Mad Cows and Englishmen –The Telegraph goes Barking Mad over Beef and Communism

As Douglas Murray chokes on his racist bile, is the Torygraph's headline the most stupid ever? 

I rubbed my eyes when I saw the headline ‘University which banned beef now hosts 'Communist' summer school’. What could possibly be the connection between the decision to take beef off the menu at Goldsmiths University, as part of their contribution to fighting global warming and a debate between Professor Moshe Machover, the founder of Matzpen, the Israeli Socialist Organisation and myself?

What for that matter is the connection between British Beef and hosting the annual Communist University? I guess in the mind of the Daily Telegraph it’s only the loony left and rabid feminists who would ban the staple food of every red blooded Englishman. Hosting a Communist University must be proof that our way of life is under attack even though it is a commercial booking and nothing to do with the university itself. Small details such as these are irrelevant to the rabid right.

Phoebe Southworth was a hackette in search of a story and she wasn’t going to let facts stand in the way. Yes it’s true I’ve described abusive Zionists who call you a ‘self hater’ as Zionist scum. That is precisely what they are. It is also an incontrovertible historical fact that the Zionist movement collaborated with the Nazis. Get over it. In the 1950’s Israel staged a four-year long trial of the leader of Hungarian Zionism, Rudolf Kasztner over allegations by survivors of the Hungarian Holocaust that he had collaborated with Eichmann and helped send them and their families to their deaths. When Kasztner was found to have collaborated with the Nazi, literally ‘sold his soul to Satan’ by Judge Benjamin Halevi of the Jerusalem District Court the government of Israel fell. 

However I wasn’t expelled for these ‘crimes’ but for being an anti-Zionist and ‘abusing’ people like Louise Ellman, a noxious supporter of the Israeli Military’s abuse of Palestinian children.

Letter to the Telegraph in response to their idiotic article

However The Telegraph’s idiotic reporter isn’t one to let up on a good story. Apparently ‘The latest move has prompted accusations that Goldsmith is no longer a "safe space" for Jewish students and that it is "officially becoming a Communist university".

So let us digest this.  Two Jewish people debating the finer points of whether Israeli Jews constitute a nation means that ‘Goldsmith is no longer a "safe space" for Jewish students’.  Is she really saying that hearing two Jewish anti-Zionists debate Zionism will threaten the well being of the spoilt Jewish darlings and JAPs (Jewish American Princesses) who are students at Goldsmith? 

Needless to say, when a hack needs a quote then who better to turn to than the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism.  They believe that the presence of Professor Moshe Machover and myself on campus is "deeply troubling". The University is “welcoming onto campus a number of individuals who have a history of baiting Jews or outright antisemitism”.

The term ‘anti-Semitism’ has been so shop soiled of late that it has lost its effect.  Now we are ‘Jew baiting’ if we disagree with Zionism and anti-Palestinian racism. Indeed we have a ‘history’ of doing this.  I guess I also have a history of opposing fascists such as Tommy Robinson and the EDL, who Zionists like the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism work with. 

The head of the college even looks like one of those hated feminist leftist do gooders

And if this was not bad enough, then Douglas Murray, the frothing at the mouth Islamaphobe  who is Associate Director of the cold-war Henry Jackson Society penned in the following day’s Telegraph, Our anti-capitalist, anti-Western universities no longer care about excellence

This mild mannered, man is the same person who, in 2009, described Robert Spencer, the leader of "Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA)", as a "very brilliant scholar and writer". He is so brilliant that along with Pamela Geller he got himself banned from entering Britain. He is responsible for Jihad Watch which is allied to David Horowitz’s Freedom Centre and Frontpagemag.com an overtly racist and Islamaphobic web site.

In a 2006 speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference Murray demanded that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”:

“All immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should also be enacted retrospectively. Those who are currently in Europe having fled tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed. And of course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the West (not just the country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the West or Western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin.”

So if you sympathise with attacks on American troops in Iraq or Saudi Arabia or wherever you should be ‘forcibly deported’.  Bang goes freedom of speech.

Murray wrote in The Spectator that ‘There are certain things in Britain about which it is impossible to speak frankly. The birth rate of the Muslim population is a prime subject” The birth rate of Black and Asian people has always been an obsession with racists and neo-Nazis.

