When Jeremy Corbyn Supported a Democratic, Secular State & Breaking Links with Poale Zion (JLM)

On Palestine Corbyn has become a Trappist Monk

Of course everyone is entitled to change their mind.  Sometimes people even change the parties they belong to but I’m not aware of a time when Jeremy Corbyn changed his mind about support a 2 state solution in Palestine or the breaking of links with Labour Zionism. 

The primary purpose of a 2 state solution was and is to justify a never ending peace process (in Israel its known as the ‘piss process’).  As long as the Peace Process can be said to be continuing so long will there be a justification for the present Apartheid situation on the West Bank and the pretence that Gaza isn’t occupied.

Corbyn has changed his tune since becoming leader

Netanyahu made it clear during the General Election in Israel that he did not believe in a 2 State Solution.  His Ministers have made it even clear.  Tsipi Hotoveli, the Deputy Foreign Minister (there is no Foreign Minister as Netanyahu has also taken that position) has made the position of the Israeli Government crystal clear:

Tzipi Hotoveli - the religious nutcase who is Israel's Deputy Foreign Minister

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

Zionism from its foundation has asserted Jewish sovereignty over all of the biblical Land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael), which extends up to the Litani, east to the Euphrates and south to the Nile.  There is no recognition of shared sovereignty.  As Moshe Dayan explained to a group of university graduates: 

Moshe Dayan

During the last 100 years our people are in the process of building up this country and this nation, of expansion, of getting more Jews and more settlements to expand the borders.  Let no Jew say that this is the end of the process.  Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road. Ma’ariv, 7.7.1968.

The ‘peace process’ has only one function.  To maintain the pretence that a 2 state solution is possible and therefore to provide justification for the denial of any political or civil rights for over 4 million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.  It is a pretence that western leaders are happy to play along with.

When you're surrounded by  New Labour sharks it's best not to feed them

But for socialists and Corbyn in particular to play along with this is despicable.  Corbyn was arrested at South Africa house once protesting Apartheid in South Africa yet he is willing to go along with Apartheid in Israel.   Because that is what the 2 State solution amounts to.

The Labour Movement Conference which Corbyn chaired in 1984

Of course the Jewish Labour Movement and assorted hypocrites will pretend they support a 2 State solution, knowing full well it won’t come about.  However they oppose any pressure upon the Israeli state, such as sanctions or BDS, to bring it about.  Sanctions on Iran, a siege of Gaza (which is the most coercive form of sanctions) is fine, but sanctions against Israel – let the heavens fall in first.

Report of LMCP Conference which Corbyn chaired - the Zionists tried to hoax the speakers that the conference had been cancelled

In the Spring of 1984 the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine held a conference at County Hall, London when the GLC was still in existence.  The Conference was sponsored by AUEW-TASS, the engineering section of the Engineering Union, 11 MPs and Palestine Solidarity Campaign as well as the London office of the PLO.   Among the speakers were Peter Tatchell and Richard Balfe MEP (he's now Lord Balfe of the Conservative Party!).

One of its main demands was for the breaking of links between Poale Zion, the British branch of the Israeli Labour Party and the Labour Party.  Poale Zion has now changed its name to Jewish Labour Movement but it is the same creature.  Now Corbyn is happy to preside over an absurd situation where JLM is going to be ‘training’ people to recognise ‘anti-Semitism’ – which in their view is opposition to the Israeli state and Zionism (a word they don't like to use because Zionist, I mean the word, is 'abusive'.

Jeremy Corbyn was the Chair of the Conference and a very good and enthusiastic chair he was.  He was fully in support of the principle aims of the conference so I am interested to know why he has changed his mind about what, if the Trades Description Act applied to politics, would be called the Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel.

Jeremy Corbyn was one of the LMCP's original sponsors - the LMCP's platform included support for a democratic, secular state not a Jewish Apartheid state

It’s not terribly difficult to discern the strategy of Corbyn’s advisers.  Keep you head down when it comes to anything to do with Palestine.  Above all don’t say anything about how the current campaign about ‘anti-Semitism’ is really about criticism of Israel.  If you concentrate on the bread and butter issues of austerity then other things will disappear into the distance.  This is a particularly stupid strategy because the Zionists, aided by their chorus in the Mail, Guardian etc. will not let the issue of Palestine and Zionism die.  They will continue to root out ‘anti-Semitism’ in the party even if it does mean ludicrously examining every tweet for the past decade in the hope that some minor misdemeanour might be discovered.  In my own case it has taken ludicrous lengths.  

