Showing posts with label apartheid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apartheid. Show all posts

19 September 2025

The 100,000+ Fascist Demonstration on Sept. 13 & the Rise of Reform Must Be a Wake Up Call to the Left

Corbyn’s Leadership of Labour was a Disaster - We Cannot Afford a Repeat Performance With Karie Murphy & James Schneider As Advisors

The Membership Must Control The Left (Your) Party & Tell Corbyn to Work With NOT Isolate Zarah/






Zarah Sultana – Why I am an Anti-Zionist

It is no secret that there were tensions between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana.  Zarah bounced Corbyn into forming the Your Party when she resigned from the Labour Party. Corbyn did nothing to hide his dismay that she had had the gall to call for an end to his dithering and delay about whether or not to form a new party.

It is therefore doubly disturbing that Corbyn, along with the four Independent MPs – none of whom claims to be a socialist – launched an attack on Zarah for sending out details of a new membership portal for Your Party.

The threat to invoke legal action including a complaint to the Information Commissioner are disgraceful. Has Corbyn not had enough of State interference, such as the EHRC report on ‘anti-Semitism’, in the British political system? The dispute is a political not legal one.

The panicked reaction of the all-male Independent MPs

Instead of supporting his co-leader, Corbyn attacked Sultana. Zarah is totally correct in calling out this misogyny and terming it a ‘sexist boys club’. Corbyn should be ashamed of aligning with the group of male, Muslim MPs who were elected on opposition to the genocide in Gaza but who are not otherwise progressive or on the left.

Corbyn has aligned himself with sexists against a young, politically principled woman MP. Socialists should have no difficulty in deciding where their loyalties lie. Corbyn seems determined to repeat the mistakes which led to his defeat as Labour leader.

Corbyn really needs to get a grip and put the overwhelming desire of people to see an alternative to Starmer and Farage at the top of his priorities. Instead of excluding Zarah he must talk to her. The Independent MPs are welcome to join the party but they must not have special privileges.

Politically they are a mixed bunch. Adnan Hussein was elected in  Blackburn with a communalist vote defeating Craig Murray. Shokat Adams opposes the idea of a left or socialist party because we might put off people on the right.

One year ago Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson, Asa Winstanley, Anne Mitchell and myself wrote a letter to Corbyn asking him to reassess the role that false accusations of anti-Semitism played in his downfall as Leader of the Labour Party and his reaction to them.

During Corbyn’s leadership hundreds of good socialists were expelled from the Labour Party for ‘anti-Semitism’, in reality criticising the State of Israel. This was at the behest of the genocide supporting Jewish Labour Movement who claimed that it was all about ‘anti-Semitism’ when anyone with a few brain cells could see that their sole concern was support of the apartheid state of genocide.

We did not receive a reply to our letter. It was obvious to me as soon as I was suspended, in March 2016, that neither myself nor Jackie Walker or later on, Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth and Chris Williamson were the real targets.

We were just collateral damage. The real target was Corbyn. Despite Corbyn and Jennie Formby presiding over an increasing number of expulsions the Zionists were not satisfied.  Corbyn and Formby were proud of the number of ‘anti-Semites’, i.e. socialists that they had expelled. Not once did it occur to the dim-witted two that the more people who were expelled, the more it confirmed the false allegations of the Zionists that anti-Semitism was indeed a real problem inside the Labour Party.

Corbyn’s efforts to appease the JLM and the Labour Right had no effect whatsoever except to give them confidence. No sooner had Corbyn satisfied one demand than they went on to make another demand. As Len McCluskey wrote in Huffington Post Zionist leaders refused to accept ‘yes’ as an answer.

The JLM passed a motion of no confidence in Corbyn, days after had begged them not to disaffiliate from the Labour Party. A bogus threat designed to win sympathy for these poor ‘victims’ of anti-Semitism.

Corbyn’s strategy, if one can call it that, was to retreat, apologise and  promise to do better. However the JLM had no intention of letting up because they had been refounded in 2015 with the explicit aim of removing Corbyn.

Accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ were seen as the ideal way to undermine Corbyn. It was designed to confuse an identity politics left that confuses racism with prejudice and fails to understand that ‘hate  speech’ can often be a code for support for the oppressor. In 2015 people were not wise to the weaponisation of anti-Semitism as a means of undermining the Palestinian struggle. They are now.

Corbyn has learnt nothing from his years of leadership. Of course it is understandable that the whole period was traumatic for him but that is no excuse for refusing to learn the lessons of that period. Instead he takes pride in his anti-intellectual approach.

