Yoav Gallant’s Statement that Palestinians are ‘Human Animals’ Echoes Hitler’s Description of Jews as ‘Human Cattle’

The Palestinian Uprising has Destroyed the Myth of Israeli Invincibility – Neither Hamas Nor Hezbollah are Terrorists –Israel Alone Deserves That Label

Register here

https://tinyurl.com/2s43ddzf

Varoufakis statement on Gaza Uprising

I will be speaking this Wednesday at a meeting on the Gaza-Ghetto Uprising and the significance of the attack by the Palestinian resistance on Israel. What will be the political fall-out? What has changed? What does the reaction of the United States and the western powers signify? What are Israel’s intentions etc.

Socialists should be crystal clear. Palestinians have every right, after a siege of Gaza lasting over 17 years to resist their oppressors. Anyone who denies that is no supporter of the Palestinians.

We should also be under no doubt as to the dangers. Netanyahu has already promised, as if a Nazi General, to raze Gaza to the ground. Yoav Gallant, Israel’s Defence Minister has already called the Palestinians ‘human animals’ thus betraying the racist nature of Zionism and its treatment of the Palestinians. This is not an emotional response of the moment. In 2015 Deputy Defence Minister Eli Dahan also called Palestinians ‘animals.’

To the more faint-hearted amongst us who recoil at some of the atrocities that the Palestinian guerillas are alleged to have committed I say this. There is no war yet when human rights crimes haven’t been committed by both sides. The mass rape of German women at the end of the last war, the undoubted war crimes committed by the British when they bombed Dresden and Nuremburg did not mean that we were neutral as between the Nazis and the Allies.

It is perfectly possible to condemn rape, the alleged parading of a naked Israeli woman in Gaza City and yet support the Palestinian Uprising. Because we all know that whatever war crimes have been committed by Palestinian fighters they pale into insignificance compared to the endless Israeli atrocities. The violence of the oppressed can never be compared with the violence of the oppressor. In today's Times of Israel I came upon this report of the killing of two Israelis:

At 8:20 a.m., terrorists entered Dvir’s home, he lunged at them with an axe, tried to protect my two kids who were with him, and was murdered in front of their eyes,” she posted. “His partner Stav also tried to protect them, but was murdered as well. The terrorist calmed down my Daria and Lavi, covered them in a blanket, took lipstick and wrote on the wall: ‘The al-Qassam [Brigades] people don’t murder children.

When has Israel ever spared Palestinian children?  Israel’s bombing of Palestinian homes is indiscriminate by definition. The death of Palestinian children does not disturb the average Israeli. So far this year 47 Palestinian children have been murdered in the West Bank yet this and the brutal military occupation didn’t figure once in the demands of Israelis in their mass demonstrations against the judicial reforms. Ex-Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked called Palestinian children ‘'little snakes'.

Let us also be clear that terrorism has a very specific meaning. It is the deliberate use of violence against civilians for political purposes. It is Israel which has been responsible throughout its existence for using terrorism as its weapon of choice – be it the bombing by the Zionist Irgun of the King David Hotel in 1946 when 92 people were killed and 46 injured  to the Sabra and Chatilla massacres in the refugee camps of Beirut in 1982 when around 2,000 unarmed Palestinians were murdered by the Lebanese Phalange as Israeli troops lit up the skyline for them.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are NOT terrorist organizations and they are only deemed as such by a Tory Home Secretary Savid Javid who bowed to the pressure of the Zionist Lobby. If interpreted literally the provisions of the Terrorism Act 2000 could be used to render illegal any meeting or action supporting the uprising in Gaza.

It is quite possible that a meeting where support is given to Hamas and Islamic Jihad’s attack on Israel could be deemed to ‘encourage support for a proscribed organisation or to further its activities.’ under s.12 of the Act. Thus we see, once again, how Britain’s anti-terrorist legislation is there, not to prevent ISIS style terrorism, but to crack down on free speech that the government does not like.

In the explanation justifying the proscribing of Hamas the government said that the reason for this was that

This is an outrageous abuse of the law. In the same 2001 clash 67 Palestinian children were murdered by Israel. Is indiscriminate rocket attacks worse than Israel’s targeted attacks on civilians and its bombing of residential streets and peoples’ homes? This law is not about terrorism it is about the suppression of free speech.

Although I support the attack on Israel by Hamas and Islamic Jihad I am not a supporter of the two groups politically. They are Islamist groups whereas I believe that the liberation of the Palestinians has nothing to do with religion. It is a political struggle.

Of course the misnamed Campaign Against Antisemitism has issued a typically dishonest, lying statement headed ‘We will do whatever it takes to defend the Jewish community’. If the CAA, which was formed in the summer of 2014 on the instigation of the Israeli state, in order to try and smear solidarity action with Palestinians under attack in Gaza with anti-Semitism, was seriously concerned with anti-Semitism, then they would disband tomorrow.

Because there is nothing more likely to increase anti-Semitism in Britain and attacks on Jews than those who do their best to associate British Jews with Israeli war crimes.  Even the Zionist Community Security Trust admitted this in its 2014 Anti-Semitic Incidents Report.

The single biggest contributing factor to the record number of antisemitic incidents recorded in 2014 was antisemitic reactions in the UK to the conflict in Israel and Gaza that began on 8 July 2014 and ended on 26 August 2014. CST recorded the highest-ever monthly total of 314 antisemitic incidents in July, and the third-highest ever monthly total of 228 incidents in August.

The CAA, which is no more than an extension of the Israeli state and which is directly funded by the Israeli para-state organization the Jewish National Fund does its best to equate Hamas attacks on Israel with the safety of British Jews.

In its statement the CAA accused Hamas and Islamic Jihad of supporting the ‘genocide of Jews.’ If anyone supports genocide it is people like Israel’s Police Minister Itamar Ben Gvir who had a poster of Baruch Goldstein on his living room wall. Goldstein entered the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and opened fire with an assault rifle killing 29 worshippers and injuring nearly a hundred. It is those in Israel who march to the chant of ‘Death to the Arabs’ who are the genociders but of these people the CAA has nothing to say.

