My Book ‘Zionism During the Holocaust’ is Being Released This Week

 Jewish Network for Palestine is hosting the Book Launch Sunday 13 November 5 pm

Jewish Network for Palestine is hosting the Book Launch Sunday 13 November 5 pm

Please share with your networks and register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7N3bCglHRJ-kYwCW3QKtUw

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

It has been a long time coming but my book Zionism During the Holocaust – The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation is due to be released this week in time for the book launch which is being hosted by Jewish Network for Palestine.

You can order the book by contacting me at tonygreenstein104@gmail.com and sending me your name and address. The paperback will cost £12.50 and the hardback £18.00. Alternatively you can transfer the money to the following account and then contact me to let me have your details:

Name:                             Brighton and Hove Unemployed Workers Centre

Sort Code:                      09-01-50

Account Number:           04093879

Reference:                      Your Name

Alternatively you can send a cheque made out to B&HUWC, with all your details, to

BUWC, PO Box 173, Brighton BN51 9EZ

Interviews & Readings

During the Labour Party Conference on September 27 I was interviewed about the book by Tina Werkmann for the Beyond the Fringe – Future of the Left Events

and in October I was interviewed by Electronic Intifada's   Asa Winstanley and Nora Barrows-Friedman, for a Podcast  How Zionists collaborated with the Nazis,

Tony Greenstein reading extracts at the Over the Edge book fair in Galway City Library

On October 27 I was invited to read extracts from the book by the Over the Edge Literary Events at Galway City Library in Ireland, alongside two other writers, Rob Doyle and Riley Johnson. The video of my talk is here.

I was also interviewed by Tony Gosling of Bristol Community Radio about my book and you can hear the interview here:

A Brief Summary of My Book

My book covers the relationship of the Zionist movement to anti-Semitism before, during and after the Holocaust and looks at how the Holocaust has been weaponised by the Zionist movement. It particularly focuses on the period of the Holocaust itself.

Despite the efforts of the Zionists to prevent my Crowdfunder the book has been published and it is over 500 pages with more than 3,000 footnotes, mainly from Zionist sources.

Of course the mainstream media are not interested in anything that contradicts the Establishment narrative that Zionism was the answer to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. A narrative that totally eliminates the anti-Zionist leaders of Poland's Jews from history. 

In Poland in the last free elections in 1938 in Warsaw the anti-Zionist Bund took 17 of the 20 Jewish Council seats. The Zionists obtained one. Throughout Poland, in conjunction with the Polish Socialist Party, the Bund were victorious. Jewish and Israeli students today know nothing of this history.

In Germany the Zionists were even more of a fringe minority.  They constituted no more than 2% of its Jews.

It will make uncomfortable reading for Zionists and supporters of the State of Israel because I rely on mostly Zionist sources to show how the Zionist movement was a Quisling movement.

In my reading in Galway I quoted David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and the then Chair of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist government in waiting. After the British had accepted the entrance of nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany in the wake of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 pogrom against Germany's Jews, Ben Gurion made a speech to Mapai’s Central Committee (Israeli Labor Party) on 9 December 1938. Ben Gurion explained that:

If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but also the history of the People of Israel.

This quote can be found in multiple sources includingthe official biography of Ben-Gurion by Shabtai Teveth 'The Burning Ground - 1886-1948' (p.855)  as well as in Yoav Gelber’s ‘Zionist policy and the Fate of European Jewry,’ Yad Vashem Studies (1939-42) p. 199 and Tom Segev’s, The Seventh Million, 28.

Many Zionist leaders saw the rise of Hitler as a good thing. Of course they did not foresee the Holocaust but whereas most Jewish people did see the Nazis as a dire threat to German’s Jews the Zionists only saw opportunities.

Emil Ludwig, the world-famous biographer, ‘expressed the general attitude of the Zionist movement’:

'Hitler will be forgotten in a few years, but he will have a beautiful monument in Palestine. You know, the coming of the Nazis was rather a welcome thing. … Thousands who seemed to be completely lost to Judaism were brought back to the fold by Hitler, and for that I am personally very grateful to him.'

Nahman Bialik, the national Zionist poet, volunteered that

‘Hitlerism has perhaps saved German Jewry, which was being assimilated into annihilation.’