Of course there were a tiny handful of anti-Semites in the Labour Party. No doubt there were tiny numbers of paedophiles too.  Every party has them but no one said that Labour was ‘overrun’ with paedophiles. In fact the Tory Party was led by an anti-Semite,  Boris Johnson, who in his novel 72 Virgins portrayed a Jewish character, Sammy Katz, with a “proud nose and curly hair”, and ‘painted him as a malevolent, stingy, snake-like Jewish businessman who exploits immigrant workers for profit.’ Johnson also described Jewish oligarchs who run the media and fiddle the figures to fix elections.

Not only did Corbyn throw allies like Livingstone, Wadsworth and Williamson under the bus but according to the Labour Leaked Report, his office, in the form of the obnoxious Laura Murray, tried to get the right-wing staff, who detested Corbyn, to speed things up!

Corbyn's Private Office Was Asking the Labour Right to Expel More Socialists

Whenever the Right, usually in the shape of Tom Watson barked, Corbyn jumped. His only query was as to how high. He supported Jon Lansman, the millionaire property developer who has now joined the JLM, in destroying Momentum’s democracy.

When Chris Williamson was reinstated by an NEC disciplinary panel Tom Watson organised a round robin petition of the Labour Right to protest. Instead of standing up to Watson and defending Williamson Corbyn got Jennie Formby to resuspend him.

The last and final opportunity was over the Open Selection of MPs. Here was the chance to get rid of the right-wing detritus in the Parliamentary Labour Party. Corbyn had always supported mandatory reselection as a young MP. But when Labour MPs pressurised him to oppose it he persuaded Len McCluskey of Unite to break the union’s mandate and also oppose it. By opposing Open Selection Corbyn signed his own death warrant.

Six years later amidst the Genocide in Gaza one would have thought Corbyn would at last have learnt something. That ‘anti-Semitism’ was a smear to be employed against opponents of Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing. That Zionism, far from being a form of Jewish identity is a vicious, racist ideology that treats Palestinians as subhumans.

Instead Corbyn merely witters on that anti-Semitism is a terrible thing without any understanding of the fact that the ‘anti-Semitism’ that the Zionists talk about is anti-Zionism. It should be obvious to Corbyn that ‘anti-Semitism’ is the only defence that Israel’s genocidaires have left. Anyone who criticises them is an ‘anti-Semite’. Yet Corbyn gives no indication that he has learnt anything at all from his period as Leader of the Labour Party.

No-one doubts that Corbyn is a veteran supporter of the Palestinians. That is why the Zionists and their imperialist allies on the Labour Right targeted him. However, even now, he has no understanding of the reasons for the Palestinians plight. He does not see that ethnic cleansing is an integral part of the Zionist dream of a purely Jewish ethno-nationalist state.

Corbyn was a vigorous opponent of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. He was even arrested because of it. Corbyn would have been the first to say that opposing the South African regime’s human rights abuses was not enough if one did not oppose Apartheid itself. Yet when it comes to Israel Corbyn opposes the attacks on Palestinians without understanding that this derives from Zionism, the ideology behind Israeli apartheid.

Corbyn still supports the 2 State Solution even though it has been the main smokescreen which has enabled the expansion of the settlements on the West Bank and the growth of the messianic neo-Nazi Jewish Right in Israel. Two states means a ‘Jewish’ settler colonial state continuing.

Zarah Sultana, by way of contrast has understood that Corbyn’s adoption of the IHRA misdefintion of anti-Semitism was a fatal mistake. Zarah’s declaration that she is a proud anti-Zionist should therefore have been welcomed. Instead of huffing and puffing Corbyn should have joined her.

Instead Corbyn has instead reverted back to his failed advisors in Collective, James Schneider and Karie Murphy, the architects of Corbyn’s disastrous failings first time around. It is as if Corbyn is congenitally incapable of learning from his past mistakes.

Corbyn has learnt nothing from what happened between 2015 and 2019. He doesn’t get how ‘anti-Semitism’ was weaponised by the Zionists and the British Establishment. The same Establishment that is now actively supporting and participating in the Genocide in Gaza.


James Schneider's Pamphlet That Bolstered the Fake Anti-Semitism Campaign

I hope that despite the breaking out of open warfare that all those involved, in particular Corbyn, will realise that Your Party (despite the opposition of Shockat Adams to terming it a left party) will make its politics clear to all and adopt a name, such as The Left Party.

