Zionist Lawfare in the UK

The Zionist smear campaign against the pro-Palestinian, socialist leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, has reached a whole new level, that of lawfare:

"Britain's equality watchdog has said it believes Labour may have 'unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs' as it announced the first step of a statutory inquiry into the party's handling of antisemitism complaints. The party said it would cooperate with the regulator, while its increasingly outspoken deputy leader, Tom Watson, called on party officials to ensure no emails or records were deleted.

"An Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) spokesperson said: 'Having received a number of complaints regarding antisemitism in the Labour party, we believe Labour may have unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious beliefs. Our concerns are sufficient for us to consider using our statutory enforcement powers. As set out in our enforcement policy, we are now engaging with the Labour party to give them an opportunity to respond.'

"The regulator's announcement followed legal complaints made by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA)* and the Jewish Labour Movement** last year, which have argued that the party was not compliant with equalities law. The move is the first step in an investigatory process by the EHRC, and if the regulator concludes Labour has a case to answer it could go on to open a full inquiry under section 20 of the Equalities Act 2006." (Labour antisemitism equalities watchdog opens investigation, Dan Sabbagh, theguardian.com, 7/3/19)

"May have"?

So why then, on the EHRC's website, do the in-text quotes above appear under the heading "Antisemitism in the Labour Party: our response to complaints"? Shouldn't that be Alleged Antisemitism in the Labour Party... ?

I mean, if the word alleged isn't automatically used in the EHRC's reference to complaints, what confidence can one have in this body's inquiry into the matter? Where is the presumption of innocence here?

[*The CAA has been described by UK anti-Zionist activist Tony Greenstein as "a British propaganda organization and registered charity that specializes in defaming Palestinian solidarity campaigners." (Antisemitism is a campaign against Palestinians, The Electronic Intifada, 20/3/17);**The JLM has ties to the Israeli embassy.]

The Dark History of Labour Racism

The latest absolute must-read from Jonathan Cook on British Labour's civil war and the sorry history of its institutional Zionist racism:

"An announcement this week by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that it is considering splitting from the British Labour Party could not have come at a worse time for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is already besieged by claims that he is presiding over a party that has become 'institutionally anti-semitic'. The threats by the JLM should be seen as part of concerted efforts to oust Corbyn from the leadership. They follow on the heels of a decision by a handful of Labour MPs last month to set up a new faction called the Independent Group. They, too, cited anti-semitism as a major reason for leaving.

"On the defensive, Corbyn was prompted to write to the JLM expressing his and the shadow cabinet's 'very strong desire for you to remain a part of our movement'. More than 100 Labour MPs, including members of the front bench, similarly pleaded with the JLM not to disaffiliate. They apologised for 'toxic racism' in the party and for 'letting our Jewish supporters and members down'. Their letter noted that the JLM is 'the legitimate and long-standing representative of Jews in the Labour party' and added that the MPs recognised the importance of 'calling out those who seek to make solidarity with our Jewish comrades a test of foreign policy'.

"That appeared to be a swipe at Corbyn himself, who is the first leader of a British political party to prioritise Palestinian rights over the UK's ties to an Israeli state that has been oppressing Palestinians for decades. Only this week the Labour leader renewed his call for Britain to halt arms sales to Israel following a UN report that said the Israeli army's shooting of Palestinian protesters in Gaza's Great March of Return could amount to war crimes.

"Despite the media attention, all the evidence suggests that Labour does not have a problem of 'institutional anti-semitism', or even a problem of anti-semitism above the marginal racism towards Jews found in the wider British population. Figures show only 0.08% of Labour members have been disciplined for anti-semitism.

"Also largely ignored by the British media, and Corbyn's opponents, is the fact that a growing number of Jews are publicly coming out in support for him and discounting the claims of an 'epidemic' anti-semitism problem. Some 200 prominent Jews signed a letter to the Guardian newspaper calling Corbyn 'a crucial ally in the fight against bigotry and reaction. His lifetime record of campaigning for equality and human rights, including consistent support for initiatives against antisemitism, is formidable.' At the same time, a new organisation, Jewish Voice for Labour, has been established to underscore that there are progressive Jews who welcome Corbyn's leadership.

"In the current hysterical climate, however, no one seems interested in the evidence or these dissenting voices. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that Corbyn and his supporters are on the back foot as they face losing from Labour an affiliate group of 2,000 members who represent a section of the UK's Jewish community.

"But paradoxically, the loss of the JLM may be inevitable if Labour is serious about becoming a party that opposes racism in all its forms, because the JLM has proved that it is incapable of meeting that simple standard. While the Labour Party has been dragged into an increasingly fractious debate about whether anti-Zionism - opposition to Israel as a Jewish state - equates to anti-semitism, everyone has been distracted from that elephant in the room. In fact, it is political Zionism, at least in the hardline form adopted by groups such as the JLM that is racism - towards Palestinians.

"Zionism, we should recall, required the ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians to engineer a 'Jewish state' on the ruins of Palestinians' homeland. It fuelled Israel's hunger for an enlarged territory that led to it occupying the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and further dispossessing the Palestinians through illegal settlement building. Zionism has made it impossible for any Israeli government to offer meaningful concessions to Palestinians on statehood to create the conditions necessary for peace. It has justified policies that view 'mixing between the races' - between Jews and Palestinians - as dangerous 'miscegenation' and 'assimilation'. Furthermore, Zionism has kept Israel's Palestinian citizens a segregated minority, hemmed up in their own ghettoised communities, denied rights to almost all land in Israel, and corralled into their own separate and massively inferior school system.

"All of these policies were instituted by Israel's Labor Party, the sister organisation of the JLM in Britain. The JLM not only refuses to oppose these policies, but effectively shields Israel from criticism about them from within Britain's Labour Party. The JLM remained mute on the structural violence of Israel's occupying army, and the systemic racism - encoded in Israel's laws - towards the fifth of its population who are Palestinian citizens. Meanwhile, the JLM's mother body, the World Zionist Organization, has a division that - to this day - finances the establishment and expansion of settlements in the West Bank, in violation of international law.

"Added to this, an Al-Jazeera undercover documentary broadcast in 2017 showed that the JLM was covertly working with an Israeli government official, Shai Masot, to damage Corbyn because of his pro-Palestinian positions. Israel, remember, has for the last decade equated to the ultra-nationalist government of Benjamin Netanyahu. His coalition allies seek not a two-state solution, but the takeover of most of the occupied territories and ultimately their annexation, again in violation of international law. Ella Rose was appointed director of the JLM in 2016, straight from a post at the Israeli embassy. Times - and politics - move on. The JLM is a relic of a period when it was possible to claim to be anti-racist while turning a blind eye to the oppression of the Palestinian people. Social media and Palestinians armed with camera phones - not just Corbyn - have made that evasion no longer possible. Labour giving pride of place to groups such as the JLM or Labour Friends of Israel - to which 80 of its MPs proudly belong - is, in the current circumstances, as obscene as it would have been 40 years ago for British parties to host their own Friends of South Africa groups.

