Socialist Fight Drops Its Support for Ian Donovan’s Anti-Semitic Theories about a pan-national Jewish-Zionist Bourgeoisie – or does it?

Gerry Downing and SF Have Yet to Admit that Labour Against the Witchhunt was right in 2018 to Exclude Them

 

As Jesus remarked:

there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!

We should welcome the fact that Gerry Downing [GD] has repented of his association with Ian Donovan [ID] and his anti-Semitic theories.  However repentance, at least for socialists, is not enough. GD needs to come to terms with why he maintained an alliance with ID for at least 5 years.

In last week’s Weekly Worker, GD announced the expulsion of ID and the Trotskyist Faction [TF] from Socialist Fight [SF]. In this week’s paper ID denies that he has been expelled since it is his comrades who are in the majority. The expulsion is therefore ‘dead in the water’.

Gilad Atzmon

Where the truth lies is irrelevant since, with or without ID, SF is politically dead. GD’s letter says that for the past 5 years SF has harboured within it a key individual, ID, who is ‘in lockstep’ with Gilad Atzmon [GA] whom he describes as a ‘left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist.’ What kind of Trotskyist or Marxist organisation is it which has harboured within it a neo-Nazi and one whom, until very recently, GD himself gave uncritical support to?

ID’s defence, if that is the right word, is that GD has become a Zionist because he doesn’t support expelling all Zionists from the Labour Party. Neither do I. I am in favour of disaffiliating or proscribing Zionist organisations such as Labour Friends of Israel and Jewish Labour Movement not individuals per se, although clearly Zionist apparatchiks and propagandists should be shown the door.

ID’s letter also constitutes an appalling apologia for GA’s anti-Semitism, including his comments questioning the Holocaust.

What is important however are the political issues that this falling out between ID and GD involves and not who expelled whom.

When Labour Against the Witchhunt [LAW] was formed at the end of 2017, it faced an immediate problem. Set up to fight the Zionists’ fake anti-Semitism smear campaign and the ensuing suspensions and expulsions, it faced a problem. Two of those present at the inaugural meetings, ID and GD were espousing anti-Semitic politics.

The Israel Lobby at Work

Unsurprisingly LAW’s officers decided that they had no alternative but to exclude supporters of SF. We were called witchhunters and accused of hypocrisy since we were set up to protest the expulsion of Labour Party members for ‘anti-Semitism’ and yet here were we expelling SF for anti-Semitism!

The difference of course was that the target of the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations in the Labour Party were innocent. Their real ‘crime’ was being anti-Zionists. SF was guilty. The bourgeois and Zionist press however weren’t interested in such nuances.

The Independent’s ‘Group set up to protest against Labour's expulsion of members accused of antisemitism expels members for alleged antisemitism’ reported that ‘Gerry Downing, who was excluded from Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW), has accused the group of conducting its own witch hunt against him.’

In the lead up to the LAW meeting on January 6^th 2018 SF appealed to its supporters to come to the all-members meeting where the question of their exclusion would be decided.  They wrote:

No one can point to a single act or political stance that is in any way racist or anti-Semitic except in the minds of those who want to appease the Labour party bureaucracy of Ian McNicol.

Our actions were compared to a ‘throwback to the Great Purges in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s’.

Gerry went even further arguing that

‘Today, he [TG] and his bed mate Jack Conrad are in a bloc with the same Iain McNichol who is framing him up for anti-Semitism. This is class treachery at its most pathetic.’

Two months later I was expelled by my bedmate! You can imagine my surprise when GD’s letter appeared in last week’s Weekly Worker informing us that ‘Socialist Fight has expelled Ian Donovan and his ‘Trotskyist Faction’ by a unanimous vote.’

This is to be welcomed but clearly it is not enough. You cannot wipe away the past 5 years through bureaucratic means. It is incumbent on Gerry to admit that we were right to exclude SF from LAW and to accept that we were not ‘witchhunters’ but anti-racists.

Gilad Atzmon - blowing his own trumpet

Gerry informs us that ID and the TF were expelled for ‘anti-Semitism and support for the racist, anti-Semitic and left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist, Gilad Atzmon.’

GD quotes from GA’s 2006 essay ‘On Anti-Semitism’: “... we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously’. GA goes on to say that whether the infamous Czarist forgery, the Protocols of the elder of Zion, are genuine or a forgery is irrelevant since “American Jews do try to control the world, by proxy.”  Hitler’s take on the Protocols in Mein Kampf was that they must be genuine because they were true!

Quoting from GA’s most recent book Being in Time that ‘“Fascism, I believe, more than any other ideology, deserves our attention, as it was an attempt to integrate left and right.’ GD concludes that GA is a fascist. Furthermore, since ID has ‘developed a full-blown ideological outlook in lockstep with Atzmon’, citing Donovan’s defence of GA’s admiration for ex-KKK neo-Nazi David Duke, he alleges that ID too is now a fascist.

GD also cites ID’s defence of Atzmon groupie Devon Nola that ‘“Bolshevism was a Jewish-led form of government.’

It is to be welcomed that Gerry now repudiates use of the term, ‘the world ‘Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie’’ and the whole notion of a Jewish-Zionist imperialist vanguard as anti-Semitic tropes.’ The idea that there is a Jewish sub-set of the ruling class, still less a pan national Jewish bourgeoisie is deeply anti-Semitic and reminiscent of Nazi  world Jewish conspiracy theories. They have no place in a socialist let alone Marxist group.

However GD also has to explain why he ever went along with this nonsense. At the very least it must show some serious deficiency in his own understanding of capitalism and imperialism and leave open the question, ‘what is Socialist Fight for’?

It is equally welcome that GD now believes it is inappropriate to refer to Jews such as Kissinger and Milton Friedman as examples of Jews being

“overrepresented among the most strident spokespeople for capitalist reaction” without openly recognising that they are doing so primarily as representatives of the interests of imperialist capitalism, as in the Pinochet coup in Chile against Allende in 1973, and not as any separate Jewish influence or conspiracy.

