Britain’s Cointelpro – How the Israeli Embassy and Guido Fawkes destabilised the Labour Party

Ken Livingstone Must Be Reinstated & Corbyn Must Fight Back

Ken Livingstone - under suspension for speaking the truth

The coin that the Nazis struck in commemoration of the head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo visit to Palestine courtesy of the Zionist labour movement

 The late Phil Agee revealed in his book Inside the Company how the CIA went around Latin America destabilising governments and parties it didn’t like.  In American domestic politics there was a similar programme aimed at dissident and radical organisations known as Cointelpro, a series of covert projects conducted by the FBI that infiltrated, surveilled and disrupted domestic political organizations.

For the past few months the Labour Party has been subject to a similar programme of destabilisation.  A programme in which the Zionist movement played and is still playing a major role.

Identity Politics have wrecked havoc with Jones' socialist politics - He supports the Palestinians and he supports their oppressors

From July 2015 onwards, when it became increasingly clear that Corbyn would win the leadership election, we had a campaign, initiated by the Daily Mail EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn's 'long-standing links' with notorious Holocaust denier and his 'anti-Semitic' organisation revealed and fronted by the Jewish Chronicle under Stephen Pollard, its far-right editor and member of the Henry Jackson Society, The key questions Jeremy Corbyn must answer   The aim of the campaign was to paint Corbyn as a ‘friend’ of ‘terrorists’ – Hamas and Hezbollah and an associate of holocaust deniers.

When Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, the campaign shifted to an attack on Gerald Kaufmann for having said at a meeting that it was ‘Jewish money’ that was responsible for the pro-Israel policy of the Conservative government.  Groups such as the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, an overtly Zionist political organisation masquerading as a charity [see EXCLUSIVE - Lifting the Lid on the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism The Bogus Charity that Campaigns Against Corbyn, Muslims and Palestinians  waged a prolonged campaign against Kaufman as if he was the most notorious anti-Semite since  Adolf Eichmann.  

When I searched the Jewish Chronicle’s database for ‘Jewish money’ I turned up no less than 590 occurences of this phrase!  It is a phrase commonly used in the Jewish community.  As an example of Zionist hypocrisy, on May 1^st a former prominent Jewish funder of the Labour Party, Michael Foster, was given nearly 10 minutes of airtime on BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme to explain why Jewish people weren’t going to be funding the Labour Party whilst Corbyn was leader.  Of course ‘Jewish money’ is only anti-Semitic when used by opponents of the State of Israel. 

Jewish Chronicle columnist Geoffrey Alderman called for Kaufman’s excommunication from the Jewish community despite having used the very same term twice in the same article. A man who deserves banning Jewish Chronicle  Geoffrey Alderman and Gerald Kaufman –Jewish Chronicle Columnist’sExercise in Hypocrisy

Despite his outburst against Kaufman Alderman was remarkably tolerant in respect of David Whelan, the former owner of Wigan Athletic football club, who stated that ‘there is nothing like a Jew who sees money slipping through his fingers’ and when challenged by the Guardian responded that ‘I think they [Jews] are very shrewd people…. I think Jewish people do chase money more than everybody else.  I don’t think that’s offensive at all.’ To most people this would count as anti-Semitism.

See 'The Witchunt of Gerald Kaufman - Crucified for Supporting the Palestinians 

Lansman  holds talks with racist Zionist groups and supports Livingstone's expulsion whilst remaining Chair of Momentum

Alderman’s take was that ‘It was ‘a sad and miserable tale of political correctness taken to new depths of absurdity.’  This football fuss is a bit rich 5.12.14.    Despite ‘shrewd’ being used in the sense of canny or mean, i.e. a stereotypical comment about Jews and money, Alderman’s comment was ‘who reading this column could take umbrage at that?’  And as for Jews chasing money, Alderman believed that ‘as far as I’m aware no serious research has been done on this subject.  But it’s certainly true that the Jewish view of money differs considerably from that of Christianity.’  

Pollard himself was more than willing to excuse anti-Semites when they were pro-Israel.  Michal Kaminski, the Conservative’s new partner, in the European and Conservative Reform group in the European Parliament, was ‘the best friend of the Jews’ despite being anti-Semitic. [see ‘Poland’s Kaminski isnot an anti-Semite: he’s a friend to Jews’:  and Weapon of Choice   

Ben Gurion - 'it is in our interest to use Hitler' as they 'turn a disaster (the Holocaust) into a productive force

The reason why Kaminski could not possibly be anti-Semitic, despite being a member of a former neo-Nazi party and opposing a Polish apology for Jedwabne, when up to 900 Jews were burnt alive in a barn, was that ‘Far from being an antisemite, Mr Kaminski is about as pro-Israel an MEP as exists.'  David Miliband's insult to Michal Kaminski is contemptible Jewish Chronicle 1.10.09., 

Other incidents of ‘anti-Semitism’

In February there began the new phase in the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign.  It centred on Oxford University Labour Club whose co-chairman Alex Chalmers resigned claiming that his fellow Labour Club members were anti-Semitic .  The occasion of this resignation was the decision of the Club to support Oxford’s Israel Apartheid Week.  Oxford University Labour Club co-chair, Alex Chalmers, resigns amid anti-Semitism row

Since then we have had the case of Vicky Kirby,  an ex-Bradford Mayor who tweeted that 6 million Zionists died in the holocaust when complaining that even greater acts of genocide didn’t receive the same attention as the Jewish genocide and now of course Ken Livingstone’s reference to Hitler’s support for the Zionist solution to German anti-Semitism.