We face a neo-fascist racist party leading the polls. Starmer’s Labour is not only incapable of fighting racism it doesn’t want to. Racism and imperialism are deeply embedded in it. I hope Corbyn recognises that his petty squabbles with Zarah must not get in the way of the main task which is to defeat Nigel Farage’s racist Reform Party.

For my part I have no hesitation in supporting Zarah Sultana and all anti-racists and anti-imperialists and opponents of misogyny and sexism will do the same. I have therefore joined as a member paying £5 per month despite the dire warnings of Corbyn and the other independent MPs.

If Corbyn is serious about forming a new left party that can challenge Farage then he has to put his ego to one side and stop being precious. He also has to accept that after the Holocaust in Gaza politics around Palestine have changed and that there is no merit in clinging to outdated concepts and ideas. Becoming an open anti-Zionist himself is long overdue if opposition to apartheid and racism is a principle.

Tony Greenstein

These are the Blogs I Wrote Between the Years 2016-2019 -  They Tell the Story of How, When the Ruling Class Media was Attacking Him, Corbyn sought to Appease Rather than Fight – This time it Must Be Different.

1.          David Baddiel’s allegation of ‘anti-Semitism’ against Corbyn for pronouncing ‘Epshtein’ demonstrates why you can’t appease Zionists 28-Nov-19

2.          The Hypocrisy of Ephraim Mirvis’s Attacks on Corbyn’s ‘Anti-Semitism’ November 2019

3.          Why Anyone Who is Jewish and on the Left Should Have no Problem Voting for Jeremy Corbyn November 2019

4.          The Hypocritical War by the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Establishment on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party 09-Nov-19

5.          Rabbi Jonathan Romain, A Senior Reform Rabbi, Urges Jews To Vote ABC – Anyone But Corbyn November 2019

6.          Corbyn can win BUT it is unlikely without a clear position on Brexit and a clear rejection of the anti-Semitism narrative 02-Nov-19

7.          Drifting Without Direction – Are these the Dying Days of Corbyn’s Leadership?  02-Oct-19

8.          The BBC’s War on Corbyn – Panorama would have made Pravda Proud 15-Jul-19

9.          Corbyn’s Latest Anti-Semitism Proposals Prove that He is a Victim of the Stockholm Syndrome   23-Jul-19

10.       If You Can’t Defend Chris Williamson, You Can’t Defend Jeremy Corbyn   07-Jul-19

11.       Jeremy Corbyn Must Defend Chris Williamson Instead of Appeasing Tom Watson July 2019

12.       We welcome the reinstatement of Chris Williamson –but why are Dennis Skinner, Laura Pidcock and the Campaign Group of MPs Saying Nothing? June 2019

13.       Once again Corbyn Has Betrayed his Friends & Appeased his Enemies – Today Corbyn’s very leadership is at stake    June 2019

14.       We Are Witnessing the Slow Death of the Corbyn Project –   June 2019

15.       Jewish Chronicle Columnist Geoffrey Alderman Nails the Lie that Corbyn is an anti-Semite May 2019

16.       The Equality Commission Inquiry into Labour ‘Anti-Semitism’ is Political Interference by the State in a Corbyn-led Labour Party     May 2019

17.       At last Corbyn fights back against the anti-Semitism smears – now its time to junk the Witchhunter’s Charter, the IHRA May 2019

18.       The Lie of Labour Anti-Semitism has but one purpose – the removal of Corbyn (I)   April 2019

19.       Ha’aretz’s War Against Jeremy Corbyn – Gideon Levy & Amira Hass are the exceptions not the rule March 2019

20.       John McDonnell Has Become Tom Watson’s Useful Idiot as Watson Openly Defies Corbyn and Prepares a Coup   March 2019

21.       The Suspension of Chris Williamson MP is Shameful – This May Be the End of the Corbyn Project   February 2019

22.       In Office But Not in Power – Jeremy Corbyn seems to have become Tom Watson’s Understudy   February 2019

23.       Joan Ryan Resigns from Labour – Xmas Comes Early for Corbyn February 2019

24.       Shock Horror – Jeremy Corbyn is accused of ‘nodding’ when a Rabbi said that Zionism and Judaism have nothing in common!! January 2019

25.       Corbynism without Corbyn – Lansman’s new strategy begs the question – what is the purpose of Momentum? January 2019

26.       29 Rabbis of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations issue statement supporting Jeremy Corbyn – for some reason it is ignored by the BBC and the MSM! September 2018

27.       We are facing a Coup by Attrition as the Zionists and the BBC pore over every last word Corbyn has ever uttered August 2018