Yet this racist buffoon is given space in The Torygraph to proclaim that banning beef and hosting a Communist University means an end to civilisation as we know it.

Murray told the Telegraph’s readers that ‘tragedy always follows close on comedy’s heels and this tragedy ‘can also be glimpsed on the Goldsmiths campus.’   Why pray tell? Because Goldsmiths ‘is hosting a summer school involving a series of lectures organised by the Communist Party of Great Britain.’

Shocked as you may be dear reader there is more.

‘The lecturers include Tony Greenstein, the founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who last year achieved the almost unachievable when he was expelled from Labour for using terms like “Zionist scum” and accusing “Zionists” of “collaborating with the Nazis”. Also lecturing at the Communist summer camp is an activist called Graham Bash who will be addressing students on the subject of “How can we transform the Labour Party into a vehicle of socialism?” A lecture whose aims might be said to already have been achieved.

I know it’s not much consolation to someone who even the Tory front bench broke off relations with in 2011 because he was seen as a racist and extremist, but being expelled from the Labour Party these days, if you are Jewish and a socialist, is quite easy!

Still I don’t want to spoil a good story since The Telegraph’s readers enjoy having something to shock them over their tea and marmalade first thing in the morning. Murray engages in an attack not merely on Goldsmiths but on what he calls an ‘only slightly watered-down version of the full-throated communism’ at Cambridge University no less. He tells us of ‘a great tide has swept across the university system in America as in Britain’.  By now babbling like a hyena on heat Murray splutters that ‘It is a culture war waged with tools such as “de-platforming”, claims for “safe spaces” and more. Most of all it exists in the Academy’s fetishisation of “diversity”.’

Now where have I heard of culture wars before?  Oh yes, it is a standard  meme of the fascist right

As Noah Berlatsky wrote in Jewish Currents after a neo-Nazi opened fire at Poway synagogue earlier this year, ‘“Cultural Marxism” is a trope that is rapidly spreading from the far right to the conservative mainstream.’ It was first popularised by Andrei Brevik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi (and Zionist) who murdered 77 young people.  This is what Douglas Murray is arguing for and what The Telegraph is quite happy to print in the name of fighting socialism and defending Zionism.

Meanwhile if you are interested in a debate between Moshe Machover and myself on whether or not Israel’s Jews constitute a nation, then take yourself off to Goldsmith’s College this Friday for a no doubt riveting debate! Beef I’m afraid will not be on the menu!

 The details are here! And here is the timetable.  Our debate is timed for 4.45 p.m. this Friday at Goldsmith's University St James London SE14 6AD

Tony Greenstein

Open Letter to Len McLuskey, General Secretary of UNITE – The Time has Come to Junk the IHRA

 The IHRA’s Only Purpose is to Prop Up Apartheid Israel, Undermine solidarity with the Palestinians and Topple Corbyn

At the June meeting of Unite SE/6246 Branch members learnt of the suspension of one of our members from the Labour Party. She is an activist in Palestine Solidarity Campaign and her ‘crime’ was tweeting opposition to Israeli political interference and Zionism.

She has been suspended with a recommendation for expulsion without a hearing. All her tweets, without exception, related to Israel and the Israel lobby. Nothing in them is remotely anti-Semitic.

The branch therefore asked me to write an open letter to the General Secretary of UNITE, Len McLuskey, asking for the Executive Council to withdraw its support for the IHRA’s bogus definition of anti-Semitism. 

UNITE has clear policy in support of BDS and the Palestinians. The IHRA defines it as ‘anti-Semitic’. The IHRA says that ‘applying double standards’ to Israel ‘by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ is anti-Semitic. The problem is that Israel is not like any other democratic state.  It is a state of only its Jewish citizens. However the IHRA starts from the proposition that Israel is a liberal democracy

BDS is only applied to Israel therefore the IHRA classifies it as anti-Semitic. Applying this logic when South Africa was an apartheid state, BDS was also racist against White South Africans and when Jews (except for the Zionists) launched a boycott of Nazi Germany in 1933 that was racist against Germans! 

 Only recently the German Bundestag, following in the tradition of Nazi opposition to Boycotts, confirmed that BDS is anti-Semitic. We had the spectacle of Greens, Social Democrats and neo-Nazis agreeing that support for the Palestinians is anti-Semitic!