When the CAA say

Those who glorify terrorism and delight in the massacre of Jews, and those who use the events still unfolding as cover for antisemitic acts should be under no misapprehension: we will pursue justice against you.

Note how the CAA conflates ‘terrorism’ i.e. support for Palestinian organisations with murder of Jews, which is the prerogative of the friends of the CAA – fascist groups like Britain First and people like Tommy Robinson – both of whom they keep company with.

Nonetheless we should treat seriously their legal threats. The reason is that Britain’s racist Home Secretary Suella Braverman combines her racism against refugees, with her talk of hurricanes, with putting political pressure on the police to arrest those who support the Palestinians.

Tory MP threatens use of Anti-Terrorism Act to suppress free speech

And just to make it clear to Braverman and her racist friends in the CAA, I support totally the right of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and others to launch attacks on Israel in response to the years of suffering and murder that they have experienced at the hands of the Israeli state and furthermore there is nothing you will ever be able to do about it.

Tony Greenstein

LLA statement on Israel/Palestine: Oppression inevitably feeds resistance

The situation in the Middle East is more volatile than it has been for many decades. We want to discuss what's going on - and if there is a solution. Join us on Wednesday October 11 at 7pm for an open discussion forum jointly sponsored by the LLA and the Republican Labour Education Forum, which will be introduced by Tony Greenstein. More details below, where you can also find the LLA's statement on the issue.

Hamas’ attack on Israel was certainly not ‘unprovoked’. The systematic and racist oppression of the Palestinians by the colonialist state of Israel has massively worsened with the introduction of the blockade 15 years ago and, more recently, with the state-sponsored extension of illegal settlements and pogroms on Palestinian land. These actions have created the horrific conditions which have led to this dramatic act of resistance. The aim of the Israeli state is simple: to ethnically cleanse the Palestinian population. It does not exploit the Palestinian people, as the apartheid regime in South Africa did – it simply wants to get rid of them. As a major ally of US-led imperialism in the otherwise unstable Middle East, Israel is supported politically, financially and militarily in this campaign by most ‘Western’ governments and receives more than 3 billion dollars a year from the US alone (over 150 billion since its foundation).

This attack however will be a long-awaited opportunity for the Israeli government to distract from its own problems, rally the divided population behind it, move to the right politically and expand its programme of ethnic cleansing. The US government on the other hand might well use this attack as a precursor to heat up its conflict with Iran.

The results for the Palestinian population remain the same: Further Israeli repression, particularly in the Gaza strip, is inevitable. Israel has no interest in getting rid of Hamas, otherwise it would have to govern Gaza directly, at great cost politically and financially. But they will want to destroy as much of Gaza as possible, in front of the TV cameras, before declaring ‘revenge’ has been served.

The attack has naturally been described as “anti-Semitic” – that is, after all, what the smear campaign in the Labour movement was all about, to prepare for a moment like this. Getting rid of Jeremy Corbyn was just a convenient side effect and it remains true that the failure of the official Left to stand up to the witch-hunt has helped to prepare the current ground. Any opposition to the programme of brutal ethnic cleansing and the coming expansion of military and financial support for the Israeli government is likely to be branded ‘racist’ and anti-Jewish.

All the more important that socialists continue to fight:

• for an end to the occupation of Palestine
• against the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism
• against any political, financial or military support for Israel
• against war on Iran

Mass Lobby of Labour’s NEC Tuesday July 20th 12.00 - Stop the Purge of Socialists

 Starmer to Expel Thousands of Socialists while Readmitting Islamaphobe Trevor Phillips

It is clear from reports in the yellow press that Starmer is embarking on a purge of socialists and anti-racists in the Labour Party. This comes after Trevor Phillips quietly had his suspension lifted about a month ago. Phillips was suspended in March 2020 after a series of racist comments such as Muslims were ‘a nation within a nation’.

Phillips was also quoted in the Guardian as saying that it was correct for Muslims to be judged collectively: “You keep saying that I make these generalisations,” he said. “But the truth is, if you do belong to a group, whether it is a church, or a football club, you identify with a particular set of values, and you stand for it. And frankly you are judged by that.”

It is accepted by all that blaming all Jews for the actions of an individual is racist, yet when it comes to Muslims this is perfectly acceptable to Starmer and Evans. If ever there were proof that Starmer’s commitment to ‘rooting out anti-Semitism’ was a vicious anti-Palestinian hoax this is it.

And then there was the call by far-right Labour MP Neil Coyle for Jewish Voices for Labour should be expelled too. There is a word for those who call for the expulsion of Jews from the Labour Party – ah yes, anti-Semitism.  However I suspect it was not the same ‘anti-Semitism’ that Starmer  pledged to get rid of.

Four groups are going to be proscribed – Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), Labour in Exile Network (LIEN), Socialist Appeal and Chris Williamson’s Resist.

These measures only affect the aforementioned 3 groups.  LAW is a longstanding group first formed in the 1980s when Jeremy Corbyn was its Secretary.  It was refounded in 2017 to fight back against the bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt which Corbyn succumbed to.

LIEN was formed in the wake of Corbyn’s suspension last October. Despite being reinstated to the Party Sturmer refused to reinstate the Whip forcing him to sit as an independent MP.  Over a hundred Constituency Labour Parties passed motions of no confidence in Sturmer and his glove puppet Evans and demanded the reinstatement of Corbyn.

Keir Starmer has none of the above three!

Starmer and the unelected Evans reacted in the way we have come to expect of the Labour Right. Evans declared that CLPs were ‘not competent’ to discuss such resolutions. This Stalinist approach to democracy will be warmly applauded by the capitalist press, not least the Mirror and Guardian.

Those CLPs and officers that refused to be intimidated were suspended and their officers either suspended or expelled if they refused to accept the dictate of Starmer and his big business buddies. 

Starmer was elected leader on a pledge of being the ‘unity’ candidate who would take forward the manifesto pledges of Corbyn. These were lies as was his reason ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theories’ for sacking Rebecca Long-Bailey as Education Shadow and then Corbyn himself.

