in his dying days has become repulsed at what he was doing. Ady described how fresh out of college in 2006 he was working with the Democratic congressional candidate in ‘deepest red Ohio’ when an AIPAC staffer offered $5,000 if the candidate, Victoria Wulsin, would support AIPAC’s position on Iran and another issue.  Despite being pro-peace they agreed to do Aipac’s bidding for the money. Ady wrote that ‘It was, I am ashamed to say, definitely about the Benjamins.’

The article is particularly sad because Ady is only 35 and is dying from a ‘poorly understood neurological disease with no treatment’ which has paralysed him. He can only write thanks to modern technology that tracks the location of his eyes.

'Antisemitism has no place in the US Congress' except when it comes from me, Trump and the Christian Right!

The Jewish Forward has played a major part in this story but most of their writers haven’t taken the nakedly Jewish supremacist and racist approach of Batya Ungar-Sargon.  One such is Joshua Leifer’s Ilhan Omar Writes Bad Tweets. But The Right Has Jewish Blood On Its Hands, which .  Unlike Batty Joshua doesn’t try to defend AIPAC which he describes as exterting a ‘massive sway over American politics and works to prop up a brutal, unjust status quo of perpetual occupation in Israel-Palestine, but there are ways to critique this responsibly, without resorting to words and phrases that evoke unsavory tropes.’ Contrast this with Batya’s apologetics for an organisation whose sole purpose is to support the Israeli far-Right and its Occupation.

My own view is that Ilhan’s suggestion that it was all abut the ‘Benjamin’s’ was a mistake, not least because the supply of corrupt money does not account for Aipac’s influence. Its political influence stems from being aligned with powerful imperialist and corporate political forces in the United States.  However what is equally clear is that nothing Ilhan said was in the least anti-Semitic.

What is a story about Jewish donors if not about Jewish money?

I am reminded over a similar furore in Britain in the Autumn of 2015 when the late Gerald Kaufman MP attributed the pro-Zionist stance of the Tories to ‘Jewish money’ from Conservative Friends of Israel. It was an unfortunate phrase but it was also not anti-Semitic.  Or if it was then the Jewish Chronicle which has repeatedly carried the same phrase is one of Britain’s most anti-Semitic publications! Jewish money is a theme of much of the British press, for example stories about how Jewish donors are no longer supporting the Labour Party for example Labour funding crisis: Jewish donors drop 'toxic' Ed Miliband. This however gave the CAA the excuse to launch an attack on Kaufman, a Jewish MP, who had been a stalwart supporter of the Palestinians.

One of Omar's biggest critics was Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy who unlike Ilan has peddled genuinely anti-semitic nonsense

Leifer pointed out that Kevin McCarthy was the same person who accused George Soros and two other Jews of trying to buy the election.  His tweet included a scowling picture of Soros and the inevitable #MAGA (make America great) which is the accompaniment of Trump’s America First slogan.

Leifer pointed the finger at those ‘American Jewish establishment organizations — like AIPAC, the ADL, and the AJC’ who ‘have found common cause with the right around support for the Israeli government and anti-BDS laws.’

However the most articulate article in The Forward is that of Peter Beinart, a liberal Zionist, a senior columnist as well as being a professor of journalism.

In The Sick Double Standard In The Ilhan Omar Controversy Beinart wrote that Ilhan Omar ‘was wrong to tweet that the American government’s support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” This is undoubtedly right. It is too crude and simplistic to reduce the support of American imperialism for Israel to the ability of the Zionist/Israel lobby to bribe politicians although a tweet is hardly the place for a sophisticated analysis.

If that was all that was needed to remove the Zionist entity then the Arab governments could have done it years ago. Beinart also acknowledged that ‘AIPAC’s influence rests partly on the money its members donate to politicians. But it also rests on a deep cultural and religious affinity for Israel among conservative white Christians, who see the Jewish state as an outpost of pro-American, “Judeo-Christian” values in a region they consider hostile to their country and faith.’

Where I disagree with Beinart is with his suggestion that Omar’s tweet was ‘irresponsible.’ In what was a tortured explanation, he argued that ‘Accusing a largely (though not officially) Jewish organization like AIPAC of buying politicians is different than accusing the NRA or the drug industry of buying politicians because modern history is not replete with murderous conspiracy theories about how gun owners and pharmaceutical executives secretly use their money to control governments.’ AIPAC is not a Jewish group, it is a Zionist political group and as such should not be immune from criticism lest it offend Jewish sensibilities. In any case there are many people who allege that the gun lobby and big pharma use their money to control or influence government policy.

Those who accuse Omar of ‘anti-Semitism’ are saying that to be a pro-Israel group is to be Jewish.  Factually this is nonsense. Beinart also says that Omar ‘was right to apologize last month for a 2012 tweet in which she also evoked anti-Semitic stereotypes by accusing Israel of having “hypnotized the world” about its behavior in the Gaza Strip.’

