Brighton & Hove Councillor Anne Pissaridou Suspended for ‘Anti-Semitism’ as Lloyd Russell-Moyle MP is sacked by Starmer

When will they learn? Starmer is waging a War on the Left – Anti-Semitism is his Pretext – STOP apologising for criticising Israeli Apartheid

Three days ago, Brighton & Hove Labour Councillor Anne Pissaridou was suspended for ‘anti-Semitism’. Her ‘crimes’ were two Facebook posts of at least 4 years vintage. It says something about the pathetic state of the Labour Party at the moment that her fellow councillors didn’t immediately protest at the decision to deprive Labour of its status as a majority party on Brighton and Hove Council.

The first question that should be asked is why someone was trawling through 4 year old Facebook posts? I wouldn’t even know how to access mine. Who is it that dug up Lloyd Russell-Moyles 11 year old Facebook post? It is clear that there is Israeli state involvement in all of this. Israel barely bothers to hide the fact that it has a Ministry of Dirty Tricks which goes by the name of the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Four years ago one of their operatives, Shai Masot, was caught with his pants down by Al Jazeera’s undercover programme, The Lobby. Because of the close relationship between the British and Israeli states it was all hushed up and Masot quietly left the country.

Anne PissaridouNo one, absolutely no one, should be suspended for social media posts alone. If someone is posting overtly anti-Semitic stuff then they will also be active racists and unlikely to be in the Labour Party. If by chance they are members of the party then they should be judged on their actions not their words.

Racism is not about words (or to use the Zionists’ favourite word ‘tropes’) it is about deeds. It is what you do not what you say that counts. One of the most remarkable things about the whole fake Labour ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign is that there are no Jewish victims, apart from people like me, i.e. Jews who have been expelled for being anti-Zionists.

As was made clear from the leaked Labour Party report (see my blog) in the case of a genuine Holocaust denier, Christopher Crookes, Sam Matthews and the Compliance Unit/GLU were not interested. It took a petition of over 200 members of the International Section before he was suspended and later expelled.

The reason is simple. So simple that even the thickest member of the Labour Right, even Luke Stanger or Emma Daniels should get it. The ‘anti-Semitism’ witchhunt is not, and never was, about anti-Semitism. It is unfortunate that many on the left, including Jewish Voices for Labour, still don’t get it.

The witchhunt was always about Zionism and Israel. Zionism from its very beginning accepted and understood anti-Semitism. It never had a quarrel with genuine anti-‘Semitism. After all the anti-Semites were doing the Zionists job for them. They were ‘encouraging’ Jews to leave.

As Theodor Herzl, the founder of Political Zionism wrote in his Diaries (p.6) in the middle of the Dreyfus Affair:
In Paris… I achieved a freer attitude towards anti-Semitism, which I now began to understand historically and to pardon. Above all, I recognise the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.

That is why today, the best friends of the Israeli state are anti-Semitic and far-Right regimes such as Orban’s Hungary. It is why the leaders Netanyahu is closest to include open Hitler admirer Duterte and Bolsonaro. It is why, when the Argentinian Junta was murdering Jews because they were Jews, the lips of the Israeli government fell silent.

However when it comes to anti-Zionism, which has been redefined as ‘anti-Semitism’ then the Zionists are vocal. When they say that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism what they really mean is that it’s anti-Semitic to support the Palestinians and to oppose the oppression of the Palestinians. And what is the basic assumption behind this? That all Jews support Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians which is about as anti-Semitic a ‘trope’ (to use the Zionists favourite word) as you can get.

It is also why anti-Semites such as Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson are ardent supporters of the Zionist ethno-nationalist state. There is nothing more that they would like to see adopted in Europe and the USA than ttheir own ethno-nationalist white states.

The idea that Zionist organisations, whose raison d’être is to support the world’s most racist state, are somehow opposed to anti-Semitism is the big lie that has persisted for the past 5 years. It is the lie that Corbyn, McDonnell and now Lloyd Russell-Moyle have swallowed.

Nearly 4 years ago Anne Pissaridou shared an article ‘Rothschild doubles down on Gold as Banking Crisis Begins’ with a picture of Jacob Rothschild with gold bars behind him. Anne’s comment was ‘interesting article’. The second piece of ‘proof’ that she is ‘antisemitic’ was a post sharing an article from Voxpoliticalonline.com with a picture of Corbyn meeting a rabbi with the title ‘Jewish Israeli journalist claims pro-Israel propagandist have ‘taken out a contract to stop….’ presumably Corbyn.