Starmer was funded in his leadership campaign by a bevy of wealthy individuals – Bob Latham (£100K), Waheed Ali (£100K), Martin Taylor, a hedge fund manager (£95K), Clive Hollick (£50K), Trevor Chinn, a long-time Zionist & owner of Kwik Fit (£50K), Peter Coates, owner of Bet365 (£25K), Martin Clarke, former AA finance director (£25K) and a former  funder of the defunct Change UK/Independent Group. One of the few examples of a rat joining a sinking ship and Paul Myners (£10K). Just 8 rich individuals contributed nearly half a million pounds yet Starmer used various legal stratagems to hide the fact from Labour members that it was wealthy businessmen who were funding his campaign until the election was over. It might have given the game away if members had been aware that he was funded by a ratbag of Blairite entrepreneurs.

Sir Keir is repaying the debt he owes Chinn and the Israel Lobby by expelling and purging socialists from the Labour Party. He intend to complete what Blair started.  To remake Labour into a second party of capitalism and to purge it of any trace of socialism.

Except that when Blair began his campaign to repeal Clause IV he was riding high in the polls as was Kinnock before him.  Starmer by contrast is in a dire position electorally. He lost one by-election in Hartlepool, a seat Labour had never before lost, nearly lost another by-election and in a third by-election Labour got the worst ever election result in its history, 1.6%.

Starmer is taking Labour down to what will be a historic political defeat at the next election. Why  Because he has nothing to say.  As the Tories introduce a new NHS reform bill Labour sits silent because under Starmer Labour does not oppose private companies taking over more and more of the NHS.  The same is true for the Labour Party on the Police and Crime Bill.  Starmer has no concept of what opposition is because he and the Labour Right have no fundamental differences with the Tories.

It is time for the Campaign Group of MPs to get off their knees and start fighting back. If Sir Keir is successful socialism inside the Labour Party will be dead. It is regrettable that Jeremy Corbyn has taken the legal route in fighting back rather than campaigning for the removal of Starmer.

We also have to be honest and say that much of the Labour Left under Lansman, Corbyn and McDonnell helped bring this situation about when they introduced the ‘fast track’ system of expulsions. It should be a lesson to all that when you appease Labour’s Right they only demand more.  It is also highly unlikely, given he has already had one legal setback, that Corbyn will be victorious.

Last night representatives of LAW, LIEN, LRC, LLA, Socialist Appeal and JVL met to plan the fightback which will start with the Lobby this Tuesday July 20^th outside the Labour Party headquarters  at 105 Victoria St, London SW1E 6QT.

Unfortunately despite Socialist Appeal making it clear that they wanted to fight the purge politically, by calling for Starmer to go, the majority in the meeting did not agree.

The Right are proposing to revive the McCarthyist list of proscribed organisations that was abandoned in 1973. Anyone who is a member or supporter of the four groups will be automatically expelled.

Membership of the above groups will be held to be “incompatible with membership of the Labour Party”, as they have their own programme, membership, and structures. Three of the four organisations on the list do not do that whereas the right-wing factions Progress, Labour First and the Jewish Labour Movement do qualify. Indeed the JLM is affiliated internationally to the World Zionist Organisation and is the overseas wing of the Israeli Labor Party. All 3 of the above right-wing organisations openly campaigned against Labour under Corbyn’s leadership and the JLM went so far as to refuse to support Labour candidates at the 2019 general election.

We were informed at the meeting that Momentum’s National Coordinating Group will be issuing a statement tomorrow opposing Starmer’s proposals. Apparently the man who did more than anyone to weaken the Labour Left, Jon Lansman, has also made clear his opposition to what is being proposed by the Right.

When Keir Starmer promised to ‘root out antisemitism’ in the Labour Party what he was really saying was that he was going to root out the left. Unfortunately the present Momentum leadership still hasn’t come to terms with this despite dozens of Jewish members being suspended.

 False charges of ‘antisemitism’ have been used to prevent any discussion or expression of solidarity with Palestinians of which the ruling out of order of a motion to Hove Labour Party on the advice of Labour’s racist and anti-Semitic South-East Regional Organiser Scott Horner is but the latest example.

The position of LAW and LIEN is quite clear. There should be no automatic expulsions.  Everyone is entitled to a fair hearing and due process. The National Constitutional Committee, an elected body, which is there to hear disciplinary cases has been totally sidelined.

If you have been suspended or expelled you or they are trying to silence your local party then you should come to this protest-lobby of the NEC at 12 noon this Tuesday 20 July and tell your story.  Email Norman on info@labour-in-exile.org to let us know.

Norman Thomas, who founded LIEN said in a statement:

“There is wide agreement Starmer is pretty pathetic at fighting the Tories, but he’s in overdrive when it comes to attacking his own members. He has destroyed democracy in Labour to get rid of the thousands of people who joined after Jeremy Corbyn became leader.”

Thomas said there would be more action to come – including at the conference in September.

 “This is just the beginning of the fightback. We are fighting for the future of the Labour party,” he said.

The whole left must stand in solidarity with these four organisations and oppose this latest purge. If Starmer succeeds on Tuesday then other groups will be added to the list.  

See also Labour’s planned purge is an act of self-sabotage and Sir Keir set to expel 1,000 leftwing members in four ‘poisonous’ groups in the Morning Star and in Canary Labour wants to ban left wing members, but they’re taking the fight to party HQ and on Skwawkbox Exclusive: the FOUR left groups Labour plans to outlaw – and the ‘Labour’ MP who wants left-wing Jews added to the list. 

NOT THE FORDE INQUIRY! Why Starmer Sought to Hide and Cover Up Racist and Sexist Abuse & Corruption Amongst Labour's Senior Staff

 Despite Packing the Forde Inquiry With his  Sycophants Starmer Decided to Suppress it

Register here for The Not The Forde Inquiry

The Forde Inquiry was set up at in April 2020 as a result of Labour’s Leaked Report which demonstrated conclusively that senior Labour staff had consciously set out to sabotage the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.  The Report was aiming to issue its report early in 2021. 