 Germany’s remaining Jews were of course annihilated, but not by assimilation. Berl Katznelson, a founder of Mapai (the forerunner of Israel’s Labour Party) and editor of its paper Davar, as well as Ben-Gurion’s effective deputy, saw the rise of Hitler as ‘an opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will have.’

Ben-Gurion himself was even more optimistic. ‘The Nazis’ victory would become “a fertile force for Zionism.’ One of the leaders of German Zionism, Rabbi Joachim Prinz admitted that:

It was morally disturbing to seem to be considered as the favoured children of the Nazi Government, particularly when it dissolved the anti-Zionist youth groups, and seemed in other ways to prefer the Zionists. The Nazis asked for a more Zionist behaviour.

Today the Zionists keep quiet about this because they know how appalling their record is. Their only response is to cry ‘anti-Semitism’.

The Zionist movement even betrayed its own young Zionist fighters in Warsaw and the other ghettos of Poland. Their writings and diaries were falsified and edited in such a way as to remove any criticism of the Zionist movement. Tuvia (Tova) Altman, a leader of the Hashomer Hatzair underground in Poland, wrote in December 1942 that ‘Israel is dying before my eyes and I wring my hands and cannot help.’ What they didn’t publish was the following:

After all, you have erased me from your memory and what are we.... It takes all the restraint I can muster not to vent the bitterness that has accumulated for you and your friends for forgetting me so completely... Only the realization and the certainty that we will never again meet led me to write…. Do not give regards to anyone. I don’t want to know about them.

Another victim of the censorship was Hayka (Chajka) Klinger who, when she went to Israel, couldn’t find anywhere to publish her experiences. When she died her Ghetto Diary was published. However it had so many changes and erasures that researchers were recommended to consult the original. The originals have now been republished, see Chajka Klinger, I am Writing these Words to You: The original diaries, Będzin, 1943. https://tinyurl.com/4trn2dtd.

When Chajka went to Palestine in 1944 she made a speech to the Zionist Executive. However the extracts below were not mentioned in references to the speech by Dina Porat, the Chief Historian at the Zionist propaganda museum Yad Vashem, in her book The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David. Chajka told how the Jewish Councils, the Judenrate, were hated by the masses for their collaboration with the Nazis and how they were largely staffed by members of the Zionist movement:

 [the] various Jewish communities [in Europe] were headed by members of the Zionist movement and most of them understood that if [the Nazis] said A they would need to carry on and [do] B.

And after they began assisting the Nazis to collect gold and furniture from Jewish homes, they had no choice but to go on to help them prepare lists of Jews for labor camps... And precisely because those who stood at the head of most of the communities were Zionists, the psychological effects on most of the Jewish masses vis-à-vis the Zionist idea was devastating, and the hatred towards Zionism grew day by day...

One bright day we will need to try these people. It must be said clearly and publicly that many Zionists betrayed [their people] ... Yes one must try Haim Molchadsky, the head of the JNF in Bedzin...

Today the Zionist movement claims credit for the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance but at the time the leadership of the Zionist movement in Palestine urged them to abandon the fight against the Nazis and go to Palestine via Aliya Bet, the secret emigration of Zionist pioneers from Nazi occupied Europe.

Hayka Klinger, who arrived in Palestine in March 1944, told the Histadrut Executive that ‘we received an order not to organize any more defence.’ To the Zionist leadership the ghetto fighters were more valuable in Palestine. Klinger observed that

‘Without a people, a people’s avant-garde is of no value. If rescue it is, then the entire people must be rescued. If it is to be annihilation, then the avante-garde too shall be annihilated.’

Never was the ethical and moral distinction between the Jewish diaspora and Palestine’s Zionist leaders clearer.

The Zionist leaders saw the risings in the ghettos as ‘a kind of betrayal of the overriding principle of the homeland.’ Yet despite opposing the uprisings at the time, the ghetto fighters were ‘retrospectively conscripted’ into the Zionist terror groups. ‘We fought here and they fought there’ according to Palmach commander Yitzhak Sadeh. Except that the Jewish partisans were fighting against the fascists whereas the Zionist militias fought with fascists.