Again I disagree. The fact is that the world has stood by whilst Israel has, in the words of former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, sent parts of Gaza back into the stone age. Accusing Zionists of hypnotizing the world (or its leaders) is only anti-Semitic if you equate Zionists with Jews, in which case it is you who is anti-Semitic! However Beinart puts the attacks on Ilan into perspective:

Guaranteeing Jews in the West Bank citizenship, due process, free movement and the right to vote for the government that controls their lives while denying those rights to their Palestinian neighbors is bigotry. It’s a far more tangible form of bigotry than Omar’s flirtation with anti-Semitic tropes. And it has lasted for more than a half-century.

Beinart points out that Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin, ‘who has called for stripping Omar of her committee assignments, spoke at a fundraiser for Beit El, a West Bank settlement from which Palestinians are barred from living even though it was built—according to the Israeli supreme court—on land confiscated from its Palestinian owners. It is these double standards by Israel’s supporters which should have been condemned yet instead she was ‘publicly rebuked’ by the entire Democrat’s House leadership. For his enthusiastic endorsement of land theft and state-sponsored bigotry in the West Bank, Zeldin has received no congressional criticism at all. To the contrary, he’s a Republican rising star.’

As Beinart points out that if the Republicans denouncing Omar were sincerely opposed to anti-Semitism, they would not support Trump. He lists just some of his anti-Semitic remarks.

·       In 2013 he tweeted that “I’m much smarter than Jonathan Leibowitz—I mean Jon Stewart.”

·       He ran for president on a slogan laden with anti-Semitic associations from the 1930s: “America First.”

·       In 2015 he told a Jewish audience that “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money… you don’t want to give me money, but that’s ok, you want to control your own politicians that’s fine.”

·       In 2016 he retweeted an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by money and a Jewish star.

·       He closed his presidential campaign with an ad that showed three Jews—Janet Yellen, Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros—alongside language about “global special interests” that “control the levers of power in Washington.”

·       In 2017, he said there were “very fine people” among the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville and

·       in 2018, his racist fear mongering about a caravan of Central American migrants provoked a Pittsburgh man to commit the worst anti-Semitic atrocity in American history. Unlike Omar, he has not apologized for any of this.

Beinart concludes that ‘if you denounce Ilhan Omar but support Donald Trump, you don’t really oppose bigotry. You don’t even really oppose anti-Semitism. What you oppose is criticism of Israel.’ Republicans ‘are not trying to police bigotry or even anti-Semitism. They’re using anti-Semitism to police the American debate about Israel.’

Another excellent article, from Mehdi Hassan (below) points out the hypocrisy of those who pretend that AIPAC is just a harmless and anodyne debating society.  He quotes the late Uri Avnery as saying that if AIPAC proposed a resolution calling for the abolition of the 10 commandments then 80 senators and 300 Congressmen would sign it.

What this affair tells us is that AIPAC and the Zionist lobby is becoming more twitchy and nervous.  Never before has the Zionist lobby been discussed in America. Millions of people will see through the self-serving apologetics for this Israeli PR group. Although she does not realize it, Ilhan Omar has broken a taboo.  What is disappointing is that other radicals who were elected last November have kept quiet with Alexandria Ocadio-Cortez tweeting that Ilhan was right to apologise when what she should have been doing was calling out her detractors.

What is gratifying is that groups like Jewish Voice for Peace have come out unequivocally in support of Ilhan. Jewish progressives realize that the attack on Ilhan is motivated more by white racism than any concern for Jews.

Tony Greenstein

There Is a Taboo Against Criticizing AIPAC — and Ilhan Omar Just Destroyed It

Mehdi Hasan

February 12 2019, 1:00 p.m.

Rep. Ilhan Omar speaks to members of the media after a news conference on Capitol Hill on Jan. 24, 2019. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

In 2005, Steven Rosen, then a senior official with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, sat down for dinner with journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, then of the New Yorker. “You see this napkin?” Rosen asked Goldberg. “In twenty-four hours, [AIPAC] could have the signatures of seventy senators on this napkin.”

I couldn’t help but be reminded of this anecdote after Rep. Ilhan Omar, of Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District, was slammed by Democrats and Republicans alike over her suggestion, in a pair of tweets, that U.S. politicians back the state of Israel because of financial pressure from AIPAC (“It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” she declaimed). Was the flippant way in which she phrased her tweets a problem? Did it offend a significant chunk of liberal U.S. Jewish opinion? Did it perhaps unwittingly play into anti-Semitic tropes about rich Jews controlling the world? Yes, yes, and yes — as she herself has since admitted and “unequivocally” apologized for. But was she wrong to note the power of the pro-Israel lobby, to point a finger at AIPAC, to highlight — in her apology — “the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA or the fossil fuel industry”?

No, no, and no.

Rosen, after all, wasn’t the first AIPAC official to boast about the the raw power that “America’s bipartisan pro-Israel lobby” exercises in Washington, D.C. Go back earlier, to 1992, when then-AIPAC President David Steiner was caught on tape bragging that he had “cut a deal” with the George H.W. Bush White House to provide $3 billion in U.S. aid to Israel. Steiner also claimed to be “negotiating” with the incoming Clinton administration over the appointment of pro-Israel cabinet members. AIPAC, he said, has “a dozen people in [the Clinton] campaign, in the headquarters … and they’re all going to get big jobs.”