However if this rejection of ID’s pretentiously titled ‘Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism is sincere then he must explain why SF up till now didn’t realise that they had an anti-Semitic cuckoo in their nest.

ID’s Theses argued that what is distinctive about Israel is that unlike other settler colonial states ‘Israel has no ‘mother country’ because it was populated by part of the Jewish population from several countries.’ This is one of GA’s key argument as to why Israel’s character owes nothing to its being a settler colonial state but to the fact that it is a Jewish state. And it is the Jewishness that most interests GA.

It is of course a bogus argument. South Africa’s Boers had no mother country either. Nor did the American colonists once they had rebelled. Palestine had British imperialism as its sponsor.  What distinguishes settler colonialism is not who sponsors it but what the settlers do.  It is the political economy of settler colonialism which matters.  Do the settlers depend on exploitation of the indigenous labour or do they want to exclude it?

The next best thing to the tablets of stone that Moses carried down Mount Sinai

ID explains support for Israel by the West as being on account of ‘Jewish overrepresentation in the US and other ruling classes.’ In other words Jews form an ethnic lobby. Although ID doesn’t realise it, this is what the Zionists themselves say! When arguing in support of Israel the Zionists claim to represent the whole Jewish community (apart from a few Jews of the ‘wrong sort’). No. 8 of the Board of Deputies 10 Commandments, which Labour leadership candidates were expected to endorse proclaims that

‘labour must engage with the Jewish community via its main representative groups, and not through fringe organisations and individuals.’ #

It is Zionist advocates who argue that only Jews have the right to define what is anti-Semitic. In the words of Jonathan Freedland

black people are usually allowed to define what’s racism; women can define sexism; Muslims are trusted to define Islamophobia. But when Jews call out something as antisemitic, leftist non-Jews feel curiously entitled to tell Jews they’re wrong,

Freedland was talking nonsense. There is no homogenous women’s view as to what sexism is nor is there a Black monopoly on the definition of racism whereas the Zionist movement insists that everybody accept a definition of anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is defence of Israel. And further they also insist that they, and only they, represent British Jews.

In order to understand the background to GD’s letter it is instructive to have a look at what SF said at the time we were ‘witchhunting’ them. ID’s Third-Camp Stalinoids bring Witchhunt into ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ spoke about ‘the role of Jewish bourgeois in the diaspora.’ This ‘Jewish component within the ruling classes of Western countries that exceeds by many times over the proportion of Jews in the general population’ turns a ‘normal relationship’ between states ‘into a servile relationship where states like the USA give barely critical support to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.’

Socialist Fight accused the CPGB of having engaged in the ‘indulgence of Jewish sensibilities” as if all Jews have the same sensibilities. It is a statement which could have been taken from an overtly anti-Semitic publication. SF also defended GA’s belief that the Bolshevik Revolution was Jewish dominated describing his views as ‘confused and paranoid’ rather than calling their fascist lineage out.

ID defended GA and attacked the campaign that Jewish anti-Zionists waged against him and the SWP’s toleration of him. Ours was

‘a reactionary campaign, contrary to working class democracy, and in reality constituted an anti-left witch-hunt which the SWP unfortunately capitulated to.’

Not only that but

Atzmon manages to poke holes in key aspects of Zionist ideology, and expose some of the capitulations to Zionism and Jewish communalism of some of those on the left who claim to oppose Zionism. He is a savage critic, albeit from an idealist standpoint, of Jewish identity politics, which... is the identity politics of an oppressor people, and thereby Atzmon’s critique, along with those of others such as Shlomo Sand, is essential for Marxists to engage with.

In Defend Marxism and Labour Movement democracy against capitulators to Zionism Donovan wrote that Jews are a ‘people, who, insofar as they act in a collective manner under a quasi-nationalist leadership today, act as oppressors of another people, namely Arabs’.

The Jewish Question was confined to the feudal era and the transition to capitalism, not modern day capitalism

Yet during the debate on whether or not LAW should exclude SF ID denied that they had described the Jews as an ‘oppressor people’ which suggests that his ‘materialist’ analysis of what he calls ‘the Jewish Question’ is indefensible.

Atzmon’s ‘critique’ of Zionism includes drawing a straight line between the ‘Judaic god’ of Moses and Israel’s behaviour today. In ‘The Wandering Who’ (p.120) Atzmon writes that:

The Judaic God, as portrayed by Moses... is an evil deity, who leads his people to plunder, robbery and theft. ...  Israel, the Jewish State, has been following Moses’ call. The ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in 1948, and the constant and total abuse of the Palestinian people since then, makes Deuteronomy 6:10–12 look like a prophecy fulfilled.

Atzmon’s statement in his essay Truth, History and Integrity questioning Auschwitz has nothing in common with Arab or third world Holocaust denial. Yes because Zionism uses the Holocaust as a weapon many Arabs therefore query the weapon itself rather than the use made of it. But Atzmon comes from the oppressor people. His ideas are from European neo-Nazis. When GA wrote

I am left puzzled here, if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators? I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws. (my emphasis)

ID merely says that

‘His sometimes-sceptical remarks about the Holocaust have an Israeli origin, and are a confused reaction to the abuse of the Holocaust to justify hideous Israeli crimes.’

The first two sentences of the above quotation are omitted from the chapter ‘Truth, History and Integrity’ in his book. Clearly GA recognised that they were problematic even if ID didn’t!

GA also went on to justify the persecution of Jews under the Nazis by conflating the Jews of Europe with Israeli Jews today. In essence he was justifying the anti-Semitism that led to Auschwitz.

65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz we should be able to ask – why? Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East (pp. 175-176 The Wandering Who)

For anyone interested in a Report of the meeting of January 6^th 2018, including a comprehensive analysis of how SF adopted the politics of anti-Semitism, as a means of explaining Zionism, you can go here.

GD has written a mea culpa of sorts, explaining that when he formed an alliance with ID ‘I did not examine too closely the politics of Ian’s Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism’. This is, to say the least, hard to take.