The Leaked Report, which was clearly commissioned by former General Secretary Jennie Formby (perhaps her only real service to the left during her tenure) demonstrated that senior Labour officials, led by General Secretary Iain McNicol and his unattractive enforcer John Stolliday, ran an unofficial  general election campaign in support of right-wing MPs at a secret HQ during the 2017 General Election campaign.

The Report, in perhaps its only humorous moment, illustrated the grief and tears of these sordid and wretched hacks as Corbyn increased his majority. They were openly disappointed, some in tears, when Corbyn unexpectedly gained not lost seats. McNicol warned his fellow bigots that they were in for an uncomfortable few months.

Unfortunately it took Corbyn another 8 months to force McNicol's resignation despite the fact that, in anticipation of a coup, McNicol had cancelled the passes of Corbyn's office on the night of the General Election. It was a sad commentary on Corbyn's tenure as leader that he refused to confront the Right even as he was betraying his own comrades like Chris Williamson.

Keir Starmer - Labour's Leader In Need of a Personality Transplant

The Leaked Report  included outrageous examples of racist abuse, homophobia, anti-Semitism (ironically) sexism and electoral sabotage by party officials.  In short utter corruption.

Starmer however made his displeasure clear. Not at the behaviour of McNicol, Stolliday, Emily Oldknow and all the other crooks and bigots who Labour employed at great cost.  His anger was directed at those who had compiled and leaked the Report.

The Forde Inquiry was filled with Starmer loyalists and right-wing toe rags.  Yet despite this Starmer has desperately attempted to kick the Inquiry into the long grass. The latest pretext for delay is that it might conflict with the Information Commissioner’s inquiries.

Over a year later the Forde Inquiry still hasn’t reported. Many people believe Forde’s findings are being suppressed because the party’s leadership wants to bury the truth. But we’re not going to let that happen.

That’s why we’re holding the “Not The Forde Inquiry”, to give people the chance to say in public what they would have told the inquiry if they’d had the chance.

Starmer is Labour’s most dishonest leader ever. A born liar who campaigned as a unity candidate and the moment he was elected began undoing Corbyn’s legacy. First Rebecca Long Bailey was sacked as Shadow Education Secretary for retweeting Maxine Peake’s references to Israeli Police training their US counterparts in how to choke, strangle and otherwise incapacitate Black people.  This was, apparently, an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’.

Whilst standing for leader Starmer hid the fact that his campaign was financed by a plethora of right-wing businessmen and hedge fund managers such as Martin Taylor, (£95,000) Clive Hollick (£50,000) and Trevor Chinn (£50,000), a major funder of Labour Friends of Israel and an Executive Member of BICOM, the main pro-Israel propaganda organisation in Britain.  Zionist supporters constituted a large chunk of Starmer's campaign funding but Starmer refused to divulge the source of his donations until the election campaign was over. As Bob Pitt noted:

those party members who voted for Keir on the basis of his assurances that he would continue Labour’s radical political trajectory might ask themselves whether they were well and truly suckered.

Because the Forde Inquiry looks as if it will never report, Labour in Exile Network has organised an alternative Forde Inquiry, namely Not the Forde Inquiry which will take submissions from people who have been at the centre of the witchhunt.

Rebecca Massey (under the flag) and Anne Mitchell (second from right) who was also expelled from Hove Labour Party

They include:

Jackie Walker – the Black-Jewish former Vice Chair of Momentum who was stabbed in the back by Jon Lansman at the behest of the Jewish LabourMovement whose 'sister party', the Israeli Labour Party, has just gone into a coalition government in Israel with the far-Right.

Chris Williamson        the former Labour MP who was attacked as an ‘anti-Semite’ by the JLM. Chris was stabbed in the back by Jennie Formby and betrayed by Jeremy Corbyn who failed to stand up for him.

Graham Bash    the Editor of Labour Briefing, an Executive Committee member of Jewish Voices for Labour who has also been suspended.

Leah Levane     a Jewish councillor for Hastings, Leah is co-Chair of Jewish Voices for Labour. Remarkably she doesn’t appear to have been suspended (yet!).

Tina Werkmann          Secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt and active in Labour Left Alliance has been expelled.

Rebecca Massey         was expelled on the explicit instructions of the Board of Deputies – this fact was uncovered when a document was obtained through a subject access request.

Contributions also encouraged from attendees at this event

If you have information relevant to the inquiry please email info@labour-in-exile.org. Whistleblowers are particularly welcome!

The inquiry will also hear a special message from film director Ken Loach

Over 450 people have already registered for Saturday's 'Not the Forde Enquiry' meeting at 7pm, which is being run in conjunction with the Labour Left Alliance and Labour Against the Witchhunt. The Morning Star covered the event and above you can see a video interview with LIEN's Norman Thomas that was shown on RT.

Register

https://tinyurl.com/npcjv7ws

Join LIEN

https://membermojo.co.uk/lien/

ALSO

Saturday 12 June, 5-7pm

Join our workshop on shadow CLPs: What are they? And how are they run?

A workshop to discuss the feasibility and possibility of creating Shadow CLPs around the country where we can affect and influence party business and policy from a left, democratic socialist agenda both from within the Labour Party in collaboration with exiles and members and from the outside with direct action and community projects and involvement.

We will have testimonies and examples of current examples of similar activities and how we can work together, using ideas and suggestions already in use and ones we can brainstorm together to build our numbers strength, effectiveness and efficiency .

Key speakers will include

• Kevin Bean, from Liverpool Wavetree - one of the Wavetree 4 suspended and expelled last year
• Carel Buxton from East Ham CLP
• Mike Kennard from North East Cambridgeshire CLP
• Terry Deans from Plymouth Moor View CLP, suspended V Chair of CLP and Branch Secretary.

There may be other key speaker contributions to be announced. Contributions as always are encouraged from the floor.

If anyone else would like to ensure a spot to contribute their experiences and ideas, please contact Terry Deans at terrydeans@hotmail.com or by FB messenger.

