John Mann, Progress & the Zionists did their best to Destroy Labour’s
Election Performance
Those who welcomed the victory of Jeremy Corbyn in
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| The Israeli Labour Party welcomed ex-Nazi and Apartheid Premier John Vorster to Israel on a state visit. Under ILP governments South Africa was Israel's closest ally and collaborator |
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| Interned during WW2 for supporting the Nazis, South African Apartheid Premier Vorster pays tribute to the dead at Israel's holocaust propaganda museum, Yad Vashem |
the Labour leadership campaign and want to see him become Prime Minister in 2020 have to fact up to the truth. Corbyn is drinking in the last chance saloon. The vultures are circling and it is a matter not of if but when they strike.
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| Owen Jones - the future Nick Cohen |
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| Owen Jones has shown that he is another 'left-winger' moving rightwards |
Labour hung on in the local elections last week, in Corbyn’s words, despite not because of Labour’s election campaign. The only reason that Labour only lost about
25 local council seats was because of the Tories own near political collapse. Part of the desperation of the false 'anti-Semitism' campaign was motivated, not just by the local elections but the referendum campaign. It is conceivable that the Tory Party could go into meltdown and even split on the issue. In such circumstances Labour could be expected to almost walk into power. It is this scenario above all others that haunts those who are behind the current campaign. We should not underestimate the sense of determination of Corbyn's foes.
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| Jon Lansman in his youthful left-wing days as Tony Benn's aide |
Labour did terribly in Scotland, it stood still in
Wales and improved its percentage of the vote slightly in England. Overall it gained 31% of the vote which is nowhere
near well enough to win a General Election. Of course the results in Scotland were a legacy of Blairism and what is called Red Toryism.
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| John McDonnell - launching Momentum |
With the Tories in disarray politically, Labour should
have done far better. The Tories were
forced into a series of U-turns on cuts to disability benefits, tax credits, and
school academies. IDS resigned, the
Cabinet are split over Europe and the doctors’ strikes have rocked the government
and forced Hunt back into negotiations. Why
then was Labour unable to capitalise on all this?
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| Far-right Labour MP John Mann - he considers himself Jewish |
There is one primary reason. The Right of the Party, in the person of John
Mann and Wes Streeting, did their utmost to ensure that the Labour Party did as
badly as possible. This was a case of
deliberate sabotage. John Mann’s farcical
confrontation with Ken Livingstone at the doors of Parliament was staged
managed specially for the cameras. The
only thing we learnt from this is that Mann has apparently read Mein Kampf!
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| Jon Lansman - Momentum's Chair - has conceded that Right's accusation of anti-Semitism has validity - has refused to campaign against witch hunt |
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| Livingstone - outspoken and not willing to play by the Right's rules |
This was at the instigation of the British
branch of the Israeli Labour Party, the Jewish Labour Movement and Labour
Friends of Israel, in conjunction with the Jewish Chronicle and the Israeli Embassy,
whose Ambassador Mark Regev, was Netanyahu's spokesman as well as a polished PR spokesman for Israeli war crimes. Regev has been busy this week speaking to the press on Labour's crisis.
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| Ken Livingstone - former London Mayor - targeted by the Right |
Max Blumenthall shows [How Opponents of UK Labour Leader Corbyn Advanced a Political Coup with Antisemitism Smears] how what we are seeing is a live version of Chris Mullin’s A Very British Coup where Harry Perkins
was the Jeremy Corbyn character. The
difference is that Perkins was a former steel worker with nerves of steel whereas Jeremy Corbyn seems to have a spine made of rubber. Corbyn has been pushed
from pillar to post by the Right with barely a squeak.
Arthur Miller's Crucible Comes to the Labour Party
What we are seeing is not the rise of anti-Semitism but an Informers Charter in which people are afraid to speak their mind for feaer that they will cross an invisible boundary. In practice it isn't racism but anti-racist discourse which is being scrutinised. All the worst practices of
McCarthyism have come to the Labour Party and Corbyn and MicDonnell have presided over it, seemingly oblivious of what is happening around them.
No one will dare debate any controversial issue, least of all Palestine, Zionism or anti-Semitism for fear of falling foul of the modern
day equivalent of the Salem Witch hunt.
Support Palestinian resistance?
That’s ‘terrorism’ and you will be denounced as readily as America's Communists and Pete Seeger (and many who weren’t communists) were to the FBI. Under John Stolliday’s Compliance Unit denunciation will result in automatic suspension in Labour's version of Arthur Miller's Crucible! Instead of the House of UnAmerican Activities committee we have the National Constitutional Committee.