In what is the first comprehensive investigation of these allegations of anti-Semitism by Electronic Intifada researcher and journalist Asa Winstanley it becomes clear that these allegations are not what they seem. How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’santi-Semitism crisis

Alex Chalmers was an intern with BICOM the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre, which despite describing itself as an ‘an independent research centre’  is an Israeli propaganda group. 

The case of Vicky Kirby which was one of the worst examples of ‘anti-Semitism’ presented turns out  to be a case of someone quite innocent fitted up.  Her ‘big noses’ comment was nothing more than quoting from a play  the 2010 comedy film The Infidel.  The information had been taken from the far-right Conservative web site Guido Fawkes which had cropped a screenshot of a tweet to make it appear that these were her own words.’  In other words the usual Tory dirty tricks.  The article 

analyses the role of New Labour MP and ex-NUS President Wes Streeting who attended a key anti-BDS Conference in Tel-Aviv.  Streeting, who le arnt the tricks of the trade in NUS, is almost certainly working with the Israeli embassy and no doubt has other intelligence links.

Ken Livingstone

On April 28^th in an interview with BBC Radio London’s Vanessa Feltz Ken Livingstone, in the course of defending suspended MP Naz Shah from accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ remarked that:

‘Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.’ Labour antisemitismrow: Ken Livingstone interview transcipts in full   These remarks can be best understood in the context of Hitler supporting the Zionist solution to German Jewry i.e. expulsion, though even this is not strictly accurate. Ken Livingstone says Labour should reinstate himbecause everything he said about Jewish people "was true" 

From the biography of David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister and Chairman of the Jewish Agency, by Shabtai Teveth - this is BG's reaction to Britain's Kindertransport plan to save 10,000 Jewish childen by bringing them to Britain in 1939 - saving half Germany's children in Palestine was better than saving all of them in England

There is no doubt that Ken made a number of minor mistakes.  Israel didn’t exist in 1933, the area was called Palestine, it was a British Mandate territory.  Secondly Hitler didn’t win any election in 1932, on the contrary his vote in the November election compared to July dropped by 2 million to 11.74 million (33.09%) compared to 13.,23 million (37.3%) for the KPD and SPD.  Hitler was put into power on January 30 1933 by reactionary political and military forces who sought the destruction of the German labour movement. Thirdly the final solution was not a product of Hitler’s madness. Even without Hitler the final solution would have taken place.  It was the product of war imperialism and the fanatical anti-Semitism of a section of the Nazi Party.  The final solution had a logic and momentum of its own.  When the expulsion of Jews was no longer an option after 1939 the countdown to the destruction of European Jewry had begun.  It began in June 1941 with Operation Barbarossa.

Ben Gurion's official biographer  Teveth concludes that for Ben Gurion and implicitly the whole Jewish Agency Executive, there was a very thin line separating him from seeing the Holocaust as a 'beneficial disaster' 

Livingstone’s comments weren’t the wisest thing to have made in the course of an ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt.  However  in essence they are correct.  The Nazi movement singled out the Zionist movement as their favourite Jews. 

For example on 28 January 1935 Heydrich, the ‘“real engineer of the final solution” [Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution, p.13.] issued a directive to the Bavarian Gestapo that ‘The activity of the Zionist-oriented youth organisations…. lies in the interests of the National Socialist state’s leadership…. (they) are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish (assimilationists).’ Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p.118,  citing Hans Mommsen, ‘Der nationalsozialistische Polizeistaat’ pp. 78-9.

The Zionists were allowed to organise, hold meetings, fly flags, have a newspapers whereas the ‘assimilationists’ were repressed.  The Zionists used their patronage by the Nazis to encroach on the position of the majority of the Jewish community demanding parity in the Reichsvertretung, the Jewish communal organisation in 1935.  Indeed they took over all the positions on the Reichsvereinigung, which was established in 1939 after Krystalnacht.

The Zionist policy was that Jews should flee to Palestine or nowhere.  Their twisted logic was that if other countries could solve the crisis of anti-Semitism in Germany and Europe then Palestine would be made redundant.  In any case anti-Semitism, being a disease, would simply spread to other countries.  Only Palestine could provide a long-term solution to anti-Semitism.  It was a racial concept of humanity.   The Zionists therefore lobbied the Gestapo not to allow Jews to emigrate to countries other than Palestine.  It was a consistent Zionist policy to oppose the emigration of Jewish refugees to countries other than Palestine such as Santo Domingo which had offered to take 100,000 refugees as a result of the Evian Conference.

In a memo to the Jewish Agency Executive after Krystalnacht, Ben-Gurion wrote:

if the Jews are faced with a choice between the refugee problem and rescuing Jews from concentration camps on the one hand, and aid for the national museum in Palestine on the other, the Jewish sense of pity will prevail and our people's entire strength will be directed at aid for the refugees in the various countries. Zionism will vanish from the agenda and indeed not only world public opinion in England and America but also from Jewish public opinion. We are risking Zionism's very existence if we allow the refugee problem to be separated from the Palestine problem. [Y. Elam, Introduction to Zionist history, Tel Aviv 1972, pp.125-26. See also Ot, paper of youth cadre of Mapai, No.2, winter 1967 cited by Machover-Offenburg p. 58 and Brenner, p. 149. Memo of 17.12.38]

It is essential that socialists defend Livingstone.  The suspension of a National Executive member, a former MP and London Mayor and a figurehead of the Labour Left for the last 30 years marks a new stage in the witchhunt.  According to reports, Corbyn was extremely reluctant to suspend Ken but he was bullied into it.  After a staged confrontation with the boorish bully John Mann MP, Livingstone was suspended.  Popular opinion holds that it is Mann, not Livingstone, who should have been suspended.  Mann is Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on anti-Semitism which devotes its time to opposing BDS and support for Palestinians.

