The ‘Anti-Semitism’ Wars Continue as Britain’s Zionist Leaders Declare That They Want To tear up the Chakrabarti Report and Purge the Left

Tory Jonathan Goldstein, Elected by No-One, ‘Sets five tests for Labour’ – Abandon Corbynism and all trace of Socialism and Anti-Imperialism

Norman Finkelstein recalls in the chimera of British Anti-Semitism how his mother, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, remarked that ‘It’s no accident that Jews invented the word chutzpah.’

Chutzpah is a Yiddish word meaning audacity, cheek, to have a nerve. The best example of Chutzpah is the tale of a Jewish boy, who was hauled before a court of law having murderedBboth his parents.  Pleading for mercy the boy declared that the court should be lenient because, after all, he is now an orphan!

Jonathan Goldstein is ‘chairman’ of the wholly unelected Jewish Leadership Council. It used to consist of big Jewish capitalists such as Stanley Kalms of Dixons and Micky Davis of the mining giant Xtrata. Today it consists of the good and great of various Jewish and Zionist organisations. Goldstein is about as reactionary a Tory as it’s possible to find but nonetheless he believes that he has the right to dictate to the Labour Party what it should do and how it should do it.

He believes that Unite trade union should be sorted out and he wants all trace of what he calls ‘Corbynism’ eradicated. It will be a test of the current  leadership candidates as to which one is prepared to stand up to this moral blackmail.  We know that Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey will haul up the white flag of surrender. It will be interesting to see whether Ian Lavery is prepared to do what Corbyn shied away from and that is to call these reactionary Zionists out for the racists they are.

It is almost as if Ed Miliband's leadership was a dry run for Corbyn - despite Miliband himself being Jewish

The JLC has been one of a number of major Zionist groups involved in the fake anti-Semitism campaign. They are pleased with their ‘success’ at having defeated Corbyn. The issue of ‘anti-Semitism’ was barely mentioned on the doorstep. Its impact lay in the inability of Jeremy Corbyn and his advisors to stand up to these political blackmailers and to tell them to fuck off back to the sewers which they share with their friend Donald Trump.

If Corbyn had had a backbone and McDonnell hadn’t tried to please these supporters of Israeli racial supremacy when the Zionists first began making accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’, then the Zionists’ could have been shown the door. As it is Corbyn and McDonnell got into the situation whereby the more they apologise the deeper was the hole that they were digging for themselves.

Maureen Lipman also abandoned Corbyn over Israel, sorry 'antisemitism' - Miliband was a dry run for Corbyn

‘Anti-Semitism’ has long been the tried and tested accusation of defenders of Zionism. There isn’t a single Palestine solidarity activist in Britain who hasn’t been accused of ‘anti-Semitism’. When you openly proclaim, as Zionist organisations repeatedly do, that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism then it is obvious that opponents of Israel’s occupation regime and its  inbuilt racism will be accused of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Corbyn’s silence and inability to push back against the accusations was unforgiveable.  It was a prime example of the inability of the Labour left to articulate any clear and unambiguous class politics. Corbyn supported the Palestinians but he treated it as a human rights not a political question. Zionism to him was a mystery.

Now however the Zionists have had their appetites whetted. These reactionary Tories now believe that they can set ‘tests’ for the Labour Party. Note that they haven’t set any tests for a Tory party led by an out and out racist, Boris Johnson, whose book 72 Virgins is replete with anti-Semitic memes and tropes.

Boris Johnson described ‘a Jewish character as an unethical businessman with a large nose, who exploits immigrant workers and black women’. You might think that Goldstein and the Zionist claque, if they were seriously interested in anti-Semitism might have fired a broadside at Johnson. According to the Jewish Chronicle’s Rosa Doherty Johnson ‘depicted Jews as controlling the media and being able to “fiddle” elections in a novel he wrote when he was a backbench Conservative MP.’

Lest we forget, the Daily Mail, which today opposes 'antisemitism' attacked Ed Miliband because of his 'alien' Jewish Marxist father Ralph Miliband

He also described a Jewish character called Sammy Katz, as having a “proud nose and curly hair.”

He also described Kosovan Muslims as having “hook noses” and called a group of characters “pikeys”, a slur for Travellers.

However you can rest assured that when Goldstein calls for ‘a zero tolerance approach to anti-Jewish racism’ you can be sure that what he doesn’t mean is genuine anti-Semitism of the Boris Johnson or Britain First variety.

What Goldstein means is anti-Zionism.  Opposition to the only apartheid state, Israel, that exists in the world today.

Goldstein talks of the election result being ‘a day of extraordinary relief’ for British Jews.  If that true it was because a nasty and dishonest campaign of lies and libels had been waged against Corbyn and the Labour Party for the past 4 years.  If British Jews felt insecure it was because their own leaders had campaigned to instil fear and insecurity in Britain’s Jews.