Saturday 12 June 2021 at 5-7pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88043023072

Meeting ID: 880 4302 3072

The Labour Representation Committee AGM is this Saturday - If It’s Serious About Defeating the Right It Should Get Rid of its President, John McDonnell

WHAT IS JEWISH VOICE FOR LABOUR FOR? When Your Strategy Has Failed It’s Usually a Good Idea To Change Direction Not Dig A Deeper Hole 

Instead of criticising Starmer's refusal to confront Boris Johnson over privatisation, PPE, nurses wages etc. McDonnell praises him

The LRC is holding its long delayed AGM this Saturday. The Labour Left has suffered a cataclysmic defeat at the hands of a state sponsored ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. If the LRC is serious about reversing that defeat then it first needs to engage in a serious evaluation of what went wrong and why.

The Labour Right demonstrated in the past 5 years that it was happy to unite with the Tories and the Zionists in order to defeat Corbyn and the Left. If the price of that alliance was a General Election they were prepared to pay that price. As the Leaked Labour Report made clear Labour’s witchhunting staff were grief stricken at Labour’s success.

Today Labour’s witchhunters don’t even bother to hide the fact that criticism of Israel will result in expulsion. The ‘mistake’ as the LRC Executive Statement puts it of Labour’s adoption of the IHRA in September 2018 was nothing less than Corbyn and the Labour Left stabbing itself in the back.  The IHRA, by making criticism of Israel equivalent to ‘anti-Semitism’ meant that from thereon in there was no need to find people in the Labour Party who didn’t like Jews.  It was enough not to like Israeli Apartheid.

The first thing the LRC should do if it is serious about learning from the past is to remove John McDonnell as its President. Instead of acting as Corbyn’s praetorian guard and spearheading the Left’s advance, McDonnell scabbed on those who did fight. He didn’t merely appease the Right he went out of his way to please them. Who can forget his interview with Alistair Campbell, who was instrumental in the drive to war in Iraq, when McDonnell supported Campbell’s reinstatement to the Labour Party, after having voted for the Lib Dems, he supported.

I don’t recall McDonnell supporting the reinstatement of Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson or myself, to say nothing of the hundreds of other members who were victims of a cruel and vicious witchhunt which literally drove some veteran members to their deaths. McDonnell’s behaviour was unforgiveable. He demonstrated that if he had become Chancellor of the Exchequer that he would have been putty in the hands of the capitalists and stockmarket spivs.

Last week  McDonnell demonstrated that his lurch to the Right has not stopped.  Almost alone amongst commentators he stated that ‘Keir’s got this exactly right.’ Starmer’s approach to the COVID-19 crisis, has amounted to giving Johnson a free pass and saying nothing about the thousands of uncounted deaths in care homes. The massive failure to deliver on PPE was a consequence of privatisation but Starmer again has said nothing. For McDonnell to praise his ‘constructive opposition’ means he has sold the pass.

Tom Watson 'lost sleep' thinking about 'poor racist Phil'

When it came to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign McDonnell told us Labour should take its advice from the Tory/Trump supporting Board of Deputies. When Margaret Hodge accused Corbyn of being a ‘fucking anti-Semite’ McDonnell urged that she should not be disciplined. No one was keener to haul up the white flag than McDonnell. McDonnell saw himself as the worthy successor to Hugh Dalton, Attlee’s first Chancellor, the guardian of sound capitalist finance.

At the very beginning of Corbyn’s leadership McDonnell demonstrated the direction he was heading in when he apologised on BBC Question Time for his Republican past and for having said that the IRA were ‘brave’.

Unless the Labour Left are capable of a serious analysis of what went wrong during Corbyn’s leadership and wake up to the fact that the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was a State directed campaign of destabilisation then they aren’t a serious left. The mere fact that the racist Tory tabloids were so concerned about anti-Semitism should have told McDonnell something. However he was so determined that Corbyn and he should come to power through appeasing rather than fighting the Right that he ignored all the signs that the ruling class was determined that this would not come to pass.

The LRC Executive’s Statement ‘Learning from mistakes of the past five years’ (paras. 12-17) is frankly pathetic.  Corbyn didn’t make the odd mistake, he embarked on a wholly mistaken strategy of appeasement of the Labour Right. Appeasing John Mann and Tom Watson was like appeasing a rabid dog. They needed to be put down not stroked.

That is why I am moving a reference back of the statement on Saturday. We shall see whether or not the Conference turns out to be a lap dog or not.

Corbyn’s decision to throw his friends abroad and act as a punch bag to the Hodges and Bergers was not only cowardly it was insane. His inability to understand what the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was about was inexcusable. Corbyn was not an innocent abroad. I chaired many Palestine meetings in the 1980’s where Corbyn spoke. There is no doubt that he knew very well that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the first accusation that Zionists make when support for the Palestinians is on the agenda. So why the hell didn’t he say that instead of repeating by rote that ‘I am not an anti-Semite’.

The LRC was well placed to make a strategic intervention in the past 5 years. Instead it chose to do nothing. It was capable of challenging Jon Lansman’s disastrous dictatorship in Momentum, the primary cause of Labour’s defeat yet it kept quiet. This raises the question as to what purpose the LRC serves.

On the eve of poll last December, whilst Momentum, Lansman and the LRC were fooling themselves into believing that Corbyn was on the road to victory, I penned an Open Letter to Corbyn’s closest advisor, Seamus Milne, the architect of the disaster on December 12^th. When the government’ files are made public in 30 years we will no doubt know who Seamus Milne, Laura Murray, Andrew Fisher and Corbyn’s other advisers were actually working for because it wasn’t for a Corbyn victory.

Too many on Labour’s gullible Left like Lansman’s former poodle, Laura Parker, were taken in by the idea that Starmer was a unity candidate who would preserve the best of Corbyn’s Manifesto. Contrast this with a post I wrote last February Keir Starmer is the candidate that the Deep State & the British Establishment want you to vote for. I wrote that

Starmer is the candidate of MI5 and the Political Police – he is Establishment down to his manicured fingers. ‘Sir’ Keir has pointed to his role in providing legal advice to striking miners and print workers.  This is true but it was a long time ago when he was a socialist. Today he is the darling of the Right.