28.       Jeremy Corbyn Must STOP Apologising to the Zionists – he has NOTHING to apologise for  August 2018

29.       Are there any limits to Corbyn’s ritual self-humiliation? Being a Leader means standing up to your opponents not appeasing them   August 2018

30.       Nick Lowles and Hope not Hate Join the Zionist attack on Jeremy Corbyn August 2018

31.       Picket of the BBC– End the Bias Against Jeremy Corbyn – If You’re Concerned About ‘Anti-Semitism’ Stop Giving a Platform to Tommy Robinson’s Fascist Supporters August 2018

32.       The Lie of Labour Anti-Semitism – Whilst Hungary’s Anti-Semitic Prime Minister Orban is Welcomed by Netanyahu 3 Zionist Papers Jointly Attack Corbyn as ‘Anti-Semitic’   July 2018

33.       Just when Labour pulls ahead of the Tories, Margaret Hodge makes false allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn  July 2018

34.       SCOTTISH LAW TOUR – The ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt has many victims but only one target – Jeremy Corbyn   June 2018

35.       If Corbyn Doesn’t Slay the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Dragon It Will Slay Him  June 2018

36.       Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard Compares Jeremy Corbyn to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis May 2018

37.       The Incremental Coup – How the Labour Right Successfully used ‘anti-Semitism’ to attack Corbyn May 2018

38.       Jeremy Corbyn throws Marc Wadsworth overboard in a desperate attempt to save his leadership  April 2018

39.       Corbyn Should Refuse to Meet Jonathan Arkush and the Board of Deputies as and until they take anti-Semitism seriously!  April 2018

40.       Jeremy Corbyn Stabs Himself in the Back as the Fake News Anti-Semitism Campaign Gathers Strength  April 2018

41.       Avi Gabbay, leader of Israel’s Labour Party cuts links with Jeremy Corbyn alleging ‘anti-Semitism’ April 2018

42.       If Momentum expels me today they will be joining the false anti-Semitism campaign whose target is Corbyn March 2018

43.       A Very British Coup – How the British Establishment and the Israeli Embassy are Using ‘anti-Semitism’ to Destabilise Jeremy Corbyn   March 2018

44.       EXCLUSIVE – The letter that Corbyn intended to send to Jonathan Arkush at the Board of Deputies March 2018

45.       EXCLUSIVE: David Collier – the ‘Independent Researcher’ who accused Corbyn of anti-Semitism keeps company with White Supremacists, Neo-Nazis and Islamophobes March 2018

46.       The Guardian and Jonathan Freedland’s tedious Campaign against Corbyn   November 2017

47.       Corbyn Rally Attracts Thousands in Brighton – But He Refuses to Speak at Labour Friends of Palestine Meeting For Fear of Offending Zionist Lobby September 2017

48.       The false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations at Labour Conference have one purpose only – to destabilise Corbyn’s leadership September 2017

49.       Corbyn Must Defend Chris Williamson MP Against False Accusations of Anti-Semitism   September 2017

50.       Jeremy Corbyn and the Humiliation of Nick Cohen June 2017

51.       Just for old times sakes as she won’t be around much longer – Theresa May was too Strong & Stable to Meet Ordinary Voters or Debate with Jeremy Corbyn June 2017

52.       ELECTION UPDATE: Is it any wonder that the Old Crow refuses to do TV debates? Will Progress MPs refuse to support Corbyn as PM? May 2017

53.       DEFEND KEN LIVINGSTONE – DEFEND CORBYN – SIGN THE LETTER BELOW April 2017

54.       Steve Bell’s defence of Ken Livingstone – If… only Jeremy Corbyn had the same courage and clarity   April 2017

55.       Labour Can Win if Corbyn is Bold – the Key Issue is Poverty and the Transfer of Wealth   April 2017

56.       Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn – Don’t Appease the Zionist Lobby – It only encourages them   April 2017

57.       Those who abandon Livingstone today will abandon Corbyn tomorrow – Stand Up for Free Speech on Israel and Palestine      April 2017

58.       Corbyn’s Disastrous Brexit Strategy – Labour’s slow moving car crash February 2017

59.       Sign the Petition – Call on Corbyn to sever all ties with Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel February 2017

60.       Fake claims blown apart – Al Jazeera’s The lobby exposes the establishment’s ‘anti-Semitism’ claims for what they are, writes Tony Greenstein January 2017

61.       Letter from 112 Labour Party members to Jeremy Corbyn January 2017

62.       Jon Lansman’s Xmas Punch Could Sucker Corbyn January 2017

63.       As the Guardian’s ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn continues its time to BOYCOTT the Guardian October 2016

