Letter to Sarah Sackman KC – As Solicitor-General You Gave Permission for My Prosecution for ‘Terrorism’ To Proceed Despite You Having Previously Attacked Me in the Jewish News & Sought My Expulsion from the Labour Party

This is a Clear Abuse of Process – I Look Forward to Your Resignation

The Paragraph Above is Part of the Jewish News article in which Sackman attacks me by name as a 'problematic' antisemite - Mike Katz was also Vice Chair then b4 becoming Chair - Katz is a member of the 'left' Zionist Yachad group

1.  It is said that there’s no honour among thieves but this seems equally true for politicians, especially those close to Keir Starmer.

2.  I am charged with ‘inviting support’ for a proscribed organisation, Hamas, under s.12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 despite the fact that I don’t support Hamas politically. What I do support is the right of the Palestinians, as an occupied people, to take up arms against the IDF, Israel’s equivalent of the Schutzstaffel (SS).

3.  I have written plenty of blogs criticising Hamas (e.g. here, here and here), which is not surprising since I am a Jewish atheist and socialist. Hamas is a conservative Islamist group. However they are a resistance group and the Palestinians have a right to resist genocide and ethnic cleansing.

4.  There isn’t a crime that the IDF is not guilty of, from starving people to death to sniping and burning alive children, bombing hospitals and torturing doctors and indeed all prisoners. It is not even as though Israel hides its genocidal intent. That is why the International Court of Justice said that it was ‘plausible’ that a genocide was being perpetrated.

5.  If Israel’s leading Ministers, including Prime Minister Netanyahu, declared their intent to commit genocide in abundance and the evidence of destruction is obvious, then the refusal of Starmer and Lammy to call it a genocide is a political not legal decision.

6.  When the attack on Gaza began, Yoav Gallant, the then Defence Minister, declared on 9 October, that 

7. I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.

8.  On 10 October, the head of the Israeli Army’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: 

Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.

9.  Benjamin Netanyahu invoked the biblical story of Amalek (“Remember what Amalek did to you”). In the Bible God commanded the total extermination of the Amalek tribe down to the last child. He also vowed to turn the “wicked city” Gaza into “rubble”.

10.  Isaac Herzog, the President stated regarding the October 7 attacks, that “It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true this rhetoric about civilians not aware, not involved”.

11.  Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister stated in August 2024 that it would be “justified and moral” to “starve 2 million people” and in May 2025, he called for the “total annihilation” of areas like Rafah.

12.  Itamar Ben-Gvir, the National Security Minister repeatedly called for the "voluntary migration" i.e. expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the blocking of all humanitarian aid. Amihai Eliyahu, the Heritage Minister suggested dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza.

13.  Yoav Kisch, the Education Minister, stated, “Those are animals, they have no right to exist... they need to be exterminated". Nissim Vaturi, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, called to “burn Gaza now” (Times of Israel 17.11.23) and stated there are “no innocent people there”.

14.  Only Zionist holocaust deniers pretend that there is no genocide in Gaza. The UK’s International Criminal Court Act 2001 makes aiding genocide an offence but the Police refuse to use it. Because the Attorney General’s permission is required for a prosecution it is unlikely that we will see Starmer at the Old Bailey. Attorney General Hermer is a member of the government so it’s unlikely that he will be prosecuting himself!

15.  To be fair to Hermer, when a decision on my prosecution landed on his desk he passed it on to Sarah Sackman, the Solicitor-General, probably because Hermer is on record as having confessed to having ‘dear family members currently serving in the IDF’.

16.  Sarah Sackman had no such qualms despite the Jewish Labour Movement, of which she was Vice-Chair, targeting me for expulsion from the Labour Party. Sackperson even attacked me in print in the Jewish News.

17.  I therefore decided to do what anyone would in the circumstances and write Sarah a personal letter. I trust that those who read this will keep it confidential as I don’t want to cause Sackperson any embarrassment!