"The Labour Party bureaucracy is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the modern world by its members, who have felt liberated by Corbyn's leadership and his history of supporting all kinds of anti-racism struggles, including the Palestinian one. While Britain has major and pressing issues to tackle, from dealing with its exit from Europe to imminent climate collapse, Labour's energies have been sidetracked into a civil war about Israel, of all things. The old guard want to be allowed to support Israel, even as it heads towards full-blown fascism, while much of the membership want to dissociate from what looks increasingly like another apartheid state - and one whose leaders are seeking to stoke a conflict across a volatile region.

"Israel's most ardent supporters, and Corbyn's enemies, in Labour will play dirty to protect Israel and their own role from scrutiny, as they have been doing all along. The JLM led moves last year to divide the party by insisting that Labour redefine anti-semitism to include criticism of Israel. Rumblings of dissatisfaction from the JLM will be cited as further evidence of the membership's anti-semitism, because that is the most powerful weapon they have to silence criticism of Israel and deflect attention away from their role in shielding Israel from proper scrutiny within Labour.

"In 1944 - four years before Israel's creation - Labour's annual conference recommended that the natives of Palestine, a large majority population, be ethnically cleansed to advance the goals of European Zionists colonizing their land. The resolution declared: 'Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out, as the Jews move in.' That is what Israel did by expelling 750,000 Palestinians, more than 80% of the Palestinian population, in events we now call the Nakba (Catastrophe).

"For decades after Israel's creation, Labour Party members happily travelled to Israel to toil in agricultural communities, such as the kibbutz, that were built on stolen Palestinian land and which, to this day, refuse to allow any of the country's 1.7 million Palestinian citizens to live in them. In a speech in 1972, after Israel seized yet more Palestinian lands, including East Jerusalem, Labour leader Harold Wilson urged Israel to hold on to these conquered territories: 'Israel's reaction is natural and proper in refusing to accept the Palestinians as a nation.'

"This is the dark, dishonourable underbelly of Labour racism, and the party's decades-long support for colonialism in the Middle East. Labour created a hierarchy of racisms, in which hatred towards Jews enjoyed star billing while racism towards some other groups, most especially Palestinians, barely registered.

"Under Corbyn and a much-expanded membership, these prejudices are being challenged in public for the first time - and that is unjustifiably making the party an 'unsafe' space for groups such as the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel, which hang on to outdated, hardline Zionist positions. The JLM's claim to speak for all Jews in Labour has been challenged by anti-racist Jews like those of the Jewish Voice for Labour. Their efforts to defend Corbyn and Labour's record have been widely ignored by the media or, encouraged by JLM, dismissed as 'downplaying' anti-semitism.

The JLM's discomfort may be unfortunate, but it cannot be avoided. It is the price to be paid for the continuing battle by progressives to advance universal rights and defeat racism. This battle has been waged since the Universal declaration of Human Rights was published in 1948 - paradoxically, the year Israel was established by violating the core principles of that declaration.

"Israel's racism towards Palestinians has been indulged by Labour too long. Now history is catching up with Israel, and with groups such as the JLM. Labour MPs have a choice. They can stand on the wrong side of history, battling the tide like some modern King Canute, or they can recognise that it is time to fully enter the modern era - and that means embracing a programme of anti-racism that encompasses everyone, including Jews and Palestinians. (Labour's civil war on Israel has been a long time coming, middleeasteye.net, 7/3/19)

Thought of the Day

"Isn't it odd? No-one gave a shit about anti-Semitism before Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader... except Jeremy Corbyn."

A Modern Witch Hunt

Over 100 years ago, political Zionism unobtrusively entered British politics with the deceptively worded, thoroughly deceitful, Balfour Declaration, which declared that "His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people..." Who at the time could possibly have imagined that, as a direct consequence of that disastrous foreign policy blunder, Britain today would be witnessing (in addition to the protracted agony of the Palestinians) the deplorable phenomenon so lucidly analysed below by British journalist Jonathan Cook?

"'McCarthyism' is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning - and horror - has been increasingly obscured. McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination - denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance. McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.

"In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women. And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour Party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism.

"Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party's MPs, who hanker for the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre.

"Corbyn's success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour Party - some 80 MPs are stalwart members of Labour Friends of Israel - and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians' right to justice over Israel's continuing oppression of the Palestinians. For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership contest and then by assisting the corporate media - which is equally opposed to Corbyn - in smearing him variously as a shambles, a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an 'enabler' of anti-semitism.

"This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition, formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism - opposition to Israel's violent creation on the Palestinians' homeland - with anti-semitism.

"Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being 'institutionally anti-semitic', 'endemically anti-semitic' and a 'cesspit of anti-semitism'. The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation to be groundless. The figures show that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life. Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head dangerously on the political right. But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war - a policy of 'zero tolerance' - to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed 'hard left' given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.

"This is the context for understanding Williamson's 'crime'. Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic. One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics yesterday in trying to prove Williamson's anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a 'Jew baiter' because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.

"Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed his guilt to the inquisitors.

"First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour 'anti-semitism crisis', he argued that the party had been 'too apologetic' in dealing with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party. In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed dealing with what he called the 'scourge of anti-semitism', and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn't 'institutionally anti-semitic'. Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.

"As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn, noted: 'The flood of exaggerated claims of anti-semitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to.'

"As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power. So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches. He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson's statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.

"Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker. He had booked a room in the British parliament building - the seat of our supposed democracy - so that audiences could see a new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims. The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn. Walker was seen as a pivotal figure by those opposed to Corbyn. She was a co-founder of Momentum, the grassroots organisation established to support Corbyn after his election to the leadership and deal with the inevitable fallout from the Blairite wing of MPs. Momentum expected a rough ride from this dominant faction, and they were not disappointed. The Blairites still held on to the party machinery and they had an ally in Tom Watson, who became Corbyn's deputy. Walker was one of the early victims of the confected claims of a Labour 'anti-semitism crisis'. But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She fought back.

"First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour Party bureaucracy - framed in the context of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west - called The Lynching. And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt. It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour's closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party. For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the 'witches' they have hunted down. But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.

"Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn's, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was 'outed' last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party 'into disrepute'.

"Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn's solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a 'zero tolerance' policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.

