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

If there is one thing Israel’s supporters hates it is the Truth about Zionism and Israel – even if it means defaming the child of 2 concentration camps inmates as a holocaust denier

Following Last Week’s Campaign for Freedom of Speech Meeting The Zionist Attacks on Norman Finkelstein have been joined by David Rosenberg of the Jewish Socialists Group 

It must be immensely frustrating to the Zionists that they couldn’t ban last week’s hugely successful Campaign for Free Speech in the Labour Party Zoom meeting which 400 people attended and which thousands have since seen on Youtube and Facebook.

Having spent the last 5 years trying to ban meetings on Palestine as part of their campaign to defeat Corbyn it must be galling to face defeat at the hands of COVID-19. The next thing we should expect is a Zionist campaign led by the Daily Mail and Jewish Chronicle to demand that Zoom is only licensed to ‘responsible’ groups.

'Liar' Lee Harpin attacking Norman Finkelstein

There have been the predictable attacks from the Zionists. There was ‘Liar’ Lee Harpin, the Jewish Chronicle’s diminutive phone hacking Political Correspondent who led with Norman Finkelstein praises Holocaust denier David Irving at pro-Corbyn group meeting.

Finkelstein, like Noam Chomsky, is an absolutist when it comes to freedom of speech, including Holocaust denial. It’s not a position I share but that doesn’t make him an anti-Semite.

Norman was being tongue-in-cheek when he said that he didn’t know what a holocaust denier is but I share his exasperation with those who loudly protest the denial of the Holocaust, but who have no problem with denial of the Nakba, the expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.  And then there are Zionists who, like Elie Wiesel deny the genocide of over 1 million Armenians because keeping friendly relations with Turkey is considered of prime importance.

Of course Norman might have been referring to the issue of how to define the Holocaust. According to Zionist historians such as Yehuda Bauer and Lucy Dawidowicz, the only people killed during the Holocaust were the Jews. The Disabled, the Gays, the Gypsies, to say nothing of 3 million Poles and 3.5 million Russian POWs are excluded. So Norman’s difficulty is understandable.

The attitude of the Zionists to the Holocaust, namely that it is a political asset to be exploited in the cause of Israel has done more to aid Holocaust denial than any number of books by Irving. In the words of World Jewish Congress representative Gerhard Reigner:

 ‘Auschwitz was not only a national memory belonging to the Jewish people… it was also an important political asset. Among other things it served the diplomatic efforts of both the WJC and Israel.’ [Tom Segev, The Seventh Million p. 474]. 

‘Liar’ Lee objected to Finkelstein praising Irving as a good historian. Yet as a military historian there is no doubt about this. However Irving is also a neo-Nazi.

There was an even more ludicrous article in The Times of Israel by Kevin Berk Did Norman Finkelstein Just Deny the Holocaust? Apparently if you treat people like Irving as flesh and blood human beings rather than cardboard cutouts then you are damned forever.

Let us be rid of this hypocrisy. It is not David Irving who, by their propaganda efforts, are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people but people like the appropriately named David Berk and ‘liar’ Lee Harpin. Irving has managed to discredit himself. He is a danger to no one bar himself. Harpin and Berk on the other hand actively support an Israeli state which is actively killing and maiming thousands of Palestinians. 

It isn’t Irving but Zionism’s propagandists, like the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland and Hope not Hate who support Israel’s military regime in the West Bank and the settler violence which accompanies it. They also support a state which has provided military aid and training to a host of fascist regimes in Latin America. From the death squads of El Salvador and Colombia to Pinochet in Chile and Rios Montt in Guatemala, Israel was their military benefactor.

Argentine's Neo-Nazi Junta led by General Videla (2nd from left) were armed and trained by Israel

Even worse the Israeli state had friendly relations with and provided military equipment and training to the Argentinian Junta which between 1976 and 1983 ‘disappeared’ 30,000 political opponents, including 3,000 Jews. Jew, who were less than 1% of the population, were singled out for torture and murder yet Israel said nothing during the whole episode. As Yossi Sarid an MK for Mapam wrote in Ha’aretz of 31^st August 1989:

Israel supplied the evil Argentinian junta with weapons and tools of repression during the years in which they kidnapped, imprisoned, tortured and killed tens of thousands of civilians. Israeli-Argentinian relations were never closer than in the late 1970’s.’

Israel not only refused to criticise the world’s only post-war neo-Nazi regime but according to Hadashot ‘Israel Denied Shelter to Left-wing Argentine Jews During Junta Rule’ (28 Sept. 1990).