What Norman Finkelstein wrote in his essay almost exactly describes what happened to British Jews. It was an classic example of mass psychosis and hysteria:

If residents of Salem, Massachusetts, experienced deep anxiety about witches; if Americans experienced deep anxiety about Communists; if White southerners experienced deep anxiety about Black rapists; if Germans experienced deep anxiety about a “Judeo-Bolshevik” conspiracy; and if, for that matter, Christians experienced deep anxiety about Jewish ritual child-murderers—if an anxiety is widespread, surely it doesn’t necessarily, or even probably, follow that it is a rational fear. It could just as plausibly have been induced by powerful social forces standing to benefit from a deliberately contrived paranoia. Or, in the case at hand, it could spring from Jewish hypersensitivity—in light of historical experience wholly understandable—to a phantom anti-Semitism (see Woody Allen’s Annie Hall).

It is strange that a letter signed by 34 Orthodox Jewish rabbis never made it into one mainstream newspaper or the BBC - the powers of self-censorship in Britain newspapers must be the envy of police states the world over

Britain’s Jews are not subject to any form of state anti-Semitism. They do not experience economic discrimination, police harassment or violence, charges of driving whilst Jewish, disproportionate imprisonment or violent racist attacks.  They are a privileged section of the White population. The only section of the Jewish community which is distinguishable and which has suffered physical attacks, the Orthodox Jewish community is the very one which has distanced itself from the Zionist leaders’ attacks on Corbyn.

There is no basis to Zionist complaints that the Labour Party is racist. The fact that the Goldstein and the Board of Deputies’s Marie van der Zyl have said nothing about Tory MEP’s sitting with anti-Semites in the European Parliament or their support for Hungary’s anti-Semitic Prime Minister Viktor Orban demonstrates what their real agenda is and it isn’t anti-Semitism.

They said the same about Labour's only Jewish leader as Corbyn - he'd lost the 'trust' of Britain's Jews - why?  Because he had supported a Palestinian state

The lie that Corbyn lost the trust of Britain's Jews is demonstrated by the fact that most British Jews had not supported the Labour Party since the 1950's

Jonathan Goldstein’s 5 demands include

1.            ‘tearing up’ the Chakrabarti Report because it is a ‘whitewash’. What they mean is it didn’t say that anti-Zionism was ‘anti-Semitic’.

2.            An independent disciplinary process in other words more people should be expelled for supporting Palestinians and the Kangaroo Court should become a fixed institutioin.

3.            A ‘zero-tolerance approach to anti-Jewish racism.’  Perhaps Goldstein would like to implement a similar approach to anti-Muslim racism in the Jewish community and do something about the band of Zionists who make friends with people like Tommy Robinson.

4.            ‘A commitment to political education and a real effort to address left-anti-Semitism’. No, not right-wing anti-Semitism, because most fascists and genuine anti-Semites today love Israel, seeing in it their ideal state. And what is ‘left anti-Semitism’?  Goldstein doesn’t say but we can guess it involves the IHRA and Israel.

5.            ‘Condemn and proscribe factions within the party or any affiliated trade union.’  In other words an intensification of the witchhunt and an extension of it to Unite, the LRC, Labour Briefing and even Momentum.

A separate article ‘Corbyn’s exit ‘won’t end anti-Semitism’ states that ‘Goldstein also urges Corbyn’s successor to take on the Unite union.’ which is seen as on the Left. In other words the Zionists today are acting as the stalking horse of the ruling class and urging an attack on the left as a whole.

A failure to stand up to these McCarthyists and a continuation of Corbyn’s useless appeasement policy will destroy the left inside the Labour Party.

In these circumstances the left has to come together, ditch the nonsense that anti-Semitism is a problem in the Labour Party and go on the offensive. The first target should be the scab Jewish Labour Movement which is affiliated to the racist land thieves of the World Zionist Organisation. The JLM didn’t even support Labour in the general election. If there is to be a Jewish section it should not make support for Israel a condition of membership and nor should it be affiliated to the Israeli Labour Party, a racist party of ethnic cleansing which has less than 5% support amongst Israeli Jews today.

The Zionists are the cutting edge of the British ruling class. They will have their supporters both in the Parliamentary Labour Party and the unions, the GMB and to a lesser extent UNISON too. Dave Prentis in particular can be relied on to back them up.

Rebecca Long-Bailey has already hauled up the white flag. There is no way that this charlatan should become the Left’s candidate.  The only alternative in sight is Ian Lavery, former General Secretary of the National Union of Miners.

The ruling class is going to take advantage of Labour’s defeat on December 12^th to try and purge the Labour Party of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism.  It is up to the Left to stop them.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Lloyd Russell-Moyle, MP for Brighton Kemptown and Chair of the Campaign Group of MPs - Why the Silence Over Chris Williamson?

