Corbyn’s speech 8 years ago condemning the siege and Israel’s attack on Gaza is now being used to attack him – Corbyn’s past is being used to attack the present – that is why he must defend his past not apologise or run away from it

For the first time in over two years I fear for Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.  As Theresa May’s hold over the Tory Party and her problems with Brexit mount, the desperation of our ruling class to place the Labour Party in ‘safe’ hands grows.  That is the clue to the Zionist attacks on Labour over non-existent ‘antisemitism’.

Walter Wolfgang, former NEC member and refugee from Nazi Germany, gives his full support to Pete Willsman unlike the Scab Leader of Momentum, Jon Lansman

What possible reason could there be for the entirely artificial story that surfaced this week about a meeting Corbyn chaired eight years ago? It is clear that there is a systematic campaign, fronted by Zionist and pro-Israel organisations, supported by our yellow press and the BBC, to oust Corbyn.

For over two
years I have traversed the country speaking at public meetings.
One point above all I have stressed is that it is not me, Jackie Walker or Ken
Livingstone who were the main targets of the anti-Semitism witchhunt.  We were collateral damage. The real target
was and is Jeremy Corbyn.

Lansman  plays the role of a 5th columnist, a scab

These past
few weeks have borne this out. It is Corbyn himself
who is in their line of fire.  Margaret Hodge’s calling Corbyn a ‘fucking anti-Semite and a racist’ was not a sudden rush to the head. It was premeditated and coordinated .  It gave the cue to the Jewish
Chronicle to launch an all
out attack last week on Corbyn, in consort with two other Zionist papers.

The Jewish Chronicle launches the latest attempt to launch a coup against Corbyn

This meeting
has been public knowledge for years but now anything and everything is being
dredged up in order to attack Corbyn. You don’t have to be a member of MENSA to
work out that those who are behind this latest ‘revelation’ are not interested
in anti-Semitism.  Their only concern is
removing Corbyn.

Until Corbyn develops a backbone and starts standing up for what he believed then he will continue to be rocked by these accusations. There is plenty more of this stuff for the media to  dig up.  It is now crystal clear that this ‘antisemitism’ nonsense is about Israel and Zionism.  

I don’t know
whether Seamus Milne, who is Corbyn’s adviser has taken leave of his senses but
the best indeed the only way of dealing with this was to stand firm, not apologise and say that Hajo Meyer
had every right to make a comparison. Note a comparison is not the same thing
as saying Israel and Nazi Germany are identical.

Comparisons
with Nazi Germany are two a penny. They are not in the least anti-Semitic. Seymour Hersh,
who broke the story of My Lai, the village in Vietnam where the Americans
murdered over 200 villagers, remembered
that one of the soldiers who took part began his story by saying “It
was a Nazi-type thing.” Comparisons 
with the Nazis are normal when evaluating particularly horrendous deeds. Nazi Germany didn’t spring from nowhere.  It was a consequence of West European capitalism, including its colonial empires and the racial sciences that developed, including eugenicism.

Benny Morris, an Israeli historian,
in Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited describes how, in November
1948, Eliezer Peri of the leftist Mapam, received a letter describing a
massacre at al-Dawayima. There were ‘hundreds’ of dead. Agriculture Minister,
Aharon Cisling referred to a letter he had received about the atrocities declared:
‘I couldn’t sleep all night … This is something that determines the character
of the nation … Jews too have committed Nazi acts.’ ‘The children they killed
by breaking their heads with sticks. There was not a house without dead’, wrote
Eliezer Kaplan, the Jewish Agency Treasurer and later Minister of Finance.
Perhaps this too was anti-Semitic?

As I showed in a recent article
there are hundreds of comparisons that Israelis themselves make between their
actions and those of the Nazis.  There is
nothing in the slightest anti-Semitic about this.  It merely reflects the fact that Israel,
because it claims its lineage from the Holocaust and what
the Nazis did, has a special duty not to emulate them.  It is a means by which this racist settler
state can be held to at least some human norms.

What is so depressing is that Corbyn isn’t
able to figure this out for himself.  Whether
it is just stupidity or political cowardice I leave it to others to discern.  Today Corbyn has an article in The Guardian I
will root antisemites out of Labour – they do not speak for me. It repeats
all Corbyn’s previous errors and more, not least in accepting that there is an anti-Semitic problem in the Labour
Party. A political friend, Brian Robinson was impressed by the article.  I wasn’t. 
I reproduce the exchange below:

Corbyn’s article in The Guardian

Dear Brian

thank you
for sending me a copy of your response to Jeremy Corbyn’s article in the Guardian.