The anti-Zionist leadership of the Warsaw Ghetto resistance, of which the Bund was the main component, has been eliminated by the Zionists from history.

The Israeli state was extremely hostile to the last commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Resistance, Marek Edelman, who had written an Open Letter to the Palestinians asking them to stop the bloodshed and enter into peace negotiations. The letter caused outrage because Edelman did not mention the word ‘terrorism.’ Israeli leaders were particularly incensed by its title: ‘Letter to Palestinian partisans’. Paul Foot wrote in an obituary to Edelman:

Mr Edelman … wrote in a spirit of solidarity from a fellow resistance fighter, as a former leader of a Jewish uprising …He addressed his letter to ‘commanders of the Palestinian military, paramilitary and partisan operations – to all the soldiers of the Palestinian fighting organisations.’ This set up a howl of rage in the Zionist press, who reminded their readers that Mr Edelman, despite his heroism in the 1940s, is a former supporter of the anti-Zionist socialist Bund and can therefore not be trusted.

What was particularly irksome was that Edelman had compared the structures of the Jewish resistance movement in Warsaw to that of the Palestinians. Although he occasionally came to Israel to visit old friends, Edelman retained the Bund’s hostility to Zionism. In an interview he described Israel as a:

chauvinist, religious state, where a Christian is a second-class citizen and a Muslim is third-class. It is a disaster, after three million were murdered in Poland, they want to dominate everything and not to consider non-Jews!

When Edelman died on 9 October 2009 he was honoured with a state funeral and a fifteen-gun salute. Not even the lowliest clerk at the Israeli Embassy attended. Edelman received Poland's highest honour and the French Legion of Honour but he died unrecognised and forgotten in Israel.

The President of Poland spoke at his funeral… held in the old Jewish cemetery of Warsaw. Two thousand people attended the grave-side ceremony. But no one from the Israeli government attended… No official representative of any international Jewish organisation attended either: not even from the holocaust memorialisation organisations.

You can read about all of the above and much more besides, including the story of Ha’avara, for which Ken Livingstone was forced from the Labour Party  in my book 

Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour-in-Exile-Network Vote to Merge into a Single Organisation

 A Single Anti-Witchhunt Organisation Committed to Build Shadow CLPs Can Only Strengthen the Fight Against Starmer

Fringe Meeting at 2018 Liverpool Conference (left to right) - Jo Bird, Tony Greenstein, the late Tony Mulhearn, Anya Ndwuke (chair), Chris Williamson, Alexei Sayle

Last Friday night members of Labour-in-Exile-Network voted by 31-8 to merge with Labour Against the Witchhunt. The following night LAW, at its first All Members Meeting for 3 months also voted to support a merger, albeit by a narrower but decisive majority of 47-27 with 12 abstentions.

The successful Resist at the Rialto events in Brighton during the Labour conference were organised jointly with LIEN, LAW and Resist

Members of both organisations voted to form a single organisation dedicated not only to fighting the witchhunt but to campaign on a broader basis. We have an NHS that is being privatised, a Police Bill which is a massive encroachment on civil liberties, a Nationality and Immigration Bill which will result in more deaths in the Channel. The idea that the only game in the town is the Witchhunt is an obsession. Starmer has just given a speech to Labour Friends of Israel saying that the Israel of pogroms against Palestinians is a ‘rumbustious democracy’.

It is unfortunate that the majority of the LAW Steering Committee, having lost the argument and the vote have resigned rather than accepting the view of LAW members. Their argument is summed up in this week’s Weekly Worker that we are ‘Deserting the Fight’. No comrades we are refusing to allow the fight against Starmer and his neo-liberal politics to be confined to simply machinations in the Labour Party.

Motion 1 in favour of the merger was passed with one amendment. The second motion, opposing the merger, moved by supporters of Labour Party Marxism therefore fell automatically.

At a time when thousands of Labour Party members are either under ‘investigation’, suspended or expelled, it makes obvious sense that two organisations that agree on all the fundamental questions facing socialists, inside and outside the Labour Party, should merge. The Left has been historically weakened because of unnecessary splits over minor points of theological doctrine.