64.       Victory for Ken Livingstone Despite Corbyn’s Shameful Silence   September 2016

65.       The Calm Before The Storm – As Corbyn Wins the Right Intensifies Its Destabilisation Strategy September 2016

66.       Corbyn Abandons 30 Years of Support for Palestine – But Despite Grovelling He Was Still Booed   September 2016

67.       Over 1,500 at Brighton Rally for Jeremy Corbyn August 2016

68.       Thousands Queue 4 Corbyn In Liverpool August 2016

69.       Massive Pro-Corbyn Rally in Brighton & Hove as Left Sweeps to Victory in AGM July 2016

70.       Jeremy Corbyn – In Office but Not In Power – Right Gerrymanders to Prevent 130,000 from Voting in Leadership Ballot July 2016

71.       The Times & Jewish Chronicle Report our Story on Corbyn Backtracking on Palestine  May 2016

72.       When Jeremy Corbyn Supported a Democratic, Secular State & Breaking Links with Poale Zion (JLM) May 2016

73.       Labour’s Election Results Give Corbyn only a Temporary Reprieve May 2016

74.       Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn on Witch-hunt as McDonnell Tacks to the Right April 2016

75.       Brilliant Momentum Rally Says Corbyn Stays March 2016

76.       Jeremy Corbyn and the Retreat from Palestine 5 March 2016

77.       ANTI-SEMITISM – Jonathan Freedland & The Zionist Campaign to Defame Corbyn and the Labour Left – Garry Speding Gives a Helping Hand to the Zionist Campaign Against the Palestinians March 2016

78.       Jeremy Corbyn & the Retreat from Palestine Jan 20 2016

79.       Guardian Letter from 22 Jewish people Criticises False Allegations of anti-Semitism at Oxford University Labour Club

80.       Oxford University Labour Club – An Old Story – Support Palestinians Cry Anti-Semitism – 20 Feb 16

81.       Jeremy Corbyn & the Retreat from Palestine – 20 January 2016

82.       The Witchhunt of Gerald Kaufman – Crucified for Supporting the Palestinians – 28 November 2015

83.       The Board of Deputies Invites Anti-Semitic Attacks on British Jews 10 October 2015

84.       The Sad Delusions of New Labour 23 August 2015

13 August 2025

Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis Denies Genocide in Gaza like a Holocaust Denier

According to Mirvis Most of Those who Died in the Holocaust weren’t Jewish! Has There Ever Been Such a Moral & Intellectual Lightweight Chief Rabbi? 


Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis' Genocidal Speech Urging Israel on to a Final Solution

Perhaps it’s because my own father was a rabbi that I have taken more than a slight interest in Britain’s racist Chief Rabbi. His ignorance is astounding, even for a rabbi.

I can remember when Israel Brodie, the then Chief Rabbi, came to my parent’s home in Coventry and the excitement in my family. Lots of rabbis came round but I must confess I was never much impressed, even as a child, by any of them. Perhaps the only one I liked was Stanley Cohen, who presided at Wallasey congregation (long since gone) since he stayed at my granny’s and turned the TV on himself on Saturday afternoon!  Orthodox Jews aren’t supposed to do that sort of thing. 

However I digress. It is surprising how seriously Lord Ephraim Mirvis is taken, despite his lack of any academic credentials apart from a BA from the Apartheid University of South Africa. Nonetheless Mirvis is an important player in the imperialist firmament  which is why he has been made a peer of the realm.

However it is also clear that Mirvis is nothing if not the shallowest and most stupid person to have become Chief Rabbi in a long time. Possibly that is because these days there’s not a lot of competition for the post.

The past Chief Rabbi but one, Immanuel Jakobovitz, had a PhD in Jewish Medical Ethics which he later wrote up into a book.  Like all his ilk he was a political reactionary and when the Church of England under Robert Runcie (a radical figure compared to the genocide. paedophile supporting Justin Welby) produced in 1985 a Report Faith in the City lambasting Thatcherite economics and its war on the poor, Jakobovitz replied with “From Doom to Hope”.

It was a reactionary tract that Thatcher loved. All that was needed was self-help as the Jewish immigrants had done. Not only was it a falsification of the Jewish fight against anti-Semitism and their involvement in trade unions but it downplayed the Black experience of racism to say nothing of Thatcher’s enrichment of the rich through privatisation and her attacks on the unions. Jakobovitz was a Thatcherite though he was a relative liberal when it came to Israel.