The idea is to focus on economics and ignore the political and questions of the State.  Pretend that the capitalist state is neutral as opposed to an instrument to be used by one class against another.  Leave the question of monarchy and control of the army to another time.  That is why there was such a fuss made about Corbyn singing the national anthem.  Deference to the Crown and the institutions of the State is important for Labour’s servile worshippers at the altar of the capitalist state.  The monarchy provides the icing over the division of the cake between rich and poor.  However rich or poor you are you can identify with Mrs Windsor.

Even the mild-mannered PLO representative in Britain, Manuel Hassassnian lambasted Corbyn’s silence over Palestine.  Palestinian ambassador says leaders won’t stand up to Israel for fear of being labelled anti-semitic.  Corbyn used to attend every AGM I can remember of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  He was vocal on the oppression of the Palestinians.  Now he has taken a vow of silence as if he were a Trappist monk when it comes to Palestine.

As Hassassnian said:  ‘“Jeremy Corbyn (who) was an ardent, staunch supporter of the Palestinians and now we hardly see any statements coming from him in support of Palestine.’

Naturally ‘when the Star contacted the Labour Party for comment on Mr Hassassian’s statements’ it ‘did not receive any responses.’ 

Blairite clone Fabian Hamilton accuses BDS supporters of 'anti-Semitism'

Corbyn’s silence led to the ludicrous appointment of arch-Zionist Fabian Hamilton to a junior shadow foreign office minister who in the Jewish News has accused supporters of BDS of being ‘anti-Semitic’.  According to this useless New Labour clone, opposing the military and police state that is the life of Palestinians on the West Bank is ‘anti-Semitic’ and yet Corbyn appointed him despite knowing of his views.  

Corbyn has also gone along with the 'anti-Semitism' smears made against anyone those who are deemed a political threat by Labour's Blairite civil service.  He has been attacked repeatedly by the Jewish Chronicle's editor Stephen Pollard yet not once has he pointed out that Pollard acted as an apologist and worse for anti-Semitic politicians Robert Zile and Michal Kaminski, Latvian and Polish MEPs, whose anti-Semitism was only exceeded by their support for Zionism.

If Corbyn is so willing to bow down to the Zionist lobby today, he will bow down to the financial lobbies tomorrow.

Jeremy Corbyn and the Retreat from Palestine

Elected as supporter of the Palestinians - beating the retreat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No backtracking on Palestine

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

Jeremy Corbyn: long and consistent record

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

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

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

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

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

Jonathan Arkus of the Zionist Board of Deputies of British Jews

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

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

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

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

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

Zionist anti-Semitism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Appeasement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

The Origins of Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)

A Talk I Gave to members of Brighton PSC on 31^st August 2014

We often work in organisations which are so embroiled and rightly so in their day-to-day work, that they forget where they came from.  I am posting for others the transcription of the speech.  Passages in Bold have been added subsequent to the talk

Although slow at first to come aboard the BDS campaign, PSC has persuaded the lumbering carthorse of the TUC to support a boycott of settlement (but not Israeli) produce

PSC was formed in 1982 but I don’t want to start there.  I think you have to give some context and the background to what happened. 

Tony Greenstein speaking at the 2013 PSC AGM

I was brought up in a very Orthodox Jewish background.  At that time the media and public opinion was overwhelmingly pro-Zionist in the wake of the 1967 (6 Days) war.  There wasn’t a newspaper in the land which wasn’t supporting Israel. [The Independent wasn't yet yet existence] The only newspaper which even attempted at some balance was the (Manchester) Guardian, originally the most pro-Zionist of all papers under CP Scott.  It was reviled, of course, as a result.