I do not
agree that it is a ‘very powerful and well thought out statement.‘ 
Quite the contrary it is pathetically weak and will do nothing to stem the
present attacks which I assume is its purpose.

It rests on
a fallacy, namely that there is widespread anti-semitism in the Labour Party.
There isn’t.  One idiot who believes that Hitler was much misunderstood
does not mean that the party is antisemitic. Every party is entitled to its
quota of idiots. The Parliamentary Labour Party is full of them. The
‘antisemitism’ campaign was got up even before JC became leader.  It will
only end when Jeremy resigns and the Right resume what they see as their
rightful place at the helm.  Those who believe otherwise are fooling
themselves.

I should
though add that the campaign against JC, although it is waged in the interests
of Israel and our alliance with the United States, is being waged in the name
of ‘the Jewish community.’  If Jeremy is toppled as leader then
many people are going to blame Jews for what has happened.  The campaign
of the Zionists to remove Jeremy as leader, because that is what it is, can
only stir up anti-Semitism, which I suspect is the intention of many of
them. 

Historically
Zionism has never had any problem with genuine anti-Semites. Their great
benefactor Lord Arthus Balfour was a prime example.  As Prime Minister in
1905 he was responsible for introducing the Aliens Act preventing the
immigration of Jewish refugees from Czarist Russia. He was personally
antisemitic. However he was also an ardent Zionist. That is why today Israel is
best friends with the antisemitic regimes in Hungary, Poland and the Vizigrad
4.  It is also why the alt-Right in the United States can combine
anti-Semitism with ardent support for Zionism. Its neo-Nazi founder Richard
Spencer even describes himself as a White Zionist.  Much like
Tommy Robinson and his fans!  After all, if you are a fascist or
anti-semite what is there not to like about Israel?

Jeremy
forgot to mention such minor matters as the recent visit by Hungary’s Prime Minister
Viktor Orban to Israel. Orban even paid homage to the holocaust dead in
Israel’s Yad Vashem propaganda museum, in a sickening display of piety and
hypocrisy. This despite trying to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy whom he described as an ‘outstanding
statesman’. Horthy was the pro-Nazi leader of Hungary who dispatched 1/2
million Jews to Auschwitz.  But at least Netanyahu and Orban can agree
that they both hate that archetypal Jewish financier, George Soros.  Why
Netanyahu’s son, Yair, even drew a cartoon of Soros – widely praised
by the Daily Stormer and David Duke, former Grand Wizard of
the KKK.

The attack
of the 3 Zionist papers on Jeremy as an ‘existentialist threat’ to the
Jewish community was part of a wider campaign to remove him from the
leadership.  The far-Right editor of the Jewish Chronicle, Stephen Pollard
called Jeremy an anti-semite as did the departing President of the Board of
Deputies, Jonathan Arkush.  If Jeremy wasn’t so busy trying to appease his
accusers he might work out why he too is now being accused of being
antisemitic.

For a long
time the Board of Deputies and the various Zionist groups pretended that the
campaign against ‘antisemitism’ in the Labour Party had nothing to do with
Israel and Zionism.  Yet what other purpose is there in their desire to
adopt unadulterated the IHRA ‘definition’ of antisemitism
other than to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism? That is why 7 of the 11
examples relate to Israel.  The Oxford English dictionary definition
of antisemitism, ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ consists of 6
words.  What possible reason is there to adopt a 500+ word ‘definition’?
As the distinguished former Court of Appeal Judge, Sir Stephen Sedley, who is
himself Jewish, observed the IHRA ‘fails the
first test of any definition: it is indefinite.

Why did
Jeremy Corbyn follow Theresa May in adopting this definition which 
Professor David Feldman, who was part of the Chakrbarti Inquiry and Director of
the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism has described as ‘bewilderingly
imprecise?’ Does JC really believe Theresa May is interested in a
‘definition’ of antisemitism that Viktor Orban and the Polish regime can sign
up to?  It is this kind of idiocy by Corbyn that is responsible for his
current problems.