In an interview with GA Gerry wrote that ‘I do not agree he is either racist or anti-Semitic.’ Gerry’s explanation for his alliance with ID was that he had just lost two comrades and that

‘I desperate needed someone who understood the history of the Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism, at least to a certain level and so made that alliance with Ian, which I now recognise as opportunist.’

Opportunism is probably the least of it! The anti-Semitism inherent in what ID wrote was staring GD in the face. Even if GD didn’t have a great grasp of the history of Zionism he must have been acquainted with the nuts and bolts of Marxism and a class analysis.

In Why Marxists must address the Jewish Question concretely today ID wrote that ‘Zionism is a Jewish nationalist-communalist project’ which is not true. It became an ethno-nationalist movement in Palestine/Israel but originally it was a separatist reaction to anti-Semitism. After all Poalei Zion in Russia joined the Bolsheviks. ID describes the outcome of WWII as having led to

‘an emerging understanding that the Jewish bourgeoisie was an important reserve for the survival of capitalism itself, particularly in its ability to see beyond narrow national horizons and look out for the interests of the bourgeois class on a broader basis.

In other words the ‘Jewish bourgeoisie’ were the guardians of the rest of the capitalist class! ID went on to state

‘If Socialist Fight is right on Zionism’s special relationship to global finance capital what programmatic implications does this have?’

and asked

‘Does it mean that we specifically target Jewish capital?’ Answer: Not all Jewish capital. But we do want to expose that a specific part of Jewish capital has an ethnocentric interest in the dispossession of Palestinians.

Targeting Jewish capitalists was the anti-capitalism of the Brownshirts. It was what the Nazis and anti-Semitic movements in Europe did. I find it difficult to understand how Gerry could seriously accept this garbage.

ID has responded to his expulsion by saying that they have ‘taken on the mantle’ of Socialist Fight.’ Gerry Downing needs to ask some serious questions such as what is the purpose of a group that went down this road. Does it serve any purpose?

GD describes GA as a ‘left Mussolini-Strasserite fascist’ and by implication ID too since  he has ‘developed a full-blown ideological outlook in lockstep with Atzmon’.

I disagree. Fascism is a specific political movement aimed at not only destroying working class organisations and the left but all democratic rights. It is the last resort of capitalism against the workers’ movement. GA certainly flirts with fascists and anti-Semites, neo-Nazis included but he has also flirted with the Left, including the SWP. He is, if anything, politically promiscuous. He reminds me of Christopher Hitchens, a contrarian who would argue positions for the outrage they would cause.

I’m sure that GA, an accomplished jazz player, is well aware that jazz was considered Jewish inspired ‘nigger music’ in Nazi Germany. Listening to jazz was considered an act of rebellion by rebellious youth chafing at the boring monotone culture of the Nazis. GA also works happily with Jews, converses with them and has no personal antagonism to Jews as Jews. In other words whilst his ideas are without doubt anti-Semitic, on a personal level he is not an anti-Semite. Nor is there any reason to believe that he has given his support to, still less become a member of, a fascist organisation.

Likewise ID, engaged in the hopeless task of proving that Marx and Trotsky would have approved of his batty notions that Jewish capital is responsible for the direction of US foreign policy today. Despite his many sins Ian looks to the left not the right. It would be wrong to categorise him as a fascist, if only through guilt by association.

Tony Greenstein

Tony Greenstein’s 40% vote for Secretary of Palestine Solidarity Campaign is a shot across the Executive’s bows

PSC activists express their dissatisfaction with an Executive that puts a Zionist Emily Thornberry on a Palestinian platform

PSC’s November Bulletin boasted that ‘we had our biggest Parliamentary Lobby Day ever’. In ‘an incredible month for the Palestinian solidarity movement.’ there was a photograph of a PSC meeting at the House of Commons addressed by Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry. Thornberry is the same person who boasted that when she became an MP in 2005 she joined Labour Friends of Israel. At the UK Israel Conference 2017’ Thornberry gushed:

‘Let me start by thanking BICOM and the Jewish News for inviting me to today’s historic event and once again for giving me the opportunity to emphasise the Labour Party’s long-standing, unstinting and unequivocal support for the State of Israel’ ‘

and she continued

‘even today despite the challenges that we must address in respect of relations and rights of the Palestinian people modern Israel stands out as a beacon of freedom, equality and democracy... in a region where oppression, discrimination and inequality are too often the norm.’

Electronic Intifada said of her speech that it ‘could have been written by a pro-Israel lobbyist.’ In an address to Labour Friends of Israel annual dinner, Thornberry claimed that BDS was “bigotry against the Israeli nation [that] has never been justified.”

Today Thornberry’s beacon of freedom, equality and democracy is having a General Election. But it’s not an election based on class politics, socialism v conservatism, Green v climate deniers, poor v rich as in most western societies. It is a competition between former Israeli Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, Netanyahu and the New Right of Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett as to who has killed the most Palestinians.

It features Likud MK Yaron Mazuz who teamed up with Elor Azaria, the soldier caught on camera executing a wounded and incapacitated Palestinian in Hebron.  As Elizabeth Tsurkov wrote in The Forward ‘Azaria’s military trial, conviction and incarceration for nine months were deeply unpopular among Jewish Israelis. The ad concludes with the line “Elor Azaria has joined me, you join too!”

PSC AGM: From file photo

As readers of this blog will be aware, I decided this year to stand for the post of National Secretary of PSC.  Apparently it was the first time in 15 years that an officer post was contested. I also produced a leaflet explaining why I was standing .

What led me to stand was not some unfulfilled ambition but a sense of despair at the timidity, caution and passivity of PSC in the face of the ongoing Zionist anti-Semitism campaign. Whilst I don’t think we should respond to every Zionist provocation to simply ignore our enemies attacks is and was foolish.  The failure to mount a serious campaign publicly against the IHRA definition of ‘anti-Semitism’ is unforgivable. 

