The Jewish Labour Movement motion that a Corbyn Labour Government ‘would not be in the interest of British Jews.” should result in their Immediate Disaffiliation
i.
Anti-Semitism
is now defined as hostility to Zionism not Jews – that was the reason the IHRA
misdefinition of anti-Semitism was adopted.
ii.
Because
this campaign has only ever had one aim - the removal of Corbyn as leader.
The JLM’s ‘no
confidence’ motion in Corbyn at its weekend conference should be reciprocated
by saying we have no confidence in the Jewish Labour Movement whose very existence is a
living lie.
The time has come to end
a situation whereby the ‘sister
party’ of the racist Israeli Labor Party, a party that supports the
deportation of 40,000 non-Jewish Black African refugees from Israel,
and which even opposes dismantling Jewish settlements
in the West Bank has all the privileges of an affiliated socialist
society.
Since the JLM
can’t even bring themselves to advocate a vote for a Labour Party led by Corbyn
what possible reason is there for allowing them to remain an affiliated socialist
society?
It’s time for
the myth that the JLM is the ‘Jewish section’ of the Labour Party to be
exploded. The JLM, which claims a membership of 2,000 is
predominantly non-Jewish. Although they do not disclose
details of their members there is no doubt that at least 2/3 of their members
are non Jewish.
For example in
Brighton and Hove right-wing Labour councillors such as Dan Yates, Warren
Morgan, Emma Daniels, Caroline Penn and Julie Cattell to name but a few are
members of the JLM. None of them are Jewish.
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| This Sunday Times montage portrays Jeremy Corbyn as the sinister, one-eyed devil at the heart of a conspiracy of hate |
No Jew who is
not a Zionist can possibly join a group which is affiliated to the settlement
funding World Zionist Organisation. The majority of the Labour Party’s
Jewish members are not Zionists so why is the JLM allowed to represent itself
as the Labour Party’s Jewish section?
The JLM
describes itself as the descendant of Poalei Zion, which affiliated to the
Labour Party in 1920. The reason it was able to affiliate then was that the
Labour Party was a fully paid up supporter of the British Empire and the
Zionist colonial settlement was a strategic partner of British colonialism in the
Middle East. That was the purpose behind the 1917 Balfour Declaration authored
by the Tory Foreign Secretary Arthur ‘Bloody
Balfour’.
The JLM was
virtually dead up till 2015 when, in the wake of Corbyn’s election, it
was refounded for the sole purpose of leading a campaign to
remove Corbyn. In an article by
Asa Winstanley which led to his suspension soon after, Asa described how Jeremy
Newmark, Chair of the JLM and a key Israeli Embassy operative explained,
in hitherto unused footage from Al Jazeera’s The Lobby how “a
bunch of us sat in a coffee shop in Golders Green” around September 2015
to “talk about re-forming the JLM to do something with it.’ This
came against the backdrop of what Newmark described as “the rise of Jeremy
Corbyn” and “Bernie Sanders in the states.”
When
the JLM decided to employ a Director, no doubt with funding from Israeli
government sources, who did it turn to but Israeli Embassy political officer,
Ella Rose. As Al Jazeera's The Lobby showed, Ella was most upset with Asa
Winstanley when he exposed this fact.
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| Crooked Jeremy Newmark explains the JLM's strategy to his pro-Israel acolytes in the JLM |
The JLM, which
Louise Ellman described as having been founded in
2004 is an affiliated socialist society of the Labour Party with the right to
put motions to annual conference and send delegates to and affiliate
to local Labour Parties. Newmark’s plan was, as he told a JLM barbecue in
September 2016, based on “utilizing the rights and privileges it [JLM]
enjoys as a socialist society” within Labour. In other words the
Israeli state, via its London Embassy would be represented at all levels of the
British Labour party in order to destabilise it.
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| Jewish Chronicle 'journalist' Rosa Doherty was informed of Asa Winstanley's suspension before he was |
The JLM
operates a double act with Labour Friends of Israel, which it was responsible
for founding in 1957 in the wake of the Suez debacle. Whereas
LFI defends the
actions of the Israeli state, for example the shooting dead of unarmed
demonstrators in Gaza, the JLM has concentrated exclusively on an
‘anti-Semitism’ campaign directed at Palestinian supporters. It is noticeable
that the JLM doesn’t, at least in its own name, support or even comment upon
Israeli actions. It has nothing to say about things like water theft and
Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children.
However JLM
MPs have been extremely active and outspoken in supporting Israeli repression.
Louise Ellman MP in particular has repeatedly supported the IDF’s torture and abuse of Palestinian
children as documented by UNICEF and others. For
example in January 2016 she interrupted other MPs 3 times in a debate on Palestinian
child prisoners.
The JLM has
been the primary vehicle of destabilisation in the Labour Party. Realising that
it was difficult if not impossible to defend Israel’s actions, they decided
that they would instead attack their opponents as ‘anti-Semites’. Anyone
mentioning the word ‘Zionism’ would be attacked because 'Zionist' was held to
be a ‘euphemism’ for Jews in the words of
Chakrabarti, someone who understands nothing about Zionism or Palestine. The
only people who use ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ interchangeably are Zionists and
anti-Semites. When fascists use the term 'Zionist' it is not a euphemism but a
disguise or cover. 'Euphemism' is entirely the wrong word.