"But as the battle in Labour has intensified to redefine anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, the deeper issues at stake have come to the fore. John Lansman, another founder of Momentum, recently stated: 'I don't want any Jewish member of the party to be leaving. We are absolutely committed to making Labour a safe space'. But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the 'institutional anti-semitism' and 'zero tolerance' narratives.

"First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party's Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed. A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour Party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception.

"That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert efforts by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public view.

"The MPs loudest about 'institutional anti-semitism' in Labour were among those abandoning the party to join the Independent Group this month, preferring to ally with renegade conservative MPs in an apparent attempt to frustrate a Corbyn-led party winning power.

"Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour Party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance any meaningful curbs on Israel's abuses of Palestinians - and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM and LFI - then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism of Israel. It will tie the party's hands on supporting Palestinian rights. In the name of protecting the Israel 'right or wrong' crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have to provide institutional support for Israel's racism towards Palestinians.

"In doing so, it will in fact simply revert to the party before Corbyn, when Labour turned a blind eye over many decades to the Palestinians' dispossession by European Zionists who created an ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one's ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship. Those in Labour who reject Britain's continuing complicity in such crimes - ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration - will find as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.

"If the creation of a 'safe space' for Jews in the Labour Party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles. Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that everything and anything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

"This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.

"Right now, the establishment - represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of MI6 - is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.

"While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a 'pattern of behaviour' in Williamson's efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10. Corbyn's allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him. Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly. If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest." (The witchfinders are now ready to burn Corbyn, jonathan-cook.net/blog)

Plague? What Plague?

Judging by the anti-Corbyn corporate media, you could be forgiven for thinking that those who recently left the UK Labour Party and set up a body known as The Independent Group (TIG) - now 8, having just been joined by Joan Ryan MP (chair of Labour Friends of Israel!) - were motivated first and foremost by the foul contagion of anti-Semitism, spreading like wildfire among party members.

Murdoch's Times, for example, ran a report by Daniel Finkelstein, headed Labour Party plagued by political preachers of hate (The Times/The Australian, 21/2/19)*

And yet, if you go to TIG's website, and click on their statement (of 11 principles), the plague of anti-Semitism supposedly afflicting the party doesn't even rate a mention! (theindependent.group/statement)

And if you go to the Labour Party website, LabourList, you can read that "the party received 673 accusations of antisemitism by Labour members between April 2018 and January 2019," involving just 96 individuals, only 12 of whom "were expelled," following investigations by the party's National Executive Committee (NEC).** (See Jennie Formby provides numbers on Labour antisemitism cases, Sienna Rodgers, labourlist.org, 11/2/19)

The revelation that "[t]hese figures relate to about 0.1% of our membership," according to Labour general secretary Jennie Formby, who released the data so that it could not be "misrepresented or misused for other purposes by the party's political rivals," really says it all. (ibid)

Plague of ant-Semitism? Pull the other...

[*For Daniel Finkelstein, see my 12/2/19 post Games Zionists Play;**I hasten to add here that, absent the details, we really have no idea whether the NEC got it right when it decided to expel the 12.]

IHRA's 'Working Definition' of Anti-Semitism

In the propaganda war aimed at UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters in the party by his Blairite enemies, the false allegation of anti-Semitism has pride of place. Which begs the question: what, exactly, do these elements mean when they use the term? What, IOW, is their definition - if they actually have one - of anti-Semitism?

As often as not it will be the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) 'working definition' of anti-Semitism, which widens the scope of the term well beyond its traditional meaning of hatred of Jews simply because they are Jews to include criticism of Israel. The following history of that text, and how it came to be adopted by the British government, comes from a British judge, Stephen Sedley:

"In 2005 a working party of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, an EU institution, produced a forty-word 'working definition': Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

"It was followed by a series of examples, of unknown authorship, which, depending on their context, might constitute acts of anti-Semitism. Of the 11 examples, seven referred to Israel rather than to Jews. But both the definition and the illustrations were rejected by the EUMC, and in 2013 its successor, the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA), removed the entire text from its website as part of a clear-out of non-official documents.

"In May 2016 the same text was adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a Berlin-based association of 31 states, at its meeting in Bucharest. To it were added, in the IHRA's press release, the list of 11 examples [...]

"In December 2016, a press release from the Department for Communities and Local Government and the prime minister's office announced that the UK had 'formally' adopted the IHRA's working definition of anti-Semitism, setting out the forty-word definition without any of the associated examples. It is not known what 'formal' adoption means in constitutional terms: either a text has to take legislative form, with all that this entails, or it remains simply a policy. On the same day Jeremy Corbyn announced that the Labour Party was adopting the definition.

"In neither of these announcements were the tendentious illustrations included. But central government has cited them as grounds for rejecting the advice of the Home Affairs Committee that the 'definition' should be qualified by spelling out that in the absence of additional evidence of anti-Semitic intent, it is not anti-Semitic to criticise Israel's government, to hold it to the same standard as other liberal democracies or to take a particular interest in its policies or actions. A number of municipalities, including London, Manchester and Birmingham, have adopted the list wholesale - London, among others, using a version which omits the proviso that the listed examples depend on their context.

"What is at issue is suggested by the prime minister's contemporaneous speech, quoted in the government's press release: 'Israel guarantees the rights of people of all religions, races and sexualities, and it wants to enable everyone to flourish.' From this it isn't far to the first of the 'examples' of anti-Semitism: 'Manifestations could also target the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.' Leaving aside the difference between targeting and criticism, one asks: conceived by whom? The world at large, millions of Jews included, conceives of Israel as a state with the same rights and obligations as any other state, including an obligation not to extend its territory by incremental colonisation or to occupy and administer the land of others under military law. It is hardline Zionism, and hardline jihadism which coincide, as extremes tend to do, in regarding Israel as a 'Jewish collectivity' - jihadism by seeking to identify Israel with all Jews (making every Jew a legitimate terrorist target), Zionism by seeking to identify all Jews with Israel (whence the description of Israel's Jewish critics as 'self-hating').

"None of this is addressed by a definition which sets the bar needlessly high by stipulating hatred rather than simple hostility as the defining characteristic of anti-Semitism, nor by tendentious examples which look to immunise Israel from sharp criticism. Those who seek to make use of such material in the UK should perhaps remember that public authorities are bound by the Human Rights Act to give effect to Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right of free expression subject only to restrictions prescribed by law - which the IHRA definition is not."

The above history, as well as Sedley's essay Defining Anti-Semitism can be found in the London Review of Books (4/5/17 & 8/2/18 respectively), or in Karl Sabbagh's go-to book on the subject of the campaign against anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party, The Antisemitism Wars: How the British Media Failed their Public (2018).