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Corbyn is steadily ceding ground politically to
the Right. Indeed at times he shows
signs of political incoherence. John McDonnell has already had to go through the
embarrassment of agreeing to Osborne's fiscal limits last autumn and then
reversing himself.
It was embarrassing to watch Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Question Time last Wednesday being taunted by
Cameron over his description of Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘friends’. Instead of rebutting the suggestion that
Hamas and Hezbollah were genocidal anti-Semites and terrorists he simply wilted, repeating his condemnation of 'anti-semitism'. He could have responded that Hamas has indeed condemned the holocaust [Hamas condemns the Holocaust Guardian 12.5.08., Bassem Naeem]. He could have thrown back Cameron's accusation pointing out that it was Cameron who was
aiding terrorism – state terrorism - by the vile Saudi Arabian regime, with arms supplies that have killed thousands of Yemeni
people. He could even have pointed to Cameron's anti-Semitic friends, like Kaminski and Zile in the European Conservative and Reform group that Tory MEPs are members of.
It was toe curlingly embarrassing as Corbyn seemed
to forget entirely all those many speeches about Israeli confiscation of land,
ill-treatment of Palestinian prisoners, the apartheid laws etc.
It is as if everything he said on Palestine for the laslt 30 years was just meaningless waffle. He could have pointed out that Hezbollah wouldn't have existed but for Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon that killed over 20,000 people and injured over 80,000.
It shouldn’t be beyond Corbyn’s intellect to work out that the
suspensions of up to 50 people on anti-Semitism charges, including
myself and Jackie Walker, has been got up by the Right and the Israel Lobby as part of their campaign against him.
[Labour suspends Jewish activist over “African holocaust] yet instead all he has done is to ritually condemn 'anti-Semitism' when h is opponents have a very different definition of anti-Semitism from him.
Anti-Semitism isn’t a word game played by Labour's thought police, it is hatred, discrimination and violence against Jews,
married to overarching conspiracy theories. It isn’t
calling Israel a racist state or Zionism a racist ideology. There isn’t one single or solitary example of
anyone Jewish being abused in this way. Anti-semitism isn’t calling racist Zionists ‘Zio’ on twitter where everything is shortened
to fit in 140 characters. It isn’t
discussing Jewish involvement historically in the slave trade. Nor is it Naz Shah, a Muslim woman, horrified at the murder of over 2000 Palestinians in Operation Protective Edge, including 551 children, dreaming of how all this might Labour is in danger of breeding a generation of
Matthew Hopkins.
Perhaps Norman Finkelstein, the American Jewish anti-Zionist Professor who best summed up the hypocrisy and cynicism of Labour's witch hunters:
Finkelstein was asked about Shah posting an image that has been presented as an endorsement of a ‘chilling “transportation” policy’. The absurd John Mann MP has compared her to Eichmann. [Open Democracy, [The American Jewish scholar behind Labour’s ‘antisemitism’ scandal breaks his silence. Finkelstein's response that it was 'obscene'.
'It’s doubtful these
Holocaust-mongers have a clue what the deportations were, or of the horrors that
attended them. I remember my late mother describing her deportation. She was in
the Warsaw Ghetto. The survivors of the Ghetto Uprising, about 30,000 Jews,
were deported to Maijdanek concentration camp. They were herded into railroad
cars. My mother was sitting in the railroad car next to a woman who had her child.
And the woman – I know it will shock you – the woman suffocated her infant child
to death in front of my mother. She suffocated her child, rather than take her
to where they were going. That’s what it meant to be deported. To compare that
to someone posting a light-hearted, innocuous cartoon making a little joke
about how Israel is in thrall to the U.S., or vice versa…it’s sick. What are they
doing? Don’t they have any respect for the dead? All these desiccated Labour apparatchiks,
dragging the Nazi holocaust through the mud for the sake of their petty
jostling for power and position. Have they no shame?
'desiccated Labour apparatchiks' is an fitting description of Labour's Blairite General Secretary, Iain McNicol and his hatchetman, John Stolliday. Yet it is symptomatic of his leadership that Corbyn has failed, as Jon
Lansman told me, to reign in and control the Labour Party civil
service.
What can be done?