Tweets and comments made even before Naz Shah was an MP were dug up and she was dismissed as John McDonnell’s PPS.  Naz Shah suspended by Labour party amid antisemitism row  

One tweet, issued in the middle of Israel’s genocidal Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, when 2,200 people in Gaza were murdered by Israel, including 551 children, was to joke that Israel should be relocated inside the United States as this would save the US the trouble and expense of maintaining the Israeli state and preserve Palestinian life.  She displayed a map showing Israel as the 51^st state of the USA.  It turns out that this was produced by Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American academic and anti-Zionist who is the son of two holocaust survivors.  There was nothing anti-Semitic about this map.  It was a twitter type fantasy solution to the problem of Israel’s barbarism. 

To the humourless and vindictive squad of Progress MPs such as Mann and Streeting, Naz Shah was the next worst thing to Eva Braun and she was forced to resign her position.  She was suspended from the Labour Party and forced to make a humiliating apology like a prisoner in a Stalinist re-education camp.  When Vanessa Feltz asked me why she would confess to anti-Semitism if she wasn’t  guilty I explained that there have been many false confessions in history, such as the defendants in Stalin’s purge trials.  It’s not difficult to persuade someone that they are guilty if you apply enough psychological pressure and you see your career disappearing before you.

The media, the Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland in particular have played a despicable role in the witch hunt.  see for example Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem   Freedland, a ‘liberal’ Zionist berates the left in particular for not accepting the Israeli state.  My plea to the left: treat Jews the same way you’d treat any other minority 

What if, he asked, Israel were the only Black state in the world.  Would we oppose it then.  Professor Kamel Hawwesh of Birmingham University answered yes, Palestinians would reject any coloniser, whatever their colour. A Palestinian view on the antisemitism row   Freedland demonstrates both his ignorance and his malevolence when he compares a Jewish Israel to a Christian Britain.  In Britain Christianity is an adornment.  It doesn’t entitle you to special privileges.  It doesn’t mean that your planning application in the Jewish town of Afula will be rejected because you are Palestinian.  Israel's Virulent Housing Bias Runs Deep — and It's Not Only Aimed at Arabs

The BBC has also lived up to its reputation.  It has afforded the Labour Right every opportunity to air their allegations whilst denying anti-Zionists a platform.  There has been an almost one-sided media barrage.  One of the only exceptions was the BBC Big Questions programme on Sunday May 1^st at 10 am when there are relatively few viewers.  Moshe Machover, Daphne Baram and myself were widely considered, even by Zionists, to have trounced those who alleged that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same thing.  I also did an interview with Vanessa Feltz, BBC London’s Zionist interviewer where I refused to be diverted from explaining why Israel is an apartheid society, but these are very much the exception.

One of the most egregious examples of BBC bias was that of Andrew Neil’s Sunday Politics show on March 18^th which gave MPs West Streeting and John Mann opportunity to wax at length about Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ problem.  Neil himself is a former Murdoch editor and Conservative Party research assistant.  James Schneider, a supporter of Corbyn was given just 25 seconds whereas Streeting had 45 seconds and Mann was allowed 6 minutes and 4 seconds. 

Andrew Neil, rather than subjecting his claims to cross-examination, urged Mann on to greater excesses.  Take for example this penetrating question:  ‘‘Why has it [anti-Semitism] come back?’  Note that Neil assumes the very thing he is asking. 

Corbyn has shown not only spinelessness throughout this affair but a culpable failure to understand what is at stake.  He has continuously rowed back from the positions he adopted in previous years.  Alongside MPs such as the late Joan Maynard he was a sponsor of the Labour Committee on Palestine and the Labour Movement Campaign on Palestine, both of which I chaired.  These organisations supported a democratic, secular state solution in Palestine.  We opposed a 2 state solution which at that time was supported by George Galloway’s Middle East Council!  George has now come round to our way of thinking!

If Livingstone is expelled from the Labour Party Corbyn will not last long as leader.  John McDonnell has taken an even worse position.  He backed off last September from his comments over Ireland.   Now he has added Palestine to his retreat from the Left.  Rather than sacking Naz Shah he should have backed her. Instead with his ‘out, out, out’ remarks about alleged anti-Semites he has encouraged those making false allegations to greater efforts.

Jon Lansman welcomed Livingstone's suspension and has effectively backed his expulsion

Momentum under Jon Lansman has been equally abysmal.  Lansman has held secret talks with Labour Friends of Israel and the so-called Jewish Labour Movement, the  British branch of the racist Israeli Labour Party in order to reach some form of agreement.  It’s like the chicken negotiating for a safe pass from a fox.  Lansman openly criticised Livingstone and supported his suspension.   