What is amazing about the IHRA, which governments have so readily adopted, is that there is no support for the IHRA from any legal or academic scholars. Even the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern in written testimony to the US Congress criticised it for chilling free speech. It is a worthless definition whose only purpose is to allow supporters of the world’s only apartheid state to accuse anti-racists and anti-imperialists of ‘anti-Semitism’.

Take Stephen Sedley, a former Court of Appeal Judge who is himself Jewish. Sedley wrote, in an article for London Review of Books that the IHRA

Assume(s) that Israel, apart from being a Jewish state, is a country like any other and so open only to criticism resembling such criticism as can be made of other states, placing the historical, political, military and humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestine beyond permissible criticism.

The IHRA is based on 2 fallacies:  first that Israel and Jews are identical, a position that is in itself anti-Semitic. And secondly that Israel is like ‘any other democratic nation.’ It isn’t.  No other state in the world demolishes the homes of one section of the population in order to replace them with the majority ethnic group, Jews.

Even Dr Geoffrey Alderman, a right-wing Zionist and Jewish academic and historian, a columnist for the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish Telegraph, has made a submission to the Equalities and Human Rights Council investigation into the Labour Party criticising the definition.

In an article This Labour Party row will not be settled by relying on a flawed and faulty definition of antisemitism Alderman draws attention to the 11 illustrations of anti-Semitism in the IHRA definition, focussing on 2 of them.

One example that says it is antisemitic to accuse Jewish citizens “of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.” Alderman noted that

‘many Jews who hold dual citizenship and who, under certain circumstances, would act (and have indeed acted) in the interests of Israel rather than of Britain. It should not be deemed antisemitic to point this out.’

The other example he referred to is the one saying it is anti-Semitic to ‘“draw(ing) comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”  He observes that people often compare countries, for example Burma, to the Nazis.  Why is it anti-Semitic to compare Israel’s actions to the Nazis given that Israeli politicians regularly accuse their enemies of behaving like Nazis?

The Oxford English Dictionary definition of anti-Semitism is 6 not 500+ words

Labour’s witchhunters rely on criticism of Israel not Jews

The ‘evidence’ against the UNITE comrade is an example of how the IHRA has been used, not to combat anti-Semitism, which is hostility to Jews as Jews but to defend the world’s most racist state. When Len McLuskey did a 180 degree about turn to support the IHRA he fooled himself into believing it would mean an end to the ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt.  It hasn’t. It has emboldened and strengthened it. The cowardice and pusillanimity of McLuskey and the trade union leadership has increased the crisis around Corbyn and the Labour Party. It is time to tell the Zionists to get lost and if they are concerned about anti-Semitism then maybe they will stop justifying what Israel does in the name of the Jews.

Labour's witchhunters are now openly equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism

The first piece of evidence against our Branch member was about her sharing an article by Electronic Intifada journalist, Asa Winstanley, on how the Israel lobby manufactured Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis. Asa has also been suspended in what is a blatant attack on the freedom of the press. Clearly Labour’s witchhunters think they are in Israel now. Asa has also been denied press credentials for Labour’s conference. It seems that Jenny Formby’s administration is now going one worse than the hated Iain McNicoll. As the IHRA’s author Kenneth Stern has admitted the IHRA ‘chills’ free speech ,.

The fourth piece of ‘evidence’ referred to an article in The Independent quoting the late Jewish Father of the House of Commons, Gerald Kaufman as saying that ‘Jewish money’ had influenced the government. The term ‘Jewish money’ is widely used in the Jewish community and I found over 600 instances of its use on the Jewish Chronicle website! It is not anti-Semitic per se.

Ironically the suspended Labour Party member's tweet 'But shhh, mustn't criticise Israel or you'll be accused of antisemitism' has come truer rather quicker than she expected!

Asking people to share a petition calling for an inquiry into Israel’s influence on democracy in Britain was another piece of ‘evidence’. What has this to do with Jews or anti-Semitism. Israel is not a Jew.

Al Jazeera’s programme The Lobby covered in detail how an agent operating out of the Israeli Embassy, Shai Masot had indeed interfered in British politics. He discussed how to bring down the Deputy Foreign Secretary, Sir Alan Duncan, who was hostile to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.  Masot described himself as a political officer assigned to the Israeli Embassy.  How can it possibly be anti-Semitic to speak the truth?