What is unforgiveable it to put onto our platforms people who are our enemies.  Emily Thornberry is not a friend. She has made it clear that anti-Zionists should be expelled from the Labour Party.  What kind of serf mentality operates to think that giving her a platform will be of benefit to the Palestinians? Of course she will make all the right noises about Israeli human rights abuses but at the end of the day she is a signed up supporter of the Israeli State which carries out those abuses.

Razan al-Najar 21 year old medic gunned down by Thornberry's 'beacon of light' in Gaza last year

Jonathan Rosenhead and Glynn Secker of Jewish Voice for Labour defended PSC Executive at the AGM for having helped pay for the legal opinion of Hugh Tomlinson QC and having mailed it out to local authorities.  Fine.  But did they hold any public meetings? Were there any lobbies of MPs over the IHRA? Did they support JVL’s own counter-demonstration outside the House of Commons on March 26^th at the height of the ‘mural’ affair? Did they support the lobby of Labour’s National Executive Committee on September 4^th? Are they going to follow up Liberty’s decision to oppose the IHRA? Or is everything going to be tokenistic?

The adoption of the IHRA is a dagger aimed at the heart of Palestine solidarity. What it means is that you can oppose Israeli human rights atrocities but you cannot oppose the state that perpetrates those atrocities. Imagine that the Anti-Apartheid Movement had opposed the actions of the South Africa state in Soweto but had refused to criticise the State itself? That is what the IHRA does and for PSC not to take it seriously and for leading JVL members to give them their support is unconscionable.  It is also stupid politics.

My advice to JVL is some comradely advice to look to America and follow the example of Jewish Voice for Peace which has now openly declared that it is an anti-Zionist organisation.

I had considerable doubts about standing.  Firstly because becoming a national officer of PSC is not one of my ambitions! Secondly because I was unsure about how my message would go down to a conference that is not normally known for its willingness to challenge the Executive. In the end I did far better than I had expected with about 40% of the vote 67-101 (at least I think so as someone rang me as the results were being announced!). At least 50 people simply abstained. If I was Ben Soffa I would be worried having been elected with a minority of delegates, many of whom were wielding a union block vote!

My motion on Jenny Tonge received 89-129 votes and it is clear that many people were extremely unhappy at the dumping of someone who has been of the fiercest advocates of the Palestinians in Parliament and who has suffered an extraordinary amount of vilification from McCarthite smear groups like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism. Her treatment was at the hands of the new Chair of PSC, Kamel Hawash, which suggests that Hawash is going to continue where the retiring Chair Hugh Lanning left off. PSC needs to learn to stand up to its enemies not retreat at the first sound of gunfire.

There was also a soft motion from Liverpool Friends of Palestine raising the question of a single democratic state. It was soft enough for the Executive to support it. It stated that 'decisions on the strategy for Palestinian liberation will be taken by Palestinians.' which begs the point that Palestinians are in no position to take any decisions on strategy.  It is the Quisling Palestinian Authority which in practice makes such decisions.

Even more amazingly a motion from Exeter PSC which described what Israel is doing as ‘slow motion genocide’ was passed by Conference against the opposition of the Executive.  This is almost unheard of.

Given that PSC Executive can count on a block vote by affiliated unions, who possess 3 card votes it suggests that the Executive is losing the support of activists. This is not helped by the turgid format of the Conferences themselves. Year after year an Executive Report is presented to the Conference. Year after year the Report says much the same thing.  It is as if the Executive has a psychological need to have their lethargy and lack of imagination complimented.

Conference needs to be restructured with breakout sessions and workshops and a genuine interaction between delegates. At the moment it serves no useful purpose. All affiliated bodies i.e. trade unions should have only one vote not three. People should be able to vote the moment they join. Unfortunately PSC Executive is not blessed with either imagination or daring! It fears innovation.

I asked  a question on the Finance Report which was how come with an increased membership the amount of income went down! The Treasurer was unable to give an answer at least not one that anyone could understand. The membership figures were given for the first time ever.  Apparently they have jumped from 4,064 to 5,900 in the last year. I don’t believe it.  I remember Betty Hunter announcing a decade ago that PSC membership was over 5,000.

It is welcome that Jenny Lynn was reelected with the highest vote and a welcome to a Jersey PSC member, Natalie Strecker who spoke strongly in the ‘genocide’ debate of her experiences in the Zionist hell hole called Hebron. Unfortunately Monica Wusterman decided in the end not to stand.

The primary problem is that the Executive is in the political grip of Socialist Action and the Communist League, the remnants from the old International Marxist Group. Their politics are effectively Stalinist and the capitalist Chinese regime is a model of socialism to them.

More importantly they do not believe in rocking the boat and they believe in cuddling up to the Trade Union bureaucracy.  So although most Unions are affiliated to PSC they have nonetheless support the Zionist IHRA definition of anti-Semitism without a word of protest by PSC Executive. At no time has there been an attempt to win the unions to opposing the IHRA in the Labour Party or outside it.

Unfortunately Socialist Fight fall into a trap that the Zionists have laid

I carry below a report from Gerry Downing of Socialist Voice on the conference. The Report is a fair one but I have to say that their continued characterisation of the Israel or Zionist lobby as a Jewish ethnic lobby is unhelpful. The fact that the Zionist lobby describes itself as Jewish is no reason for SV to adopt this anti-Semitic meme.

It is also not true.  People like Lord Pickles of CFI are not Jewish but are nonetheless ardent Zionists. The fact that many Jews are Zionists is irrelevant. That is not the reason why the British and US states supports Israel. There is nothing Jewish about the Israel lobby.

Tony Greenstein

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign AGM 26-1-2019

27/01/2019 by socialistfight

The woman on the right on the Gaza border is just about to be shot dead by an IDF sniper in what is clearly a war crime.

Report by Gerry Downing

Approximately 250 in attendance. Most of the AGM was routine apart from some questioning of the finance report – how come with an increase of 31% in membership income receipts from members declined from £84,142 in 2017 to £80, 775 in 2018? Answer: If you joined in August only that portion of your membership from August to January would be counted. Satisfied?

Four contested events: two motions and the elections for the Secretary and for the eight lay members of the Executive.