Jeremy Corbyn & the 7 Dwarfs

A group of 7 MPs have just announced their resignation from the UK Labour Party, setting up a so-called Independent Group. This has been long expected. (See in particular my 3/8/18 post Lord Balfour Sabotages Britain's Labour Party. )

One of them, Angela Smith, in the course of a BBC television panel discussion of racism in the UK, blurted out all we really need to know about the 7 dwarfs: 'The recent history of the party I've just left suggests [racism] is not just about being black or... a funny tinge... but... the Jewish community equally."

No surprise then that 5 of its members, including Smith, are "supporters" of Israeli embassy front group, Labour Friends of Israel. Palestinians, presumably, in addition to the crime of not buckling to the Zionist project in their ancestral homeland, could also be marginalised as "funny tinged."

This mix of racism and Zionism, of course, will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the history of the Zionist movement, and, in particular, those notorious words of its founder, Theodor Herzl: "The anti-Semites will become our most dependable friends."

And just look at how the congenitally Zionist Guardian (to focus on just one establishment media outlet) leapt on the 7 dwarfs' bandwagon, leveling yet more false smears of anti-Semitism against Jeremy Corbyn and his party. This, for example, is from today's editorial:

"It is no secret that many, probably most, Labour MPs wish someone other than Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Many Labour MPs wish that Mr Corbyn would make the case for Britain in Europe, and that he did not equivocate about antisemitism in the party."

And this is from an opinion piece by Labour peer, Andrew (Lord) Adonis:

"Corbyn must treat antisemitism as an evil to be ruthlessly defeated. No one who expresses prejudice against Jewish people or the existence of Israel - including those who try to hide behind semantics when we all know exactly what they are talking about - has any place in our party. Corbyn has too many supporters and allies who are antisemitic. They must leave the party and Corbyn should require them to do so. Corbyn must give a speech deploring not just 'all forms of racism' but the particular horror of hatred of Jews." (If Corbyn doesn't want the Labour split to worsen, he has to listen, Andrew Adonis, 19/2/19)

But then what would you expect from the Guardian?

It should never be forgotten that the renowned editor of the Manchester Guardian (as it was known in 1917), C.P. Scott, editorialised, on the occasion of the issuing of the Balfour Declaration, that "the Jews... have succeeded in establishing the beginnings of a real civilisation [in Palestine]," and were "making the waste places blossom as the rose," while "the existing Arab population... is small and at a low stage of civilisation... " (See my 2/7/17 post The Balfour Declaration Centenary: 4 Months to Go.)

Scratch the 7 dwarfs - or 5 of them at least - and you'll get racism and/or Zionism. Scratch the liberal Guardian and you'll invariably get a Zionist perspective on Palestine.

Games Zionists Play

Look at this paragraph by Daniel Finklelstein, described as "an editor and columnist with The Times".

(He's reviewing Deborah Lipstadt's Antisemitism: Here & Now, presumably for The Times, but it's just been recycled in The Weekend Australian Review under the capitalised headline NO DENYING IT, above a half-page photo of Arab demonstrators in Sydney carrying a large banner bearing an image of Netanyahu with a superimposed Hitler mustache and the word 'fascist' in English and Hebrew. And this in protest at Israel's serial Guernicas in Gaza. But I digress from the paragraph below.)

"[S]he stops short of calling either Trump or Corbyn anti-Semites. 'I don't know if either of these men is an antisemite, which is to say he harbours personal contempt for Jews'. This makes it all the more effective when she adds: 'While neither of them may be, both of them have facilitated the spread of antisemitism - they are directly responsible for the legitimisation of explicit hostility towards Jews'." (9/2/19)

If Finkelstein's review is anything to go by, Lipstadt's book seems merely part and parcel of the current Zionist campaign to cruel UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's election prospects by smearing his support for Palestinian rights as anti-Semitism.

As for the paragraph...

First, there's the obscene bracketing of Corbyn with Trump, the former a decent man of high principle, who has fought against racism all his life, the latter an unalloyed, narcissistic thug. And both in the same dock as far as their self-appointed judge and jury is concerned.

Then there's the statement, "I don't know if either... is an antisemite." This is along the lines of the classic loaded question, 'When did you last stop beating your wife?'

Following that comes the only ray of light in Lipstadt's utterance, the admission that anti-Semitism is "harbouring a personal contempt for Jews." I couldn't agree more. Ipso facto then, any forthright questioning, condemnation, or rejection of Israel, its Zionist ideology, or its practice, is clearly not anti-Semitic. Let me reiterate: anti-Semitism is hatred for Jews simply because they are Jews. Nothing more. Nothing less.

But no, Lipstadt cannot leave it there. "[B]oth of them" - the obscene juxtaposition continues - "have facilitated the spread of antisemitism..."

In what way?

Finkelstein cites a 2007 meeting with Palestinian-Israeli Islamist Raed Salah and quotes Lipstadt as saying of Corbyn "it seems that when he encounters [people like Salah], their Jew-hatred is irrelevant..." Presumably, and ludicrously, Corbyn is supposed to subject every one he meets to a McCarthy-style third degree: 'Are you now, or have you ever been, anti-Semitic?'

Meanwhile, Lipstadt's dark insinuations serve to distract many from the Zionist entity's ongoing crimes in Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. Could that be their ancillary purpose?

I Read the Herald Today, Oh Boy

I see that Nine Entertainment Co. rag The Sydney Morning Herald is crowing about polling that shows that its "readership has surged ahead of its News Corp rivals after the way digital and newspaper audiences are measured was changed to better take into account growing consumption on mobile devices." (Herald moves further ahead in readership, 21/1/19)

But what exactly are readers 'consuming'?

Among other things, chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies Vic Alhadeff''s account of his recent junket in Germany as a "guest of the German Foreign Ministry" (Confronting Germany's new generation of neo-Nazis, 19/1/19).

Parenthetically, just why the German government would be squandering its taxpayers' money on a Zionist shill from down under is anyone's guess.

After informing us that "German Jews - who include an estimated 30,000 Israelis - are overwhelmingly positive, while profoundly concerned at the emergence of the AfD [Alternative for Deutschland]" party, which includes "neo-Nazi elements," he proceeds to tell us that "3600 British Jews have applied for German citizenship in the event Jeremy Corbyn becomes that country's prime minister."

Now before you exclaim, 'the mind boggles', remember that what you're dealing with here is a typical propaganda trick: cherry-picked facts taken out of context.