Being a lover of Hitler, these young fascists recognise that Israel is the most racist anti-Muslim state of all

I can remember when Jerusalem was captured by Israel in the 1967 War, the BBC correspondent, Michael Elkins, was more enthusiastic than anyone else.  He was in fact an Israeli citizen.  He was ghastly and awful but this was accepted at the time.  Most people thought it was a very simple matter.  The Jews wanted a little portion of somewhere to live in the Middle East and the Arabs were intent on preventing this and refused to make peace. 

Hugh Lanning of PCS is the national Chairperson of PSC

The expulsions in 1947-48, the complexities never dawned on them.  It was fortuitous that I broke from that. Partly because we had a school debate and I played the devil’s advocate. The Zionist Federation wasn’t happy about a Jewish school hosting a debate on the rights and wrongs of Zionism!.  That began to open my eyes and then I went on a school trip to Israel, which was heavily subsidised by the Zionist Federation in order to get Jewish school students ‘aware of their roots’.  The only place I liked was Jerusalem.  They guided you around but if you had enough nous you spoke to people independently, which I did, particularly in Bethlehem, to ordinary Palestinian Christians to see what they felt about this benign occupation.  That was 1968-9 and I was about 15.

Jeremy Corbyn and Kamel Hawash on a demonstration outside Parliament

The other thing was that I became a socialist and a Marxist and participated in the anti-Springbok demonstrations against the South African rugby team.  I joined a group which was the precursor of the SWP, called the International Socialists.  There I met one or two other Jewish anti-Zionists.  They were few and far between compared to today where Jewish anti-Zionism has really taken off and become a major headache for the Zionists because it deflects the accusation of anti-Semitism but that was the position in the 1960’s in the wake of the 6 Day War.

Brighton PSC stall in Churchill Square.  Every Saturday Brighton PSC runs a stall

It was only in the 1970’s with the establishment of the settlements, they began in 1968 under the Israeli Labour Government and people like Yigal Allon and Yisrael Gallili of Ahdut H’avoda (one of the components of the Israeli  Labour Alignment).,

Scottish PSC after a failed attempt to prosecute 5 members for disrupting a performance of the Jerusalem Quartet

The massive expansion of the settlements began under Menachem Begin who became Israeli  Prime Minister in 1977.  That was the climate for the beginning of a a solidarity movement. 

PSC Conference speaker

I joined the British anti-Zionist Organisation which was controlled, although I didn’t realise it at the time, by the Iraqi  Ba’athists and the and this was always a problem for any solidarity movement, retaining one’s independence. 

Zionist Wishful thinking as Cherie Blair's anti-Semitic half-sister attacks PSC

But there were other major initiatives.  One was a Labour movement conference in Bradford, around 1981, where I met with Andrew Hornung, a member of Socialist Organiser, a precursor of today’s overtly pro-Zionist Alliance for Workers Liberty, which was then anti-Zionist, and decided to form a Labour Committee on Palestine.  When SO moved into the Zionist camp Andrew left the organisation.  At a well attended meeting at the GLC’s County Hall, in July 1982, we ejected the organiser of the Labour Friends of Israel, Peter Grunberger and set up the LCP as a formal organisation.  In the wake of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, in which 20,000 were killed and Beirut was heavily bombed, the LCP introduced an emergency motion to the Labour Party Conference that autumn, calling for a democratic, secular state in Palestine.  The resolution was actually passed! I had been elected as its Chair and Andrew as the Secretary and Ted Knight, leader of the Labour group on Lambeth Council was Treasurer. 

However unknown to me and others, Knight was an operative in the Labour Party for the Workers Revolutionary Party of Vanessa Redgrave fame, working behind a paper called the Labour Herald, which Livingstone helped front, and it was funded by various Arab regimes.  The LCP was a useful trophy to display to its funders to demonstrate its political prowess.  At its founding conference in November, some 100 WRP delegates, most of whom didn’t even know why they were there, trooped in to vote accordingly and we left to form the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine.  We got a good story about what happened published in the Diary column of The Guardian (Knight of a 100 Introductions).