The first controversial motion was that from Exeter PSC on the Nation State law. The Executive wanted to remove that part of the first paragraph which said, “which in relation to Palestinians in Israel or Occupied Palestine Territories can be described at best as apartheid … and at worst as attempted (slow motion Exeter addendum) genocide … These are both crimes under international law.”

So, the Zionist lobby attacked the PSC Executive viciously, expecting a robust response, but the Executive cleverly fooled them by running away.

Exeter accepted the addendum of the Executive but not the deletion.  A heated discussion took place, Socialist Fight’s two delegates strongly defending the Exeter designation of the actions of Israel as genocide. We pointed out that South African apartheid was different to the intent and actions of Israel. The South African racists wanted to exploit the labour of the oppressed black population, Israel wanted to get rid of the Palestinians. The Naqba had ethnically cleansed up to 800,000 Palestinians in 1948, the Nation State Law showed its intent to legally designate the remaining Palestinian who were citizens of Israel as second class and the constant bombing of Gaza was another strong indication of their intent. Supporters of Exeter’s motion defeated the Executive amendment with no count of the votes necessary and so their designation of Israel’s actions as ‘slow motion genocide’ stands.

The desire to conciliate Zionist reaction was even clearer in the other controversial motion, Motion 3, proposed by Tony Greenstein. This defended Jenny Tonge against the action of the Executive in forcing her resignation because, in response to the Zionist use the murder of 11 Jews at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pennsylvania on 27 October she tweeted: “Absolutely appalling and a criminal act, but does it ever occur to Bibi and the present Israeli government that its actions against Palestinians may be reigniting anti-Semitism? I suppose someone will say that it is anti-Semitic to say so.”

They did, beginning with the right wing Tory bigots, Conservative Friends of Israel Lords Pickles and Polak. The motion pointed out that “nothing that Jenny Tonge said was antisemitic” and that Israeli Minister Naftali stated that “the hand that fire missiles is the same hand that shoots worshippers”.

The debate was heated, with all defenders of the Executive’s appalling treatment of Jenny essentially arguing that we had to bow to the Zionist onslaught, and she said the wrong thing at the wrong time. Basically, you could no longer speak the truth about Israel during a vicious Zionist campaign of lies and slanders against the left. So, the Zionist lobby attacked the PSC Executive viciously, expecting a robust response, but the Executive cleverly fooled them by running away. The motion was lost by 89 votes to 129 with 22 abstentions because it was basically a vote of no confidence in the Executive and they would have been forced into a humiliating climb down and the new Chair, Kamel Hawwash, who took the main responsibility for the conduct of the affair, would have to resign.  But 89 thought he should and 22 were not sure about him at all.

Tony Greenstein stood for the Secretary’s position against Ben Soffa but lost by 67 votes to 103, a creditable performance. Socialist Fight putout a leaflet critically defending him (he did motivate our expulsion from Labour Against the Witchhunt). In his blog and in the leaflet he put out at the conference he attacked the PSC Executive because their: “Self-congratulation, timidity and caution bordering on obsequiousness is not the stuff of a solidarity campaign! He goes through their list of failures, failure to defend Jeremy Corbyn and the left anti-Zionists in Labour against the bogus charges of left anti-semitism. “Israel is NOT a democratic state – that should be our message” so why did the PSC Executive have “a PSC meeting in the House of Commons with Emily Thornberry, Shadow Foreign Secretary addressing the meeting. This is the same Emily Thornberry who is quoted as stating that:

‘People who believe Israel does not have the right to exist should be drummed out of the Labour Party.’

Far from challenging Thornberry to disavow her support for Labour Friends of Israel PSC uncritically gives her a platform. In an interview with The Standard she boasted that “I joined Labour Friends of Israel when I became an MP in 2005. I support the Palestinians’ right to have a state and I support the state of Israel.’

The meeting was addressed by His Excellency Husam Zomlot, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK. Tony’s flyer correctly states that “the Palestinian Authority is a Quisling authority”:

“The PA openly collaborates with Israeli security forces, something which Mahmoud Abbas has described as ‘sacred’. The PA is an enemy of the Palestinian people, yet PSC has never uttered even one word of criticism. On the contrary it maintains close relations with the Palestinian ‘Embassy’ in London.”

The National reported that Mr Zomlot told Sky News on Tuesday (2 October 2018) that,

“Mr Zomlot said the UK should take on the role of lead mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis for the benefit of both the US and Britain. Best friends are there to fill the vacuum, if the vacuum is going to be dangerous for your old friend which is America, fill it. This is a moment of leadership.”

Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is the President of the Palestine Authority recognised by the ‘International Community’ i.e. the USA and its global stooges, including in this instance, the EU, Russia and China. He abolished elections when his term of office expired 15 January 2009. He is a member of the Fatah party and was elected Chairman in 2009. On December 16, 2009 he was voted into office indefinitely by the PLO Central Council. Why hold elections you would certainly lose to Hamas when you have the backing of Israel and the USA and the acquiescence of the entire imperialist world?

Lastly, we were entertained by a dance troupe trio from the Palestine Hawiya Dance Company just after the break, who put on a really excellent show for us all.

Decisive Victory as Labour Against the Witchhunt Meeting Excludes Socialist Fight

Anti-Semitic Group Told They Are Not Welcome

The Independent's coverage of the LAW meeting, which was extremely inaccurate, led to its cancellation

After publicity in The Independent and the Tory Guido Fawkes blog,  the landlord of the pub where we were supposed to meet, the Calthorpe Arms, cancelled the meeting.  So we had to quickly book the Union Tavern 5 minutes away.  As it happens this was a good thing as so many people turned up to vote out the anti-Semitic Socialist Fight.

Although a few Socialist Fight members left, the room was still packed

A packed meeting of Labour Against the Witchhunt voted by over 2-1 to exclude Socialist Fight from participating in LAW.  Led by Gerry Downing and Ian Donovan, SF has a theory that the Jewish Question is still relevant today, i.e. that Jews fulfil a distinctive social or economic or political role under capitalism.