Jewish Voice for Labour

It's increasingly difficult to know what JVL's strategy is.  I suspect that they don't know either. When the so-called Centre Left Grassroots Alliance met to carve up the left slate for Labour's National Executive elections, Momentum and the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, both of which failed to oppose and in Momentum's case supported the witchhunt vetoed the nomination of JVL's Jo Bird. Instead of walking out there and then JVL accepted what amounted to a continuation of the witchhunt.  

Because of her prominence and the STV method of election, Jo would almost certainly have secured a place.  Instead JVL simply capitulated to a slate that includes at least one Lansman supporter of the witchhunt.  

Jewish Voices for Labour have absolutely no excuse for this abject surrender to Momentum Forward who include a number of witchhunters in the form of the AWL. JVL made their first appearance at the 2017 Labour Party conference at a packed meeting during which Len McLuskey of Unite promised his union would affiliate. Unfortunately JVL, because of its political timidity and failure to understand the nature of the 'antisemitism' campaign has failed to live up to its promise.

I didn’t join the JVL because I was sceptical about JVL being Jewish only and having a second tier of membership for non-Jews. I’m not opposed to Jewish organisations within the Palestine solidarity movement as a matter of principle but the Labour Party was not a solidarity movement. It was an arena where the class struggle was reflected.

Even more stupidly JVL declared that anyone, Zionist, non-Zionist and anti-Zionist could join though in practice the number of Zionists who did join must be on the fingers of one hand. What this betrayed though was a failure to understand that what was happening had nothing to do with Jews, still less anti-Semitism. It was a combined attack from the British Establishment and its Israeli/Zionist counterparts. To refuse to take a question on Zionism didn’t make you stronger but weaker ideologically.

Al Jazeera's The Lobby demonstrated that the Israeli State was up to its neck in Labour's 'antisemitism' problems - and the JLM's Jeremy Newmark (centre) is sitting with Israeli agent Shai Masot (left) who left Britain in a hurry after it was revealed that he was engaged in dirty tricks

British Jews, or the most reactionary amongst them, played their traditional role in the campaign to remove Corbyn. They were the playthings of others. The Zionist leaders of the Board of Deputies, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, the Jewish Labour Movement and Jewish Chronicle did their best to create an atmosphere of fear amongst British Jews and it is clear that they succeeded in that task.  After all the middle class are particularly susceptible to ideological campaigns. It was the German middle class who voted overwhelmingly for Hitler in 1933.

In reaction to a survey by the Israeli funded Campaign Against Anti-Semitism that suggested that anti-Semitism in Britain was almost on a level with that in the 1930’s, Ha’aretz’s Anshel Pfeffer, who is a mainstream Zionist observed that:

‘Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population in both Houses of Parliament, on the Sunday Times Rich List, in media, academia, professions and just about every walk of public life. To compare today’s Britain, for all its faults, with the Jews’ situation in 1930s exhibits a disconnect from reality which borders on hysteria.

A ‘disconnect bordering on hysteria’. It’s a good summation of the whole fake anti-Semitism campaign.

Just as Jews were the middlemen in pre-capitalist society and in settler colonial societies like Algeria and Morocco, so they once again became the stool pigeons for others in the campaign to be rid of Corbyn. That was why the ‘strategy’, if one can grace it with that term, of JVL, of being a Jewish ‘cover’ for Corbyn had no impact. The Campaign Against Corbyn was never about Jews or anti-Semitism.  It was about defaming the Left as ‘anti-Semitic’ and JVL fell straight for it.

Corbyn of course saw it all as a personal attack on him, hence why he kept parroting the statement that he wasn’t anti-Semitic. It’s not a personal attack to say that Corbyn is not the brightest tool in the box. He never seemed to understand that when they attacked him as an anti-Semite they were not using ‘anti-Semitism’ in its traditional meaning, dislike or hatred of Jews but hatred of what Israel does. Corbyn never took the trouble to understand what was happening. What is surprising is that those who were more intelligent than him, like Seamus Milne also did not get it.  That is why I suspect that at least one of his closest advisors were also working for the British state.

The rest is history. Led by Lansman and the trade unions, Labour’s ‘left’ NEC decided to commit political suicide by endorsing the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism. You have to wonder that people who called themselves socialists allowed themselves to endorse a ‘definition’ that allowed critics of Israeli apartheid to be classified as ‘anti-Semites’.

It is untrue that Corbyn simply made a mistake or two.  From the moment he was elected, indeed even before, he went out of his way to appease the Zionists.  In the debate between the four candidates that the JLM sponsored and Jonathan Freedland chaired in July 2015, Corbyn went out of his way to praise Israel.  It is as if 35 years of being in the Palestine solidarity movement hadn’t left a single imprint on the airhead.

Of course there were a few anti-Semites in the Labour Party. Always have been, always will be but the Zionists had no problem with anti-Semites under previous leaders. Indeed they got into bed with more than a few. When Herbert Morrison, as Home Secretary during the war, refused to admit more than a token number of Jewish refugees from the Nazis, the Zionists said nothing.  Indeed they endorsed such a position since they too were opposed to the admission of refugees.

David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group, who knows Corbyn well, was instrumental in the JVL’s disastrous strategy. Rosenberg was happy to assure people that there was ‘some’ anti-Semitism in the Labour Party thus totally missing the point that it was not about anti-Semitism and never had been.

Tom Watson declared that he wouldn’t rest until every last anti-Semite was removed from the Labour Party. This is the man who as Campaign Organiser in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in 2004 had issued a leaflet informing electors that ‘"Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."

Racist Labour MP Phil Woolas - was defended by Tom Watson and John Mann

The same Tom Watson who, when the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas was removed from Parliament by the High Court for lying about his Lib Dem opponent, which was based on a strategy of ‘making the White folk angry’ declared that he had ‘lost sleep thinking about poor Phil.’

