Not the Forde Inquiry but a Jolly Good Substitute!

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

Interview with Tony Greenstein about Labour's Witch Hunt

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

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

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

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

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

The events were

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

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

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

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

Starmer surrounded by the butcher's apron

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Norman Licky QC aka Paddy O'Keefe

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

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

Becky Massey, Esther Giles and Roger Silverman

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

Becky Massey, expelled member of Hove CLP,

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

Leah Levane, Chris Williamson and Greg Hadfield

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

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

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

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

Tony Greenstein & Stan Heller of The Struggle

Interview of Tony Greenstein by Stan Heller

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Open Letter to Lisa Nandy, Who Went from Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine to Becoming the Zionist’s Favourite Pet

Is there anything more sickening than a politician who steps on the bodies of Palestinian children in order to build her career?

 

I thought it was about time that I wrote to an old friend, Starmer’s Shadow Foreign Secretary, Lisa Nandy. Because it is of general interest I have decided to share it with others but I would ask that you keep it confidential.  I don’t want our friendship to be derailed!!

The JLM's Mike Katz praises Louise Ellman, who has defended the torture and abuse of Palestinian children in the name of 'security' - Ruth Smeeth was very brave in lying to get Marc Wadsworth expelled

It’s not often that I agree with Stephane Savary of the Jewish Labour Movement, who accused Lisa Nandy of “playing both sides.” Just a day after saying, at a JLM hustings for Labour leadership candidates that she was a Zionist, Nandy agreed to sign up to 3 Pledges from PSC, including the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

If Nandy had understood what she said then she would know that a return of those who were ethnically cleansed in 1948 would spell doom for Israel as a Jewish Supremacist state. It would force Zionism to choose between a democratic state or an apartheid state. In practice the choice has already been made. Israel rules over 5 million Palestinians in the Occupied Territories yet refuses to grant them even the most minimal civil or political rights.

The refugees were expelled in order to create a Jewish majority in Israel. That was always the intention of the Zionist movement. In December 1940, Joseph Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund's Lands Settlement Department, wrote in his diary:

Ruth Smeeth, described in one US memo published by Wikileaks as a Protected Asset of the United States.  A hard line Zionist, she lied about anti-racist activist Marc Wadsworth whom Corbyn failed to defend

There is no way besides transferring the Arabs from here to the neighboring countries, and to transfer all of them, save perhaps for [the Arabs of] Bethlehem, Nazareth and Old Jerusalem. Not one village must be left, not one [bedouin] tribe. And only after this transfer will the country be able to absorb millions of our brothers and the Jewish problem will cease to exist. There is no other solution."

In December 2018 Nandy became Chair of the invisible Labour Friends of Palestine. In an article outlining her plans as the new Chair, Nandy waxed lyrical about the oppression that the Palestinians faced.

How is it that Nandy, who wrote eloquently about ‘families humiliated at checkpoints on a daily basis and the denial of basic medical care’ and in support of an arms embargo could also support the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign directed against Corbyn and supporters of the Palestinians?

Labour Party policy on Palestine as passed by the 2021 Conference

Nandy’s condemnation of the Palestine motion passed at Labour Party conference was a further example of how she is prepared to sell the Palestinians down the river if it benefits her career. He condemnation was of course supported by Starmer, who had previously declared that he is a ‘Zionist without qualification.’

As someone who always believes in the best in people I thought I should write a personal letter to Nandy expressing my disappointment and hoping that she had been misquoted. After all Nandy can't want people to think that the only thing she is interested in is power for its own sake!

Open Letter to Lisa Nandy

Dear Lisa Nandy,

I am sure you will agree with me that consistency, honesty and integrity are qualities to be admired in a politician, rare as it might be to find such a person. I have looked in vain for any evidence that you possess any of these qualities.  Given your record to date you will understand why integrity, honesty and consistency are not the things that spring to mind when your name is mentioned.

However, since I always try to look for the best in a person I thought that if I wrote to you that you might help me in my endeavours.

My problems stem from the fact that in December 2018, when you  became Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine, you spoke movingly of your experiences visiting the West Bank. I hope I am not embarrassing you if I quote back to you what you said, as in today's climate in the Labour Party they may well be termed 'anti-Semitic' and get you suspended:

I met a three-year-old child whose house was surrounded by the Separation Wall and was growing up without daylight. I saw a 15-year-old shackled by the ankles, who had been held in administrative detention for months without any contact with his family, access to school or a lawyer. I saw families humiliated at checkpoints on a daily basis and the denial of basic medical care as a result…. After a decade working with some of the most marginalised children in the UK, I didn’t think I could be shocked anymore, but what I saw in the West Bank amounted to the deliberate destruction of the hopes of a generation.

You will be aware that the cry of ‘anti-Semitism’ is routinely used, not only against critics of Israel and Zionism but even against its friends who stray from the Zionist pth. The examples are legion. Even President Obama, who agree to the largest ever military aid to Israel, some $38 billion over 10 years, was labelled an ‘anti-Semite’ for having the temerity to abstain on a UN resolution condemning Israel’s illegal settlements.