The first article could be seen as anti-Semitic but there should be no automatic assumption that the person who posted it is anti-Semitic.

The involvement of the Rothschilds in all sorts of nefarious activities is a standard theme of conspiracy theorists. It is based on anti-Semitic assumptions that the Rothschilds have such extraordinary financial prowess that they can engineer things like the banking crash. There is no doubt that the origins of the Rothschild’s conspiracy theories were anti-Semitic.

However most people who refer to the ‘Rothschilds’ are not anti-Semitic. Indeed I’ve met some who didn’t realise that the Rothschilds were Jewish! The mere fact of sharing such an article is not proof that Anne Pissaridou is an anti-Semite. Not, that is, unless you want her to be.

Today the place of the Rothschilds has been taken by George Soros. And virtually the whole of the racist Right, Trump and Jacob Rees Mogg included, subscribe to the notion that Soros is a destroyer of the White nations and a supporter of subversion.

If this witchhunt was genuinely about anti-Semitism then there would be an investigation into Anne’s activities. Has she hung around with anti-Semites and racists? Has she written for far-Right papers or gone on Tommy Robinson support marches alongside a large number of Zionists?

But of course those who suspended Anne don’t for a minute believe she is a far-Right infiltrator into the Labour Party. What they are seeking to do is to remove as many people on the Left as possible. As far as they are concerned you can be racist about just about anybody as long as it’s not Jews or rather as long as you are not opposed to the Israeli state.

In the second article Anne quoted from Gideon Levy, a journalist on Ha’aretz. It had nothing at all to do with anti-Semitism, unless of course you think that opposing Zionism is anti-Semitic in which case you are saying that anti-racist Jews are anti-Semitic!

Yet that is the ‘logic’ of genuine racists like former Brighton & Hove Labour Leader Councillor Daniel Yates who immediately opened his big mouth to issue platitudes about ‘anti-Semitism’.
Yates told the Argus that

“I can only apologise for the hurt fear and betrayal these actions have caused those who we seek to represent and support. There is no action I can take to undo this.’

Where do these people live? No one who is Jewish will give a tinker’s cuss about what Pissaridou shared on Facebook 4 years ago. People are far more worried about Coronavirus and how this government has fucked up big time killing thousands of people.

Of course it doesn’t help when Pissaridou say ‘“I am deeply sorry for my actions and any distress I have caused to the Jewish community.’ Look love, no one in the Jewish community has suffered the slightest distress for any inane comments you have made.

There is of course a very simple test as to what is and is not anti-Semitic. It is the Oxford English Dictionary definitionof anti-Semitism, ‘opposition to or discrimination against Jews‘ as Jews. If that was Anne’s intention in posting the first article then yes the charge is justified. If it was just an article which she read and found interesting then the charge is nonsense.

The problem is that the IHRA misdefinition of ‘anti-Semitism’ which Yates foisted on Brighton & Hove Council has nothing to do with anti-Semitism and everything to do with conflating anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, thus rendering at a stroke thousands of anti-Zionist Jews as anti-Semites.

Daniel Yates, like most of his ilk, is a political careerist. Like his predecessor, Warren Morgan, he is not the brightest tool in the box. But even Yates should be able to understand this. If you say that anti-Zionism is equal to anti-Semitism, which is what Yates is doing, then what he is saying is that the 5-6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust were anti-Semites! Think about it. 2-3% of German Jews were Zionists and in Poland in the last elections in 1938 Polish Jews overwhelmingly rejected the Zionists. In the Warsaw local elections out of 20 Jewish Council seats the anti-Zionist Bund won 17. The Zionists won just one. This is where the accusation that anti-Zionism=anti-Semitism leads.

The real question is what are the motives of those who moved to suspend Anne. Do they, for example, take the same attitude to other forms of racism as they do to ‘anti-Semitism’ or are allegations of anti-Semitism merely a smokescreen for another agenda entirely? An agenda that involves a war on the Left?