Mirvis’s predecessor Jonathan Sacks held a BA, MA and Ph.D. in philosophy. He authored 25 books, all of them instantly forgettable. He too was an out and out racist, a supporter of the settlers March of the Flags on Jerusalem Day when thousands of settler youth storm Arab East Jerusalem chanting such ditties as Death to the Arabs, May Your Villages Burn etc.

His knowledge of philosophy didn’t stop him recommending as one of the best books of 2017 the far-right Douglas Murray’s Strange Death of Europe which was an exposition of the fascist White Replacement Theory. In its full blown neo-Nazi version it is the Jews who are organising the replacement. Murray wrote of:

the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration – the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people – is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest.

It is somewhat ironic that when Jeremy Corbyn called out two Zionist thugs, Richard Millett and Jonathan Hoffman, for not understanding English irony like the Palestinian speaker, he was accused by Sacks of echoing Enoch Powell’s Rivers of Blood speech.  Yet Murray described Powell as a ‘remarkable man’ who ‘got a lot more right than wrong’

Yet if Sacks was a flawed incontinent philosopher Mirvis makes no pretensions to possess anything in the way of deep thought.

What can one make of Mirvis’ statement to attendees of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance conference in Jerusalem that ‘I am Zionist because I am a Jew.’ Mirvis went on to dig himself deeper into a hole. “If you are anti-Zionist, you are anti-Jews and anti-Judaism.” Before adding that “Israel is not just the geo-political endeavour of the Jewish people, it is the center of Judaism. A strong Israel means a strong Jewish people.’

In a similar vein in May 2016, in an attack on Ken Livingston for having touched on the pro-Zionist policies of Hitler and the Nazis, Ephraim Mirvis had said of Zionism that ‘One can no more separate it from Judaism than separate the City of London from Great Britain.’ 

As I said Mirvis is a simple man not possessed of deep thought. Simple slogans are more his style. So let us try and unpack this.

Firstly his statement ‘I am a Zionist because I am a Jew’. This is clearly nonsensical. There are plenty more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists. Trump’s cabinet is full of them. Are they also Jewish? Clearly Zionism is a political not a religious phenomenon.

Far from a strong Israel meaning a strong Jewish people, whatever that means, it is Israel and its barbarism and apartheid treatment of Palestinians which is responsible for most anti-Semitism today. Israel is the curse of most Jewish people who don’t want to be tarred with the brush of genocide.

Nor is Israel the centre of Jews world-wide. Jerusalem is the religious centre of Judaism, as it is of Islam and Christianity. It has been for two millennium when there has been no Jewish State. A religion does not need a state to provide it with a centre.

Sir Edwin Montagu (left)

When Jewish Zionism came on the scene, its bitterest opponents were Jewish.  Its most ardent supporters were Christian. The only member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet to oppose the Balfour Declaration was its only Jewish member Sir Edwin Montagu. It took till 1939 before the Board of Deputies of British Jews was captured by the Zionists.

When Zionism first appeared in Britain the Chief Rabbi of the time, Hermann Adler was vehemently opposed to it. In For Haredi Jews secular Zionism remains a religious heresy Giles Fraser wrote of:

The walled neighbourhood of Mea Shearim (which) is just a few minutes’ walk from the old city of Jerusalem. Built in 1874, it is home to Jerusalem’s Haredi or ultra-orthodox community...

Posters put up at the various entrances to the area demand modesty from visitors: long dresses and sleeves. Another poster declares: “No entry to Zionists”. Mea Shearim is home to some of the most fervently anti-Zionist Jews in the world.

As Fraser noted, in 1898 Adler’s predecessor and father, Naftali Hermann Adler, also opposed Zionism giving a sermon in which he condemned Zionism as usurping God’s role: “I look at this movement and worry with my heart, since I see it as opposed to the Torah of Hashem.”

If Mirvis is correct then two previous Chief Rabbis were not only not Jewish they were anti-Jewish. As Stuart Cohen wrote in English Zionists and Jews:

Opposition to Zionism was the only thing that united all Jewish religious groups, from Chief Rabbi Herman Adler and the Orthodox to the Reform movement. In 1902 no prominent rabbi responded to a call to form the religious Zionist Mizrahi group and a conference to launch Mizrahi in 1904 had to be abandoned for lack of support. Zionism was variously described as ‘a peril’, a ‘travesty of Judaism’ and ‘a restoration of primitiveness.’