There is only one thing that will instil the fear of god into Labour’s
Right. That is deselection. It is rumoured that Corbyn didn’t want to
suspend Livingstone but was forced into it by threat of shadow cabinet resignations. If true then he should have called their bluff and made it clear that they would face the consequences. It is still possible for Corbyn to confront
the Right. It is still possible for
Momentum to stop sitting on the sidelines doing nothing. But for that to happen Jon Lansman must be removed
and a democratic structure put in place.
Instead of John McDonnell saying that of course we don’t want reselections,
Momentum should declare war on the hard Right.
Those who voted to bomb Syria should be top of the list with John Mann
suspended for bringing the party into disrepute.
At the moment the Right are winning the battle for delegates to the annual
party conference. The Left has not
organised. Neither the LRC or
Momentum. Momentum has seen its
Vice-Chair Jacqueline Walker suspended over the same ‘anti-Semitism’ charges
that I have been suspended for.
Apparently a Black-Jewish member of the Party is not allowed to
discuss the Black holocaust of the Slave Trade, still less Jewish involvement in it even though the latter is a fact [see Labour’s Thought Police claims another victim] What we are
seeing is the political equivalent of book burning.
Ken Livingstone’s comments about Hitler's support for Zionism were tactically inept but they weren’t anti-Semitic
and they were pretty near the truth too. He didn't say that Hitler was a Zionist nor that the Nazis supported the Zionist project. What he meant was that the Nazis supported the Zionist solution to Germany's Jewish population which was that they should be sent to Palestine primarily.
It is a fact that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis. It wasn’t that the Nazis worked with
the Zionists to expel as many Jews as possible.
If that was the case then clearly the Zionists could not be criticised
for their actions.
Those on the left who attack Livingstone and even support his expulsion
are not merely betraying Ken but they are ultimately betraying Jeremy Corbyn. Ken Livingstone has given fulsome support to Corbyn
since his election. The Right would dearly
love to see his expulsion and anyone on the Left who goes along with that, and
it would appear that Jon Lansman and Owen Jones are willing to do so, is the
political equivalent of Judas Iscariot.
The only difference is that it hasn't been necessary to bribe them with
30 pieces of silver since they are willing to offer their services completely
free of charge.
Particular mention should be made of the dilemmas of the Alliance for Workers Liberty. The AWL are in a dilemma. Their main person in Momentum, Jill Mountford has been expelled. They themselves are a victim of the Rights slow witch hunt, a witch hunt that Jeremy Corbyn has done nothing to prevent or put a stop to. AWL cannot therefore be seen to be supporting the witch hunt.
On the other hand they have been guilty for nearly 30 years of conflating anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, so they are faced with a dilemma when Labour's Zionist witch hunters do the same thing. In the case of Ken Livingstone they are unable to let their opposition to a witchhunt get the better of
an ingrained hostility to Livingstone. Hostility to Livingstone and George Galloway is almost their raison d'etre.
In a textbook exercise in mendacity and Stalinist distortion, Sean Matgamna writes Livingstone, Labour and Anti-Semitism that 'If the enemies of the Labour Party and of the left have found a soft
target, it is a legitimate target.' This is nothing less than crossing class lines. Livingstone is the target of the Right, not merely the Zionist Right. To let your own vicious sectarianism come before unity on the Left is a disgrace. It is the equivalent of scabbing on a strike.
Matgamna, who is a self-declared Zionist continues that 'A big part of the pseudo-left believe
or assert that “Zionists” (that is, for practical purposes, most Jews)
are historically tainted by Nazism.'
Having bound his organisation hand and foot to imperialist politics, it is necessary to reflect and ape the distortions of the bourgeois press. Socialists and anti-imperialists make a sharp distinction between Jews and Zionists unlike the Zionists and their echo chambers. Nor does anyone I know suggest that Jews are 'tainted by Nazism.' It is true that Zionism today is indeed tainted by Nazism, whether it is the Lehava poster that declared that Hitler had got the wrong nation - it should have been the Palestinians or the welcome given to the leader Strache of Austria's formerly neo-Nazi Freedom Party.
Matgamna continued to suggest that anti-Zionists argued that “the Zionists” “collaborated”
with the Nazis in making the Holocaust and share responsibility for it.' Again a perfect example of the worst example of bourgeois distortion, worthy of the Daily Mail and Sun newspapers. No one I know has ever suggest that the Zionist movement collaborated in making the Holocaust with the Nazis and that they share responsibility for it. Certainly the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis and certainly the number of Jews who died as a result of this collaboration was greater than it would have been. This really is indisputable. Its like suggesting that Marshall Petain collaborated with the Nazis in the invasion and occupation of France. Of course once the Nazis had occupied France he collaborated with the Nazis but no one suggested he collaborated in helping the Nazis invade.