So the hypocritical ranting of Harpin and Berk (whose article was copied from Liar Lee) about Finkelstein are just background noise.

If Harpin or the professional anti-fascists of Hope not Hate were to condemn Israel for arming Ukraine’s neo-Nazi militia, the Azov Battalion, which reveres Ukraine’s nationalist collaborator with the Nazis, Stepan Bandera, then one could take what they write seriously.

Bandera, was the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. He collaborated          with the Nazis in the hope of establishing an independent Ukraine after their invasion of Poland. He was to be disappointed as Hitler had no place for Slavic independence. OUN murdered some 200,000 Poles and thousands of Jews.

Daniel Lazarre described the attacks of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army the Banderist faction of the OUN on Ukraine’s Jews. Such was their ferocity that Jews actually sought the protection of the German army:

“The Banderite bands and the local nationalists raided every night, decimating the Jews,” a survivor testified in 1948. “Jews sheltered in the camps where Germans were stationed, fearing an attack by Banderites. Some German soldiers were brought to protect the camps and thereby also the Jews.”

These are the people whose supporters Israel provides weaponry to. It would be quite a novelty for Zionists like ‘liar’ Lee Harpin or his editor Stephen Pollard to condemn Israel’s arming of neo-Nazi groups. The Azov Batallion is infinitely more dangerous to Jews than David Irving.

I listened with interest to NF. He is right that it doesn’t really matter whether it was 5, 6 or 7 million Jews who died in the Holocaust. We can’t bring them back to life. It is of academic interest only.

NF is also correct to say that, notwithstanding his tampering with sources, mistranslations of German etc, that Irving is an acknowledged historian. Even his most infamous book, Hitler’s War, is worth reading.

I do think and I said as much that NFwas wrong to reduce the term ‘Christ killers’ to the question of ‘who killed Christ’. It is clear that Christ was killed by the Romans since crucifixion was a Roman method of execution. It is also clear that the Saducees and the High Priests wanted Jesus, who was considered a revolutionary, out of the way. The idea that ‘the Jews’ killed Jesus is anti-Semitic because it assumes that they were one undifferentiated mass. 

David Rosenberg with a friend

It is no surprise that the Zionists have targeted our Free Speech in the Labour Party meetings. Zionism and Free Speech go together like John Ware and telling the truth. What is a surprise is that David Rosenberg, Secretary of the Jewish Socialists Group and a member of Jewish Voice for Labour, should join in the attack.

In an article on the JVL Blog Rosenberg wrote

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.’

If, instead of relying on Zionist reports, David had actually bothered to listen to the video he would have heard my remarks (1.35.35) in response to Norman Finkelstein.

‘The point I made about Rachel Reeves is that Nancy Astor, whom she was supporting, used the term ‘Christ killers’ in reference to Jews. In that context the term ‘Christ killers’ is clearly anti-Semitic. I don’t think there is any doubt about it at all. As to who killed Christ we all have our own opinions That is an esoteric subject I don’t want to get into a debate on.

Similarly about Goebbels Diaries. Yes they should have been published.  I don’t know where Norman got the idea that I didn’t. [In fact NF was not directing his remarks at me!] Yes any valuable source material on the Holocaust should be revealed, even if it has to come via David Irving, who I agree is a historian.  One cannot take it away from him. The problem is that his politics have got in the way of his history and his research and he certainly did  tamper with sources from my reading of the transcripts of the Irving trial.

I am not saying that David deliberately lied. In many ways it is worse. He backed up the Zionist attacks on the meeting! I would have loved to have pursued this debate with Norman but there was no time. The idea that Norman was ‘supporting’ Irving is the typical Zionist hasbara. You can acknowledge that Irving is a good historian (not a reputable one) whilst at the same time accepting he is a neo-Nazi.

But you know, time has moved on.  This isn’t 1977 when Irving wrote Hitler’s War, which and made the absurd suggestion that Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust and even opposed it. Anyone who is aware of Hitler’s two meetings with Hungary’s ruler, Admiral Horthy in April 1943 and March 1944 knows that Hitler urged that Hungary hand over its Jews to Nazi Germany for extermination. The evidence of Hitler’s active pursuit of the Holocaust is overwhelming.

Rob Ferguson of the SWP

Today David Irving represents no threat. Those who should be of concern are the fascists and populists of the European Right, the Tommy Robinsons, Steve Bannons, Matteo Salvini’s. None of them are holocaust deniers (as far as I’m aware) all of them are supporters of Zionism.  David Rosenberg forgets that time has moved on.