2019 Fringe Meeting with Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, Alexei Sayle and Chris Williamson

Opponents of the merger, primarily Labour Party Marxism argued that there is still much work to be done fighting the witchhunt. That is true but conditions have changed massively since the Corbyn witchhunt began in 2016. This point was made eloquently in an introductory speech by Graham Bash, the recently expelled Political Officer of Jewish Voices for Labour and someone who was a member of Labour for 53 years.

Graham emphasised that the scale and reach of Starmer’s witchhunt is bigger than anything that the Labour Party has ever experienced in its history. Previously particular groups like Militant were targeted.  Now it is anyone on the socialist left who speaks out against the leadership. People like Pamela Fitzpatrick of CLPD, a well respected local councillor in Harrow, the recipient of abuse by right-wing trolls, has been expelled whilst her abusers have got off scot-free. The suspension of a previous Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is itself unprecedented.

LAW picket of Jackie Walker's Disciplinary Hearing

When nearly all the Left capitulated to the false ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks LAW was virtually alone in standing up to the Zionists and and people like Margaret Hodge. We organised pickets of the disciplinary hearings of Marc Wadsworth and Jackie Walker, organised well-attended fringe meetings at Labour Party Conference and gave support to Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson and others.

We also led, with JVL, the campaign against the adoption by the Labour Party of the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism with a large picket of the NEC meeting in September 2019 which adopted the IHRA.  We warned then that far from putting the ‘anti-Semitism’ attacks to bed they would increase in volume.

Jo Bird's reaction to her expulsion, that she is glad to get out of the Labour Party, is a typical reaction. Labour Party Marxists simply don't understand that people don't want to stay in Labour's poisonous cavern

Unfortunately Corbyn and Jennie Formby chose not to listen to us and they embarked on a policy of appeasement of the Right. At meeting after meeting I repeated the same message that the expulsion of Jackie, Marc and myself was not about us – we were collateral damage – the real target was Corbyn himself. That should be clear even to the most venal and stupid member of Momentum, even to Jon Lansman, now that Corbyn himself has lost the Whip.

When you don't like the way members voted you describe it as a 'hostile takeover' - this is the attitude of the trade union bureaucracy to democracy in the unions 

The throwing under the bus of Chris Williamson, Ken Livingstone and many others like Pete Willsman and Christine Shawcroft, simply whetted the appetite of Margaret Hodge and the JLM. When Corbyn opposed Open Selection he signed his own death warrant. When he and Formby proposed ‘fast track’ expulsions they laid the basis for Starmer’s purge and Corbyn’s own suspension.

But the opponents of merging the two organisations wanted people to believe that LAW today is the same as it was 2-3 years ago. That simply is not true.  In the past 6 months LAW has done relatively little other than with LIEN. On LAW’s own website there is no activity registered since the Resist at the Rialto in late September. The fact is that there is next to nothing we can do to fight the witchhunt inside the Labour Party because there is no democracy left.

LAW has no branches today - it has a passive membership

On July 20^th LAW and LIEN organised the well attended picket of Labour’s NEC at Southside and during the Labour Party conference we organised a whole series of alternative events at the Resist at the Rialto in Brighton. It makes sense to merge into one group.

You only need to look at the Wikipedia entry for LAW. It lists a whole series of our activities but stops in May 2019. The reality is that LAW has been on a life support system for the past two years. Before the last AGM membership had plummeted by one-third. Ironically the only thing that restored LAW’s previous membership was Starmer/Evans decision to proscribe LAW!

The Steering Committee which has met fitfully in recent months has failed to involve members in its work or bring them aboard. There are no separate working groups or strands. Members are just passive observers. LAW is not the campaign it was when we had regular monthly All Members Meeting. Members of the Labour Party are reluctant even to be seen on pickets or demonstrations when that will be taken as support for LAW and instant expulsion.

The preamble to the first motion began with Ken Loach’s statement:

‘democracy is dead in the labour party...this is a political vacuum, this is the biggest challenge to the left in my lifetime,  we do need a new political movement, across the whole left, inside the Labour Party and outside, it’s got to be ready to become a party when the time is right.... Otherwise we fragment. People are leaving and we will fragment. At this critical moment when you have this mass of people just driven out of the party where are they going to go? If we miss this opportunity it is a very black outlook.’