Tony Greenstein

See

Attorney General assigns prosecution of Jewish Anti-Zionist activist to pro-Israel minister

Sarah Sackman KC MP,

Minister of State for Courts and Legal Services,

Ministry of Justice,

102 Petty France,

London, SW1H 9AJ

ministerialcorrespondence@justice.gov.uk , sarah.sackman.mp@parliament.uk,

Dear Ms Sackman,

18.  As you are no doubt aware, I am being prosecuted on a trumped up charge of ‘inviting support for a proscribed organisation’ under s.12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. As you will also be aware my barrister Jeremy McNulty has put in an application for a stay in the proceedings because of an Abuse of Process by your good self.

19.  The abuse being the fact that you gave consent to my Prosecution on 22 November 2024. It is a matter of trite law that the Attorney General is required to consent to any prosecution under s.117(2a) where it appears that the alleged offence has been committed ‘for a purpose wholly or partly connected with the affairs of a country other than the United Kingdom.’

20.  That country is of course Israel which has been found to have committed genocide in Gaza by every major human rights organisation in the world, including Israel’s B’tselem. It is a genocide to which this ‘Labour’ government, including yourself, is a party to.

21.  The Attorney General, the Rt. Hon Lord Hermer KC did not feel able to give permission to the CPS to prosecute and therefore handed it to you. Perhaps it was because of his confession to the Jewish Chronicle that ‘I actively support a range of Jewish and Israeli organisations’ and that ‘I have dear family members currently serving in the IDF.’

22.  But whereas Lord Hermer can be said to have acted honourably no such thing can be said of you. Your whole political life has revolved around your support for the State of Israel and Zionism. At a hustings in May 2015, the Times of Israel described how  ‘the issue of Israel is something that is deeply personal and emotional' for you. In other words completely irrational.

23.  In the Jewish News of 23 December 2024 you were reported as saying that “The events of October 7 are the worst in my lifetime as a Jew.’ Given the close connection between my prosecution and those events it is clear that what motivated you was not British national interests.

24.  The details of your apparent bias are listed in paragraphs 11-15 of counsel for the defence’s application of 16^th December 2025.

25.  Not only was your decision apparently biased but it is now clear that you were also motivated by actual bias and malice. The details are contained in my blog of 24 December 2025. I will enumerate them below.

26.  In the Leaked Labour Report of March 2020 on the work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit we learn on p.333 of an email of 17 October 2017 from Laura Murray of Corbyn’s office to John Stolliday, which reads:

27.  could we have an update on the current status of the cases of Ken Livingstone, Jacqui [sic] Walker, Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth and a clear timetable of when they will all be heard by the NCC and when a final decision will be made on them. The Jewish Labour Movement expressed frustration that these cases have taken such a long time to be heard, as they feel that it is difficult to begin the process of rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community whilst we have still not dealt with these cases.

28.  The JLM, of which you were Vice-Chair, was pushing strongly for the expulsion of all those named above. It is inconceivable that you weren’t involved in this campaign, targeting me and others. That alone should have convinced you to withdraw from having anything to do with my prosecution. But of course you had the opposite reaction. You saw it as a golden opportunity to settle scores with someone who is one of Britain’s leading Jewish anti-Zionists. Zionism dictates that there is no group which is more hated than anti-Zionist Jews. We are, in your warped view, traitors to race and nation. ‘Kapos’ or ‘self-haters’ are some of the choice epithets people like you use. 

Daily Telegraph 2 April 2016

29.  But if there was any doubt about your actual bias then it was laid to rest in an article in the Jewish News of March 26, 2016, written by you and Mike Katz, who became Chair of the JLM after Ivor Caplin was retired, where it said, in the context of allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party that:

30.  In the cases of Leaked Labour Report Laura Murray of Corbyn’s office to John Stolliday, Ken Livingstone, Jacqui [sic] Walker, Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth Mike Katz, Kirby and Downing, the Labour Party took swift action against them within 24 hours of problems being reported. A senior Labour peer has been appointed to investigate the activities of the Oxford Labour Club and other problematic figures such as Tony Greenstein have been suspended. These are welcome first steps and a reflection of how seriously party officials take the issue.