The irony is that the International Jewish Anti-Zionist group here does not support Socialist Fight and it is one of those Jewish groups which are really a Zionist wedge!

What this means concretely is that the allegedly disproportionate number of rich Jews and billionaires are responsible for the United State’s support for Israel.  In particular that the relationship between Israel and the United States was such that the latter was ‘servile’ to the former.  SF argue that:

It is factually demonstrable that there exists a Jewish component within the ruling classes of Western countries that exceeds by many times over the proportion of Jews in the general population, and that this part of the ruling class is overwhelmingly loyal to Israel. This does not determine the bare existence of a Western alliance with Israel.

What it does, however, is play an important role in transforming what would otherwise be a ‘normal’ relationship similar to that of the US, UK, Germany etc. with each other as NATO allies, into a servile relationship where states like the USA give barely critical support to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians that certainly do not accord with obvious US, UK etc. imperial interests. It also gives Zionism a social power to persecute critics of Israel in Western societies not possessed by any other allied state. Including in the British Labour Party…

There were 2 motions on the floor – one from the Steering Committee and another from Socialist Fight. 

Tony Greenstein and Gerry Downing respectively moved the motions.  Tony Greenstein stated that given that we were fighting a false anti-Semitism witch hunt, the presence of an anti-Semitic group in our midst was not helpful!  Downing responded that this was caving in to the Zionists and Labour’s crooked General Secretary, Iain McNicol.  We were joining in with the witchhnters.

Tony Greenstein also drew attention to the interview that Downing had very recently done with Gilad Atzmon, a notorious anti-Semite who Donovan has defended as an ‘Israeli dissident’.  Downing said that this was no different from talking to a dotty aunty with reactionary views but it was pointed out that Atzmon was not a batty relative but someone who had flown to Canada to give evidence in support of the neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel at a hearing before the Canadian courts.

Jews don't need to apologise for the role they play in the movement - the only people who take exception to Jewish anti-Zionists are either Zionists or anti-Semites

Tony Greenstein also expressed wonderment at the fact that SF wanted to work with us anyway as they had stated in Defend Marxism and Labour Movement democracy against capitulators to Zionism

‘Today, he [Greenstein] and his bed mate Jack Conrad are in a bloc with the same Iain McNichol who is framing him up for anti-Semitism. This is class treachery at its most pathetic.’  

Below I have included material on both Socialist Fight’s and Gilad Atzmon that demonstrates that both are, without doubt, anti-Semitic.

During the course of the debate Ian Donovan, who is the main theoretician behind SF’s anti-Semitic orientation denied that SF spoke of Jews as an ‘oppressor’ people.  This was, as Moshe Machover has pointed out, quite clearly a lie.

Over 60 people attended this all members meeting and some people came down from as far as Sheffield and Liverpool.  A large number of people spoke in the debate and it went on for nearly one and a half hours.  I chaired the debate and then Jackie Walker took over afterwards.

After SF had been excluded a number of decisions were taken such as to establish a membership (£5/£10), affiliations (£25 trade union branches) and to prioritise a number of activities.  In particular we are organising pickets of the National Executive Committee on 23^rd January at Southside, London, a picket of Marc Wadsworth’s hearing before the National Constitutional Committee on 24^th January (venue unknown) and a picket of Tony Greenstein’s hearing on 26^th January.  We also have a public meeting on January 29^th at Conway Hall with Ken Loach.  We also agreed a submission to Labour’s Democracy Review.

We also decided to make Professor Moshe Machover, who was auto excluded then reinstated in the Labour Party in October 2017 our Honorary President.  We also co-opted Sally to the Steering Committee as being responsible for social media.

Gerry Downing and  Gilad Atzmon unite in defence of anti-semitism

Steering Committee motion:

Labour Against the Witchhunt (LAW) is a Labour Party campaign. We urge all those who oppose Labour's witchhunt against Corbyn supporters and critics of Israel/Zionism to stay in the Party and fight.

LAW reaffirms its three key demands:

   1.    That the Labour Party ends the practice of automatic, instant, expulsion or suspension of Labour Party members without a hearing, with no right of appeal.

   2.    That the Labour Party rejects the International Holocaust Memorial Alliance (IHMA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and support for the rights of the Palestinian people.

   3.    That the Labour Party immediately abolishes its 'compliance unit'. Disciplinary decisions should be taken by elected bodies, not paid officials.

As shown by the September 2017 Labour Party conference, the formation of Free Speech on Israel and Jewish Voice for Labour, and by the surge of support which quickly achieved the reinstatement of Moshé Machover, we believe our campaign is capable of stopping the witchhunt.

Professor Moshe Machover, the veteran Israel anti-Zionist that McNicol was forced to reinstate in the Labour Party, is our new Honorary President

LAW campaigns for the immediate lifting of all suspensions and expulsions from Labour Party membership which were

·         connected with the rightwing witchhunt of Corbyn supporters;

·         carried out "automatically", without a hearing, without the right of appeal;

·         connected to the 'anti-Semitism' smear campaign.

LAW rejects the view, promoted by the Zionist movement and the Jewish Labour Movement, that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism. Those, such as the Alliance for Workers Liberty, who conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel, are not eligible for membership. Those who regard Moshé Machover, Tony Greenstein, Jackie Walker or Ken Livingstone as anti-Semitic or who regret the reinstatement of Moshé Machover and/or support the expulsion of Ken Livingstone, are not welcome in LAW.

However, our support will be weakened if we allow the campaign to be associated with those who promote views which are anti-Semitic. LAW condemns anti-Semitism and all forms of racism. Those groups or individuals, such as Socialist Fight, who promote a form of anti-Semitism, for example the view that imperialist support for Israel has any connection to the "overrepresentation" of Jews in the ruling class; or that Jews are "an oppressor people"; or that Jewish campaigns in support of the Palestinians such as Jews Against Zionism, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods or Jewish Voice for Labour are racist because they operate on the basis of a supposedly "Jewish moral superiority", are not welcome in LAW

Socialist Fight Motion

This meeting rejects the motion to expel Socialist Fight from the LAW and rejects the accusations of anti-Semitism against them.