In Left Futures Why the Left must stop talking about ‘Zionism’  Lansman argues that we should drop all mention of Zionism.  The movement that founded the racist settler colonial state of Israel should not be mentioned even though the World Zionist Organisation is alive and kicking, funding the settlement of the Palestinian territories.  Netanyahu proclaims that in the name of Zionism he cannot admit refugees to Israel, because it would undermine the national identity of the Jewish state.  IsraelPM: illegal African immigrants threaten identity of Jewish state.  Binyamin Netanyahu reignites row over fate of thousands of African migrants in Israel Harriet Sharwood, The Guardian, 20.5.12.   Lansman argues that if we pretend there is no such thing as Zionism then all the cries about anti-Semitism will go away.  Such is the craven attitude of left social democrats when they come under any pressure.

The Sex Pistols wrote a song about Owen Jones - Pretty Vacant

Owen Jones, the Guardian’s token left commentator,  has demonstrated that he is both politically and intellectually a light weight.  For the last 3 years he has written an annual article deprecating ‘anti-Semitism’.  Two of them even begin with the same fatuous phrase ‘anti-Semitism is a menace.’  He is incapable of understanding that when Israel is killing Palestinians, Zionists cry ‘anti-Semitism’. 

Owen Jones scabs in the witchhunt against 'anti-Semites' and backs the Zionist 'concern' over 'anti-Semitism'

It is not necessary to defend everything that Ken Livingstone said in order to oppose his suspension.  Defending Livingstone goes hand in hand with opposing the new McCarthyist witch hunt.  Whereas Joe McCarthy was an anti-Semite, his disciples come in the guise of opponents of anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein 

How Labour Was Destabilised by the Israel Lobby and Progress Right

This is an excellent analysis from Electronic Intifada's Asa Winstanley that confirms all my suspicions that this crisis of 'anti-Semitism' in the Labour Party has been deliberately created.  It has been created partly by the media, inc. The Guardian but without doubt co-ordinated between the Right of the Party and the Zionist lobby as represented by the so-called Jewish Labour Movement and the Israeli PR Group BICOM.

I have no doubts that the hand of Israel's Embassy and its personnel are involved in destabilishing Britain's second major party.  The prospect of the Palestine supporter Jeremy Corbyn being elected as leader of the Labour Party triggered a dirty tricks operation worthy of any CIA effort to destabilise a South American country.

It has been aided by a compliant media and  talking heads such as BBCs Andrew Neil, Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland and other paid propagandists.

Thousands of pounds have been spent on researchers going through hundreds of thousands of emails, tweets, FB posts etc. in order to dig up some dirt and if necessary manufacture some dirt.

This article reveals how Alex Chalmers, the co-Chair at Oxford University Labour Club was an ex-intern at BICOM and a dirty tricks agent on behalf of the Zionists.  His allegations of anti-Semitism at Oxford University Labour Club were totally without any supporting evidence and at least one student was framed.

It reveals how Vicky Kirby was set up and the comments about Jews having 'big noses' was a quote from a comedy called 'The Infidels'.  She has since received death threats.  Someone who is wholly innocent was set up by the despicable creatures who have framed Ken Livingstone today.

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How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis

Asa Winstanley The Electronic Intifada 28 April 2016

Former London mayor and long-time Palestinian rights campaigner Ken Livingstone is the latest victim of the UK Labour Party’s witch hunt over alleged anti-Semitism. TLA WENN Photos

Last year, socialist stalwart Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the UK’s Labour Party by a landslide.

Since then, there has been a steady flow of claims by Israel’s supporters that Corbyn has not done enough to combat anti-Semitism.

This has only accelerated in the lead-up to a major test for Corbyn, the UK local elections on 5 May.

Even as this story was in preparation, two more victims were claimed in the war against his leadership.

Lawmaker Naz Shah and the former mayor of London, long-time Palestine campaigner Ken Livingstone, were also suspended from the party – within hours of being accused of anti-Semitism.

But an investigation by The Electronic Intifada has found that some of the most prominent stories about anti-Semitism in the party are falsified.

The Electronic Intifada can reveal that a key player in Labour’s “anti-Semitism crisis” covered up his involvement in the Israel lobby.

Most Labour members so accused are in reality being attacked for expressing opinions in favor of Palestinian human rights and particularly for supporting the boycott of Israel.

Labour activists, many of them Jews, have told The Electronic Intifada that false accusations of anti-Semitism are being used as a weapon against Corbyn by the party’s right-wing.

Corbyn has been active in the Palestine solidarity movement for more than three decades. In an interview with The Electronic Intifada last year, he endorsed key elements of the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel. For example, he urged an end to weapons trading with Israel.

His election represented a radical shift in Labour, a popular revolt at the grassroots membership level.

Although Labour’s membership has grown since Corbyn’s victory, he has been under constant attack from right-leaning politicians within the party. In an attempt to weaken his position, some of his critics have manufactured a “crisis” about alleged anti-Semitism.

Attacks on Corbyn have escalated in the lead-up to next week’s local elections. Poor results would be seized upon by his enemies within the party.

Witch hunt

Charley Allan, a Jewish member of the party, and a Morning Star columnist, has described the current atmosphere in the press and Labour Party as a “witch hunt.”

It has reached such an absurd volume that any usage of the word “Zionist” is deemed to be anti-Semitic – although tellingly not when used by self-described Zionists.

Where real instances of anti-Jewish bigotry have come to light, the leadership and party machine have taken robust action.