Letter of Suspension from the Labour Party 18th March 2016

 

31.  What is curious about this article is not only your personal attack. The JN came out on March 26^th 2016, which means you must have written it at the latest on March 24^th. My letter of suspension was only signed by John Stolliday on March 18^th and it reached me on March 21^st.The first publicity about my suspension was when news of it was leaked to The Times and The Telegraph which both published it on April 2^nd.

32.  So the obvious question is how you knew of my suspension when no one else did? Clearly the information had been leaked to you by the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit. Now why should they do that unless you were involved in the whole process leading to my suspension? Clearly, as an officer of the JLM, you had a deep political and personal involvement in my suspension. This alone should have disqualified you from having any involvement in the decision to give the CPS permission to proceed with my prosecution.

33.  As Counsel for the Prosecution, Kate Temple-Mabe conceded in paragraph 41 of her Response to the Application of my barrister, Jeremy McNulty, on 18^th December 2025:

34.  Clearly this is evidence of actual bias and malicious intent. In essence you were seeking to deal with someone who the JLM has long seen as one of its main targets. As I have already pointed out, there is no more hated target than a Jewish anti-Zionist for the simple reason that we give the lie to the assertion that being Jewish and Zionist is one and the same.

35.  In the circumstance the most honourable thing for you to do is to resign as a Minister. However, since honour is not a quality that Zionists are best known for I suspect you will do your best to cling on to your ministerial car and chauffeur.

36.  I also have a second, unrelated question for you. As Vice-Chair of the JLM how much did you know of the activities of Ivor Caplin who served alongside you as Chair of the JLM from 2018-9.

Some great news today: @GregHadfield acquitted in vexatious “harassment” case brought against him by Zionist fanatics in Brighton.

Meanwhile alleged pedophile Ivor Caplin still hasn’t been charged… https://t.co/ONn2G6kDqO

— Asa Winstanley (@AsaWinstanley) November 17, 2025

 Peter Kyle and his ex-boyfriend Ivor Caplin

37.  As you will be aware Caplin was arrested in January of this year after a sting by anti-paedophile campaigners. He still has not been charged by the CPS and it is clear that he still has powerful friends in the Starmer government including his ex-boyfriend, Business Secretary, Peter Kyle. Instead a local journalist, Greg Hadfield, was arrested by the Police and charged for sending Fiona Sharpe, of Sussex Friends of Israel, a copy of one of Caplin’s posts and asking a few questions about what she knew.

A tender moment in the lives of two genocidaires

38.  Perhaps you might care to explain why, after nearly a year, in what is clearly an open and shut case, the CPS have not charged Caplin and Sussex Police decided to prosecute instead a local journalist Greg Hadfield who had retweeted one of Caplin’s pornographic posts to highlight the cover up of his activities. Given your position in the Justice Department you should be in a good position to know about why the delay.

39.  Caplin’s behaviour was known about for some considerable time. He was protected by the Jewish Labour Movement and people like Fiona Sharpe.

40.  Indeed the prosecution of Greg Hadfield, a former Sunday Times journalist living in Brighton and a victim of the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, was at the behest of Fiona Sharpe, an activist in Labour Against Anti-Semitism and someone who you are acquainted with. See Hadfield’s article Revealed: Zionism, abuse, pornography, and worse

41.  Sussex Police are inherently corrupt and heavily involved in protecting the local Zionist genocidaires. Perhaps you would like to come clean and tell us what you knew about Caplin since he has been tweeting pornographic posts for some considerable time.

42.  In June 2024 Caplin was arrested by Police for a sexual attack on a homeless man but because of his status was freed without charge and without being named.

43.  In fact it seems that Sussex Police did their best throughout, despite knowing of Caplin’s activities to protect him and Fiona Sharpe and the JLM was at the Centre of this. It would be interesting to know your views about your former Chair given your own close involvement.

44.  I look forward to your resignation.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein 

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