Socialist Fight’s Anti-Semitism

An Oppressor People

In Defend Marxism and Labour Movement democracy against capitulators to Zionism Donovan speaks of 

‘the transformation of the Jewish Question into its opposite, from a question involving a people that suffered considerable, and at times enormous and genocidal, oppression in the early period of imperialist capitalism, to a question involving a people, who, insofar as they act in a collective manner under a quasi-nationalist leadership today, act as oppressors of another people, namely Arabs.’

Under Breaking with oppressor Zionism, Donovan writes that

‘This view of Jews as having escaped oppression and become, insofar as they link themselves to Israel and give that state their support, an oppressor people, also gains Greenstein’s ire.’

He continues explaining that

‘Zionism is an unusual oppressor-people movement in that it partly operates on an extra-territorial basis’

‘Greenstein attempts to mock our interlocking points that Jews in the imperialist countries have become an oppressor people by various kinds of demagogy.’

In Third-Camp Stalinoids bring Witchhunt into ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ Donovan speaks of: 

‘a pandering to the nationalism and communalism of an oppressor people, as Jews have become today insofar as under Zionist leadership they manage to act collectively.’

ID  goes on to write that:

‘Jews are the one people in the imperialist epoch that have comprehensively escaped from systematic oppression and joined the ranks of oppressor peoples in the imperialist world order.’ 

This is not only an anti-Semitic position, it is a Zionist notion as Sally said from the floor because what it is saying is that Jews outside Israel constitute one people i.e. a nation, precisely the position of the Zionists.  This is another example of how anti-Semitism and Zionism are congruent.

ID states that  

‘It is factually demonstrable that there exists a Jewish component within the ruling classes of Western countries... This does not determine the bare existence of a Western alliance with Israel What it does, however, is play an important role in transforming what would otherwise be a ‘normal’ relationship... into a servile relationship

Jewish anti-Zionist groups are accused of operating as a 5^th column inside Palestine solidarity groups, whose ‘opposition to Israeli crimes is suspected to be anti-Semitic unless validated by a special Jewish endorsement.’ 

These groups are indirectly a transmission belt for Zionist influence into the left, despite their subjective intentions as anti-Zionists.’

Donovan accuses the CPGB of engaging in the ‘indulgence of Jewish sensibilities and ‘left’ forms of Jewish communalism.’

In Greenstein and Conrad circle the wagons Donovan explains the basis of all this:  ‘There is a huge disproportion between the number of Jewish bourgeois in the US and other Western ruling classes, and the number of Jewish people in society.’

Donovan - An Echo to the Anti-Semitic Gilad Atzmon

ID has long been a supporter of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic Jazzman.  He therefore picks up on all his themes such as opposition to Jewish only groups to combat Zionism and his hatred of the Bund, the mass anti-Zionist Jewish political party that led the Warsaw Ghetto resistance.   

In Third-Camp Stalinoids bring Witchhunt into ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ he writes of ‘The CPGB’s bloc with Bundist-influenced Jewish socialists such as Tony Greenstein and Moshe Machover, who have played initiating or supporting roles in various Jews-only political campaigns, such as Jews Against Zionism, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (JBiG) etc, only underlines this philo-semitic, Islamophobic bias.’

Indeed throughout his articles ID has an obsession with attacking the Bund, who the Socialist Zionists bitterly hated.  They were the main enemies of the Zionists in Czarist Russia and Poland.  It is no accident that Donovan and his mentor, Gilad Atzmon are so hostile to them.

Jewish Moral Superiority

Under the heading Moral Superiority and Zionist Racism Donovan writes that ‘This concept of Jewish moral superiority does not however originate with Greenstein or the CPGB. It is a general social phenomenon...’   He goes on to explain that ‘it is precisely the concept of Jewish moral superiority, not crude concepts of racial superiority, that drives that hegemony.’  It is as if there is some homogenous Jewish people that all have one particular characteristic.  Now it might be possible to make such a characterisation in reference to the settler Jewish people in Israel, who quite clearly are an oppressor people, but ID doesn’t confine his remarks to Israel. 

Jewish only Groups

In a particularly vile attack on Jewish groups specifically set up to counter the lie that Zionism speaks for all Jewish people, Donovan writes:

In the way these groups operate within the Palestine solidarity movement, they often appear to play a paternalistic role and actively reinforce, instead of fighting against, the widespread racist prejudice, based on the notion of Jewish moral superiority to non-Jews as a result of past suffering, that opposition to Israeli crimes is suspected to be anti-Semitic unless validated by a special Jewish endorsement. Greenstein has been involved in creating a number of Jews-only organisations connected with the Palestine Solidarity Movement, such as Jews Against Zionism (JAZ) and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (JBiG). These groups are indirectly a transmission belt for Zionist influence into the left, despite their subjective intentions as anti-Zionists, because a widely accepted notion of Jewish moral superiority is a sine-qua-non of Zionism’s influence and legitimacy in this society.’

This is a lie.  No anti-Zionist Jewish group has ever said that opposition to Israeli crimes is suspected to be anti-Semitic unless ‘validated by a special Jewish endorsement.’  What is noticeable is that he feels the need to lie in order to align him with the openly anti-Semitic Atzmon.

In Defend Marxism and Labour Movement democracy against capitulators to Zionism Donovan refers to Atzmon as ‘the expat-Israeli dissident Jazz musician’.  He speaks of ‘Greenstein’s campaign between 2005 and 2010 to witchhunt the Socialist Workers Party for hosting Atzmon’s gigs’. 

What we opposed was not so much Atzmon doing gigs but being invited as a speaker to SWP events or, since these were antiracist events, an open anti-Semite playing and vocalising at such events.  Yes we criticised the SWP heavily for having anything to do with Atzmon but this was not a witch hunt, it was an exercise in anti-racism.  

That is why in June 2005 Jews Against Zionism and other Jewish and non-Jewish socialists picketed a Bookmarx talk given by Atzmon on Otto Weininger, a Jewish fascist in Germany of whom Hitler was reported to have said that he was the only decent Jew and he went and killed himself.