Matgamna goes to the outer reaches of lunacy in suggesting we argue that “the Zionists” manipulated even the Nazis during World War 2 and
especially share responsibility for the Nazi murder of one million
Hungarian Jews in 1944-5.' There is a very serious argument that collaboration in Hungary increased the number of those Jews who died. Instead of 430,000 dying it could have been far far less if for example the Zionist leadership under Rudolf Kasztner hadn't suppressed the Auschwitz Protocols, a detailed account of the workings of Auschwitz by two escapees Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler. As even Yad Vashem historian, Professor Yisrael Gutman conceded, Kasztner received
a copy of the Protocols on 29 April 1944 but that he had already made a
decision, with other Jewish leaders, ‘not to disseminate the report in order
not to harm the negotiations with the Nazis. [Ruth Linn, Escaping Auschwitz - A Culture of Forgetting, p.72, London 2004.]
The suppression of the Protocols, in order to preserve an agreement with Eichmann regarding a train out of Hungary carrying 1684 of the Zionist and Jewish elite, is a matter of fact. The Jerusalem District Court, in 1955, found that Kasztner, in testifying for a leading Nazi Kurt Becher after the war at Nuremburg, had indeed collaborated with the Nazis. In fact Kasztner, on behalf of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress, testified on behalf of 7 leading Nazis including Dieter Wisliceny, the butcher of Slovakian and Salonikan Jewry and Herman Krumey, Eichmann's second in command in Hungary, who organised the deportation of its Jews.
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| AWL Zionist guru Sean Matgamna - attacking Livingstone is more important than opposing witch hunt |
'Tony Greenstein is himself Jewish. He has been an often strident
critic of anti-semitism, including on the left. [not true - I don't agree with the concept of 'left' anti-Semitism - TG] He also adheres to an
extreme version of that strand of far-left politics on Israel/Palestine
which exceptionalises Israel as a uniquely evil state and Jewish
nationalism as a uniquely reactionary nationalism. He has long been
hostile to Workers Liberty on issues to do with Israel. [the last sentence is true!] His comments, if they are indeed the subject of the allegation were
rhetorically wild. They were not in and of themselves anti-semitic, but
that is not to defend them: Greenstein will be well aware of the way in
which anti-semites, including left anti-semites, often hyperbolically
and cynically compare Israel to Nazi Germany, in a deliberate attempt to
instrumentalise the collective trauma of the memory of the Holocaust
against Jews. His comments feed into that discourse. Nevertheless, that does not
justify his suspension, the manner of which is an affront to any basic
notion of justice. Those accused of a misdemeanour have, at the very
least, a right be informed by their accuser what it is!'
As Toad said of his defence lawyer in Kenneth Graham's classic Wind in the Willows 'it's not much of a defence'!
The question is
whether Corbyn uses the time to mobilise his forces or whether he is going to
continue to be a willing hostage of the Right.
The only possibility of Corbyn remaining leader is if those Labour Party
members who joined in the wake of Corbyn’s victory are mobilised. At the moment the new members are not
attending meetings or engaging in what are frankly the boring routine meetings
that the Labour Party has. Labour’s
rhythms are electoral not political. It
centres around activities such as canvassing, even though most canvassing is a
waste of time. People don’t decide
whether to vote and who to vote for on the basis of doorstep chats but because
they are convinced that the Party is going in the right direction and has the
right answer to their problems.
There is no possibility of Labour being in a position to convince anyone
it is a serious, credible anti-austerity party unless it removes from the
Labour Party the influence of the Prince
of Darkness Peter Mandelson and his cohorts.
If anyone should be expelled it should be the old war criminal himself,
Tony Blair.
Good party activists are being accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ and suspended by those who supported the Iraq war and who
are indelibly associated with Islamaphobia.
It is the representatives of the racist regime in Tel Aviv who are
calling the shots. By the logic of the Zionists and the Labour Right, people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ronnie Kassrils, the Jewish ANC former Police Minister, are also anti-Semites. Indeed most of the African National Congress are anti-Semitic for supporting BDS against Israel.
South African anti-apartheid activists know what Israel is really like because they were confronted
with Apartheid security forces who had been armed and equipped and in many
cases trained by the Zionist regime in Israel.
It is time to fight back but the breathing space afforded by the
elections will not last long and it is unlikely to come round again.
Tony Greenstein