The person also said it would be ‘interesting to see how the JLM and other Zionist orgs justify this appalling action’ referring to police brutality against Palestinian children.  Is it anti-Semitic to call out the abuse of Palestinian children by Israel?

Other things that the comrade said included telling Brighton’s then leader of the Labour Council, Dan Yates that ‘privileging anti-Semitism above other forms of racism is nothing to be proud of. Neither is supporting Israeli racism and apartheid.’ It is an extremely valid question as to why the Labour Party has been obsessed with non-existent ‘anti-Semitism’ when racism in society and the Windrush scandal has merited no attention at all.

Or perhaps her crime was referring to Israel’s most popular rap artist (who has a quarter of a million Facebook fans), The Shadow. The Shadow  blamed the dead at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue for their own murder. Their ‘crime’ beingn to support immigrants in the USA. Normally it is only fascists and anti-Semites who cheer on those who murder Jews but there is also a number of sick Zionists who believe that you need anti-Semitism in order to ‘encourage’ Jews to emigrate to the racial paradise of Israel. Referring to this fact is enough to be accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ by the morons of Southside.

Supporting an inquiry into the fake anti-Corbyn ‘charity’, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism also aroused the ire of Labour’s witchhunters as did mentioning Israel’s half-hearted probe into the fire bombing of a Palestinian family in the West Bank, which left both parents and an 18 month old baby dead and a four year old child with severe burn injuries.  The Southside scum who included this tweet clearly believe it is anti-Semitic to condemn Zionist child murderers.

The time has come for McLuskey and other union bureaucrats, like UNISON’s Dave Prentis to abandon the IHRA ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism.  Why is a ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism needed anyway if not to protect Israel? My dad did not need a 500 word definition of anti-Semitism in order to fight Oswald Moseley’s British Union of Fascists at Cable Street.  And when the BUF did attack Jews and try to march in Jewish areas, the Board of Deputies told them to stay at home. These are the very same reactionaries who cry ‘anti-Semitism’ today whenever Palestine is on the agenda.

Tony Greenstein

Len McCluskey,

General Secretary,

Unite The Union,

128 Theobald's Road,

LONDON, WC1X 8TN

Tuesday 23^rd July 2019

len.mccluskey@unitetheunion.org, executive.council@unitetheunion.org

Dear Brother McCluskey,

It’s Time to Scrap the IHRA Definition which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism

I am writing to you on behalf of Unite SE/6246 Branch. We believe that it is time to call a halt to this bogus and confected ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign. 

Last August, in an article in Huffpost you stated that ‘It would be for the best if all eleven [IHRA examples] were now agreed, so the party can move on.’ The Party however did not move on. The whole purpose of this fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign was to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

You acknowledged as much in the title of your article where you stated that the ‘Jewish community leaders’ ‘have simply refused to take “yes” for an answer.’  You spoke of their ‘Intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage in dialogue’. Why then continue to appease them?

You are right. These Zionist leaders will always refuse to accept ‘yes’ for an answer as long as Jeremy Corbyn is Leader of the Labour Party. The primary interest of these people is the defence of the Israeli state, right or wrong. That is why last summer the Board of Deputies supported Israel’s massacre of over 200 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza.

The Board of Deputies is not concerned with ‘anti-Semitism’ From the Battle of Cable Street to the present day their attitude has been that Jews should avoid confrontations with fascists.

You stated in your article that ‘it would have been far better for the party to have adopted at least ten of the eleven IHRA examples’ but you were willing to give them the whole loaf. We disagree.  The IHRA has only ever had one purpose, to conflate anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. 7 out of the 11 examples of anti-Semitism are concerned with Israel not Jews.

Our union supports a policy of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Under the IHRA that is anti-Semitic since we don’t apply BDS to any other country.

Likewise the IHRA holds it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to claim that ‘the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.’ This is palpable nonsense. When Israeli actress Rotem Sala protested that ‘Israel is a state of all its citizens’ she was immediately reprimanded by Benjamin Netanyahu who declared ‘“First of all, Israel is not a country of all its citizens. According to the nation-state law that we passed, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish nation’.

According to the IHRA telling the truth is anti-Semitic. The examples of racism are legion from protests in Afula against the sale of a house to an Arab to the edict, by the Chief Rabbi of Safed Shmuel Eliyahu, a paid public servant that forbids renting homes to Arabs.