In Third-Camp Stalinoids bring Witchhunt into ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ ID describes Atzmon as an ‘Israeli dissident’.  ID states that ‘Atzmon and Greenstein are both ‘Jewish anti-Zionists” which is untrue as Atzmon specifically rejects the notion that he is Jewish.

Gilad according to Ian Donovan is not anti-Semitic despite 'absolutely detesting the Jew in you'

Gilad Atzmon

These are just a few examples of why Gilad Atzmon   is a vehement anti-Semite and why it is  disgrace that Socialist Fight treat him as some kind of comrade in arms.

In his essay ‘On Anti-Semitism’ Atzmon stated that ‘we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously.’ 

In Truth History & Integrity Atzmon doubted that Auschwitz was an extermination camp, writing:

‘if the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? Why didn’t the Jews wait for their Red liberators?

‘I think that 65 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, we must be entitled to start to ask the necessary questions. We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative that is sustained by political pressure and laws. We should strip the holocaust of its Judeo-centric exceptional status and treat it as an historical chapter that belongs to a certain time and place’

A good example of Atzmon’s anti-Semitism was when he cited John Reynolds, Chair of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group during the financial crash of 2008-9: Reynolds said that "Above all we need more individuals to make a stand. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York should go further and call for more Christians to work in the city." The Observer 28.9.08.

Atzmon took this to mean that this was a call to rid the City of Jews:

'One may wonder what Reynolds refers to when calling for more ‘Christians to work in the City’... By pleading the Archbishops of Canterbury and York to send more Christians to the City he may try to suggest to us that our financial world must be spiritually de-Judified. I must admit that it took me by complete surprise to read such a suggestion in the politically correct Guardian.’

It also came as a complete surprise to John Reynolds who, once he’d recovered, threatened to sue for libel. Atzmon therefore issued a ‘Clarification’ and fulsome apology.

 ‘Clarification: In the course of an article entitled "Credit Crunch or rather Zio Punch?" I recently made a comment about Mr John Reynolds, the Chief Executive of Reynolds Partners and chairman of the Ethical Investment Advisory Group. I suggested that some people may think that his call in The Observer to send more Christians to the City was a plea for the financial world to be "spiritually de-Judified". I want to make it clear that I did not intend to suggest that Mr Reynolds was anti-Semitic or in any way hostile to Jewish people or those of the Jewish faith and I am sorry if my comment was understood by anybody in that way. Mr Reynolds has asked me to clarify the position and I am happy to do so. I would like to apologise for any distress caused.’

I have previously referred to Atzmon’s hatred of the Bund, the General Jewish Workers Union in Russia, Poland and Lithuania.  In the delightfully named Swindler’s List Atzmon explained that 

‘Bundists believe that instead of robbing Palestinians we should all get together and rob who is considered to be the rich, the wealthy and the strong in the name of working class revolution.’

Atzmon, who Donovan describes as an ‘Israeli dissident’ and an anti-Zionist has come up with the unique formulation of ‘Jewish Marxism’.  In Tribal Marxism for Dummies’ Atzmon explains that 

‘While Marxism is a universal paradigm, … Jewish Marxism is basically a crude utilisation of ‘Marxist-like’ terminology for the sole purpose of the Jewish tribal cause. It is a Judeo-centric pseudo intellectual setting which aims at political power.’

In one of a number of attacks on Moshe Machover, Atzmon explains that

“We are therefore entitled to assume that Machover’s ‘settler state’ is just another Judeo Marxist spin that is there to divert the attention from the clear fact that Israel is the Jewish state.

The last people who referred to Judeo-Marxists were the Nazis who held that the Jews had given birth to Bolshevism.  It is therefore somewhat of a surprise that a so-called socialist group is now taking to its bosom this vile anti-Semite.

Despite saying that they oppose Zionism and support the Palestinians Donovan and Socialist Fight directly contradict the statement of Ali Abunimah, Professor Joseph Masad and Omar Barghouti and other Palestinian activists and intellectuals.  

The Tories loved the internal dispute in LAW

In Granting No Quarter: A Call for the Disavowal of the Racism and Antisemitism of Gilad Atzmon they wrote:

...

Atzmon’s politics rest on one main overriding assertion that serves as springboard for vicious attacks on anyone who disagrees with his obsession with “Jewishness”. He claims that all Jewish politics is “tribal,” and essentially, Zionist. Zionism, to Atzmon, is not a settler-colonial project, but a trans-historical “Jewish” one, part and parcel of defining one’s self as a Jew. Therefore, he claims, one cannot self-describe as a Jew and also do work in solidarity with Palestine, because to identify as a Jew is to be a Zionist. We could not disagree more. Indeed, we believe Atzmon’s argument is itself Zionist because it agrees with the ideology of Zionism and Israel that the only way to be a Jew is to be a Zionist.

...

We reaffirm that there is no room in this historic and foundational analysis of our struggle for any attacks on our Jewish allies, Jews, or Judaism; nor denying the Holocaust; nor allying in any way shape or form with any conspiracy theories, far-right, orientalist, and racist arguments, associations and entities. Challenging Zionism, including the illegitimate power of institutions that support the oppression of Palestinians, and the illegitimate use of Jewish identities to protect and legitimize oppression, must never become an attack on Jewish identities, nor the demeaning and denial of Jewish histories in all their diversity.

Indeed, we regard any attempt to link and adopt antisemitic or racist language, even if it is within a self-described anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist politics, as reaffirming and legitimizing Zionism. In addition to its immorality, this language obscures the fundamental role of imperialism and colonialism in destroying our homeland, expelling its people, and sustaining the systems and ideologies of oppression, apartheid and occupation. It leaves one squarely outside true solidarity with Palestine and its people.

.....

The reality is that SF are a racist throwback to the early days of the 20^th Century when the Social Democratic Federation and British Socialist Party under Henry Hyndman tried to combine socialism and racism and ended up forming a British National Socialist Party.