A number of
us have been expelled or suspended because of the false anti-semitism
campaign.  It is no coincidence that it is Jewish and Black anti-racists
who were the main target of this campaign. As I have repeatedly said in the
past 2 years, this campaign was not about me or Jackie Walker or Ken
Livingstone.  The real target was Jeremy.  Yet despite this he
decided to keep silent as the Compliance Unit went about their witchhunting
work.

Of course if
some people hold to the idea that being an anti-Zionist is a form of
anti-semitism it all makes sense, which is why Corbyn’s appalling apology for a
meeting 8 years ago, when a holocaust survivor, Hajo Meyer, drew comparisons
between Israel and Nazi Germany, was so absurd.  How long is Jeremy going
to go around apologising for his past instead of having the backbone to stand
up to his accusers and defend his actions?  Of course Jeremy didn’t
dissociate himself from what Hajo said at the time. I was at the meeting. Hajo
a survivor of Auschwitz was in a very good position to understand that just as
the Nazi state first separated the the Jews and then murdered them, so Israel
is also segregating and separating its Palestinian citizens.  The fact
that they are not also murdering them, or at least not on the scale of Nazi
Germany, should not be a cause for celebration.

Corbyn is
wrong to say that Zionism is not a form of racism.  What else can a
settler colonial movement and ideology be that sought to displace the
indigenous population?  ‘A land without a people for a people without a
land’ is not an expression of comradely solidarity.  Zionism in
alliance with British colonialism established a militarised settler state in
Palestine.  It discriminated from the beginning in evicting the
Palestinians first from the economy and then from the country altogether. 
What do you think the Jewish National Fund was?  A benevolent society? Its
whole existence was based around the idea that it would only redeem land for
the benefit of Jews. If you want to know more then I refer you to the
Government’s Hope-Simpson Report in 1930 into
the riots the previous year in Palestine.

My worry is
that by continually appeasing his accusers Jeremy is discrediting
himself.  Instead of appeasing and apologising he should stand up to those
whose real agenda is defence of the Apartheid State in Israel.  Jeremy
mentions the Jewish Nation State Law, Israel’s equivalent of the Nuremburg
Laws, but he draws no conclusions about the inherent nature of racism in
Zionist Israel.  In Germany the Jews were stripped of their German
citizenship and thus nationality.  In Israel there is only a Jewish
nationality and the Jewish Nation State Law makes it clear that only Jews in
Israel have national rights which means that the individual rights of Israeli
Arabs are less than those of Israeli Jews.  Because Israel is the nation
state of Jews, all Jews, wherever they live, Arab citizens are thus the
equivalent of resident aliens.

Unfortunately
during all his time in the Palestine solidarity movement, Jeremy seems to have
understood nothing about the cause of Palestinian dispossession and the
permanent military regime that they face. That is what Zionism is about.
Jeremy’s bleating about a two state solution is pathetic.  Two states is
not going to happen and never was going to happen and today it is clear to all
with eyes to see that it cannot happen.  In the words  of Tzipi Hotoveli,
Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister ‘this land is ours. All of it is
ours.’  What part of this does Corbyn not understand? Who or what does
he think is going to be the agency for this two states?  Does not Jeremy
understand the significance of Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the Israeli
capital? Two states is a pretext to perpetuate the present military occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza, an occupation that is now 51 years old. That is why
Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel supports 2 states.

No Brian the
article is terrible.

Tony

Congratulations,
Jeremy, on that very powerful and well-thought-out statement being your article
in the Guardian.   An extremely difficult and highly fraught moment, as
you don’t need me to tell you, but you’ve got the balance right.

I’m not a
Labour party member but I vote Labour and hope to do so in the next election
whenever it comes and like many other Jews I have been deeply upset, and quite
frightened, by the wholly unmerited abuse and misrepresentation to which you,
and the party, have been subjected.  I’m sure some of my fellow-Jews are
sincere in their expressions of anxieties even though I believe those anxieties
to be unwarrented and no doubt based on all-too-true history;  however I’m
equally sure that the majority of those who are Zionists are opportunistically
exploiting accusations of bogus antisemitism, and cynically at that, partly as
apologists for Israel and partly in attempts to rescue the Tory party and prop
up the present, and failing, socio-economic system.

The various
bodies that claim to speak so loudly (dare I say noisily) on behalf of some
supposed homogeneous entity, “the Jewish community” are not in fact
so speaking.  They do not for example represent me, nor my friends and
comrades in such groups as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Free Speech on
Israel, the Jewish Socialist Group, Jewish Voice for Labour, Independent Jewish
Voices, and others.