The accusation that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism is a catchphrase of the Right, from President Macron of France to Mike Pompei, Trump’s Christian fundamentalist Secretary of State. It is a lie that has become part of the West’s imperialist narrative. As Goebbels noted if you “Repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth”

What surprised me most about this fake narrative was how yesterday’s racists, such as Tom Watson and John Mann, were born again opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’. How is this possible?

Who would have thought that Watson, who ‘lost sleep thinking about poor old Phil Woolas and his leaflets’ was the same Watson who declared that he wouldn’t rest until the last anti-Semite had been driven out of the Labour Party? This was the same Tom Watson who, as campaign manager in the Birmingham Hodshrove by-election in 2004 had issued a leaflet "Labour is on your side, the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers."

The Feeble Five Labour Leadership Candidates

You will I am sure remember Woolas and the campaign he ran in Oldham. The campaign strategy was‘making the White folk angry’. John Mann, the ‘anti-Semitism Czar’ (a fitting title) was also angry at the ‘injustice’ to Phil Woolas as was Steve McCabe, the current Chair of Labour Friends of Israel.

Following the suspension of Woolas, after not before, the High Court removed him from the House of Commons, John Pienaar revealed that a mutiny took place during the weekly meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party. Harriet Harman, the acting leader of the party was called a ‘disgrace’ for suspending this vile racist. These are the same people who carried the flag for the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign five years later.

Indeed John Mann went even further. No stauncher defender of Israel and Zionism is there than Mann. He is infamous for his bullying confrontation  with Ken Livingstone for having referred to how the Nazis and the Zionists got on like a house on fire in the 1930s. It was the same John Mann who wrote a handbook on anti-social behaviour which described Gypsies and Roma as examples of anti-social behaviour, an asocial pest to be excluded from polite society.  

In the section on ‘Travellers’ there was ‘a big, bold strapline saying “the Police have powers to remove any gypsies and travellers”. If John Mann or the Labour Right had any sense of history they might recall that it wasn’t only the Jews who died in the Nazi death camps but Gypsies too and in much the same proportions.

Don’t you think it is strange that the most rabidly racist section of the PLP were also the most ardent opponents of ‘anti-Semitism’ under Jeremy Corbyn? Why do you think it is that the mass media, from the Mail and the Sun to the BBC and LBC, were united in condemning ‘anti-Semitism’ when they have all played their part in whipping up hatred against Black and Muslims in this country?

But you also played your part in stirring the ‘anti-Semitism’ cauldron. In your imitation of a nodding dog, in an interview with Andrew Neil in 2020, Rachel Cousins was quoted by Neil as a ‘prominent Labour activist’ who had tweeted that the Board of Deputies were ‘Conservative backers’, which is a statement of fact. The Board welcomed the anti-Semitic White Supremacist Donald Trump to power but not Corbyn to the Labour leadership.

Rachel demanded that the BOD condemn all Israeli military atrocities in the West Bank. Neil then asked you ‘is that anti-Semitic?’ to which you answered – ‘yes, it is’.

Forgive me if I am slightly puzzled but that is always what happens when non-Jews profess to be such experts on ‘anti-Semitism’. Perhaps you could tell me, being Jewish, exactly what was anti-Semitic about calling on the BOD to condemn Israel’s military atrocities? This is the same Board which has supported each and every Israeli attack on the Palestinians. 

When Israeli snipers mowed down unarmed Palestinian civilians in Gaza the Board was on hand to defend Israel. When Israel attacked Gaza earlier this year the BOD immediately issued a statement of support. It even organised a demonstration of support (which Tommy Robinson, that well known opponent of racism, attended). Indeed Robinson was welcomed like a hero.

One of the most striking thing about support for Israel today is how the strongest supporters of Zionism, from Viktor Orban and Steve Bannon to neo-Nazi Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson, come from the White Supremacist far-Right. Don't you think that is strange? How is it that the most racist and anti-Semitic elements in society are also those who are most opposed to 'anti-Semitism'?

But I digress. The BOD has support for Israel embedded in its constitution. Why then should Rachel Cousin’s call for the Board to criticise Israel’s military reign of terror, which you yourself once opposed, be anti-Semitic?

Given your previous role as Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that you are a prime example of a hypocrite who will say and do anything in order to advance her career.

Lisa Nandy's idea of 'balance' is to support both the victims of Israeli apartheid and the supporters of apartheid!

Given your strong condemnation, as Chair of LFP, of Israel’s reign of terror in the West Bank, I would have assumed that you would have welcomed the Young Labour motion on Palestine which was passed by the most recent Labour Party conference.

The motion called for support for the ‘international campaign to stop annexation and end apartheid.’ It was only this year that B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch concluded that Israel is practising the crime of apartheid. How can there be any doubt about this? It is a statement of fact.