It is claimed that Israel is a Jewish state. What this means in practice is that Jews receive preferential treatment. 93% of Israeli state land is barred to Arabs because it is Jewish national land. Britain is officially a Christian state but the rights and duties of Jews are no different from Christians.  If a Jewish person were told that they couldn’t rent a house because they weren’t Christian that would rightly be termed anti-Semitic yet it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to criticise the same thing in Israel.

The IHRA has been panned by academics and legal scholars. According to Geoffrey Robertson QC the IHRA definition is, ‘not fit for purpose’.  Sir Stephen Sedley, the Jewish former Court of Appeal Judge wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite.’ Hugh Tomlinson QC declared that the IHRA had ‘a potential chilling effect’ on free speech.  Even the person who drafted it, Kenneth Stern, complained in written testimony to the US House of Representatives that ‘The definition was not drafted, and was never intended, as a tool to target or chill speech’.

We understand why you agreed to endorse the IHRA last August. However appeasement only emboldens the aggressor. In recent months two members of Unite locally have been suspended for alleged ‘anti-Semitism’. Both are anti-racist activists and one is Black.

The time has come to declare that we are not going to allow this continuing attack on socialists and anti-racists, in the name of the fight against anti-Semitism. Widening the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel benefits no one, least of all Jews.

Only last week Panorama broadcast a vicious, one-sided and blatantly dishonest attack on Jeremy Corbyn. No one from Jewish Voices for Labour was interviewed.

We therefore ask that Unite representatives on the NEC are instructed to withdraw their support for the IHRA.

Furthermore, at the 2017 Labour Party conference in Brighton you promised that Unite would affiliate nationally to JVL.  The time has come to honour that promise.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Greenstein

Summary of decisions of the July 2014 Unite Policy Conference

Policy on Israel/Palestine

Work with other NGOs and all other supportive bodies in the UK and around the world and develop a Unite campaigning and leverage strategy around Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) within the next 12 months, notably against complicit companies involved in the occupation, the apartheid wall and the illegal settlements, through workforce pressure, contracts and pension funds, and encourage members to call on supermarkets and retailers to stop using companies which export goods from illegal settlements

Zionism and the Israel Lobby are the Biggest Threat Today to Freedom of Speech and Democratic Rights

Peter Kyle ‘Labour’ MP for Hove and the Board of Deputies were the instigators of the threats of violence and abuse employed against the Chris Williamson meeting

When Peter Kyle pressured the Brighthelm Church & Community Centre (which is now likely to be subject to a boycott) to cancel the meeting with Chris Williamson, he gave the green light to Sussex Friends of Israel and their friends to use threats of violence and make abusive phone calls to staff at the Holiday Inn and the Quaker Friends Meeting House.

Kyle has refused to condemn the methods that were employed to force these venues into cancelling bookings. Not only that, but as Greg Hadfield makes clear, he has lied and dissembled about these threats. In reality he is party to them.

Peter Kyle - right-wing Labour MP for Hove and in need of urgent deselection

For further information on the timeline of events and Kyle’s role see Greg Hadfield’s two excellent essays A first rough draft of history: Chris Williamson MP in Brighton and Hove and The sequel: A second rough draft of history and Chris Williamson

Other racists such as former Council leader, Daniel Yates complained that, instead of accepting the fact that Zionist thugs could intimidate venues into cancelling our booking,  we had the temerity to hold a rally out in the open in Regency Square.

The pathetic Yates tweeted that ‘I’m disgusted. I hope @BrightonHoveCC look into the matter and the organisers actions.’ This is the level of the commitment of the Labour Right in Brighton & Hove to free speech..’

Yates was given short shrift on Twitter.

‘Are you a councillor for Labour or Israeli fascism?’

'And what are they going to look into? Man makes speech outside'? What the police should look into is the various threats against the venues’.

‘Absolutely outrageous, what is disgusting is your not asking the police to investigate the threats made to the venues. Instead you abuse the victim’.

The best response was from Jo Seirer: 

‘You spot a victim of bullies, and can't resist giving them an extra kick. And you say you are disgusted. You spelled it wrong. You are disgust-ING.’

According to Yates we should have had the good grace to acknowledge that the supporters of the Israeli state had the right to intimidate venues into closing down a perfectly lawful meeting.