What then were the arguments of opponents of the merger? LPM has always taken the position that there is nothing in between the Labour Party, a bourgeois workers party in their eyes, and a revolutionary Marxist Party. All or nothing and they get nothing.

The late Tony Mulhearn - one of the heroes of the Liverpool Council refusal to set a rate in the 1980s, who came under attack from Kinnock

The CPGB didn’t always take this position having participated first in the Socialist Alliance, Respect and Left Unity. The CPGB/LPM have never explained the change in their tactics from opposition to ‘autolabourism’ to a devotion to labourism! In 1997 they refused to support a vote for Labour at the General Election. Now they damn anyone who even thinks of standing against Labour!

Ironically the first person to propose a merger wasn’t me but Tina Werkmann. I urged caution! At the LAW AMM on July 24 a motion ‘to explore the merging of LAW and LIEN’ was passed. Moved by Tina it read:

 This meeting believes that:

4.     Unity is strength. While there are obvious political differences in the history of both groups, the composition of both memberships and some campaigning priorities, we believe that both groups have enough in common politically to justify a possible merger.  

5.     Such a merger would send out a strong signal to many of those who are feeling disheartened and politically disoriented by the current trajectory of the Labour Party. 

6.     It might encourage more people and groups to join our merged organisation. 

This meeting therefore resolves to start exploring a merger process between both organisations...

A Zionist Without Qualification

At a joint LLA, LAW and LIEN members and supporters meeting on October 14 Paragraph 6 of a motion Bringing the Left together moved by Tina was identically worded to Para. 4 above! Para. 7 of the same motion was almost identically worded to Para. 5 above.

A number of other amendments moved by Roger Silverman, Diana Isserlis and myself made Tina’s motion even more explicit.

For reasons that are not clear, Tina reversed her position and put out a paper Why a merger between Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour In Exile Network is a bad idea Tina wrote:

There are a number of reasons why I personally oppose a merger at this moment in time, despite the fact that I initially proposed ‘exploring a merger’ between the groups. Yes, unity is strength, but this unity has to have a serious political purpose if it is to be effective. I would be very much in favour of building a democratic and socialist movement based on the revolutionary politics of Marxism. But that is not what is being discussed here, far from it.

But Tina knew back in July and October that neither LIEN nor LAW were revolutionary Marxists. What changed? A clue can be found in the accusation that the LIEN Steering Committee lacked ‘political incoherence.’ This incoherence ‘reflects the fact that the organisation has no clear political programme.’ Well neither LIEN nor LAW has such a programme. The point is to develop a program of ideas. 4 months ago that wasn’t a problem. Why now?

I understand why LPM opposea a merger. They consider that they, all 30 or so of them, are that organisation. In a motion to the LAW Steering Committee of 9^th November Stan Keable proposed:

to withdraw from the recent joint meetings with the steering committees of Labour in Exile Network and Labour Left Alliance, and to end LAW’s participation in joint all members and supporters meetings. 

The joint steering committee meetings, while nominally favouring continuing the struggle in the Labour Party, have in fact been dominated by proposals to orientate away from Labour, to give up on the struggle within Labour, and to attempt to create an alternative movement or party based on the failed politics of Corbynism, aiming to keep together the thousands of disillusioned comrades at all costs. ... we believe such a project will only add to the widespread demoralization and disorientation of the Labour left that already exists.

The LPM motion to the LAW All Members Meeting meeting of 27^th November LPM stated that:

We reject the proposed merger of LAW with the Labour in Exile Network, which we believe would effectively liquidate LAW and add to the widespread demoralization and disorientation of the Labour left that already exists.

LPM have always had a consistent policy, at least since the election of Jeremy Corbyn, that they reject the formation of any broad socialist group outside the Labour Party. Especially with those who espouse ‘the failed politics of Corbynism.’

Instead I was belaboured with the fact that I was in a minority of 1 on the LAW Steering Committee in favouring a merger. However the meeting on Saturday wasn’t particularly impressed either by Tina’s change of heart or LPM’s implacable opposition to anything smacking of what they call a Labour Party Mark 2.

What I didn’t expect was the bad faith reaction of both LPM and Tina to reject a democratic decision of LAW members and simply resign and refuse to implement the decision. On the LAW Steering Committee Whatsapp group Tina posted:

This feels very much like a hostile takeover and the only outcome is that it will close down LAW. Pretty shitty outcome.