Here's The Times report on the subject:

"Thousands of British Jews have applied for foreign passports since 2016, driven mainly by a desire to retain EU citizenship after Brexit but also by fears over rising antisemitism and the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn coming to power. New figures obtained by The Times show that more than 3,600 Britons have applied for German nationality under a 2015 scheme inviting the descendants of those driven out on religious, racial or political grounds by the Nazis to reclaim citizenship, with most applications from Jewish people." (British Jews apply for foreign passports as 'insurance policy', Kaya Burgess, 17/11/18)

"... driven mainly by a desire to retain EU citizenship after Brexit... " says it all.

The UK Disease

It seems as though the drive-by smear of 'ANTISEMITE!', hurled relentlessly by Zionists at pro-Palestinian supporters of UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has now reached these shores, although emanating here from a most curious source:

"NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes has issued a stunning call-to-arms to save universities from what he sees as the twin threats of international students and 'anti-Semitic' left-wing activists." (Stokes' speech takes aim at foreign cash, 'safe spaces', Michael Koziol, Sydney Morning Herald, 22/10/18)

You really have to wonder who has been in Stokes' ear.

Remember when the term 'anti-Semite' meant anyone who hated Jews as Jews? Passe. It's now the Zionist weapon of choice for anyone who opposes Israeli apartheid and supports Palestinian rights.

Thoughts on UK Labour's 2018 Conference

I may be reading too much between the lines here but rather than tackle Zionist influence in the UK Labor Party directly, and making crystal clear the fundamental distinction between anti-Semitism on the one hand and anti-Zionism on the other, Jeremy Corbyn's speech to Labour's annual conference seems to be an attempt at wedging the hostile Zionist elements in the party.

He sought early in the speech to reassure British Jews that they had his full support as a veteran anti-racist campaigner. Dismissing the Labour component of the Zionist smear campaign against him and his party as merely a "row," he targeted instead "Tory hypocrites who accuse us of antisemitism one day, then endorse Viktor Orban's hard-right government the next." In addition, he studiously avoided all mention of Israel (despite, perhaps inadvertently, using the Zionist fiction that Jews constitute a "people"):

"The Jewish people have suffered a long and terrible history of persecution and genocide. I was humbled to see a memorial to that suffering two years ago, when I visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Terezin. The row over antisemitism has caused immense hurt and anxiety in the Jewish community and great dismay in the Labour Party. But I hope we can work together to draw a line under it. I say this to all in the Jewish community. This party, this movement, will always be implacable campaigners against antisemitism and racism in all its forms. We are your ally. And the next Labour government will guarantee whatever support necessary to ensure the security of Jewish community centres and places of worship, as we will for any other community experiencing hateful behaviour and physical attacks. We will work with Jewish communities to eradicate antisemitism, both from our party and wider society. And with your help I will fight for that with every breath I possess. Anti-racism is integral to our very being. It's part of who you all are, and it's part of who I am. So conference, we won't accept it when we're attacked by Tory hypocrites who accuse us of antisemitism one day, then endorse Viktor Orban's hard-right government the next. Or when they say we are racist, while they work to create a hostile environment for all migrant communities. We can never become complacent about the scourge of racism. Race hate is a growing threat that has to be confronted. Not just here in Britain, but across Europe and the United States. The far right is on the rise, blaming minorities, Jews, Muslims and migrants, for the failures of a broken economic system."

The Palestinians came later in the speech, when he addressed foreign policy matters:

"And let me next say a few words about the ongoing denial of justice and rights to the Palestinian people. Our Party is united in condemning the shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces and the passing of Israel's discriminatory Nation-State Law. The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage. We support a two-state solution to the conflict with a secure Israel and a viable and secure Palestinian state. But a quarter of a century on from the Oslo Accords we are no closer to justice or peace and the Palestinian tragedy continues, while the outside world stands by. As my great Israeli friend Uri Avnery who died this year put it: 'What is the alternative to peace? A catastrophe for both peoples'. And in order to help make that two-state settlement a reality we will recognise a Palestinian state as soon as we take office."

Underwhelming, yes, with its tired repetition of the two-state mantra. One wonders whether Corbyn here has made a strategic decision to stick with the international consensus, at least for the time being. Some joy, I suppose, could be had from his proviso of "a viable and secure Palestinian state," a formula clearly incompatible with Israel's expansionism in the West Bank and the ongoing Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Most encouragingly, the conference is reported to have passed a near unanimous motion calling for an immediate freeze on UK arms sales to Israel. (See Defying Israel lobby Labour votes for arms freeze, Asa Winstanley, electronicintifada, 26/9/18)

St Greg's Fartwa on Jeremy Corbyn.

Hark! Somewhere, deep within the bowels of News Corpse, something stirs, namely Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian, author of God is Good for You (2018), and knight errant for Israel.

And somewhere, deep within St Greg's bowels, something darker stirs, namely his latest fartwa, Corbyn's rise is a symptom of the West's infirmity (18/8/18).

Herewith, some only of its more mephitic odours:

"[L]et's be clear: Anning presents like a combination of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt compared with Corbyn."

And, while we're being clear - it has to be said! - Corbyn even makes Adolf Hitler, Genghis Khan, Dracula, and Tony Abbott look good.

Gnashing his teeth over "the increasingly ubiquitous dynamic of celebrity," St Greg pronounces that "by contradicting every tenet of common sense and political decency [Corbyn] became a star. He certainly stood out from politicians who may have been dull, but whose very dullness was evidence of a connection with reality."

A star, yes, but a dark one:

"Corbyn's addiction to conspiracy was not born of digital media. He is an analogue conspiracy believer and hater from way, way back. Which brings us to the matter of Jews and anti-Semitism. For 2000 years, indeed longer, Jews have been the centre of the most lurid conspiracy theories. From the false conviction of Alfred Dreyfus to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and countless other cases, Jews have been at the centre of baseless and viciously malign conspiracy theories.

"Many Christian individuals and institutions played horrible roles in anti-Semitism, while many Christians also opposed it. The past 20 years have seen a dangerous upsurge in anti-Semitism in the West. It has two sources. One is Islamist - even nonviolent Islamists and indeed much Muslim opinion generally. The other is the conspiracy mindset of contemporary left activism, especially as it focuses on Israel."

St Greg's fartwa continues, but with the following piccolo-like proviso:

"It is of course perfectly OK, and not remotely anti-Semitic, to criticise Israel."

(Funny that, coming from one who has never in his life criticised Israel! And who once vehemently dismissed the well-documented - including from Zionist archives - fact of Zionist ethnic cleansing in Palestine in 1948 as "all rubbish." See my 9/5/09 post Sheridan: Nakba Denier.)