This is the pathetic reaction of Labour's former Council leader

We . should also have accepted the characterisation of Chris Williamson as a ‘Jew baiter’ and not dared to challenge their Goebbels style propaganda.

In all the attacks on Chris no one has produced anything that merits this description.

This is the level of dishonesty of our Zionist opponents, Kyle and Yates.

It is worth looking at what Chris actually said at the fateful Sheffield Momentum meeting because liars like Kyle and Yates continue to allege that what Chris said was anti-Semitic:

"The party that has done more to stand up to racism is now being demonised as a racist, bigoted party. I have got to say I think our party's response has been partly responsible for that because in my opinion… we've backed off far too much, we have given too much ground, we've been too apologetic..."We've done more to actually address the scourge of anti-semitism than any other political party. Any other political party. And yet we are being traduced."

I defy anyone to point out what was anti-Semitic in the above statement.

When I first came to Brighton I quickly became involved in anti-fascist activity. The National Front was then very active doing what the Peter Kyle’s of today are doing, which was to try and close down meetings they disagreed with. In particular they attacked meetings of CHE (Campaign for Homosexual Equality). No doubt Kyle is unaware of this and much else.

What is despicable is that Kyle, whose only claim to fame is that he is gay, is adopting the methods of the National Front. His attack on Chris Williamson as a ‘Jew baiter’ is an example of the Nazi propaganda technique of the big lie.

What Kyle and co. are saying is that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are one and the same. This is the libel which equates Jews with everything that Israel and Zionism does.  It is itself anti-Semitic.

The term ‘Jew baiter’ seems  to be in fashion these days. Presumably Kyle and the Jewish Chronicle believe it has greater effect than the overused ‘anti-Semite’ the value of which has been devalued since it is used against all critics of Israel.

In fact ‘Jew baiter’ wasn’t used against run of the mill anti-Semites such as Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists. It was reserved for ardent Jew haters like Arnold Leese of the Imperial Fascist League. But I suspect Kyle is as ignorant of the history of fascism as he is about the history of the gay rights movement.

By using Jews as a stick to beat his political opponents, the person who is guilty of ‘Jew baiting’ and anti-Semitism is Kyle himself.

What we are seeing today with Chris Williamson is an attempt to close down democratic debate by the supporters of the world’s only apartheid state. It is also an international phenomenon.

In America repeated attempts are being made to render BDS illegal.  In Germany the Bundestag witnessed the spectacle of neo-Nazis, Greens and Social Democrats voting together to condemn BDS as anti-Semitic! Indeed the neo-Nazi AfD, Alternative for Germany, complained that the other resolutions were not strong enough as they didn’t outlaw BDS!

Katie Hopkins - ardent Zionist, neo-Nazi who talked of 'final solution' for Muslims and supported the murder of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh - was guest of honour at the last Zionist Federation dinner

In the United States it is the most anti-Semitic elements, born again Christians and the alt-Right, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and Steve Bannon who declare their love for Israel as an ethno-nationalist state.  Here in Britain anti-Semites such as Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins pledge their support for Israel. The same Katie Hopkins who declared that refugees were ‘cockroaches’. This didn’t stop her justifying the attack on the synagogue in Pittsburgh where 11 Jews were murdered because of their support for refugees. A justification that was echoed by the Israeli far-Right and figures such as the popular rap artist The Shadow (Yoav Eliasi).

Every racist, from the White Supremacist in the White House to Kyle, Stanger and Yates opposes 'anti-Semitism'

Israel is a model for White Supremacists and Nationalists because, like Trump, they admire Israel’s determination to keep refugees out and its virulent Islamaphobia in order to protect their ‘Jewish identity’. They admire Israel’s wall with Egypt and the determination to keep Israel racially Jewish.

When Trump pressured Israel to refuse to admit Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, this White supremacist President, who described the neo-Nazis of Charlottesville as ‘fine people’, said of Tlaib and Omar that ‘They hate Israel & all Jewish people’. This should prove decisively that ‘anti-Semitism’ is a weapon of the racist right – be it Trump, Kyle or Yates.

Labour Right and Zionist oddball, Luke Stanger, currently suspended by the Labour Party for harassing women and racism - was on the fringes of the meeting in Regency Square

It was of course particularly enjoyable seeing the outrage and splenetic fury of the Zionists, Yates included. Their rally mustered all of a dozen miserable creatures a few of whom hung around the periphery of our demonstration, frustrated that we had defied them and exercised our democratic rights.