On the LAW Facebook page Tina declared that the proposal to merge was a ‘Hostile takeover, really. Not sure it serves any purpose apart from closing down LAW.’ To which I responded that:

‘The Steering Committee opposed the merger. The members voted for it. Yes the members have taken LAW over as they realise it was going nowhere fast. Labour Party Marxists wanted to preserve LAW in aspic as a trophy that does very little.

You remind me of Bertold Brecht's satirical poem "Die Lösung" (The Solution) in which he portrays the East German communists, after crushing the 1953 German Workers Uprising of wanting to abolish the people and start again

Leaving aside the fact that Tina herself was proposing what she now calls a ‘hostile takeover’ this is unbelievably arrogant. LAW’s Steering Committee was clearly unrepresentative of the membership. It is the members who have taken it over. This reaction is similar to the reaction of the Labour Right in 2015 to the ‘hostile takeover’ of the Labour Party by the Corbynistas!

This is the language of a Board of Directors of a company to a takeover bid by some venture capitalist. It demonstrates a contempt for democracy. Instead of asking why, repeatedly, I have been in a minority on the Steering Committee yet not at All Members Meetings, Tina blames the members! Bertold Brecht captured this brilliantly in his poem The Solution.

It is often said that whatever their political differences, Trotskyist and Stalinist groups often have a very similar attitude to democracy. One only has to look at the SWP with its self-perpetuating leadership.

The reality is that socialists and socialism are being driven out of the Labour Party by Starmer – all in the name of fighting anti-Semitism! The opponents of the merger, instead of accepting that they were defeated, are now trying to make the creation of a unified organisation that much more difficult. The only people to gain from their actions will be Starmer and co. I would therefore appeal to them to pull back.

The creation of a unified organisation is not the ‘liquidation’ nor the closing down of LAW. There is nothing LAW could have done that it can’t do in a merged organisation. LIEN is obviously committed to fighting the witchhunt and always has been.

LIEN already has a Witchhunt Analysis Group amongst 7 other groups. LIEN is already far more active over the witchhunt than LAW. There is obvious room for an 8^th Anti-Witchhunt group.

At a time when Starmer has declared to the Labour Friends of Israel that the Israeli Military State is a rumbustious democracy, what is needed is a little more respect for democracy in our own ranks!

Tony Greenstein

Not the Forde Inquiry but a Jolly Good Substitute!

 Israel Bans Palestinian Human Rights Groups  Yet It Still Calls Itself a Democracy 

Interview with Tony Greenstein about Labour's Witch Hunt

Two years ago, when the Zionists were doing their best to close down free speech in Brighton and elsewhere, we held a series of cultural and political events at Brighton’s Rialto Theatre. The Zionists had been intimidating and harassing venues in Brighton to cancel meetings with people like Chris Williamson on the grounds that they were ‘anti-Semitic’.  The Brighthelm Centre had received a letter from local Zionist MP Peter Kyle and immediately obeyed his ‘advice’. The local Quakers Friends Meeting House also gave in as did the Holiday Inn.

The lies that Fiona Sharpe - the racist at the heart of Brighton & Hove Council's 'anti-racist' strategy tells - free speech at the Rialto had no negative community impact unless Fiona is implying Jews don't like freedom of speech!

The Rialto Theatre was run by someone who had had experience supporting the Kent Miners over 30 years previously and was made of sterner stuff. The bombardment of tweets, social media abuse etc. from Zionists like Fiona Sharpe had no effect so that this year there was nothing.  The Zionists gave up because they had met resistance.  If only the quaking Quakers had stuck to their principles and not retreated at the first sign of grapeshot then all would have been well. Free Speech is worth preserving and fighting for but these religious souls took fright and emboldened the racists and imperialists.

So when the book launch for Bad News for Labour was cancelled at the last minute by Waterstones Bookshop, because the head office was also put under pressure (the local store staff wanted to continue with the event), we put it on literally at the last minute. Instead of 30 people attending over 100 did, including Ken Loach.