You have
right on your side, so keep strong!

With good
wishes and in solidarity

Brian
Robinson

Dr Brian
Robinson (Retired NHS psychiatrist)

PRESS STATEMENT from the
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH ANTI-ZIONIST NETWORK UK (IJAN UK)

For more
information contact:
Michael Kalmanovitz tel: 07722 926562  email: [email protected]

IJAN is an international network of Jewish people opposed
to imperialism, militarism, apartheid and genocide. We support the liberation of the Palestinian people, and the right of return for
those driven from their homes and their land by Israeli occupation and ethnic
cleansing. IJAN has active chapters in Argentina, Canada, France, Spain, the UK
and the US.

In 2010,
IJAN and the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign organised the Never
Again – For Anyone speaking tour with 85 year-old Jewish Auschwitz survivor
Dr Hajo Meyer, this included the meeting in the House of Commons on Holocaust
Memorial Day, 27 January.

Dr Meyer
spoke on “The Misuse of the Holocaust for Political Purposes”, and Dr Haidar
Eid, who participated in the meeting from Gaza via speakerphone, on the
situation in Palestine.  They compared the dehumanisation of Jewish people
in Hitler’s Germany pre-1941 and the dehumanisation of Palestinian people in
current day Israel and occupied Palestine.  Throughout the tour, Dr Meyer
received standing ovations – many hearing for the first time important truths
about Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

The
meeting Never Again – For Anyone was a coming together of many
communities which have faced dehumanisation, racism and genocide. Speakers
were Armenian, Bangladeshi, Irish, Native American, Roma, Rwandan, Tamil, as
well as people with disabilities, and a speaker on the Slave Trade from Africa
to the Americas and the revolution which ended slavery in Haiti.

Dr Meyer
said:

‘My great lesson from Auschwitz is:
whoever wants to dehumanise any other, must first be dehumanised himself.
The oppressors are no longer really human whatever uniform they wear.’

The event
attracted leading Zionist figures Louise Ellman MP [then and now, Vice Chair of
Labour Friends of Israel], Jerry Lewis [then Vice President, Board of Deputies]
and Jonathan Hoffman [then Co-Vice Chair of the Zionist Federation], and
Christian Friends of Israel.

Most of
them had clearly not come to listen. They barracked both Dr Meyer and Dr Eid,
and one of them, Martin Sugarman, had to be escorted out by the Commons
security; on his way out he stunned everyone by giving the Nazi salute and
shouting “Sieg Heil”.

Following
the deaths of more than 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza in July 2014, a letter
from survivors of the Nazi genocide and hundreds of their
descendants, called for “a full economic, cultural and academic boycott of
Israel”.  The letter reads:

“Genocide begins with the silence of the world . .
. We must raise our collective voices and use our collective power to bring
about an end to all forms of racism, including the ongoing genocide of
Palestinian people.”

“Never
again” must mean NEVER AGAIN FOR ANYONE!”  Dr Hajo Meyer was the first to
sign on.  The letter was published in the New York Times on 24 August
2014, the morning after he died.

Following
this year’s Israeli massacre of Palestinians during their Great March of
Return, our members recently initiated and circulated a statement
calling for an arms embargo, and an open
letter to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, signed by over 100
Jewish people, many of them distinguished, including Prof Moshe Machover,
Michael Rosen and Sir Stephen Sedley, condemning BoD’s support for the massacre
and refuting its claim to speak for all Jewish people in Britain.

We
welcome the letter
from distinguished Palestinians defending their “inalienable rights”
and refusing “attempts to silence public discussion” (Guardian 31 July), and
the comment from Jewish former Appeal Judge, Rt. Hon.
Sir Stephen Sedley (Guardian 27 July):

“. . . both Jews and non-Jews in the UK are
entitled, without being stigmatised as antisemites, to contend that a state
that by law denies Palestinians any right of self-determination is a racist
state, or to ask whether there is some moral equivalence between shooting down
defenceless Jews in eastern Europe and unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in
Gaza.”

For a
more detailed report of the Never Again tour, see Scottish Palestine Solidarity
Campaign’s statement here.

Under Tony Blair the stewards act like fascist thugs as they removed “Walter Wolfgang, a refugee from Nazi Germany, for quietly heckling war criminal Jack Straw