According to The Spectator, the party’s general secretary Iain McNicol told a recent meeting of Labour lawmakers that everyone who had been reported for anti-Semitism had either been suspended or excluded.

Corbyn has responded to the media storm by repeatedly condemning anti-Semitism and saying that anyone making an anti-Semitic remark is “auto-excluded from the party.”

John McDonnell, the shadow finance minister and a long-standing Corbyn ally, told The Independent that any party member found by an investigation to be expressing anti-Semitic views should be expelled for life. “If people express these views, full stop they’re out,” McDonnell said.

Smears

Smears of anti-Semitism against Corbyn started even before he was elected.

During his leadership campaign in the summer of 2015, the establishment media worked itself into a frenzy of anti-Corbyn hysteria, led more than any other paper by the liberal Guardian.

One of the recurring themes in this campaign was Corbyn’s long-standing support for Palestinian human rights.

Because of this, attempts were made to say outright, or to imply, that Corbyn was a secret anti-Semite, or that he associated with, or tolerated “notorious” anti-Semites.

Although these hit jobs gained some traction, they were soon debunked, and ultimately seemed to have little impact on the leadership election.

This dishonest theme is now being revisited. In February, the slow drip of anti-Semitism scare stories burst into a flood.

Oxford

An “anti-Semitism scandal” erupted in the Oxford University Labour Club – an association of student supporters of the party.

Alex Chalmers posing with right wing Labour MP Caroline Flint in a photo taken from his Facebook. A failed candidate for deputy leader, Flint is a leading voice in Progress, a right-wing Labour faction.

In a public Facebook posting Alex Chalmers, the co-chair of the club, resigned his position over what he claimed was anti-Semitic behavior in “a large proportion” of the student Labour club “and the student left in Oxford more generally.”

But as evidence he cited the club’s decision, in a majority vote, to endorse Oxford’s Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual awareness-raising exercise by student groups which support Palestinian rights.

This connection was clearly designed to smear Palestine solidarity activists as anti-Semites – a standard tactic of the Israel lobby.

In fact, the similarity was no coincidence.

The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time evidence that Chalmers himself has been part of the UK’s Israel lobby.

Chalmers has worked for BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.

Funded by the billionaire Poju Zabludowicz, BICOM is a leading pro-Israel group in London.

Chalmers once listed an internship with BICOM on his LinkedIn profile, although the page was deleted some time in February.

But even were this key fact not known, Chalmers’ accusations were not credible.

No one specific was named in his Facebook posting. He claimed that shortening the word Zionist to “Zio” and expressing support for the Palestinian political party and resistance organization Hamas were enough to prove anti-Semitism.

Chalmers did not reply to an emailed request for comment. He set his Twitter profile to private the day after the email was sent by The Electronic Intifada.

One of his tweets from 2014 sought to smear The Electronic Intifada with “Islamism.”

Chalmers has also been accused of disseminating a false allegation that a left-wing Labour student at Oxford had organized people into a group to follow a Jewish student around campus calling her a “filthy Zionist,” and that he had been disciplined as a result.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the accused student said that he had reason to believe Chalmers may have been behind the dissemination of this smear.

Paul Di Felice, the current acting principal of the Oxford college in question, confirmed to The Electronic Intifada the authenticity of a statement from its late principal denying all the allegations. “I have found no evidence of any allegations being made to the college about” the student “involving anti-Semitism, or indeed anything else, during his time at the college,” the statement read.

The Electronic Intifada put all this to Alex Chalmers in an email, but he failed to reply.

Dirty tricks

The Oxford University Labour Club responded with a statement saying it was “horrified” at the accusations and would fully cooperate with an investigation launched by the party organization Labour Students.

It did not take long, however, for someone to leak names to the right-wing press.

Citing an anonymous “source at the club,” The Telegraph named two left-wingers at Oxford who were supposedly “being investigated over alleged anti-Semitism at Oxford University.”

Again, there were no further details. Chalmers’ dubious and obviously politicized accusations were raised in general terms.

One of the two, James Elliot, was a vocal advocate at Oxford University of BDS, the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel, and was photographed in the Telegraph article sitting next to Corbyn.

But in an email to a Daily Mail journalist, seen by The Electronic Intifada, Chalmers privately admitted that Elliott wasn’t involved. “I haven’t heard any allegations relating to him,” Chalmers wrote.

Both activists named by The Telegraph are part of Momentum, the grouping founded by Labour left-wingers in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s election victory to support his leadership.

The Electronic Intifada has seen evidence of a whispering campaign against the activists at Oxford. A dossier of allegations against the student Labour club is said to have been filed with the union’s Jewish society.

That society has posted a summary of the dossier on Facebook.

Asked in an email if he had been behind the dossier or the press leaks, Chalmers did not reply.

Hit pieces

Alex Chalmers’ Facebook post resigning from the Oxford University Labour Club was seized on by anti-Corbyn forces aiming to influence key internal elections to the Labour Party’s youth wing, in which the Momentum pair were both candidates.

On 19 February, the Guardian reported that Momentum candidates had swept the board in Young Labour’s elections, conducted by online ballot.

The Telegraph published its highly dubious hit piece four days later.

At the Young Labour conference the following weekend, several other positions remained to be elected. Elliot stood for the youth representative on Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC).

After the smear campaign against him, Momentum candidate Elliot lost to right-wing Labour First candidate Jasmin Beckett – by only a tenth of a percentage point.