No sooner had the piccolo - if I may refer to it thus - faded away than suddenly there came a sound from St Greg's nether regions as of a rushing mighty wind which filled all the house where he was sitting:

"But to apply standards to Israel that would never be applied to other nations, to accuse Israel of blatantly untrue crimes, to equate Jews automatically with all the policies of Israel, to equate Israel with Nazism, to criticise Israel in terms of traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes, to accuse Jews of having greater loyalty to Israel than to the nations of their citizenship, to generate such exaggerated hatred of Israel that it spills over into hostility to Jews, all of that is anti-Semitism. And supporting terrorists who kill innocent Jews is also anti-Semitism."

Verily, not even the cockroaches which rule the roost in the bowels of News Corpse could withstand such a wind as this! Yea, smitten were they and utterly destroyed.

As for the rest of the fartwa it was these two cheeky, shofar-like blasts in particular that knocked me to my knees:

"There are Jews whom Corbyn likes. If a Jew routinely execrates Israel and adopts every other far-left conspiracy-tinged political cause, Corbyn will be his friend."

How dare Corbyn not like Netanyahu, Lieberman et al. I mean, really now, what's not to like? Top blokes!

"Corbyn has equated Israel's presence in the West Bank with the military occupations of World War II. Such language automatically invokes Nazi images."

Far out! How dare Corbyn compare a mere 51-year Israeli "presence" in the West Bank with a German military occupation of 4 years! (Parenthetically, there's been an Israeli army base and half a dozen Israeli settlements, whose inhabitants have been running around with firebombs and chainsaws in my backyard for, like, forever, but, hey, I'm not complaining. After all, it's just a "presence," innit?)

Listen, Corbyn, you can run on your cloven hooves, but you can't hide, OK?

How to Talk to Benjamin Netanyahu

The latest turn of the screw in Israel's Operation Get Corbyn (which came in the wake of a Daily Mail beat-up, which came from... ):

"The laying of a wreath by Jeremy Corbyn on the graves [sic] of the terrorist who perpetrated the Munich massacre and his comparison of Israel to the Nazis deserves unequivocal condemnation from everyone - left, right and everything in between." (Benjamin Netanyahu tweet, 11/8/18)

And Corbyn's withering, tweeted response to this swaggering bully, the ideological heir to Irgun terrorist Menachem Begin:

"Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's claims about my actions and words are false. What deserves unequivocal condemnation is the killing of over 160 Palestinian protesters in Gaza by Israeli forces since March, including dozens of children. The nation state law sponsored by Netanyahu's government discriminates against Israel's Palestinian minority. I stand with the tens of thousands of Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel demonstrating for equal rights at the weekend in Tel Aviv."

Western 'leaders', accustomed to swooning at Netanyahu's feet, take note.

The Banality & Ubiquity of Evil

Former British diplomat Craig Murray reflects on those who smear anti-racists as anti-Semites:

"My world view changed forever, when, after 20 years in the Foreign Office, I saw colleagues I knew and liked go along with Britain's complicity in the most terrible tortures, as detailed stunningly in the recent Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Report. They also went along with keeping the policy secret, deliberately disregarding all normal record taking procedures, to the extent that the Committee noted: 131. We note that we have not seen the minutes of these meetings either: this causes us great concern. Policy discussions on such an important issue should have been minuted. We support Mr Murray's own conclusion that were it not for his actions these matters may never have come to light.

"The people doing these things were not ordinarily bad people; they were just trying to keep their jobs, comforting themselves with the thought that they were only civil servants obeying orders. Many were also actuated by the nasty 'patriotism' that grips in time of war, as we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Almost nobody in the FCO stood up against the torture or against the illegal war - Elizabeth Wilmshurst, Carne Ross and I were the only ones to leave over it..

"I then had the still more mortifying experience of the Foreign Office seeking to punish my dissent by bringing a series of accusations of gross misconduct - some of them criminal - against me. The people bringing the accusations knew full well they were false. The people investigating them knew they were false from about day 2. But I was put through a hellish six months of trial by media before being acquitted on all the original counts (found guilty of revealing the charges, whose existence was an official secret!). The people who did this to me were people I knew.

"I had served as First Secretary in the British Embassy in Poland, and bumped up startlingly against the history of the Holocaust in that time, including through involvement with organising the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. What had struck me most forcibly was the sheer scale of the Holocaust operation, the tens of thousands of people who had been complicit in administering it. I could never understand how that could happen - until I saw ordinary, decent people in the FCO facilitate extraordinary rendition and torture. Then I understood, for the first time, the banality of evil or, perhaps more precisely, the ubiquity of evil. Of course, I am not comparing the scale of what happened to the Holocaust - but evil can operate on different scales.

"I believe I see it again today. I do not believe that the majority of journalists in the BBC, who pump out a continual stream of 'Corbyn is an anti-semite' propaganda, believe in their hearts that Corbyn is a racist at all. They are just doing their job, which is to help the BBC avert the prospect of a radical government in the UK threatening the massive wealth share of the global elite. They would argue that they are just reporting what others say; but it is of course the selection of what they report and how they report it which reflects their agenda.

"The truth, of which I am certain, is this. If there genuinely was the claimed existential threat to Jews in Britain, of the type which engulfed Europe's Jews in the 1930s, Jeremy Corbyn, Billy Bragg, Roger Waters, and I may humbly add myself, would be among the few who would die alongside them on the barricades, resisting. Yet these are today loudly called 'anti-semites' for supporting the right to oppose the oppression of the Palestinians. The journalists currently promoting those accusations, if it came to the crunch, would be polishing state propaganda, and the civil servants writing railway dockets. That is how it works. I have seen it. Close up." (craigmurray.org.uk, 30/7/18)

The Guardian Sabotages Britain's Labour Party

You've heard of the PEP (Progressive Except Palestine). Now meet the subspecies SEP (Socialist Except Palestine). Self-proclaimed "natural Labour voter," and Guardian columnist,Gaby Hinsliff, mutters darkly in her drive-by smear of UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn:

"Dare to criticise Jeremy Corbyn as a natural Labor voter, and sooner or later you'll be accused not only of 'smearing' the leader, but of being morally liable for every bad thing that ever has happened or will happen under a Tory government... God forbid he should take responsibility for creating a party that doesn't make some of its longest-standing supporters feel morally tainted by association. Even Momentum - which dared to publicly abandon its support for Peter Willsman as an NEC candidate after a tape emerged of him apparently challenging the very existence of antisemitism in Labour - faced a vicious backlash from its own members. It was a stark illustration of the difficulty facing a younger generation of Corbynites, who are no keener than your average millennial to upset minorities and are genuinely seeking a way out of this mess, but who belong to a movement encouraged to view any criticism of Corbyn or his friends and allies as a full-frontal assault on socialism itself. Well, they should stick to their guns. It's perfectly possible to offer progressive taxation, more social housing, renationalised railways and and a welfare system in which people don't visibly starve without an unwanted side order of Mossad conspiracy theories. The idea that you can't have one without another [sic] - that unless we all agree that there's nothing wrong with calling Jews Nazis, then leftwing economic beliefs will somehow die - is grotesque. And if Corbyn, laden as he is with the personal baggage and friendships of the past 40 years, struggles to separate the two in the public mind, then sooner or later the Labour Party must find someone who can." (Dark forces gather as UK politics heads for rock bottom, 3/8/18)

Note the irony in the title of Hinsliff's witless piece: the Guardian, not Corbyn's Labour, is in fact one of the "dark forces" working to send UK politics to "rock bottom."