Two years ago we could only put on a 2 day event because we had only booked the venue late in the day. This year we had plenty of time to prepare and we booked it from September 26 to 29, for 3½ days. We put on a whole series of political and cultural events called Resist at the Rialto. You can see them all here. There were 11 events in all:

The events were

Why alternative media is important to the left chaired by Greg Hadfield, who was expelled for putting on the 3 day events. It’s a sad state of affairs in the Labour Party when you can be expelled for putting on 3 days of socialist politics and culture. Former Telegraph political editor Peter Oborne, Asa Winstanley from Electronic Intifada and the irrepressible Lowkey participated.

Municipal Socialism - the left in local government with Roger Silverman, Carol Buxton and Greg Hadfield chaired by Chris Williamson.

The Great NHS Heist chaired by Esther Giles, Treasurer of the Socialist Health Association with Dr Bob Gill, the producer of the Great NHS Heist.

Wikileaks and the torture of Julian Assange chaired by Dr Deepa Driver of the Labour Campaign for Free Speech and Chair of Camden Momentum with Matt Kennard , Lauri Love and Bjartmar Alexandersson

Starmer surrounded by the butcher's apron

Purge III: McCarthyism and Starmer’s Labour Party chaired by Esther Giles with Dr Neil Todd, Senior Research Fellow of the University of South Wales

Socialists, republicanism and PR chaired by Larry Hyett with Steve Freeman, Tina Werkmann and Dr Kevin Bean

Labour, the antisemitism crisis and the destroying of an MP is the title of a book by Lee Garratt, a man who has had a very varied life including being a left-wing policeman in the Metropolitan Police! He is now a teacher. It was chaired by Chris Williamson.

Can Modern Monetary Theory solve the crisis of capitalism? chaired by Esther Giles with Professor Bill Mitchell, Carlos García Hernández and Michael Roberts, a former City economist.

This is how Zionist racists like Fiona Sharpe operate - they use the Jewish community like pawns in their attempt to close down free speech

The Palestinian resistance – and the need for international solidarity chaired by Anne Mitchell, Secretary of BHPSC, with Asa Winstanley, Huda Ammori of Palestine Action, Natalie Strecker a former human rights activist in Hebron, and Issa Amro, a Hebron-based human rights defender recognised by the UN as an anti-occupation and anti-apartheid activist. This was one of my favourite sessions.

Fiona Sharpe of Sussex Friends of Israel reveals what her real agenda is - protecting Apartheid

The Weaponisation of Racism was chaired by Tina Werkmann with Jackie Walker and Tony Greenstein.

The threat to academic freedom chaired by Dr Deepa Driver of Reading University with Dr Kevin Bean, lecturer in Irish politics at the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool and Mike Cushman, Chair of Free Speech on Israel and a member of BRICUP’s Organising Committee.

The final event was Robb Johnson and friends, including Brighton’s own Professor Dave Hill.

But the event which crowned the 3 days and was a pure piece of political theatre was the Not the Forde Inquiry. 

You will remember when Labour’s Leaked Report was issued detailing the racist and misogynist abuse, by senior Labour Party staff like John Stolliday of Corbyn supporters. Senior employees of the Labour Party did their best to sabotage the 2017 election campaign. They openly supported the Tories. This Report had been compiled at the behest of Jennie Formby for submission to the EHRC.

When Starmer came in the Report, all 831 pages, was leaked. Starmer’s anger was not at the revelations of the racist abuse of Dianne Abbot or the treachery and deception of Stolliday, Emily Oldknow (both of whom have gone to UNISON) or Sam Matthews. His anger was directed at who leaked the Report. Starmer was forced to set up an Inquiry under Martin Forde QC. It was packed with right-wing Labour supporters but nonetheless Starmer has refused to release the Report using ‘confidentiality’ and the ongoing work of the Information Commissioner as his excuse. Because it is unlikely that the Forde Report will ever be issued, Resist at the Rialto decided to put on this production.

It was compared by Dorothy Walker, the late mother of Jackie Walker who had kindly agreed to come back to life to help us ward off the latest bout of McCarthyism, something which forced her to flee to London from the United States with Jackie in the 1950s.

Sir Norman Licky QC aka Paddy O'Keefe

The Cross-examiners in chief were Ken Loach and Graham Bash of Labour Briefing/LRC.