But Beckett was caught carrying out a dirty tricks campaign against Elliot.

As a result, a formal complaint has been submitted calling for her to be disqualified from the NEC.

The smear campaign drew on right-wing media insinuations against the Momentum pair at Oxford.

Beckett did not reply to an emailed request for comment.

“Go hard”

As first revealed by Morning Star, Beckett urged supporters to “get a few people tweeting” allegations against Elliot.

But because such negative campaigning is against Labour rules, Beckett cautioned supporters to distance themselves from her. She asked her supporters to remove “twibbons” – promotional badges for her election campaign – from their social media accounts before making allegations against Elliot.

One supporter, Josh Woolas – son of former Labour MP Phil Woolas – cautioned it “needs to look like a genuine complaint about racism and not a smear campaign!”

In a Facebook group chat titled #TeamJB (viewable in full on the Labour blog Left Futures, edited by the chair of Momentum), Beckett encouraged other young Labour members to share unsubstantiated hit pieces on Elliot from right-wing media.

She asked “do you actually want an anti-Semite as NEC rep?” She suggested her friends “get a few people tweeting saying ‘shocked my union GMB are supporting James Elliot who is anti-Semitic’ or something.”

“Let’s just get it out there,” agreed Labour activist Tom Jennings. “We’ve got a huge opportunity … thus shaving off votes for him at [the Young Labour] conference.”

Investigation

The complaint against Beckett was subsequently rolled into another investigation into Chalmers’ allegations of anti-Semitism at Oxford, one ultimately taken over by Janet Royall, the Labour leader in the House of Lords, the unelected upper chamber of the UK parliament.

Labour Students conducted a hasty investigation into the Oxford allegations. But, Labour activists told The Electronic Intifada, it was so obviously botched that it was not credible.

That investigation was led by Michael Rubin, Labour Students’ national chairperson – who happened to be the boyfriend of one of Beckett’s allies, Rachel Holland. Holland was part of Beckett’s dirty tricks campaign, expressing support for it in the #TeamJB group chat.

Elliot told The Electronic Intifada he could not comment until the Royall investigation is concluded.

That seems unlikely to happen until after the crucial local elections at the earliest, and probably not until the summer, the BBC says, when Beckett is due to take her seat on the NEC.

The witch hunt expanded.

“Fresh row”

In March, Huffington Post talked up a “fresh row over Labour anti-Semitism.”

The website referred to how union official Jennie Formby had allegedly pointed out at a meeting of Labour’s NEC that Royall once took part in a sponsored trip to the Middle East organized by Labour Friends of Israel, a pressure group within the party.

Formby has successfully pushed at the NEC to have private security firm G4S banned from Labour conferences, due to its supply of equipment to Israeli prisons that practice torture against Palestinians.

The Jewish Chronicle claimed Unison’s Jennie Formby was “to be moved from her role partly as a result of her anti-Israel activism.” It cited no evidence.

The paper claimed the move represented a demotion by the union, the UK’s largest.

But the report was instantly denied by Formby and her union.

Formby said she never questioned Royall’s ability to conduct the investigation.

In fact, Formby said, she was appointed to the new job long before Chalmers made his allegations on Facebook.

@stephenkb JF applied for the post 5 months ago. It is a promotion. She will remain on the NEC. Please check facts.

— Unite the union (@unitetheunion) March 11, 2016

The Jewish Chronicle swiftly edited the online text and headline of the article to water down its claims (a copy of the original can still be found online).

But the narrative was already out there.

Tony Greenstein

In March, the witch hunt reached Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist well known in Palestine solidarity circles.

Despite supporting other left-wing parties in the past, Greenstein had joined the Labour Party after the election of Corbyn, hoping it would take a new, leftward direction.

But on 18 March he received a letter from the party’s Compliance Unit (also known as the Constitutional Unit) saying that his membership had been suspended pending an investigation into a possible breach of party rules.

“These allegations relate to comments you are alleged to have made,” wrote John Stolliday, head of the unit. Greenstein asked to see the allegations against him, but his request was denied.

Although the party refused to let Greenstein know what he was being accused of, further vague allegations were leaked to the right-wing press.

In April, The Telegraph published a story citing Greenstein’s admittance to the party as the “latest anti-Semitism scandal” to hit Labour.

Greenstein says he is considering legal action.

The Telegraph later added a “clarification” saying it wanted “to make clear that we had not intended to imply that Tony Greenstein is anti-Semitic.”

It would, however, be difficult to read the article as intending to do anything else.

Ironically, Greenstein has been at the forefront of moves to combat genuine cases of anti-Semitism on the fringes of the Palestine solidarity movement.

“I’m going to fight”

For years Greenstein has been perhaps the most vocal foe in the UK of Gilad Atzmon – an Israeli jazz musician based in London who claims to express solidarity with Palestinians, even while opposing the BDS movement and relentlessly attacking activists.

Four years ago, Atzmon was criticized by prominent members of the Palestine movement over racism and anti-Semitism in his work.

Also in 2012, a Holocaust denier was expelled from the UK’s Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Greenstein has written that he is the person who had first reported the Holocaust denier to the PSC.

The Compliance Unit has also been behind the expulsion of many new Jeremy Corbyn voters accused of being “hard left” or “infiltrators.”

In February, John McDonnell, the shadow finance minister, called for the unit to be scrapped.