In Germany when Hitler took power just 2% of German Jews were paid up Zionists. In Poland in the 1938 local elections, the last free elections in Poland, Polish Jews voted overwhelmingly for the anti-Zionist Bund. In Warsaw, of the 20 Jewish Council seats the Bund won 17 and the Zionists precisely one. The same was repeated all over Poland, which had over 3 million Jews. Overall in Poland in one-third of the towns the Bund achieved a majority Jewish vote. According to Mirvis the majority of Poland Jews were anti-Semites!

Indeed the majority of Jews who died in the holocaust were not Zionists.  So what Mirvis is saying is that most of those who died in the holocaust were not Jewish! Either that or they were anti-Semitic! This is the intellectual calibre of Britain’s Chief Rabbi.

Indeed not only Polish Jews but Germany’s and Britain’s Jews were all anti-Jewish because they weren’t Zionists according to the buffoon who is Britain’s Chief Rabbi.

Perhaps it’s not surprising that Mirvis is such an ardent Zionist. Mirvis grew up in Apartheid South Africa in a Jewish community that was ardently pro-Zionist and equally pro-Apartheid. It was not until the bitter end that the South Africa Jewish community discovered that they had been opposed to apartheid all along and embraced the Black Sheep of the community like Dennis Goldberg, someone who spent 22 years in prison having been sentenced to life at the 1964 Rivonia trial, for his membership of the ANC.

Mirvis is well aware of the deep racism of Israeli rabbis yet he has never spoken out to condemn it - quite the contrary he approves of it

When Mirvis left South Africa it was natural that he would go to Apartheid Israel and live on a settlement in the West Bank. Mirvis received his rabbinical training in the yeshiva of Har Etzion in the settlement of Alon Shvut. He trained among the most bigoted racists and seemingly didn’t notice that the settlement was established on stolen Palestinian land. And no one is more racist than the West Bank’s religious settlers.  The chief rabbi of the settlers’ rabbinical Council, Dov Lior, is famous for his statement that a Jewish fingernail is worth more than a thousand non-Jewish lives.

So it was natural that Mirvis should joined his predecessor Jonathan Sacks and thousands of far-Right settlers on the 2017 Jerusalem Day ‘March of Flags’. Mirvis had no hesitation in joining those who desire nothing more than the expulsion or death of the Palestinians.

Haaretz’s Bradley Burston described the March as:

an annual, gender-segregated extreme-right, pro-occupation religious carnival of hatred, marking the anniversary of Israel's capture of Jerusalem by humiliating the city's Palestinian Muslims....

marchers vandalized shops in Jerusalem's Muslim Quarter, chanted "Death to Arabs" and "The (Jewish) Temple Will Be Built, the (Al Aqsa) Mosque will be Burned Down," shattered windows and door locks, and poured glue into the locks of shops forced to close for fear of further damage.’... And they repeated Samson's prayer in Judges 16:28: "May I avenge (the loss of) my two eyes with one act of vengeance against the Palestinians – may their name be blotted out!"

Clearly Mirvis felt at home as Sacks  extended a “personal invitation” to Diaspora Jews to join him “leading” the March of the Flags on Jerusalem Day and “dancing with our brave [Israeli Defence Force] soldiers” in the settler enclave inside Hebron.

Haaretz Anna Roiser pleaded with Sacks not to attend, saying:

one of the world’s most respected rabbis sends a message of normalization and acceptance of the occupation...  Many Jews in the Diaspora work hard to emphasize that being Jewish is not synonymous with supporting the Israeli government, and that supporting Israel’s right to exist is not synonymous with supporting the occupation. Rabbi Sacks’ actions risk undermining these messages.

Sacks and Mirvis ignored the pleas of liberal Zionists such as Anna Roiser and Nina-Morris Evans, who wrote a blog Chief Rabbi and Lord Sacks should not back this march, with contempt. Sacks and Mirvis marched in unison. But to be fair to him Mirvis finds it difficult to oppose any form of racism bar ‘anti-Semitism’.

Mirvis finds it difficult to oppose Zionist anti-Semitism too. Although he withdrew from a  conference on ‘anti-Semitism’ organised by Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, earlier this year, because they had invited so many anti-Semites  to attend (there is of course a certain logic in this – who better to invite than those who are experts in the subject!] he did this very reluctantly and without ever condemning this gathering of Europe’s far-right.

Most neo-Nazis today, like Richard Spencer, are in full support of Zionism

Those who were invited included Jordan Bardella, President of the far-right French National Rally party founded by Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen; Marion Marechal, a far-right French member of the European Parliament and Le Pen’s granddaughter; Hermann Tertsch, a far-right Spanish member of the European Parliament; Charlie Weimers of the far-right Sweden Democrats party and Kinga Gál, of Hungary’s Fidesz party were also invited guests.