By Refusing to Support Chris Williamson and Oppose his Expulsion You are Complicit in the Campaign to Remove Corbyn

Dear Lloyd,

I am writing to you as co-Chair of the Campaign Group of Labour MPs as well as my own MP.

One of your constituents, David Rodgers was informed by Labour’s Disputes Committee in February that he ‘may have been involved in a breach of Labour Party rules.’

The ‘evidence’ consisted of a Facebook post stating that the BBC was conforming to a Zionist agenda whilst hundreds of unarmed demonstrators were being massacred in Gaza. David also mentioned that the lies of the British press concerning ‘anti-Semitism’ were orchestrated by Tel Aviv’s Ministry of Information.

Apparently this is anti-Semitic

As can be seen, the fake anti-Semitism witchhunt is concerned with criticism of Israel not Jews

To most people this would be classed as fair comment, even a statement of the obvious, but in the present atmosphere of intimidation, informing and denunciation he was effectively being accused of anti-Semitism.

David made no mention of Jews. His comments related solely to Israel and Zionism. Yet when any mention is made of Zionism, the ideology that justifies demolishing Palestinian homes to make way for Jewish settlers, Labour’s disciplinary blood hounds smell anti-Semitism, a reaction which is itself anti-Semitic. . What is happening in Labour today is a parody of Arthur Miller’s Crucible yet people like you are afraid to speak out.

I know that you have been a vociferous supporter of the Palestinians and that is appreciated but what you don’t seem to comprehend is that Israel’s behaviour is not some aberration. Israel was founded by the Zionist movement as a Jewish supremacist state in just the same way that Northern Ireland was created as a Protestant supremacist state.

On 25^th March David received a letter from the Compliance Unit giving him a formal warning, without any hearing, because he had posted content which was ‘prejudicial and grossly detrimental’ and incompatible with the Code of Conduct on Anti-Semitism. In the day of Joe McCarthy he might have been accused of being UnAmerican.

This ‘finding’ is Kafkaesque. The BBC is clearly following a Zionist agenda. The recent Panorama programme Is Labour Anti-Semitic fronted by the Islamaphobe John Ware is proof of that. The BBC’s pro-Israel bias can no more be doubted than its anti-working class bias. The reference to Israel’s Ministry of Information is factual.

Jon Lansman has betrayed a whole series of socialists in his determination to support Apartheid Israel

Because of the adoption of the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism, criticism of the Israeli state is now equated to criticism of Jews. The fact that this contradicts one of the IHRA’s illustrations of anti-Semitism, ‘Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel’ seems to have eluded the heirs of Uncle Joe.

The reason that I am writing to you is that your assistant, Nathan Philips wrote to David stating that ‘this is a party matter, and as an MP's office we do not get involved in individual cases relating to party disciplinary issues.’

Nathan is wrong. This is not a disciplinary but a political issue. It is about the weaponisation of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism of the Israeli state and also undermine and destabilise Corbyn’s leadership.

The Right have chosen their attack carefully. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is a more palatable and plausible than opposition to nationalisation or austerity. Even Donald Trump has gotten in the act. When telling Black Congresswomen to ‘go back home’ he also attacked them for ‘anti-Semitism’. ‘Anti-Semitism’ is the Right’s signature tune. Those who’ve never taken the slightest interest in opposing racism, from the Daily Mail to Tom Watson, have suddenly become concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’?

Given that you are also co-Chair of the Campaign Group your response is disappointing. What’s happening to David is happening to hundreds of people in the Labour Party.

In 1992 I was one of about 30 people suspended or expelled from the Labour Party.  Indeed the whole Brighton and Hove party was suspended not because of ‘anti-Semitism’ but because we opposed the Council’s attempt to implement the poll tax.

Under Tony Benn the Campaign Group did more than hold 1 meeting a year

At that time the Campaign Group, led by Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn, gave us their support. Corbyn was Secretary of Labour Against the Witchhunt. The NEC Report into Brighton Labour Party was leaked to us by Dennis Skinner. In short the Campaign Group used to do some campaigning.

Today it is difficult to know what if anything the Campaign Group does.

Solidarity with one’s comrades is the bread and butter of socialism. It was the basis on which the labour movement was founded. An injury to one is an injury to all.

We have seen a steady stream of people who have been demonised as a result of the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign: Ken Livingstone, Pete Willsman, Christine Shawcroft, Marc Wadsworth.  Even Jewish opponents of Zionism such as Jackie Walker, Glynn Secker and myself have not been immunse.