JVL also posted on their blog Denial by Rob Ferguson, a Jewish member of the SWP who purports to be an anti-Zionist. It is a review of a film based on the Irving v Penguin libel trial of April 2000. For those who are interested this is the link to the transcript.

The protagonists in the trial were Irving himself and a shallow US Zionist Holocaust historian, Deborah Lipstadt, who played a significant part in condemning Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ and Corbyn.

According to the Daily Mail ‘Acclaimed American academic Professor Deborah Lipstadt claimed the Labour leader has 'fomented a sense among Jews of being unsafe in Britain'. But according to SWP hacks like Ferguson, Lipstadt is someone to be admired because it hasn’t sunk into his sectarian skull that the Zionist movement uses the Holocaust, not to fight racism, not to ensure genocide is never repeated but in order to legitimise racism.

Lipstadt even attacked Richard Evans, the historian who was the chief witness at the Irving trial, for saying that he was going to vote Labour at the General Election. She is one of those junk historians who now abound in the field of Holocaust studies. They specialise in the Holocaust not as part of any anti-racist commitment but in order to defend Israeli Apartheid.

Fergusson states in his article that ‘The trial was a close run thing. If Irving had won, it would have been a major political victory for the Nazis.’ This demonstrates that Ferguson didn’t understand the evidence in the trial. It is utter nonsense. The trial was a foregone conclusion. Irving made so many concessions that in the end it was difficult to know what was left of his case, if anything.

Irving accepted that the Holocaust was an established fact true e.g. the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in Operation Barbarossa but made his stand over the use of poison gas in Auschwitz. Unsurprisingly he was comprehensively defeated over his claim on that issue as well since it is indisputable that poison gas was used by the Nazis to kill the Disabled in Germany itself. He didn’t even dispute the mass murder at Chelmno, the first extermination camp. 

On a more general point. The SWP claims to be anti-Zionist though there is precious little evidence of this in practice. In Scotland, Stand Up to Racism, which is an SWP front, allowed the Confederation of Scottish Zionists, a far-Right group, to march in their ‘anti-racist’ march 3 years on the run.

On Holocaust Memorial Day 2019, when a Stand Up To Racism meeting was banned by Tower Hamlets Council from the Town Hall, the SWP relocated elsewhere. They also withdrew the invitation to Glynn Secker of JVL, who has been a major target of the Zionists.

In their obsession over Holocaust denial, which is a marginal factor today on the far-Right, the SWP form alliances with those who are hostile to the Palestinians. They don’t seem to understand that Israeli Apartheid is a crucial issue for socialists and the anti-racist movement. Unlike the opportunists of the SWP, Black Lives Matter take the issue of Palestine very seriously because they understand the connection between their oppression and that of the Palestinians.

Incidentally I discovered recently that Fergusson had blocked me on Facebook. Since I have never gone to his timeline I can only assume that the SWP has a blacklist of people on the left whom its members must not have contact with!

The SWP have always had difficulties coming to terms with the Zionist and indeed the way western capitalism uses the Holocaust to reinvent itself as ‘anti-racist’. When Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry first came out it was reviewed by the SWP’s Alex Callinicos, the SWP’s guru. Callinicos asked:

How different is his [Finkelstein] assertion that "the field of Holocaust studies is replete with nonsense, if not plain fraud" from the Holocaust revisionist David Irving's rantings during his recent libel case?

Many of the thousands of books on the Holocaust are worthless. Some of them are fiction dressed up as fact. A far more important question which didn’t occur to Callinicos would be why there is just one major book, Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa on the genocide in the Belgian Congo, where 10 million Africans were murdered. To any socialist the answer is obvious. The Holocaust has become an ideological weapon in the armoury of the western ruling class.

And when Callinicos concludes his review by remarking that

‘so exaggerated is his polemic that at times he comes, quite contrary to his own intentions, dangerously close to giving comfort to those who dream of new holocausts.’

you see the bankruptcy of the SWP’s politics. If telling the truth about how the Zionist movement and Israel have used the murder of millions of Jews in order to justify their barbarism gives comfort to those who dream of a new Holocaust then whose fault is that?  The person who speaks the truth or those who exploit the Holocaust for racist and genocidal purposes?

Tony Greenstein

Below is the comment I submitted to JVL’s comments section. Because it has been cut down because of their editorial policy of only allowing short comments I am reproducing it in full here:

It is clear from David Rosenberg's comments that he has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from the state directed campaign to destroy Corbyn.

It is also clear that David didn’t watch the Campaign for Free Speech in the Labour Party Zoom meeting on Tuesday July 28^th. The meeting was sponsored, not organised by Labour Against the Witchhunt.  It was an independent initiative by Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson and myself.