“I’m going to fight it of course,” Greenstein told The Electronic Intifada. He also accused the Compliance Unit itself of being behind the leaks – The Telegraph article cited “evidence compiled” by the unit.

Labour’s general secretary wrote to Greenstein denying this.

“Corbyn hasn’t got a grip on the [party] machine, that’s part of the problem,” said Greenstein.

Israel lobby

One of the people at the forefront of the witch hunt has been Jeremy Newmark, now the chairperson of the Jewish Labour Movement.

The JLM is affiliated to the UK Labour Party, the Israeli Labor Party and the World Zionist Organization – according to the UN, the latter pumps millions into building in the occupied West Bank through its settlement division.

Newmark has for years been active in the Israel lobby’s anti-Palestinian campaigns in the UK.

He was previously the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, an anti-Palestinian lobbying group behind numerous attacks on BDS.

During his tenure, the group invested huge efforts in an attempt to sue the University and College Union for “anti-Semitism” after some members proposed discussing the academic boycott of Israel.

Newmark was left with egg on his face, however, when in 2013 a tribunal judge ruled against the case on all counts.

The judge found it was “devoid of any merit” and “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means.”

The judge criticized Newmark personally for a “disturbing” attempt to crush free speech in the union. 

He also found that that Newmark’s evidence to the tribunal was “preposterous” and “untrue.”

Given all this, media should treat Newmark’s claims about anti-Semitism in Corbyn’s Labour Party with caution.

Instead they’ve been buying it all.

In The Telegraph hit piece on Greenstein, Newmark claimed the affair was a sign of Corbyn being “impotent” over anti-Semitism.

He also told BBC Radio 4’s influential Today program this month that the party was not doing enough about anti-Semitism.

None of these journalists disclosed Newmark’s long-standing role in the Israel lobby, or his record of lying about anti-Semitism.

Right-wing Labour

There is a large crossover between right-wing, anti-Corbyn Labour and the pro-Israel lobby within the party.

Right-wing Labour MP Wes Streeting has participated in Israeli government efforts to cast Palestine solidarity as “evil.” (The Leadership Foundation/Flickr)

One example is Labour lawmaker Wes Streeting, also an Israel lobby stalwart.

Streeting appeared on the same radio segment as Newmark. The right-wing Labour MP claimed that “we’ve now got a problem” that people think the party is “apathetic to anti-Semitism.”

Streeting has a long history in Progress, a right-wing faction within the party that continues to support former prime minister Tony Blair.

One of Progress’ leading supporters has described the group as “an unaccountable faction” dominated by the “secretive billionaire” Lord Sainsbury.

In 2009, when he was president of the National Union of Students, Streeting attended an anti-BDS working group in Jerusalem.

The visit was organized by the Israeli foreign ministry, which slandered the BDS movement as “evil.”

As an MP, Streeting has been consistently hostile to Corbyn.

Term of abuse

Streeting and Newmark are arguing for tougher action and changes to the party’s rules.

The head of Progress proposed rule changes in the Mirror which would put “a modern understanding of anti-Semitism” into the party. “It is not acceptable to use the term ‘Zionism’ as a term of abuse,” the article stated, arguing for people who did so to be expelled.

This proposal echoes efforts pushed by Israel lobby groups, including at the University of California, to legislate that opposition to Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – is itself a form of anti-Semitism.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Labour Party staffer told The Electronic Intifada that, even were the rule change to pass, such expulsions would still have to be approved by the NEC.

The staffer emphasized that for many within the party, concerns about incidences of anti-Semitism were genuine.

But the member of staff said that for the “non-Jewish Zionists” in groups like Progress, “anti-Semitism is just a tool” in “a field of battle” to “smash up Jeremy at all costs.”

“Whatever gets agreed will not be good enough” for them, the member of staff said.

Streeting did not reply to emails requesting comment.

Five cases

Labour is a mass membership organization, which now has more than 380,000 full members, according to party figures.

The staff member said that, amid all the politicized attacks in recent months, there had been about five actual cases of alleged anti-Semitism within the party.

A 2015 survey by Pew found that seven percent of the UK public held “unfavorable” views of Jews.  By contrast, about a fifth held negative views of Muslims and almost two-fifths viewed Roma people unfavorably.

There’s no evidence to suggest that such views are any more prevalent in the Labour Party – and the tiny number of anti-Semitism complaints suggests they may well be less so in a movement many of whose activists have been in the frontline of anti-racist struggles.

The staff member said that in the five or so cases that had come to its attention, the party had taken swift action to expel, or suspend the membership of those alleged to have made anti-Semitic comments.

One of the most prominent of these was Vicki Kirby, a Labour Party candidate in Woking who is alleged to have tweeted that Israel is “evil.”

She also reacted to Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza by tweeting in August: “Who is the Zionist God? I am starting to think it may be Hitler. #FreePalestine.”

That assault resulted in 2,251 dead Palestinians, including 1,462 civilians, 551 of whom were children, according to an independent inquiry commissioned by the UN.

Kirby’s comments led to her suspension from the Labour Party in 2014.

Speaking to the media for the first time, Kirby told The Electronic Intifada that her choice of words had been “awful” and “appalling.” It was “a reaction. I didn’t think it through. I’m not a born politician,” she said.

Later, still under the leadership of Corbyn’s predecessor, Kirby’s suspension from the party was lifted. But, after Corbyn became leader, somebody leaked a photo of Kirby posing with Corbyn to the party’s enemies in the media.