When the
history of these times comes to be written the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations will
be seen to have been manufactured and confected by the Establishment and its
tame ‘journalists’. There are very few journalists today prepared to buck the
Establishment consensus that the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis is
genuine. I can only think of Robert Fisk and Patrick Cockburn
of The Independent. There isn’t a single Guardian journalist
– not Gary Younge, Aditya Chakrabortty, Owen Jones or George Monbiot - prepared
to defy the Guardian’s anti-Semitism narrative as laid down by Jonathan
Freedland.
No doubt in 20
or 30 years time some bright young thing at the Guardian, if it
still exists, eager to establish their reputation, will put in a freedom of
information request in Washington and discover that the allegations of
‘anti-Semitism’ which accompanied Corbyn’s election as leader were as genuine
as a 9 bob note. Rather than being the spontaneous outpouring of Jew-hate that
those well known anti-racist papers, the Sun and Daily
Mail would have us believe, the false anti-Semitism smears were cooked
to order.
If our
Guardian journalist is particularly bold they will establish a link between
Corbyn’s support for the Palestinians and opposition to American foreign policy
with the different stages of the anti-Semitism affair starting with the
anti-Semitism allegations at Oxford University Labour Club to the East End
mural that suddenly appeared after 6 years.
Al Jazeera’s
programme, The Lobby, gave us a glimpse of
the Israeli state’s role in this affair. No doubt the American and British
secret services will also be seen to have played a part in what will come to be
seen as a classic example of political destabilisation, the kind that we are
witnessing in Venezuela today and which was common in Central and South America
in the 1970’s.
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| After having tweeted initially in support of the Sunday Times article Mehdi Hassan quickly rowed back |
At the weekend
we had a double whammy. Firstly there was the Sunday Times Corbyn Factory of Hate which began to unravel almost as soon as
it hit the press. Then barely 150 people at the JLM’s AGM overwhelmingly passed
a vote of no confidence in Corbyn. It is clear from the article by their new Chair
Mike Katz in the New Statesman, that the Murdoch Press and the JLM operate in
tandem, synchronising their moves and feeding off each other. Not once did Katz
challenge the veracity or motives of the Sunday Times. On the contrary he and
the JLM have deliberately tried to get the soft State, via the Equality and Human Rights Commission to attack the
Labour Party. You might have been forgiven for thinking that the EHRC had its
work cut out on a genuine example of racism such as the Windrush scandal,
whereby British citizens were illegally deported.
There isn’t a
trace of anything progressive still less socialist in the politics of the JLM.
They are totally unconcerned with opposing austerity, the cuts, privatisation
or indeed any left-wing campaign. Their sole concern is with ‘anti-Semitism’ in
the Labour Party. Real issues of racism such as the Grenfell fire or
the Windrush deportations are of no concern to them.
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| This tweet was the straw that broke the camel's back - calling the JLM what it is - an Israeli Embassy proxy |
Criticism of
Israel and in particular the Zionist nature of the Israeli state is to them, by
definition, anti-Semitic, hence their support for the IHRA ‘definition’ of
anti-Semitism whose sole purpose is to conflate criticism of Israel with
anti-Semitism. As Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal
Judge noted, it isn’t even a
definition, being open ended. As well-known human rights lawyer Geoffrey
Robertson QC observed, the IHRA isn’t ‘fit
for purpose’. The IHRA has been savaged by legal and academic scholars
yet it is the common sense of our Establishment.
It was a
crucial mistake of Corbyn and his advisers to have adopted the IHRA when
Theresa May did so. It is a decision which should be reversed at the
earliest opportunity. Unfortunately instead of standing up to these false
allegations Corbyn, McDonnell and the Labour leadership have continually
apologised, promised to do better and increased the pace of the witchhunt. And
the more victims that were purged the more that the JLM and the Zionists
demanded. Everytime the Labour leadership has made a concession the Zionist
lobby has thrown it back in its face and demanded another.
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| A Sun headline which was quickly withdrawm |
It is not of
course anti-Semites who have been caught in the net but anti-racists
- Black and Jewish activists such as Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth,
Asa Winstanley, Ken Livingstone and myself. All of us just happen to be
outspoken critics of Israel and Zionism.
If there was
any truth to the allegations that Labour is overrun with anti-Semitism then
what is most surprising is that newspapers such as the Daily Mail and Sun
who have continually demonised asylum seekers and refugees, to the extent that
they employed Katie Hopkins for
whom refugees were cockroaches, were so concerned about
anti-Semitism.
Why should the
Tory and Murdoch press be so concerned about anti-Semitism when for
example the Sunday Times doesn’t hesitate to employ arch Islamaphobes
such as Rod Liddle as columnists? This is the same Liddle
who, not so long ago, suggested that suicide
bombers should blow themselves up in Tower Hamlets because it is a ‘decent
distance from where the rest of us live’.
Why should the Daily Mail
be so concerned about
'anti-Semitism' when it criticised Labour's
former Jewish leader Ed Miliband for not being able to eat a bacon sandwich or
which attacked his
Marxist father Ralph Miliband as a Marxist who 'hated' his country? Why is the
press which which demonises George
Soros as the 'puppet master', a typical Jewish financial manipulator so up in
arms about 'anti-Semitism'?
Unfortunately
instead of resisting the 'anti-Semitism' narrative sections of the Left, led
by Jon Lansman and Owen Jones, have appeased,
flattered and supported the JLM as they led
the witch-hunt of people like Chris Williamson. In many ways Lansman has done
more damage to Corbyn by his support of the false anti-Semitism campaign than
anything the JLM has managed. Lansman has helped prevent any concerted
opposition to the movement whose aim is to topple Corbyn.
In my next
blog I am going to show how Labour’s ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt is aimed not at
anti-Semites but almost exclusively at critics of Israel and Zionism.