But whereas Mirvis is reluctant to condemn outright fascist anti-Semites and Jew haters when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn there was no such hesitation. In 2019, two weeks before the general election, his infamous Times article was published. Casting aside the unwritten convention of chief rabbis abstaining from party politics, Mirvis all but instructed the faithful that the leader of the opposition was unfit for office and told people not to vote Labour. He wrote:

The claims that the [Labour] party is “doing everything” it reasonably can to tackle anti-Jewish racism and that it has “investigated every single case”, are a mendacious fiction....

It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison – sanctioned from the top – has taken root in the Labour Party.

Many members of the Jewish community can hardly believe that this is the same party that they called their political home for more than a century. It can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism.

You would have to be even more stupid than the average Zionist not to take the hint.

The false ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign in the Labour Party laid the basis for the support of Starmer, Lammy and Nandy for the current genocide in Gaza.  The Editor of the Jewish Chronicle, the far right Stephen Pollard wrote:

there is just one fundamental issue for the vast majority of our community – doing what we can to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM.

If Mirvis was seriously concerned about anti-Semitism in political parties then he would have asked why the Conservative Party’s MEPs supported the anti-Semitic Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in a no confidence vote in the European parliament.  The reason of course was that Orban may be anti-Semitic but he is also the best friend of Israel.

Likewise he could have asked why Tory MEP’s sat in the same political group (ECR) in the European parliament as fascists and anti-Semites.

If Mirvis had been bold he might have mentioned Boris Johnson’s anti-Semitic comments in his novel ’72 Virgins. Leaving aside Johnson’s racist comments about ‘Watermelon smiles’, ‘piccaninnies’ and ‘letterboxes’. Johnson wrote:

Maybe there was some kind of fiddling of the figures by the oligarchs who ran the TV stations (and who were mainly, as some lost no time in pointing out, of Jewish origin)

There wasthe Jewish cabal who run the American media complex’. Even the Jewish Chronicle mentioned how 72 Virgins had

described a Jewish character as an unethical businessman with a large nose, who exploits immigrant workers and black women’.

Ephraim Mirvis’s attack on Corbyn had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. In 2016 he spoke out in favour of Norman Tebbit’s ‘cricket test’. The ‘cricket test’ was a device to show that the ‘real home’ of Britain’s Asian population is not in England but India and Pakistan because they cheered for the latters’ cricket teams.

If the same test were applied to British Jews then it would show that many of them belong in Israel!  Which is what the Zionists desire of course.

What made the Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign so effective is the fact that Corbyn, instead of standing up to it from the start and saying that Labour did not have an anti-Semitism problem and that the allegations against it were malicious and without foundation, bought into the narrative. Everytime Corbyn apologised he proved his critics were correct.

Ephraim Mirvis, like his predecessor Jonathan Sacks, is a Zionist in religious garb. Zionism was a secular movement. Herzl’s Deputy Max Nordau was quite explicit that Zionism was a question of race not religion. To Nordau the Jews were ‘a race of accursed beggars.

Even Colin Shindler, an ardent Zionist advocate and Professor of Israel Studies at SOAS admitted that in Britain:

Orthodoxy also had little time for Zionism. The Kamenitzer Maggid, a brilliant speaker for the Federation of Synagogues, regarded Herzl as a second Shabtai Zevi, the false messiah of the 17th century. Even the Lubavitcher Rebbe of the time announced that religion had been substituted by nationalism. "The Zionists," he argued, "had cast off the yoke of the Torah and mitzvot."

As the Times of Israel reported, the head of the Satmar Hassidic sect Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum

‘accused his followers of increasingly admiring Israel for its military and political accomplishments, imploring them to maintain the Hasidic group’s hardline anti-Zionism.

Addressing thousands of Satmar members at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum, Rabbi Aaron Teitelbaum lamented what he called a “tremendous and terrible spiritual decline” among his followers. …

 “We must yell gevalt, gevalt! To where have we come?” he declared. “We have no part in Zionism. We have no part in their wars. We have no part in the State of Israel.”

The Satmar, one of the largest Hasidic groups in the world, is staunchly anti-Zionist and does not recognize the State of Israel, maintaining a Jewish state should not exist until the Messiah appears.

“We’ll continue to fight God’s war against Zionism and all its aspects,” Teitelbaum said. Rabbis like Sacks and Mirvis have prostituted themselves to a nationalist heresy.

Tony Greenstein