What would you say if an organisation that supported Apartheid in South Africa claimed to be anti-fascist?

Nick Lowles Hope not Hate‘s Editor Openly Supports Israeli Apartheid – any Socialist or Anti-Racist Who Supports Them Is a Fake

Today I received a heartwarming Xmas message from Nick Lowles of the misnamed Hope not Hate. It boasted of many achievements, most of which had nothing to do with it, including:

‘We Stopped Tommy Robinson from Winning His Election’‘We Beat Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party’‘We Took on Donald Trump’ etc. It is after all the season of Santa Claus.

There is however a less amusing side to HnH. For the past four years they have provided an ‘anti-fascist’ cover to the demonistation of a whole range of anti-racist and anti-imperialist activists in the Labour Party, many of them Black and Jewish, such as Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Chris Williamson, the former MP for Derby North and Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London.

This is not surprising since for five years, before becoming an MP, Ruth Smeeth was Deputy Director of HnH. Before that she was Director of Public Affairs and Campaigns at the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM), the main pro-Israel propaganda group in Britain. She is a member of Labour Friends of Israel and after the defection of Luciana Berger she became Parliamentary Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement.  In short Smeeth is a racist supporter of Apartheid.

Can you imagine the late John Carlisle, MP for Luton North, an apologist for South African Apartheid, whom we used to nickname the member for Bloemfontein West being anywhere near an anti-fascist organisation? Yet Ruth Smeeth is all over HnH.

As Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, stated Israel is worse than Apartheid South Africa was. When Apartheid was in existence in South Africa Israel was its closest partner. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted, Israel is a state of its Jewish citizens, not its Palestinian citizens. 5 million Palestinians living in Greater Israel have no vote.  Within Israel 93% of the land is barred to Israeli Palestinians. The Israeli government spends money funding groups like Hemla, charitable wing of the fascist Lehava organisation, opposing Dorit Rabinmixed marriages.

An obsession with racial purity is the hallmark of a society based on the principles of race. In 2015 Israel’s Education Ministry banned from the syllabus, Dorit Rabinyan’s Borderlife, because it depicted a relationship between an Arab woman and a Jewish man. Dali Fenig, from the Education Ministery explained

“The story is based on a romantic motif of impossible prohibited/secret love. Young people of adolescent age tend to romanticize and don’t, in many cases, have the systemic vision that includes considerations involving maintaining the national-ethnic identity of the people and the significance of miscegenation.” (my emphasis)

Miscegenation is an ugly word that means the mixing of races. It is defined as

‘mixing that is perceived to negatively impact the purity of a particular race or culture. Anti-miscegenation is a prominent theme of racial supremacist movements, including white supremacy.’

And in the era of Segregation and Jim Crow laws, States passed laws forbidding miscegenation. Yet this is the Israel that Ruth Smeeth and HnH are prominent supporters of and opposition to this is ‘anti-Semitism’ according to HnH.

Smeeth is also prominent member of the JLM which is affiliated to the World Zionist Organisation. The WZO is one of the main pillars of Israeli Apartheid. It has what Ha’aretz called a ‘land theft division’.  It is complicit in the colonisation of the West Bank. And this trollope was not only Deputy Director of HnH but her politics permeate throughout this bogus ‘anti-fascist’ organisation.

I don’t care if 99.9% of British Jews were to support Israel. It would still not be anti-Semitic to oppose Zionism. It would just mean that British Jews were racists. Fortunately this is not the case but this is the basis on which HnH and others term anti-Zionist ‘anti-Semitic’.

Thirty years ago I wrote an articleSEARCHLIGHT Undermining Anti-fascists, helping Zionists’ for Palestine Solidarity magazine. It is as relevant now as it was then.

Hate not Hope is a honey trap, a money making operation for owner, Nick Lowles. Despite its attempt to portray itself as a campaign, it is a Limited Company no. 08188502. It has no democratic structures or accountability.

Smeeth is one of its 7 directors. According to its accounts it has assets and liabilities of nearly a thousand pounds.

However there is also Hope Not Hate Charitable Trust No. 02738367. This has had 31 officers, 23 of whom have resigned, including Sonia Gable, wife of Searchlight Anti-fascist Magazine and Ruth Smeeth, who resigned shortly before becoming an MP in March 2015.

HnH is the bastard child of Gerry Gable’s Searchlight Magazine which used to trade information on Marxists and Anarchists to MI5 and the Special Branch in return for information on fascists. Searchlight is now almost defunct, having not updated its website for nearly 8 months.

Searchlight and HnH fell out in an unseemly squabble about money. It was a split without any principle and was mourned by the Jewish Chronicle as a ‘tragedy’. Whether the falling out of a gang of thieves merits such a description I shall leave to my readers!

Searchlight Editor Gerry Gable was caught with his pants down in 1977 when a memo to his Editor at London Weekend Television, Barry Cox, was leaked to the New Statesman. This was when the then Labour government was in the process of deporting former CIA agent Phil Agee, who had blown the cover on CIA operations in South America, and radical journalist Mark Hosenball. As far as Gable was concerned the organiser of their Defence Campaign, Phil Kelly (later Editor of Tribune) was a PLO terrorist.

HnH continued with the political methods of Searchlight, not least the belief that opposition to Zionism is ‘anti-Semitic’. This is personified in the disgusting Ruth Smeeth who falsely alleged that Marc Wadsworth, a Black anti-racist activist who introduced the family of Stephen Lawrence to Nelson Mandela, which was what put the campaign on the map.So when I received Nick Lowles piece of puff today I decided to write him a letter, which I’m happy to share with you

Dear Nick,

Thank you for your Xmas message about all your ‘achievements’

You are However Much Too Modest.

Haven’t you forgotten another few ‘ achievements’? Please permit me to list them:

1. We Helped Propagate the Poisonous Zionist Campaign that Falsely Alleged Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party

2. We did this in conjunction with our former Deputy Director and CIA Asset Ruth Smeeth MP whose seat We Also Helped Lose

3. We targeted Black Anti-racists such as Jackie Walker and called them racists, in much the same way as the National Front used to accuse anti-fascists of (anti-White) racism. The allegation in this case was that they were ‘anti-Jewish’.

4. Ruth Smeeth, a ‘protected’ asset of the US Embassy according to Wikileaks, demonised Marc Wadsworth and falsely accused him of ‘anti-Semitism’ because he had called out her links with the Tory press.

5. We even targeted Anti-Zionist Jews like Tony Greenstein and Moshe Machover

6. We also targeted and demonised anti-racist MP Chris Williamson

Yes I agree Nick. You have indeed achieved a lot during the past year. You will forgive me if I don’t contribute towards your funds given that the Israeli Embassy is more than willing to step in.

Best wishes

Tony Greenstein