A Moving Play by Caryl Churchill on the links between Gaza and the Jewish Ghettos of Europe is ‘anti-Semitic’

The past few weeks have witnessed a resurgence of the Zionist
campaign that began during the Labour leadership campaign in the summer, when
attacks on Jeremy Corbyn as ‘anti-Semitic’ reached their height.  According to the Zionists Corbyn not only supped
with the devil, Paul Eisen of Deir Yassin Remembered but he attended a Palestine
fundraising concert in 2013 which had been put on by DYR.  See Stephen
Pollard Jewish Chronicle Editor & Apologist for Europe’s anti-Semitic
politicians – The Hypocrisy of Jeremy Corbyn’s Accusers 

The Guardian’s & the Jewish Chronicle’s Zionist journalist without a porfolio – Jonathan Freedland – never misses an opportunity to dumb down

There was then a hiatus whilst the attack diverted to the
Father of the House of Commons  Gerald Kaufmann.  Kaufmann had spoken about ‘Jewish Money’ in
relation to the Tory Party.  The fact
that many other Jews also speak in similar tones was ignored.  GeoffreyAlderman and Gerald Kaufman –Jewish Chronicle Columnist’s Exercise in Hypocrisy 

Alex Chalmers – the Upper Class fool who alleged anti-Semitism whilst providing no examples

When normal service resumed we had the affair of Oxford University
Labour Club when its upper class twit of a Chair, Alex Chalmers resigned
because he held that the club had a problem with Jews.  Antisemitic? Or just against the Israeli government’s oppressive actions? 

Gerry Downing whose foolish utterances gave Zionists comfort this week

What Chalmers really meant was that the Labour club, like
many others, had decided to support Israel Apartheid week, i.e. it was giving
support to the Palestinians who are and have been living under a military
occupation for nearly 50 years.  Some of
Oxford’s privileged Jewish students i.e. those who support the racist state and
wouldn’t know what oppression was if it hit them objected.  Most people would say ‘tough’.

Paul Eisen – Jewish Holocaust Denier banned from Palestine solidarity movement- used to smear Jeremy Corbyn

And then there was the affair of York University’s Palestine
Society which was accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ for putting on the play 7 Jewish Children, which is incidentally on the Guardian’s
own web site.   A thought provoking and stimulating play, only
10 minutes long, it draws a linkage between the Jewish child in the ghetto at
risk of being murdered and the Palestinian in Gaza who is also in danger of
being murdered.  None of which stopped
the Jewish Chronicle running
with a story Pro-Palestinian students perform ‘antisemitic’ play as part of Israel Apartheid Week,] 

Caryl Churchill – author of 7 Jewish Children

Of course Jewish students supporting the play was not
news.  Maybe that’s also a form of anti-Semitism.  Making certain Jewish people invisible.  But as they don’t support the Israeli state
they don’t count of course being ‘race traitors’ and ‘self haters’.

It is a theme that the famous socialist and Jewish folk
singer

Gary Spedding – the self-styled Palestinian activist & narcissist who no one has heard of playing the Zionist game

 Leon Rosselson takes up with his latest song ‘The Ballad
of Rivka & Mohammed’ which explores exactly the same theme,
ending up with Rivka, the Jewish girl in the ghetto and Mohammed, the Palestinian
boy in Gaza:  “then each took the hand of the other and then they were seen no more“

Stephen Pollard – the Jewish Chronicle’s Editor from the Gutter – Freedland’s partner-in crime.

There has also been the trivial matter of one Vicky Kirby
which Freedland and others have blown up out of all proportion.  She is or was a member of the Labour
Party.  Someone who believes that Jews have
big noses and believes that Hitler is the god of the Zionists, needs help
rather than expulsion.  The fact that she
believes that Jews and Israel are synonymous might have a lot to do with some
of the people that Jonathan Freedland keeps company with. 

Indeed Freedland himself argues in his latest article in
the Guardian Labour and the left have an antisemitism problem  that ‘A recent survey found that 93% of
British Jews said Israel formed some part of their identity’ thus
suggesting that it’s not possible to criticise Israel or the existence of Israel
as a racist Zionist state without it being anti-Semitic.  It’s a case of Freedland having his cake and
eating it.