A spontaneous demonstration erupts when the EDL tries to attack the PSC stall.  All 5 of them run for it

The LMCP organised with the early PSC a Labour Movement Conference on Palestine at the Greater London Council’s County Hall.  At the latter, many of the luminaries of the Labour Left spoke – Jeremy Corbyn MP, Peter Tatchell, Richard Balfe MEP (now a member of the Tory party!).  On the day of the Conference the Zionists tried to sabotage the Conference by sending out fake letters in my name with a badly forged signature, cancelling the conference!  However the ploy failed.

Jewish Chronicle Report of founding of Labour Committee on Palestine

Guardian Diary Report of Ted Knight's  sabotage of the LCP Conference

But remember the context.  In the Labour Party for example the most ardent supporters of Israel were on the Labour Left, the Tribunite Left.  Tony Benn and Eric Heffer.  Stalwarts of the Left were members of Labour Friends of Israel.  One of the things that has developed as a result of the 1982 invasion of Lebanon was that the Left began to reject Israel with few exceptions (Jo Richarson MP).  The old Ian Mikardo wing disappeared or died out.  People on the Left supported the Palestinians whereas those on the Right, the New Labourites, made it an article of faith to support Israel. 

That wasn’t always the case.  In Liverpool I remember, with my school, attending a debate where the only pro-Arab or Palestinian speakers were either from the Labour Right, people like Christopher Mayhew MP or the Guardian journalist, the late Michael Adams.  He was the first journalist I can remember who was not pro-Zionist.  One of the Guardian’s correspondents and was rather shabbily treated from what I recall.  He was the first journalist to speak out against Israel’s ‘benign occupation’.

PSC AGM Notice with Omar Barghouti as speaker - At this meeting one of the leading  Atzmonites, Francis Clark-Lowes, was expelled for holocaust denial, something Omar applauded.

I can only describe the background to the growth of a solidarity movement from my own perspective.  I came down to Brighton in 1974 to Brighton Polytechnic and there was established by General Union of Palestinian Students a quite thriving Palestine society.  It was the days of very low-cost fees when you would pay £100-150 to get on a degree course, which now cost thousands of pounds.  So there were a lot of Palestinian students on Engineering and Science courses.  There built up an alliance between overseas students and the White left whereby a sleepy, reactionary and backward student union was captured by the far-left.  I was elected as Vice-President of the Student Union, two years in succession.  In Xmas 1977 I moved the first ever motion at the National Union of Students Conference supporting a democratic, secular state in Palestine.  It didn’t win of course, but it set down a marker for things to come.  In the student movement, in the 1970’s, Palestinian organisation and opinion in Britain was taking root via GUPS.

It wasn’t like now where Fateh are wrapped up in the Palestinian Authority.  I remember two of the activists.  Hannah, a bespectacled Ph. D student who went back to Jerusalem who was aligned with the Palestinian Communist Party and there was someone I called Brother Joseph, who I saw for the first time in a decade at the first Gaza demonstration in London, who was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and firmly on the left of the movement.  Unfortunately he is very ill now and going blind.  These were some of the unspoken about heroes of the beginnings of the solidarity movement in this country and at Brighton Polytechnic, which was more active on Palestine than Sussex University, where there was also a Palestinian Society. 

There was a burning need for a national solidarity movement which was given the necessary impetus by the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.  People don’t recall but there was a precursor to the invasion where Israel went in and the United States under Reagan (!) forced it to withdraw.  Then it went back in for a major invasion, using the pretext of the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador to London, Shlomo Argov.  In fact the attack was by Abu Nidal, a renegade PLO member living in Iraq and controlled by the Ba’athists.  It was nothing to do with the official PLO but any excuse was sufficient for Israel to go into Lebanon, as we have seen in the attack on Gaza.  The carnage it caused was a catalyst for the solidarity movement in this country and world wide.  The image of Israel as a peaceful state, beleaguered on all sides, was shattered.  

Benn, Heffer and a number of Labour left-wingers resigned from Labour Friends of Israel.  Gradually the Palestinians began to have a voice in Parliament.  Not always a useful voice, for example Tony Marlowe, Tory MP, Monday Club member, for Northampton North who was more of an anti-Semite than a supporter of the Palestinians.  But there was a coalescence among the Labour left that you’d never ever seen before.  I personally began writing a whole series of articles for Tribune, house paper of the Labour Left and George Orwell’s former paper.  These were a sign of the times.  The New Statesman was another paper which swerved from support of Israel to criticism of it. 