Doctored tweet

The hard-right gossip blogger known as Guido Fawkes, then proceeded to trawl through her entire Twitter backlog. He found a Tweet from 2011, a time when Kirby says she was not even in the Labour Party.

Guido Fawkes then doctored a screenshot of the tweet, making it appear as if she had tweeted “What do you know abt Jews? They’ve got big noses and support spurs lol.” The screenshot of the Tweet on Guido’s site has clearly been cropped.

But Kirby says this was one of a series of tweets of quotes from the 2010 comedy film The Infidel.

Kirby provided The Electronic Intifada with evidence – a portion of a spreadsheet of her Twitter archive – showing that the original tweet concluded with the hashtag #TheInfidel.

The writer of the film David Baddiel confirmed this on Twitter at the time, even tweeting this to a Guido Fawkes blogger.

@WikiGuido That first one: she's quoting a character from my movie The Infidel.

— David Baddiel (@Baddiel) March 14, 2016

The wider press then ran with the story and started to use Kirby as a stick to beat Corbyn.

Kirby says she has received “death threats” to her and “hate email” from around the world, including the wish that “your children get cancer and die.” She says she even had to take legal actions against a constant barrage of journalists door-stepping her and harassing her family.

Despite swift party action to suspend Kirby once again, the incident was still weaponized by the right.

“Jeremy Corbyn needs to answer some serious questions,” Streeting told the Mirror.

Stoking the flames

Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Momentum founder Jon Lansman – a key Corbyn ally – said that “my Jewish identity and anti-Semitism are at the core of my left Labour politics and so I welcome an investigation into anti-Semitism at Oxford University.”

But Lansman cautioned that “within the Labour Party, some people have factional reasons for stoking the flames.”

He acknowledged that “racism, including anti-Semitism” had historically been part of the Labour movement. “It was not until the 1980s that the efforts to eradicate it became serious, and that was thanks in part to Ken Livingstone as leader of the Greater London Council,” Lansman added.

During that period, Livingstone, and what the right derided as the “looney left” in local government, became the prime targets of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. But with her party unable to defeat Livingstone at the ballot box, she simply abolished London’s city-wide government altogether.

It wasn’t until the Blair years that the capital once again had a London-wide government and Livingstone was elected mayor. It would now seem that with his suspension, the Thatcherite campaign against Livingstone has resumed, but this time from within the Labour Party.

Ian Saville, who started the group Jews For Jeremy and then later joined the party, told The Electronic Intifada that “some in the Labour Party, who do not have an understanding of the complexities of the situation, take [the accusations of prejudice] at face value, and quite understandably wish to oppose anti-Semitism.”

He said that “unfortunately, this ‘opposition’ to anti-Semitism has support of Israel and Zionism bundled in with it, so it fulfills the double purpose of isolating the left and supporting Israel uncritically.”

Greenstein wrote that “false allegations of anti-Semitism are akin to the boy who cried wolf. They immunize people against the real thing. As a Jewish anti-Zionist my main experience of anti-Semitism is from Zionists … I have even been told that it was a pity I didn’t die in Auschwitz.”

Back foot

In the Tony Blair years, the Labour Party took a major rightward shift.

Blair notoriously led the UK into a war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 – which even he later admitted was a major factor in the emergence of Islamic State.

Blair is also staunchly pro-Israel.

The 2006 Israeli war against Lebanon killed 1,191 Lebanese, “the overwhelming majority of them civilians” according to Amnesty International. But Blair stood strongly behind Israel in that war. He later admitted in his memoir this caused him political damage. “I suffered accordingly,” he wrote.

For career-minded, rising Labour MPs, joining Labour Friends of Israel was long seen as the place to be. That has been slowly changing.

Under Blair, Jeremy Corbyn was a backbench MP, and a gadfly of the big business and war-friendly clique that had captured Labour’s leadership. He voted against Blair’s party line hundreds of times.

The scale of Corbyn’s victory – almost 60 percent of 422,664 voters – last summer put the right on the back foot.

So now they are resorting to ever more desperate tactics, blaming alleged anti-Semitism in the party on Corbyn’s leadership.

Michael Levy, a Labour member of the House of Lords who was a key fundraiser for the party during the Tony Blair years, is a strong supporter of Israel. He has made a number of media appearances in recent weeks denouncing Corbyn for supposedly not doing enough against anti-Semitism.

Left-wing Jewish activists say that anti-Semitism has become the “weapon of choice” against the left.

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, a local Labour Party activist and founder of Jews For Boycotting Israeli Goods, told The Electronic Intifada that it has become a “really pernicious … pincer movement” by the Israel lobby and the Labour right.

“Maybe the’ve overstepped themselves” this time, she said, before cautioning that what happens would depend on how well activists fought back and educated people on the true nature of anti-Semitism and Zionism.

For the moment, the manufactured anti-Semitism crisis shows no sign of abating.

The same day Ken Livingstone was suspended from the party, BICOM appealed to the mob, posting a tweet with the words: “save your pitch fork for Corbyn.”

'Save your pitch fork for Corbyn'. 

Alan Johnson on Naz Shah, Labour and AntiSemitism in @Politics_co_uk https://t.co/ukcxOkNnGO

— BICOM (@BritainIsrael) April 28, 2016

It appears the witch hunt will not stop until it is either victorious or is defeated.

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist and associate editor with The Electronic Intifada.