Freedland’s article is the usual superficial stuff one has come
to expect.  He is like the drunk who
leans on a lamp post, not for illumination but support.  He skims the surface of every issue he
touches, raising suspicions and caveats without ever managing to tackled a
single issue meaningfully.  Never, not
once, does he attempt to tackle the question what is anti-Semitism.  He makes triviality into an art form.  Freedland is almost a living example of the
decline of the Guardian as a newspaper.

Questions such as whether the allegations of anti-Semitism that
have been made are genuine or whether they got up by people with an entirely
different agenda elude Freedland.  He
informs us that the Oxford University Labour Club Chair resigned after saying
the club was riddled with racism.  But
what was this racism?  The only example he
gives is where apparently one member of the Labour club ‘organised a group to
shout “filthy
Zionist” at a Jewish student whenever they saw her.’  When clicking the link this allegation is
sourced to one Aaron Simons,
in another Guardian Comment piece ‘It’s time we acknowledged that Oxford’s student left is institutionally antisemitic’  .  Yes the Guardian has had a deliberate
Mail-style strategy for some time to inflate Zionist allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’.  Simons states that ‘It has been alleged that
another OULC member organised a group of students to harass a Jewish student
and to shout “filthy Zionist” whenever they saw her.’

We have no indication of who made the allegation, what the
name of the student is who organised this shouting or indeed the alleged
victim.  Bearing in mind that Jewish students
who support the Palestinians are regularly abused with the terms ‘traitor’ ‘self-hater’
it is pretty small beer, even assuming there is any truth in it.

But having spread the smear Freedland moves on leaving
people none the wiser. 

There was another Labour expulsion this week, of Gerry
Downing.  The obvious point to make is that
the expulsion is a disgrace.  Downing was
expelled by post, with no notice, not told what the charges were, not invited
to present a defence and told he had no right of appeal against the
decision.  A Kafkaesque affair.  Freedland omits to mention all of that.

I don’t personally agree with Downing on the position he
takes but I have no doubt, having met Downing, that he is not personally anti-Semitic.  The problem is he is politically confused, a
confusion caused by the Zionist insistent that support for Israel is bound up
with being Jewish. 

Indeed just this week I penned an article for the Weekly
Worker criticising Downing’s political position, Confusing the question – Zionism, Jewish
identity and the ‘socialism of fools’ http://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1098/confusing-the-question/
and blogged on him too
Gerry Downing,
Anti-Semitism and the Socialism of Fools – Confusing the Jewish Question and
Zionism http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/gerry-downing-anti-semitism-and.html

Downing is wrong to think that there is a ‘Jewish Question’
or that it has any bearing on the issue of Israel.  His belief that there is a separate Jewish component
of western ruling classes is absurd and can lead in an anti-Semitic direction,
but who is it who raises the question of Jews every time Israel is mentioned
but Jonathan Freedland’s good friends in the Zionist movement?  Does not Israel call itself the Jewish state?  Does Israel not appropriate historic Jewish religious
symbols like the Star of David as its own nationalist emblems?

Freedland reluctantly accepts that opposition to Israel ‘is not always
antisemitic’ The
problem is that having conceded the point he goes on to make the opposite case
viz. that anti-Semitism is equivalent to anti-Zionism.

Freedland tells us that when Jews pray they face east towards
Jerusalem and that they have done so for 2,000 years.  Yes the holy land held a certain religious
symbolism for Jews but it had no political significance.  When the Zionist movement first arose the
fiercest opposition to it came from the Orthodox Jews.  They held it was forcing the hand of god who
had exiled the wicked Jews.  In fact they’d
voluntarily left for pastures anew.  The
fact is that Jews never sought to go to Palestine until the colonial era came
along, anti-Semitism increased and Christians urged them to settle in the area
of Palestine and build a state which would protect the Suez Canal.  And even then most Jews desired to go
anywhere but Palestine (between the mid 19th century and 1914 of the
2½ million Jews who fled Czarist Russia some 2% went to Palestine).