Or there was the ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ John Mann, who issued a scurrilous Anti-Social Behaviour handbook in which he identified Gypsies and Travellers as a law and order problem of anti-social behaviour.

What JVL should have done, but it was left to the Anti-Zionist Jewish Network and Labour Against the Witchhunt, was to demand that the racist Jewish Labour Movement should be disaffiliated from Labour. Despite its claim that it was a Jewish section of the Labour Party it is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation. Jewish anti-Zionists are not welcome whilst non-Jewish racists are.

JVL and the LRC, together with Red Labour (which only exists on social media) instead of teaming up with the Labour Left Alliance decided instead to organise separately in Don’t Leave Organise.

At a meeting on April 29^th with Dianne Abbot and Bell Ribairo Addy on the platform, Jackie Walker and myself spoke from the floor.  Immediately the Zionists demanded that the two MPs should be suspended. Unfortunately the MPs caved in to Starmer and apologised. Whilst JVL was right to issue a statement in solidarity with Abbot and Ribeiro-Addy they omitted to stand up for the right of Labour Party members and MPs to speak with and on the same platform as those unjustly suspended and expelled.

They also had nothing to say about Abbot and Bell Ribairo-Addy caving in and apologising to Starmer. If JVL is not prepared to encourage Labour MPs to develop a backbone who will?

Campaign for Free Speech

It is because of the failure of both the LRC and JVL to campaign against the Board of Deputies’s McCarthyite 10 Commandments that four of us – Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson and myself, teamed up to organise a series of meetings on the subject of Free Speech.

The first meeting in June included Max Blumenthall and largely escaped Zionist censure, apart from the authentic representative of the fascist wing of Zionism, David Collier. 

The second meeting in July, which apart from the four of us included Professor David Miller of Bristol University, who was himself suspended, Tariq Ali and Norman Finkelstein proved somewhat more controversial.  Since the meeting was about free speech Norman Finkelstein decided that he would be his normal  controversial self in the course of which he praised David Irving, the holocaust denier as a good historian and also asked the rhetorical question of what actually is the Holocaust. He also, somewhat facetiously, said he didn’t know who had killed Christ, missing the point that that was not the point.

The Don't Leave Organise meeting where Dianne Abbot and Bell Ribaire Addey were reprimanded for appearing with Jackie Walker and myself

Norman was certainly being his normal provocative self. That was why he was invited!  When I came back at the end of the meeting I pointed out that Irving had falsified and tampeed with his sources to fit in with his thesis that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust and I also added a rider to Norman’s comments about Christ Killers.

However there is no doubt that Irving, who is undoubtedly a neo-Nazi, is a good German military historian.  At least that’s what the experts say! In the famous libel trial Irving v Penguin which Rosenberg and others relied on, Judge Gray found, in s.13.7 that:

as a military historian, Irving has much to commend him. For his works of military history Irving has undertaken thorough and painstaking research into the archives. He has discovered and disclosed to historians and others many documents which, but for his efforts, might have remained unnoticed for years. It was plain from the way in which he conducted his case and dealt with a sustained and penetrating cross-examination that his knowledge of World War 2 is unparalleled. His mastery of the detail of the historical documents is remarkable. He is beyond question able and intelligent. He was invariably quick to spot the significance of documents which he had not previously seen. Moreover he writes his military history in a clear and vivid style. I accept the favourable assessment by Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan of the calibre of Irving's military history (mentioned in paragraph 3.4 above) and reject as too sweeping the negative assessment of Evans (quoted in paragraph 3.5).

Of course the Zionists exploded in their normal hypocritical manner. What is surprising is that the Zionist attacks were taken up by Rosenberg in an article published on the JVL blog, Who is David Irving? Rosenberg wrote that:

Even more shocking was after Finkelstein spoke not one of the other panelists, some of whom have played a significant part in anti-racist campaigns, used any of their concluding remarks to challenge Finkelstein’s praise for Irving. Disgraceful. I hope they will do so now.

There also followed an article by Rob Ferguson of the SWP. Ferguson pontificated about anti-Semitism and holocaust denial whilst claiming that but for the SWP we would already have been overrun by neo-Nazis.

I sometimes feel that people like Rosenberg and Ferguson live in a time bubble. Holocaust denial and people like Irving were dominant in the fascist scene 30 years ago.  That was the time when holocaust denial groups like the BNP and the National Front were the main fascist organisations. That is not true today.  Today’s far-Right accept the holocaust as part of the price for their alliances with the Zionist movement and the Israeli state. It clearly has not yet dawned on both Rosenberg and Ferguson that people like Tommy Robinson are admirers of the Israeli state. Holocaust denial is irrelevant to them.

In any event the responsibility for holocaust denial having spread beyond a small coterie of neo-Nazis is that of the Zionists who have continually used the holocaust as justification for Israel’s crimes.

Mike Rosen's letter to the Socialist Worker protesting about their alliance with Gilad Atzmon

The response defending the SWP linkup with Atzmon came from Lindsay German and Hannah Dee of their Central Committee and a former member Viv Smith

Rob Ferguson, a loyal SWP member, kept quiet for over 5 years whilst the SWP dallied with an open anti-Semite and someone who dabbled in holocaust denial, viz. Gilad Atzmon. In a series of articles in the Weekly Worker, Socialist Unity such as Time to say Goodbye I asked why it was that a so-called Marxist organisation was in alliance with someone who spoke about ‘Jewish Marxism’?  No answer was ever received. 

Rob Ferguson also kept quiet during the SWP’s rape scandal when four different women accused the SWP’s National Secretary Martin Smith of having raped them. A Disputes Committee accused the woman of effectively lying and asked her about her past sexual history. To put it bluntly Rob Ferguson is a died-in-the-wool SWP hack but it seems that JVL has taken him to its bosom.

When the SWP worked, for over 5 years, with Gilad Atzmon, Rob Ferguson kept his mouth shut

. In the Guardian’s Comment is Free I wrote about how

‘when the Socialist Workers Party first invited Atzmon to give a talk at their Bookmarks bookshop in London in June 2005, a large picket was organised by Jews Against Zionism.’