Ariel Sharon had achieved quite a bit during the invasion of Lebanon, including complete revulsion for what Israel had done.  It was after the initial false start that a group of people, it must have been about 15 or 16 people, came together at the University of London Union in Malet Street.  Besides myself there was Jeremy Landau, Helen Stollar, who I met at the most recent Brighton demonstration and is ill now.  There was Roland Rance of Jews Against Zionism, Moshe Machover and Haim Skotario of Matzpen – the Socialist Organisation in Israel.  Moshe’s article The Class Nature of Israel which New Left Review published around 1968 and the International Socialists published as a pamphlet later is, even now, extremely worth reading, even after more than 30 years.  Machover was a brilliant speaker on Zionism and is, despite his age, still active. 

There were a number of others, most of whom I can’t remember, Over half the meeting was Jewish!  There were people like John Gee, the future Chair of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.  There were a number of Palestinians and one very vociferous, outspoken and articulate member of the Lebanese National Movement.  Because Israel had ensured, via Assad’s Syria, that the Left did not win the civil war. The aim was to ensure the victory of the fascist Phalange, in order to prevent the unification of the Lebanese nation. 

In 1979, along with a group of others, we visited Lebanon.  The Embassy in Britain was controlled by the Phalange and they refused us visas.  So we went to Syria first and after a couple of days, we were taken off by the PLO in a jeep across the border, without any visas of course.  We were taken by this mountain of a guy.  It was very difficult as you go up on the hills above Damascus and see the city shimmering in the night.  It was a wonderful scene.  It was semi-desert and there were traditional villages and families by the roadside, with tents and lanterns, selling fruit.  We were taken to Beirut where we stayed at a hotel called Triomphe, which the PLO controlled.  Three years later the Israelis bombed. 

It was tragic.  We visited the refugee camps of Bourj-al-Barajneh, Sabra and Shatilla.  The people we saw were lambs to the slaughter three years later, as the Israeli troops lit up the night sky with flares as their fascist friends in the Phalange butchered them, after the PLO fighters had left Beirut under an American sponsored agreement. 

I can remember, with another member of our delegation, crossing the frontier to Christian (East) Beirut from West Beirut, to see Tel al Zataar, a refugee camp, where some 2,000 Palestinians were massacred in August 1976.  This was a consequence of the Syrian invasion of Lebanon, which the USA and Israel had given the green light to, in order to help the Phalange which was in danger of being defeated by the leftist Lebanese National Movement, which included the Druze of the Bekaa Valley.  You saw the destroyed buildings with massive gaping holes where the shells had pierced.  That was a precursor to the Sabra and Shatilla massacres.  We were arrested on the way back, for not having visas, by the Lebanese army, which was few in number and dug in behind sand bags in the strip dividing Beirut.  We told them we were guests of the Syrian government and were released pretty quickly! 

Back in London, PSC was formed three years later, in 1982, and they were small beginnings.  We met I think every 2 weeks in Oxford House, a trade union and community centre in Bethnal Green and I would estimate that after a year we only had a couple of hundred members.  If we organised a demonstration we‘d be lucky if we got more than a couple of thousand people.  When we look back to the monster demonstration on 9^th August 2014 we can see the major advances in PSC since that time. 

Growth in PSC was slow but steady.  PSC took over, two offices in a shabby building, which housed other voluntary and campaigning groups, in the backstreets of London near Finsbury Park Tube Station and after about a year we began employing a part-time worker.  I can remember that one of the workers was Anne Gray, who is still active on the Left and in PSC.

We publicised ourselves at the various GLC festivals on the South Bank of the Thames, anti-racist festivals and similar gatherings.  PSC also worked with the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine and held public meetings and displays. Slowly but surely PSC gained name recognition.  In particular PSC organised, in Camden Town Hall, a major conference on Anti-Arab racism, funded to the tune of about £2,000 by the GLC (which Thatcher abolished and was headed, in his radical days, by Ken Livingstone).  This produced a major outcry from the Zionist Establishment and the Jewish Chronicle famously wrote that there was enough Arab money within a stone throw of Marble Arch.