Lord Balfour Sabotages Britain's Labour Party

UK Labour cruising towards split over Israel-Palestine, George Galloway, rt.com, 1/8/18:

"Britain's Labour Party prepares to split; the Israel-Palestine issue breaks up the party after 100 years to the relief of Prime Minister Theresa May. At least that's the proximate cause of the rapidly approaching schism in the opposition Labour Party. Attempts to effectively outlaw existential criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel have foundered on the rocks of obduracy of the veteran Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn whose commitment to the Palestinian cause has been a leitmotif of his 40 years in left-wing politics.

"Support for the Palestinians and opposition to Israel has grown massively in recent decades in Britain and throughout the Western world. The recent decision after a passionate debate in the Irish Senate to ban the products of illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories was a high point for the BDS movement. And this decision preceded the new controversial National Law passed in the Israeli Knesset, which UN bodies and others have said makes Israel officially an apartheid state, giving a spur to the BDS cause. Widespread ostracism of apartheid South Africa was an important factor in the downfall of the system in South Africa.

"But Israel is far from taking these defeats lying down. The Israeli embassy in London is a vital center for counter-offensives, [with] ambassador Mark Regev a key operative in Netanyahu's machine. That Israel chose to send Regev to London was an early sign of the importance of the UK battleground.

"When I joined the Palestinian struggle in 1975, you could've fitted all British supporters of the PLO into a small hall, with room for elephants at the back. Now you couldn't fit us into Hyde Park. We are millions, literally. I know when the tide turned because I was there, literally. I left West Beirut in 1982, just ahead of the advancing Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Within hours they were at the gates. Their capture of President Arafat's fiefdom in the West of the city led to the departure of Arafat and his forces under an agreement brokered by the US plenipotentiary Philip Habib. Its terms included the protection of the families the fighters were leaving behind. They were promptly fallen upon by the Israeli-backed Lebanese Phalange militia and massacred.

"The UN and the Israeli Kahan Commission later held that former Israeli defence minister Ariel Sharon - present at the scene of the massacre in the Sabra-Shatila refugee camp - shared responsibility for the murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. Sharon was required to resign from the government of Menachem Begin but would later return as prime minister himself. The massacre marked the beginning of a long, slow but inexorable turn away from Israel by the British labour and trade union movement. I wrote the resolutions that passed that year in both the Labour Party Conference and the Trade Union Congress against fierce Israeli lobbying (I could show you my scars). The resolutions established policy for the first time in favour of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital and for the recognition of the PLO as the 'sole legitimate representative' of the Palestinian people. In 1982, this was a heady brew, I assure you.

"Year by year, as Israeli governments became ever more right wing and as the plight of the Palestinians grew ever more grim, the giant tanker turned a little more. Although his lifelong fidelity to this cause was not the reason for Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader - the Iraq War and austerity were much more so - it certainly marked a high water mark in the growing movement against Netanyahu's Israel. And Mr Regev and the embassy were not slow to recognise the danger to their position in a Britain whose perfidy played such a key role for over a century in the Israel-Palestine question.

"The full might of the Israel lobby has been mobilized to first stop Corbyn winning the leadership, to depose him once he had won it, and above all to stop him becoming prime minister. They have had some success, particularly within the ranks of Corbyn's MPs - most of them products of the long reign of Tony Blair. Revolt after revolt from within against Corbyn has been mounted on everything from Brexit to arms sales to Saudi Arabia. But the most potent is the now-rampant virulent campaign against 'anti-Semitism' in Corbyn's Labour. What this boils down to is, of course, not anti-Semitism at all but opposition to Israel. The idea that the vegetarian left-wing bicycling peacenik and anti-racism fanatic Jeremy Corbyn hates Jews is as absurd as it is offensive.

"Having failed to dislodge him and failed to make him kneel, his enemies are planning to break away and form a new centrist bloc against Brexit, in favour of NATO and Trident nuclear weapons, and of course in defense of Israel. The last time this happened nearly 40 years ago it failed to prosper. But by dividing the anti-Conservative vote, it kept Mrs Thatcher in power for a whole decade. And thus the only person laughing in British politics today is the beleaguered Mrs May."

The Taking Down of Jeremy Corbyn

"Jeremy Corbyn has this week been the victim of a crazed, unhinged assault by the agents of the powerful. A frenzied attack to destroy him for fear that he might win. The proximate method is the exploitation of deep-seated Jewish fear. Literally, summoning up the demons of Nazism against Britain's finest anti-fascist. It doesn't get much more serious than that for all concerned. And when I say the agents of the powerful I mean from left to right. From the liberal to the far-right. I mean from the Guardian and Channel 4 News right across the spectrum. All guns blazing, all trained on one man. A man without a scintilla of racist or anti-Semitic feeling in his body, in his psyche. A man whose parents stood at Cable St against fascism and anti-Semitism. He's been attacked by newspapers that were supporting the Nazis at the time. He's been attacked by newspapers that were funding the British Union of Fascists at the time." (George Galloway, The Mother of All Talkshows, 27/7/18)

Corbyn's Convulsion

The Zionist smear campaign against British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn rolls on. The latest offensive came in the form of a leaked account of his meeting with the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council at his Commons office 4 weeks ago:

"Jeremy Corbyn was 'too unemotional or too stupid' to understand claims that he has failed to combat anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, it has been claimed. The Labour leader is described as 'bored, uninterested and condescending' in a leaked account of his meeting with Jewish leaders last month to discuss the issue. It suggests he lacks the 'emotional or intellectual ability' to comprehend their demands for more action to tackle the problem. By contrast, he sprang into life with a 'convulsion' when told that his support for a 'two state solution' in the rift between Israel and Palestine meant he was a 'Zionist'." (Corbyn was 'too stupid' to tackle Labour Party anti-Semitism in meeting with Jewish leaders, Simon Walters, dailymail.co.uk, 27/5/18)

Leaving aside the Zionist conceit that anyone who doesn't kiss the Zionist ring is either inert or stupid (or worse), let me proceed straight to Corbyn's convulsion. This is how I imagine it:

Zionist: So you support a two-state solution?
Corbyn: Yes.
Zionist: Israel and Palestine, side by side?
Corbyn: Yes, yes.
Zionist: A Jewish and an Arab state?
Corbyn: Mmm.
Zionist: A Jewish state, eh? So you're a Zionist then?
Corbyn: CONVULSION

Corbyn was obviously too savvy to fall for this ploy. For the experience of another politician who did, check out my 30/5/15 post Richard Di Natale: The Fool Who Rushed In.