Like a dog returning to its vomit, Freedland returns to his
hobby horse – Jeremy Corbyn and anti-Semitism. 
Apparently Corbyn attended a fundraising concert for DYR in 2013 after Paul
Eisen had been outed as a holocaust denier. 
As I explained to Freedland, who queried this in an email to me.  Corbyn was never aware of the bona fides of
Paul Eisen, didn’t meet with him, simply paid for a ticket, knew nothing about
DYR and further it’s not at all certain that Eisen had anything to do with the
concert in question anyway.  In other
words the kind of McCarthyist guilt by association technique that one has come
to expect of Mr Freedland and his accomplices.

Freedland’s other point is even more dishonest.  Corbyn ‘praised Islamist leader Sheikh Raed
Salah’.  He may well have, but
so what.  Contrary to Freedland’s
assertions the British court was in no position whether or not to find that
Raed Salah had ‘deployed the blood libel’. 
It heard no witnesses to this event. 
The passing comment of the court that in its opinion Saleh had referred
to the Jewish blood libel was obiter
dicta, irrelevant to the real finding that Raed Salah’s detention was
illegal and he was freed as a consequence. 
The Court, the Upper Immigration Tribunal also found that the evidence of
Saleh having written an anti-Semitic poem was in fact faked by the Jerusalem Post
and the Zionist Community Security Trust. 

Freedland is being thoroughly dishonest in his assertion.  The Jerusalem Magistrates Court found Salah
not guilty of racial intent precisely because it accepted that he hadn’t used as
a rhetorical device the Jewish blood libel. 
On the contrary he said his reference to blood libel was to the Spanish
Inquisition and its murder of children. 
The decision was reversed on appeal in a nakedly political attack on
Salah who has been one of the main leaders of Israeli Palestinians and a thorn
in the government’s side.  The Israeli judiciary
are not neutral where Palestinians are concerned.  They are part of the apartheid state.  The attack on Saleh in Israel is a racist
attack on a Palestinian leader who has defended the Temple Mount against Jewish
fundamentalists who would destroy the Golden Dome and Mosque of Omar.

In short there is no substance at all to Freedland’s
arguments.  The whole issue of ‘anti-Semitism’
in the Labour Party is a wholly contrived and got-up affair.  It is the creation of journalists like
Freedland and his counterparts on the Daily Mail.  It has no basis in reality.  The real agenda is defence of the Israeli state.

There was a similar and equally inaccurate article in Ha’aretz,
the normally liberal Israeli paper.  It
is error ridden but I copy it below for reference.  What is most interesting about it is that a
Mr Gary Spedding, who I have tangled with before, passes himself off as ‘a
veteran pro-Palestinian activist, who said he has been ridiculed and subjected
to anti-Semitic abuse’.

See:  Open Letter to SNP Members of Parliament – Don’t Be Fooledby False Accusations of anti-Semitism

SNP MPs Don’t Take Kindly to Criticism over Palestine & ‘anti-Semitism’

The False Use of anti-Semitism – Gary Spedding, the SNP’sAdvisor on Palestine Sings the Zionist Song

Spedding isn’t Jewish. 
He is an Orthodox Christian from Newcastle who joined the Northern Ireland Alliance party which is Unionist. [see below for his response to this post!] So how he can be a victim of anti-Semitism is
puzzling, although there is a certain logic to his claim.  Under the ‘new anti-Semitism’ that has grown
up in the USA opposition to war mongering, the arms trade, support for human
rights etc. is considered anti-Semitic as it is inimical to Jewish interests!  The assumption being that being Jewish means
supporting Israel and as Israel is a nasty, militarised, racist state being
opposed to any of the aforementioned means being anti-Semitic!

Spedding is a fully blown narcissist who is unknown to
anyone in the Palestine solidarity movement. 
His only ability seems to be to blow his own trumpet and he is in good company
there – with the anti-Semitic Jazzman Gilad Atzmon.

Tony Greenstein