You yourself condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinian children whereas Jewish children living in the settlements receive entirely different treatment. They aren’t arrested in the middle of the night, blindfolded, shackled and beaten? How can this be anything than racism and apartheid? Or were you also ‘anti-Semitic’ at one time?

The motion condemned

‘the ongoing Nakba in Palestine, Israel’s militarised violence attacking the Al Aqsa mosque, the forced displacements from Sheikh Jarrah and the deadly assault on Gaza.’ 

 ‘International Criminal Court decision to hold an inquiry into abuses committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territories since 2014.’

as well as calling for ‘stopping any arms trade used to violate Palestinian human rights and trade with illegal Israeli settlements’ and to ‘support “effective measures” including sanctions’ against Israel, as well as supporting the Right of Return. It also called for an end to the occupation of the West Bank, the blockade of Gaza and the demolition of the Apartheid Wall.

The Board of Deputies held its first ever 'anti-racist' demonstration in 2018 - against Jeremy Corbyn. Against the National Front and Oswald Moseley it advised Jews to stay at home!

Finding nothing that you could disagree with in the motion you declared that the Labour leadership ‘cannot support pro Palestine motion’ at conference because the motion 'does not address the issues in a comprehensive or balanced way'.

Perhaps I am naïve but didn’t South Africa in the days of Apartheid also condemn the attacks on it as ‘one sided’? Today the Saudi regime makes similar criticisms of UN resolutions on Yemen. Would you would have insisted, as many in the West did, on a ‘balanced’ approach to the Nazis’  treatment of the Jews prior to 1939?

What does ‘balance’ mean when there is a choice between good and evil? It can only mean conniving in the perpetuation of injustice. Turning a blind eye to evil. That and that alone is the real meaning of your weasel words. As Martin Luther King observed, 

‘The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.’

In days gone by even Sir Keith supported the Palestinians 

I realise that hope must spring eternal in your breast as you look upon the walking disaster that goes by the name of Keith Starmer. It cannot be but a matter of time before Starmer, whose performance as Labour leader resembles Ian Duncan Smith’s leadership of the Tory Party, is removed. Ambition seems to be the only quality you have. But as Shakespeare noted in Hamlet ‘The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.’

At the hustings for Labour candidates in the leadership campaign you described yourself as a Zionist. You said that:

“I believe that Jewish people have the right to national self-determination. That makes me a zionist.”

Zionism was a political ideology and movement that sought to create a 'Jewish' state in Palestine. The first Zionists weren't Jewish.  They were Protesetants. Lords Shaftesbury and Palmerstone, George Elliot, Napoleon, Ernest Laharanne.  In essence western imperialists who wanted a 'Jewish' settler state to safeguard their imperialist interests, notably the Suez Canal and the route to India.

Zionism has nothing to do with Jewish 'self determination'.  Zionism never claimed to be such a movement. It saw itself as a colonising movement, hence why Zionists organisations such as the Jewish Colonisation Agency were set up. Of course today, with movements for racial justice  and national liberation, Zionists want to be part of the zeitgeist.  They use the language of the left in defence of their colonising project much as the Jewish National Fund, whose sole purpose is to effect ethnic cleansing, has taken to describing itself as an ecological movement.

It never ceases to amaze me that those who shout loudest about ‘anti-Semitism’ are usually the worst anti-Semites. When you say that Jews are entitled to 'self determination' what you mean is that Jews don't belong in the countries where they live.

Unfortunately  Palestine Solidarity Campaign thinks it advances the Palestinian cause to put Zionists on its platforms

When Zionism first arose, its fiercest opponents were themselves Jewish.  They saw in Zionism a form of Jewish anti-Semitism, which is not surprising since most anti-Semites - from the anti-Dreyfusard leader Edouard Drumont to Williams Evans-Gordon, the founder of the British Brothers League and Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party's main theoretician, all supported Zionism.

The reaction of Lucien Wolf, Secretary of the Conjoint Foreign Committee of the Board of Deputies to the idea that Jews constituted a separate nation from other British people was typical:

I have spent most of my life in combating these very doctrines, when presented to me in the form of anti-Semitism, and I can only regard them as the more dangerous when they come to me in the guise of Zionism. They constitute a capitulation to our enemies.’ [i]

---

[i]            B Destani (ed) The Zionist movement and the foundation of Israel 1839-1972, p.727.

The only people who are entitled to national self-determination are oppressed nations. The Jews are neither oppressed nor a nation. Jews speak a variety of languages and live in a multiplicity of countries.

In other words, in adopting the Zionist creed you have also adopted the anti-Semites belief that Jews are not really British. 

Rest assured Lisa that it may well be that the Labour Party deserves you as a leader. Today it seems as if the only person fit to lead the Labour Party is someone totally lacking in principle and whose only distinguishing characteristic is a willingness to say anything if it pleases the British Establishment.

Yours as ever,

Tony Greenstein