It was picketed by Herut, the dominant party of the Likud coalition in Israel and the ‘Marxist’ Zionists Mapam.  We let a few of the latter in (we had heavy security) given the campaign against the Conference.

I objected vehemently to this racist statement (substitute ‘Jewish’ for ‘Arab’ and see why) and after the Jewish Chronicle refused to carry a letter from me I submitted a complaint to the Press Council (the precursor of the Press Complaints Commission).  Much to the Editor, Geoffrey D Paul’s surprise (his main defence was that my letter was too long and ‘boring’) and also my surprise, the PC upheld my complaint and the Jewish Chronicle was forced to print the adjudication, though it also printed an angry self-righteous defence.

Brighton PSC's successful picket of the Sodastream shop - Sodastream is now in deep financial crisis

There have of course been setbacks amongst the Palestinians, notably the 1993 Oslo Accords.  This had a knock-on effect on PSC which held an Emergency General Meeting and voted by 2-1 to support the Accords.  Later the Chair of PSC, who chaired the meeting, with Uri Davies from Israel at his side, told me how wrong he had been.  But regrets after the Accords had been agreed were worthless. 

A number of us resigned from the organisation because, as I wrote in National Labour Briefing (in a debate with Julia Bard of the Jewish Socialists Organisation) this was the biggest setback to the Palestinian since the Nakba.  It was a historic defeat.  Everything I wrote then has, unfortunately, turned out to be correct.  All that has happened is that the faces of the Israeli military have been replaced by that of Palestinians, trained by the Americans and supplying every ounce of Intelligence that the Israelis require.  It is a major obstacle on the road to liberation, to which the Palestinians have to find their own answer. 

I rejoined the organisation locally in the early 2000’s at the suggestion of the then Chair Frances Clarke-Lowes (who ironically I played a major part in having expelled nationally and locally for holocaust denial).  I had taken part in a demonstration from Palmeira Square to Brighton on Palestine, as a result of one of many Israeli attacks on the Palestinians and Lebanese.

But I returned in earnest in 2005 when a friend I knew from the Left, Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University, spearheaded the first major BDS campaign in the Association of University Teachers, later the University College Union.  AUT held a national conference in Eastbourne and she nagged me to go over and leaflet it, which I did, as did other Brighton PSC members (Zoe I remember) and the resolution passed narrowly. That caused an uproar, Tony Blair condemned it as did most establishment worthies.  But UCU held on, despite its leadership (the Left later captured the Executive) and we saw the culmination of Zionist lawfare tactics with the bringing of a case last year at an employment tribunal by Ronnie Fraser, a minor academic, alleging racial discrimination against UCU. 

In reality Fraser was just a front man and the eminence grise behind the case was none other than Anthony Julius, an ardent Zionist and former lawyer to Princess Diana, who trousered some £2m from the charitable trust set up in her name after she had died.  Julius, whose speciality is clearly not employment law, was out of his depth in trying to argue that being a Zionist is a ‘protected characteristic’ (protected characteristics for example age, sexual orientation, gender, race etc. are the grounds upon which you can sue for discrimination and harassment).  The problem, as the Tribunal noted, was that many Jews are also opposed to Zionism and the Tribunal held that the litigation was “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means”.  For a damning indictment of Zionist tactics and a defence of the Tribunal, from a Zionist lawyer see ‘Why the Ronnie Fraser case against the UCU was a legal and public relations disaster’ .

After the successful motion to the AUT Conference in 2005, a group of us were invited for Sunday lunch to Stephen and Professor Hilary Rose where the academic boycott group BRICUP was discussed and tactics planned.  Also in attendance was Betty Hunter, the then General Secretary of PSC who asked me why I didn’t rejoin PSC.  I mentioned Oslo and she said that today that was irrelevant, everyone opposed it now and as a result I felt it was churlish not to rejoin.

Tony Greenstein