David stated 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.’

David is wrong. Firstly Finkelstein did not praise Irving and secondly I did challenge him on one part of his remarks. Finkelstein said that he didn’t know who killed Christ which entirely missed the point that Nancy Astor, whom right-wing Labour MP Rachel Reeves had tweeted in support of, had referred to Jews as ‘Christ Killers’. I made the point that this charge, as if Jews today bear any responsibility for the killing of Christ, was deeply anti-Semitic.

I also remarked that Irving obtaining the Goebbels Diaries was very useful and that he has been responsible for accessing documents that no other historian has gained access to.

If there is one lesson we should draw from the ‘anti-Semitism’ Campaign Against Corbyn it is that you don't accept the terms of debate or the narrative of your political opponents.  Instead of saying, as David and JVL did, that antisemitism was miniscule in the Labour Party they should have realised from day one that the campaign was not about antisemitism but Corbyn.

The Labour Party has always had a few anti-Semites in it. They were located on the Right of the Party. People such as Herbert Morrison and Sidney Webb. Why then raise anti-Semitism in 2015?  Because it would divide and confuse the Left and Corbyn’s supporters.  The failure to grasp this issue was a crucial error.

David is repeating this error. The Zionists didn’t like our meeting. Finkelstein’s comments on Irving are just a pretext for an attack. When these people disown the support of Trump, Bannon, Richard Spencer and Orban for Zionism and Israel I will take their comments about Irving seriously. What the Zionist lobby hate is free speech on Palestine and solidarity with the Palestinians. Finkelstein was targeted because he called out their weaponisation of the Holocaust.

I wish that JVL, which had such a promising start, had developed a strategy for responding to the anti-Semitism campaign instead of simply seeing itself as a ‘Jewish cover’ for Corbyn. The campaign wasn’t about Jews and it wasn’t about anti-Semitism. It was about Corbyn.

David was to the fore in describing any criticism of Corbyn as an ‘attack’ on him. If Corbyn had received more not less criticism from his supporters, especially from those who were close to him, then he might be Prime Minister now. Instead David and JVL formed an uncritical chorus. 

Instead of joining the Zionist targeting of Finkelstein David might have addressed the ‘strategy’ that led Corbyn to such a comprehensive defeat and his part in it. p. 333 of the Leaked Report sums up everything wrong about Corbyn’s throwing of supporters like Chris Williamson, to the wolves.

‘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.’

Well all of us were expelled or forced out. Did it reassure the Jewish community and re-establish trust? Of course not. Quite the contrary. Our expulsion merely ‘proved’ that Labour had an ‘anti-Semitism’ problem. The more Corbyn and Formby embarked on expelling people the more the Zionist narrative was confirmed. David Rosenberg was to the fore in supporting the idea that the Zionist campaign had some justification. British Jews hadn’t voted for Labour for 50+ years. There was no trust to reestablish. Corbyn’s appeasement strategy led to his defeat yet JVL never uttered a word of criticism. 

The Zionist press (JC/Times of Israel) homed in on Finkelstein's comments with the Times of Israel today suggesting that Finkelstein is himself a holocaust denier. David has joined them.

I was the first speaker at the meeting and NF didn't give me an advance copy of his speech. But even if he had done I would have said what I said.

I accept what NF said. Irving is undoubtedly a good historian when it comes to German Military History. Unfortunately Irving decided to use his expertise in order to bolster Holocaust revisionism. I am happy to accept the word of historians such as AJP Taylor in preference to Rosenberg.

Since such store is set on the libel trial of Irving v Penguin and the judgement of Gray J, I feel I should also point out what he wrote in s.13.7 of his judgment:

My assessment is 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. ...  I accept the favourable assessment by Professor Watt and Sir John Keegan of the calibre of Irving's military history... and reject as too sweeping the negative assessment of Evans (quoted in paragraph 3.5).

Irving as a holocaust denier is as reprehensible as al the Nakba deniers who led the 'antisemitism' campaign. I don't support free speech for fascists but nor do I believe in making holocaust denial illegal, as in Germany and Austria both of whom have neo-Nazi parties in their parliaments.

I realise that Rob Ferguson is unable as a good SWP member to reconcile his anti-Zionist and anti-fascist views. They exist in 2 separate compartments. Opposition to Zionism can't be permitted to intrude on anti-fascism.  However Deborah Lipstadt, who was at the centre of the Irving libel trial, is also an ardent Zionist, opponent of BDS and a supporter of Israeli Apartheid. Those people who cannot draw conclusions from what happened to Jewish people and apply them to the Palestinians merit contempt.