So You Think the Murdoch Press is the Only MSM Problem?

As unarmed Palestinian refugees, demonstrating behind the wire of their Gaza Ghetto for the right to return to the homes and lands from which they were ethnically cleansed by Israeli terror gangs in 1948, were being callously gunned down - 17 dead and over 1,500 wounded is the current Al-Jazeera count - by Israeli troops terror gangs, sniping from behind protective earthworks* on Good Friday, all the PEP (Progressive Except Palestine) Guardian editor, Jonathan Freedland, could reflect on this Easter is this:

"'Easter? The very word gives me a migraine.' Not my view, but that of an old family friend who couldn't shake the folk memory of Easter as pogrom season, a time of anti-Jewish attacks as Christians resurrected the libel that it was the Jews, rather than the Romans who killed Jesus. [FFS, that was in Tsarist Russia!] But this weekend is also Passover, when Jews retell the story that defines them as a people [Note, not 'as a faith community,' but "as a people," a tell-tale Zionist construct], sitting around a Seder table and recalling through words, song, and crucially, food their exodus from slavery in Egypt. [See my 29-30/12/14 posts The Exodus Master Narrative, 1 & 2.]

"The Easter/Passover combination means that at this time every year Jews are reminded of two core facts about themselves. The first is that they are raised, from the start, to remember that their place is with the oppressed and against injustice because, were it not for the exodus, they would still be slaves today. [So why then, despite this "core fact," inculcated "from the start," do the majority of Jews today see themselves as Zionists?] The second is that, from the start, they have been hated.

"Both of these messages feel timely this weekend, as Jews reflect on the way a movement that they long saw as their natural home - on the left, fighting oppression and injustice - has been rocked by the question of anti-Jewish hatred... " [Hello? So British Zionists are one and all leftist progressives - just not in Palestine?] (Antisemitism matters: Jews are the canary in the coalmine, 31/3/18)

Those, of course, are just the opening paragraphs. But the piece as a whole has bugger-all to do with genuine anti-Semitism, it's just another part of the witch-hunt currently being directed against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is seen as having strayed too far from the Zionist narrative.

The simple fact of the matter is that for Freedland and his PEP Zionist mates, no matter how many Palestinians are murdered and maimed in Israeli pogroms, all that really matters is Israel.

Or, to put it in his own morally repugnant words: "[The Zionist movement] had the right to act, even though the cost for another people, the Palestinians, was immense." (Quoted in my 24/5/14 post Orwell Turns in His Grave.)

[*In addition, the Guardian's accompanying Associated Press report on Israel's latest bloody massacre of Palestinians typically obfuscates the reality with its talk of "deadly clashes between Palestinians and Israeli troops," and features this predictable dollop churned out by the Israeli army's propaganda mill: "The Israeli military said thousands of Palestinians threw stones and rolled burning tires towards troops, Palestinian gunmen fired toward soldiers in one incident and militants were trying to conduct attacks under the cover of protests." (Gaza deaths: UN secretary general calls for 'transparent' investigation, 31/3/18). Now go to the Electronic Intifada website and compare this Guardian shite with EI's report, Israel admits, then deletes, responsibility for Gaza killing, 31/3/18.]

Corbyn Squibs It

Since becoming Labour party leader in 2015, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies in the party have been subjected to a concerted campaign by UK Zionists of false allegations of anti-Semitism. These agents of Israel will stop at nothing to prevent the emergence of a Palestinian sympathiser as prime minister of the land that issued the Balfour Declaration just over 100 years ago. (Remember expelled Israeli embassy intelligence agent Shai Masot, caught on camera talking about 'taking-down' a Tory minister in 2016? How much more of a target do you think today's Jeremy Corbyn is then?)

Having agreed to an interview* Britain's Jewish News on March 28, Corbyn was prevented with an ideal platform to challenge the views of those behind the campaign. Unfortunately, he squibbed it, leaving us to wonder whether he was simply not across the subject, deliberately pursuing a low-profile strategy, or, heaven forbid, lacking in moral courage.

Crucially, at no point in the interview did he attempt to draw the fundamental and necessary distinction between Zionism, the (racist, supremacist) political ideology which underpins Israeli settler-colonialism and apartheid, and Judaism, the faith. And even when the interviewer finally broached the subject - "JN: Your shadow foreign secretary was happy to describe you as a Zionist - is that a term you would accept for yourself? - the best Corbyn could come up with was this: "I wasn't quite sure in what context she... said that."

Corbyn's attitude towards Hamas & Hezbollah was the subject of this hysterical question:

"Another expression of regret that you've made in relation to your description of Hamas and Hezbollah as 'friends'. Can you see that to call a group that wants me dead, wants our readers dead, that want all their relatives in Israel and around the world dead, means that British Jews are bound to be profoundly concerned?"

Yet, instead of pointing out the bleeding obvious - that both are primarily national resistance movements which arose in response to Zionist aggression and occupation - he simply asserted, when pressed, that he "fundamentally disagrees" with them.

As for appearing at pro-Palestinian rallies where some have flown Hezbollah flags - which carry a logo incorporating a gun, as did the flag of Menachem Begin's Irgun, the ideological forerunner of Netanyahu's Likud - he might have asked his interlocutor what exactly he thought it was that enabled the Zionist takeover of Palestine in 1948, or continues to enable the illegal Zionist occupation of Palestine to this day.

And then there was this on the matter of false allegations of anti-Semitism:

"JN: Some of your key supporters are still calling allegations of anti-Semitism smears... are they smears?"

Instead of pointing out that yes, some at least have been smears, designed solely to stifle criticism of Israel, and contesting the absurd idea that, merely because such allegations are made by Zionist advocates in the Jewish community, they must automatically be taken seriously, Corbyn replied lamely, "I am not an anti-Semite in any form, therefore it's unfair to say that and I hope people would understand that. I've recognised there is an existence of it [anti-Semitism in the party], I've recognised the... importance... of getting rid of it."

Seriously, if Corbyn thinks that not dealing forthrightly with these issues, let alone raising the issue of  the Zionist subversion of British politics, is going to keep the Zionist monkey off his back, he is sadly mistaken.

[*Exclusive Jewish News interview with Jeremy Corbyn: 'I'm not an anti-Semite in any form']