I can’t remember Ferguson ever protesting at the time but then given that the SWP has erased the whole episode from their collective memory that is not surprising. When Mike Rosen wrote to the SWP protesting about their alliance with Atzmon Hannah Dee, who was on the Central Committee and Viv Smith, who was on the CC, wrote to defend him. Lindsay German, now of Counterfire, also joined in pointing out that anti-Semitism is not the main form of racism today.  Which was true but why should that excuse the SWP’s link up with Atzmon?

You can see a timeline here detailing Atzmon’s links with the SWP.  Neither Rosenberg nor Ferguson ever protested about their tie up. And here is an interview with Atzmon in Socialist Worker.

Deborah Maccoby intervened in the discussion on the JVL Blog to explain that Rosenberg was wrong when he said that no one had challenged Finkelstein’s comments: I certainly took them up and more importantly Deborah pointed out that Finkelstein was a fierce critic of Irving notwithstanding his comments at the Zoom meeting.

But in fact Tony Greenstein did take up Finkelstein’s comments on Irving. This is what Tony said: “ I agree [David Irving] is a historian – one can’t take it away from him. The problem is that his politics has got in the way of his history and his research – and he clearly did tamper with his sources, if my reading of the libel trial is correct”.

This is not so much a challenge as an expansion, qualification and clarification – but in fact all Finkelstein said was that, in his view, Irving is a real, substantial historian – a judgment with which Tony agreed. This doesn’t mean that Finkelstein does not agree in his turn with Tony that Irving has tampered with sources and that his politics have got in the way of his history and research.

In The Holocaust Industry (p.71, footnote 60), Finkelstein states clearly that Gordon Craig is right to dismiss “Irving’s claims on the Nazi holocaust as obtuse and quickly discredited”, but goes on: “Craig nonetheless continues: ‘He knows more about National Socialism than most professional scholars in his field and students of the years 1933-1945 owe more than they are always willing to admit to his energy as a researcher and to the scope and vigour of his publications….his book Hitler’s War remains the best study we have of the German side of the Second World War, and, as such, indispensable for all students of that conflict.”

In the main text, Finkelstein calls the politics and motivations of writers like Irving as “scurrilous” and describes Irving as “notorious as an admirer of Hitler and sympathizer with German national socialism.”

There is no sign that Finkelstein has changed the views expressed in The Holocaust Industry.

Despite Debbie’s comments above Rosenberg simply lied in his final comment that

I was so surprised that they didn’t react after he said these things. I did not attend the event at the time but heard about the comments first through a third party, so I then sat down and watched and listened, and was duly shocked.

Of course I accept that only Finkelstein himself is responsible for those words. There is no absolute obligation on others to comment one way or another about his words. But it still surprises me that as far as I know the other panelists haven’t condemned them.

Why do I mention these things?  Because the meeting was organized in the context of the Zionist demands to shut down free speech in the Labour Party and in particular that of anti-Zionists and Palestinian supporters.  On this Rosenberg has nothing to say.

David Rosenberg boasts about his friendship with Corbyn being a constituent of his.  There is no doubt that he has been in frequent contact over the past 5 years.  Unfortunately rather than providing a corrective he simply reinforced Corbyn’s errors by accepting the Zionist narrative that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party was a problem.  If the Labour Party had a problem with racism it was over its previous support for the ‘hostile environment’ policy not anti-Semitism.  Yet Rosenberg was happy to reinforce the mainstream narrative.

David throughout the past 5 years treated the Jewish Labour Movement as if it were a legitimate organisation. As Chair of the Cable Street Memorial Committee he gave it a speaker at the Cable Street Commemorations four years ago. As Asa Winstanley wrote on Electronic Intifada and as most of us understood long before this, the JLM was revived by the Israeli Embassy and its operatives as the chosen instrument to bring down Corbyn.  Unfortunately, because of his Jewish chauvinism Rosenberg was unable to see or comprehend that the Zionist movement was acting as a coherent political force with the aim and intention of forcing Corbyn out and that the JLM was part of it.

When I was a member of the Jewish Socialist Facebook group I had a post criticizing Jon Lansman, a member of the JSG, removed by Rosenberg’s partner, Julia Bard. The JSG these days seems to resemble a family business more than a political organisation. When I posted a blog criticizing the JSG for not having supported Jackie Walker I was removed altogether.

The JSG also took over the Jews for Jeremy Facebook Group and promptly stifled any attempt to develop an organisation of the same name. Throughout the past 5 years Rosenberg argued against anyone on the Left criticizing Corbyn. The result has been that apart from the far left, there was no countervailing pressure on Corbyn.  It is little wonder that he ended up surrendering to the Zionist narrative.

In his latest post on his blog Rosenberg writes about Irving’s friends in the National Rebirth Poland – NOP, a neo-Nazi group. It is well known that the NOP have a branch in London and have worked assiduously with a range of far-Right groups.

Unfortunately Rosenberg demonstrates that his political analysis is bankrupt when he describes the NOP as ‘Far-Right anti-Zionists who describe Zionism as “a power structure of colossal proportions that straddles the globe.’

This is not a minor mistake. It goes to the heart of why, despite his pretensions, Rosenberg and the JSG are not anti-Zionist. Anti-Zionism is a form of anti-racism.  It is the ideology of opposition to Zionist settler-colonialism. To be an anti-Zionist is to be an anti-racist. Poland’s NOP and Greece’s Golden Dawn are amongst the few fascist and neo-Nazi groups these days who purport to support the Palestinians.  However these groups are bitterly Islamaphobic and racist towards Arabs. They are is anti-Semitic not anti-Zionist. When they use the term ‘Zionist’ what they really mean is ‘Jew’. To give them credibility as anti-Zionists simply demonstrates that Rosenberg and by extension the JSG does not and never did understand what anti-Zionism was.

I did point this last point out in response to Rosenberg on his blog but since he doesn’t take criticism lightly it was not published!

Tony Greenstein