The reason that Lipstadt wasn't called to the witness box was not that this would give Irving a field day but rather that she couldn't be trusted up against Irving.  She is a superficial, Zionist historian who subscribes to the notion of holocaust uniqueness (in the Zionist construction of the Holocaust only Jews died - the death of Gypsies, Disabled etc. is disregarded because Hitler fought in Lucy Dawidowicz's words a 'war against the Jews' not anyone else.

I have myself participated in 3 successful attempts to prevent Irving present his fabrications of history.  Twice in Brighton, once in Horsham. I realise that Rob Ferguson is an SWP member but the ANL did not lead any of these attempts, in fact it was completely absent in Horsham. I find it deeply disturbing that Rob insists that the SWP and its front groups represent anti-fascism and anti-racism in this country.  They don't.

There is a lot of hypocrisy over the question of holocaust denial.  No one does more to spread Holocaust denial than Israel and the Zionist movement.  That is the effect of their weaponisation of the Holocaust. I really do think Rob should read Yehuda Elkana’s The Need to Forget. Elkana was a Holocaust survivor, Rector of the Central European University in Budapest until Netanyahu’s friend Viktor Orban forced it out. Whereas people like Yehuda Elkana or Gideon Levy and Israeli historians like Tom Segev understand the use to which Israel puts the Holocaust the SWP believes it can hold hands with the British establishment on this.

As Gideon Levy wrote about the thousands of Israeli teenagers who are taken to Auschwitz as part of their inculcation in nationalist norms:

I have yet to hear a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border, saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.

There was a time, back in the 1970's when the National Front's Richard Harwood (Verall) brought out a pamphlet 'Did 6 Million Really Die' when you could equate holocaust deniers with neo-Nazis.  That is no longer the case.  

Leaving aside the conspiracy theorists there is no doubt that millions of people in the underdeveloped world deny the holocaust yet they are not antisemites. The reason for this is simple.

Israel bases its legitimacy on the Holocaust.  It expelled the refugees and justified this by reference to the Holocaust. As Idith Zertal wrote in Israel’s Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood

‘The transference of the Holocaust situation on to the Middle East reality… not only created a false sense of the imminent danger of mass destruction. It also immensely distorted the image of the Holocaust, dwarfed the magnitude of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, trivializing the unique agony of the victims and the survivors, and utterly demonizing the Arabs and their leaders.

There isn't a war that Israel has fought that hasn't been in the name of Auschwitz. Every war was an existential one.

It is not surprising that if Israel bases its legitimacy on the Holocaust then people will deny the Holocaust as a means of denying Israel’s legitimacy. This is political instrumentalism not neo-Nazism. Of course by so doing, they actually end up legitimising Israel since the Holocaust is an indisputable fact.

However just as the Zionists' 'antisemitism' campaign in the Labour Party has increased antisemitism in society, so the Zionist use of the Holocaust as a political weapon has increased holocaust denial.

Dr Paul, in the comments, quotes from Finkelstein’s The Holocaust Industry, ‘Not all revisionist literature — however scurrilous the politics or motivations of its practitioners — is totally useless'. He finds this anti-Semitic.

Is Dr Paul aware that the most eminent of all Holocaust historians, Raul Hilberg, said the same?  That we could even learn from holocaust revisionists who would make us examine our own theories and knowledge?

What I find most disturbing is not holocaust denial but the way in which the Holocaust is used to establish a myth of the holocaust that Zionism was the answer to anti-Semitism. That Jews were the only victim (see the debate between Yehuda Bauer and Sybil Milton), that the Holocaust proved Zionism right and that Jews must establish a state of its own.

The real disgrace is how the Holocaust is used by Zionism not what Norman Finkelstein said.

I disagreed with Norman’s emphasis but there was nothing ‘disgraceful’ or ‘shocking’ about his remarks. Portraying Irving as some kind of cartoon character monster may suit David Rosenberg’s Zionist friends but he is a combination of someone who clearly has a great deal of expertise, has worked extremely hard researching in archives but has allowed his pro-Nazi views to completely cloud his judgement.

Footnote: I discovered yesterday that Rob Ferguson had blocked me on Facebook. I’ve never been on his timeline but I was given a link that didn’t work.  Perhaps the SWP now circulates a list of people on the Left whom it instructs its cadre to boycott lest they might engage in debates with other socialists.  After all, if you have a revolutionary party to build then you can’t be diverted by talking to other socialists!  Pathetic really but it shows the calibre of the SWP these days that they are afraid of political debate.