What the Labour Right and the Zionists don’t understand is why 150 people, at short notice, were determined to ensure that the rally took place. That people don’t like being told what they can and cannot listen to just because the defenders of the world’s most racist state tell them to.

Idiot President of the Board of Deputies, Marie van der Zyl, held her own one woman protest on the fringes of our meeting

The cream of the Zionist leadership in Britain – the President of the Board of Deputies President Marie van der Zyle and the Jewish Leadership Council -came down and spent the night in the Jury’s Inn Hotel! No doubt at the expense of the ‘Jewish community.’

Leah Levane and Jenny Manson of Jewish Voice for Labour have written an open letter to Ms Zyl. They describe what happened in Brighton  as representing ‘a critical threat to democracy’ and they describe the methods which have been used over the past year to intimidate venues including ‘telephoned bomb threats’ at the premiere of the Jackie Walker film Witchhunt at the 2018 Labour Party conference and

‘threats of hostile reviews for potential hotel hosts on TripAdvisor, mass heckling at meetings, and more. However to the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that there have been direct threats of actual physical harm made in person to venue workers.’

When Israel began using snipers to murder unarmed demonstrators the Board of Deputies rushed to support them

JVL describe what has happened as ‘reminiscent of the tactics used during the historical rise of far-right movements, who organised violence or the threat of violence on the streets.’ They ask the Board to ‘completely disassociate themselves from such actions.’

Labour Friends of Israel supported the murder of hundreds of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza this and last year by Israeli snipers

I suspect that the Board of Deputies which rushed to justify what happened last year when Israel started gunning down protestors at the Gaza fence, as did Labour Friends of Israel, are not going to condemn the fascist-like tactics of their supporters in Britain. Kosher pigs are likely to fly first.

But let us be under no illusions. The Board of Deputies only represents a minority, the most right-wing, racist section of Jews. They represent neither secular or Ultra-Orthodox Jew

Although the media has tried to cover it up, when 36 Orthodox rabbis signed a letter supporting Jeremy Corbyn and opposing the Board’s attacks on him only the alternative media such as Skwawkbox publicised it. Portraying unanimity in the Jewish community behind the Board of Deputies is in the interests of the establishment press.

The eagerness of the Board of Deputies to stop Chris Williamson is in marked contrast to their failure over the years to oppose anti-Semitism from genuine fascists.

The IHRA definition of anti-Semitism is being widely used to inhibit support of the Palestinians and what happened with the Chris Williamson meeting took place in the context of the widening of the definition of anti-Semitism to include criticism of Israel.  Only last week it was used by Tower Hamlet’s Council in order to bar the Big Ride for Palestine. It has been used to sack Stan Keable at Hammersmith and Fulham Council and it was used by Dudley Council to suspend Paul Johnson.

The IHRA ‘definition of anti-Semitism’ has to go. Although the Green Party conference refused to accept the IHRA, rejecting the attempts of the leadership to force it through, locally all 11 Green Councillors in Brighton & Hove voted for it. One can only hope that with 8 extra councillors in addition to new Labour councillors that the present Council will reverse what is a charter for racist supporters of the Israeli state.

We should accept the advice of Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA definition, who said that it chills free speech!

Last week, dissident Zionist academic Dr Geoffrey Alderman slated the IHRA definition in The Independent as being internally contradictory and not fit for purpose as he did in a submission to the EHRC investigation. His analysis is interesting because it concentrates on sections that other people have tended to ignore.

There is no academic or legal justification for the definition that is worth the paper it’s written on. The IHRA is a definition of anti-Semitism that anti-Semites are happy with.

What is needed is for the Palestine solidarity movement to build an alliance that encompasses supporters of civil liberties and human rights in order to defend our democratic rights.

Without any class politics Caroline Lucas has drifted to the Right with her all-women cabinet nonsense that included Tories and Liberal supporters of austerity

I have sent an Open Letter to Caroline Lucas, the MP for Brighton Pavilion where the meeting was held and where the venues which cancelled the meeting were based, asking why she has stayed silent over what happened in her own constituency. It seems that Caroline’s journey to the right continues apace.

Tony Greenstein