The Prosecutor for the Labour Party was Sir Norman Licky QC otherwise known as Paddy Keefe, an expelled member of the Brighton Labour Party and a professional actor. Witnesses were:

Becky Massey, Esther Giles and Roger Silverman

Esther Giles, suspended secretary of Bristol North-West CLP,

Becky Massey, expelled member of Hove CLP,

Roger Silverman, expelled member of West Ham CLP, son of the late Julian Silverman, a Jewish MP responsible more than anyone else for the ending of capital punishment in Great Britain

Leah Levane, Chris Williamson and Greg Hadfield

Leah Levane, co-chair of Jewish Voices for Labour and a former Hastings Councillor, who was expelled at the Labour Party Conference itself for attending a rally against the witchhunt!

Chris Williamson, the only socialist Labour MP, who was disgracefully suspended by Jennie Formby under Jeremy Corbyn.

Greg Hadfield, newly expelled member of Brighton Pavilion Labour Party had been suspended 3 times. When he was elected Secretary of the Brighton and Hove District Labour Party by a massive majority at the largest ever meeting of over 600 people, he was removed by the simple device of suspending him 2 days later.

I hope you are able to watch all these events but especially the Not the Forde Report.

Tony Greenstein & Stan Heller of The Struggle

Interview of Tony Greenstein by Stan Heller

On October 5^th I was interviewed by Stan Heller of the United States’s Struggle Video Media about the Labour Party witchhunt and you can watch it here

6 Palestine Human Rights Groups Declared ‘Terrorist’ Groups by Israel

Children as young as 12 (as long as they are not Jewish of course) are subject to arrest in the early hours of the morning.  They are blindfolded, beaten, often sexually abused, not allowed to see their parents or a lawyer and forced to sign confessions in a language, Hebrew, that they don’t even understand.

Their plight has been taken up by Defend Children International – Palestine.

A few weeks ago their offices were raided in Ramallah, their records, computers and other information was seized. Today they and five other organisations have been declared terrorist organisations and banned.

These are the actions of an authoritarian state, not a democracy as Israel likes to claim to be. The new Israeli government was supposed to be an alternative to the bad old Benjamin Netanyahu. It contains the so-called left Zionists of the Israeli Labor Party and Meretz and even includes, on the outside the conservative Arab Party Ram.

Yesterday the Defence Minister and former Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, a veteran war criminal, formally banned the organisations without a squeak out of the above named parties, thus proving what I have always said.  That there is no fundamental difference between the different shades of Zionism.

The groups are Al-Haq, a human rights group founded in 1979, Addameer, Defence for Children International – Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

The pretext is that they are linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in other words guilt by association. The PFLP is a legitimate left-wing Palestinian group and even if there were a grain of truth in the allegations it would be no justification for the banning.

Israel’s B’Tselem organisation, which itself declared in January that Israel was an Apartheid and Jewish Supremacist state, issued the following statement:

“Israel’s ‘change’ government’s designation, earlier today, of Palestinian human rights organizations as ‘terror organizations’ is not merely declarative. It is an act characteristic of totalitarian regimes, with the clear purpose of shutting down these organizations,” B’Tselem said in a statement, accusing Israel’s new government of trying to perpetuate a “violent apartheid regime.”

Even South Africa at the height of Apartheid did not ban human rights organisations. The decision of the Naftali Bennett government gives the lie to the idea that the Israeli state is at all interested in peace. Repression is the only game they understand. It is even more of a reason to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who work closely with many of these groups, issued the following joint statement:

“This appalling and unjust decision is an attack by the Israeli government on the international human rights movement. For decades, Israeli authorities have systematically sought to muzzle human rights monitoring and punish those who criticize its repressive rule over Palestinians. While staff members of our organizations have faced deportation and travel bans, Palestinian human rights defenders have always borne the brunt of the repression. This decision is an alarming escalation that threatens to shut down the work of Palestine’s most prominent civil society organizations. The decades-long failure of the international community to challenge grave Israeli human rights abuses and impose meaningful consequences for them has emboldened Israeli authorities to act in this brazen manner.

How the international community responds will be a true test of its resolve to protect human rights defenders. We are proud to work with our Palestinian partners and have been doing so for decades. They represent the best of global civil society. We stand with them in challenging this outrageous decision.”