Chris Williamson is merely the latest victim. Despite the best efforts of Peter Kyle he will be speaking in Brighton next week. Chris has been suspended at the instigation of Tom Watson and Margaret Hodge. His real crime is support for democracy in the Labour Party and opposition to the Witch-hunt.  What Chris actually said, when was that the Labour Party had ‘backed off far too much’ in the face of the false allegations of anti-Semitism. He also stated that Labour had done more to combat ‘the scourge of anti-semitism than any other political party.’ Yet this has been twisted to fit a right-wing Zionist agenda.

Laura Pidcock is co-Chair of the Campaign Group - she has given no support to Chris Williamson

The Campaign Group is complicit in this. During this whole period the Campaign Group of MPs, which you and Laura Pidcock chair has remained completely silent. 

According to Labour List’s survey 61% of Labour members want Chris Williamson reinstated. So why the hell have you and the rest of the Campaign Group of MPs said nothing? Do you really think that Tom Watson, the man who lost sleep when the High Court removed racist Labour MP Phil Woolas from Parliament for running a campaign designed to ‘make the white folk angry’ is really concerned about anti-Semitism?

Has it never occurred to you that the real target of this fake anti-Semitism campaign is not Chris Williamson but Jeremy Corbyn? If the Campaign Group of MPs continues its silence then what purpose does the group serve?

How the 18th century Tom Watson's fought racism

Like the Salem witchhunt of the 18^th century, denial of being a witch or anti-Semite is taken as proof of one’s guilt. Of course there may be a tiny handful of anti-Semites in the Labour Party, just as there may be a few paedophiles.  However does anyone seriously suggest Labour has a paedophile problem?

I can only imagine what Tony Benn would have said about this timidity. The time has come when you and others in the Campaign Group should throw off your fear and speak out.

In solidarity

Tony Greenstein

Labour’s Election Results Give Corbyn only a Temporary Reprieve

John Mann, Progress & the Zionists did their best to Destroy Labour’s Election Performance 

Those who welcomed the victory of Jeremy Corbyn in

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

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.

Owen Jones - the future Nick Cohen

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.  

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.

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?

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!

Jon Lansman - Momentum's Chair - has conceded that Right's accusation of anti-Semitism has validity - has refused to campaign against witch hunt

Instead of immediately withdrawing the whip from Mann, it was Ken Livingstone who was suspended for some undiplomatic but essentially correct remarks.  [see What Ken Livingstone didn’t say about Hitler] 

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.

Ken Livingstone - former London Mayor - targeted by the Right

Indeed Isaac ‘We Aren’t Arab Lovers’ Herzog, leader of the Israeli Labour Party, threatenedin a supreme act of irony to break links with the Labour Party for racism!  Unfortunately there is little chance of him keeping his word! 

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.

In Who is Driving the ‘anti-Semitism Witch Hunt in the Labour Party?  and Britain’s Cointelpro – How the Israeli Embassy and Guido Fawkesdestabilised the Labour Party I showed how the campaign over ‘anti-Semitism’ has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with destabilising Corbyn and Labour’s election campaign.  It is a witch hunt in which every past utterance by those targeted is held up to the light and distorted to demonstrate ‘anti-Semitism’.

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.

.

Asa Winstanley in Electronic Intifada, How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis  showed how virtually all the ‘anti-Semitic’ incidents that have led to suspensions from the Labour Party have been invented or embroidered. 

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.

Corbyn might, with people like Seamus Milne briefing him, point out that it was Israel that helped create Hamas as a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalism. [Why Israel virtually created Hamas, How Israel helped create Hamas Washington Post 30.7.14.,  and How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas Wall Street Journal 24.1.09. 

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. 

Given Corbyn’s experiences of being accused of consorting with holocaust deniers over the summer [EXCLUSIVE:Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed Daily Mail 7.8.15.] it wouldn’t take a genius to work out that this sudden explosion of ‘anti-Semitism’ had more to do with political calculation and destabilisation than a sudden outburst of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

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.

AWL Zionist guru Sean Matgamna - attacking Livingstone is more important than opposing witch hunt

I should therefore be grateful that AWL has called for the lifting of my suspension!  In  'Lift Tony Greenstein's Suspension' they write that: 

'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 Right has not intention of allowing Corbyn to lead Labour into the General election.  The only question is when they strike.  That is why they have to be defeated.  Appeasement is a recipe for disaster.  The local elections results have given him a temporary reprieve.  But it is temporary and Sadique Khan has begun the attacks. [Sadiq Khan, the new Mayor of London, going onto the attack. Sadiq Khan attacks Jeremy Corbyn hours after winning London Mayor election, The Telegraph 8.5.16.]  

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.

Desmond Tutu and Kassrils have condemned Israel's system of identity cards and checkpoints in the  West Bank as being worse than anything that was experienced in the days of Apartheid.  [South Africa's Israel boycott, Ronnie Kasrils, Guardian Comment 29.9.10., Desmond Tutu: U.S. Christians Must Recognize Israel as Apartheid State, Ha'aretz, Jun 17, 2014.

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