Go back further, to 1984, when Sen. Charles Percy, a moderate Republican from Illinois, was defeated in his re-election campaign after he “incurred AIPAC’s wrath” by declining to sign onto an AIPAC-sponsored letter and daring to refer to Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as more “moderate” than other Palestinian resistance figures. AIPAC contributors raised more than a million dollars to help defeat Percy. As Tom Dine, then-executive director of AIPAC, gloated in a speech shortly after the GOP senator’s defeat, “all the Jews, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians —  those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire — got the message.”

Nearly four decades later, as members of the U.S. political and media classes pile onto Omar, are the rest of us supposed to pretend that AIPAC officials never said or did any of this? And are we also expected to forget that the New York Times’s Tom Friedman, a long-standing advocate for Israel in the American media, once described the standing ovations received by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, from members of Congress, as having been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby”? Or that Goldberg, now editor-in-chief of The Atlantic and dubbed “the most influential journalist/blogger on matters related to Israel,” called AIPAC a “leviathan among lobbies, as influential in its sphere as the National Rifle Association and the American Association of Retired Persons are in theirs”? Or that J.J. Goldberg, former editor of the Jewish weekly newspaper The Forward, said in 2002, in reference to AIPAC, “There is this image in Congress that you don’t cross these people or they take you down”?

Are we supposed to dismiss Uri Avnery, the late Israeli peace activist and one-time member of the Zionist paramilitary, the Irgun, who once remarked that if AIPAC “were to table a resolution abolishing the Ten Commandments, 80 senators and 300 congressmen would sign it at once,” as a Jew-hater? Or label Jan Harman, a former member of Congress and devoted defender of Israel, an anti-Semite for telling CNN in 2013 that her former colleagues on Capitol Hill had struggled to back Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear diplomacy to due “big parts of the pro-Israel lobby in the United States being against it, the country of Israel being against it”?

To be clear: AIPAC is not a political action committee and does not provide donations directly to candidates. However, it does act as a “force multiplier,” to quote the Jewish Telegraph Agency’s Andrew Silow-Carroll, and “its rhetorical support for a candidate is a signal to Jewish PACs and individual donors across the country to back his or her campaign.” As Friedman explained to me in an interview in 2013: “Mehdi, if you and I were running from the same district, and I have AIPAC’s stamp of approval and you don’t, I will maybe have to make three phone calls. … I’m exaggerating, but I don’t have to make many phone calls to get all the money I need to run against you. You will have to make 50,000 phone calls.” (Is Friedman an anti-Semite too? Asking for a friend.)

What makes this whole row over Omar’s remarks so utterly bizarre is that so many leading Democrats, loudly and rightly, decry the pernicious and undeniable impact of special interests, lobbyists, and donations on a whole host of issues — from the role of Big Pharma and Big Finance; to influence-peddling by Saudi Arabia; to the “grip” that the NRA has on the debate over gun control, to quote Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal. But any mention of AIPAC and lobbying in favor of Israel? “Anti-Semitism!”

It's 'offensive and wrong' to suggest members of Congress are 'bought off' to support Israel but not wrong to suggest this takes place over gun control

Do they have no shame? Take Donna Shalala, a new member of Congress from Florida’s 27th District (and a former cabinet member under Clinton).

Yet here is the same Shalala boasting last month that she didn’t allow the NRA to “buy me during the campaign.”

Got that? It’s “offensive and wrong” to suggest the pro-Israel lobby tries to buy off politicians. But it’s totally fine to suggest the pro-gun lobby does. (The irony is that AIPAC’s leading lights haven’t been shy about making their own analogy with the NRA. “I’m sure there are people out there who are for gun control, but because of the NRA don’t say anything,” Morris Amitay, former AIPAC executive director, once admitted. “If you’re a weak candidate to begin with,” he continued, and your record is “anti-Israel and you have a credible opponent, your opponent will be helped.”)

Today, the Palestinians continue to be bombed, besieged, and dispossessed by their Israeli occupiers — with the full military and financial support of the United States government. There are a variety of credible explanations for this support: Israel’s role as a “strategic asset” and “mighty aircraft carrier“; U.S. Christian evangelicals’ obsession with Israel and the end-times prophecy; the impact of arms sales and the U.S. military-industrial complex; not to mention the long-standing cultural and social ties between American Jews and Israeli Jews. But to pretend money doesn’t play a role — or that AIPAC doesn’t have a big impact on members of Congress and their staffers — is deeply disingenuous.

And so we should thank Omar, the freshman lawmaker, for having the guts to raise this contentious issue and break a long-standing taboo in the process — even if she maybe did so in a clumsy and problematic fashion.

But you don’t have to take her word for it. “When people ask me how they can help Israel,” former Israeli prime minister and uber-hawk Ariel Sharon once told an audience in the United States, “I tell them: Help AIPAC.”

See

Ilhan Omar should be more radical about Israel, not less, Barnaby Raine, Guardian 12.2.19.  

Ilhan Omar under attack for telling truth about Israel lobby, Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada, 11.2.19.

House Majority Leader posted anti-Semitic tweet after bomb sent to George Soros' house, Salon, 28.10.18., Matthew Rozsa,