An exercise in hypocrisy

Almost at the same time as Anne Pissaridou was being suspended Labour frontbencher, Steve Reed, repeated a phrase that has come to be identified with Jewish financiers pulling the strings of gullible non-Jews. He asked‘Is billionaire former porn-baron Desmond the puppet master for the entire Tory cabinet?’ Richard Desmond just happens to be Jewish. ‘Puppet Master’ is a term used by a host of anti-Semites in regard to George Soros.

There has been a long and vicious campaign against Soros by Netanyahu’s friend Viktor Orban of Hungary who won the 2018 General Election by campaigning against him. Soros is the main hate figure of the American far-Right. Anti-Semitic cartoons depicting Soros as pulling the strings are regular features of the far-Right press.

3 years ago Yair Netanyahu, the son of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, posted an anti-Semitic ‘puppet master’ cartoon attacking Soros. It was replete with David Icke’s lizards. He was immediately praised by the neo-Nazi editor of the Daily Stormer, Andrew Anglin and David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK.

So what was Starmer’s response to Steve Reed’s anti-Semitic post?   Absolutely nothing. Likewise his response to right-wing MP Rachel Reeves tweet in support of Hitler supporting Nancy Astor was likewise ignored.

Reed is but one example. The person who was identified with the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign more than anyone was Labour MP John Mann. Yet Mann penned ‘The Bassetlaw anti-social behaviour handbook’ some years ago which listed under examples of anti-social behaviour such as ‘Rubbish’ and ‘Neighbours from Hell’ Travellers and Gypsies. He was subsequently interviewed by the Police under caution for a suspected hate crime.

The Labour Right, which professes to be so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ has throughout the years been distinguished by its hostility and racism to Gypsies. Luke Stanger, currently suspended for posting that Travellers are a social blight on communities, is but one example.

It wasn’t only Jews who were annihilated in the Holocaust. Up to half a million Gypsies and Roma were murdered in the same gas as the Jews yet you never hear about this from the Zionist Holocaust Memorial Trust or the Labour Right.

Tom Watson was the driving force behind the fake ‘anti-semitism’ campaign yet he was a died-in-the-wool racist. Watson had a long record of racism stretching back to the Birmingham Hodshrove by-election when he told the electorate that Labour was ‘on your side’ unlike the Lib Dems who ‘were on the side of asylum seekers’.

This ghastly man wrote in Labour Uncut about how he had lost sleep thinking about ‘poor Phil’ – the racist Labour MP Phil Woolas who the High Court removed from Parliament after he lied about his Lib Dem opponent and ran an election campaign based on ‘making the white folk angry’.

Tom Watson even issued an Easter message in 2019 referring to how the Jewish High Priests were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ, one of the oldest and most deadly anti-Semitic myths.

If Corbyn, McDonnell and the rest had had anything residing between their ears then the moment the Labour Right piped up about ‘anti-Semitism’ they would have pointed to their record over the years on immigration, asylum seekers and Muslims. But the Labour Left historically has also been the stupid left.

What Can We Do?

It should be crystal clear by now that the anti-Semitism campaign is being used by Starmer, not merely to remove supporters of the Palestinians but as a means of attacking the Left as a whole. It is not surprising that the Zionists want to separate ‘anti-Semitism’ out from racism as David Feldman and others of the Pears Institute for Anti-Semitism have suggested because their version of anti-Semitism has nothing to do with racism. [see Labour and Antisemitism: a Crisis Misunderstood]

too long the Left, including the organised left, has sat silently on the sidelines. JVL spent the last 2 years proving that there were Jews opposed to Zionism and providing a ‘Jewish cover’ for Corbyn. Unfortunately they didn’t get it that the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears were not about anti-Semitism and that providing a Jewish cover for Corbyn was an exercise in futility since he was not prepared to defend himself or his supporters.

The LRC has just gone along with a Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate that deliberately excluded Jo Bird, a Jewish anti-Zionist from the slate.

It is clear that Brighton is one of the targets of the witchhunters and it is rumoured that other councillors are targets too – names mentioned include Nikki Brennan, Nick Childs and Kate Knight. Even soft-left Council leader Nancy Platts is being talked about.

It is incumbent on the left Councillors to say that they will not accept the removal of the whip from Anne. That an injury to one is an injury to all. If necessary all the Left councillors should either resign the Whip and put the Greens in power or insist that Anne stays a member of the Group. On no accounts should racist Dan Yates be allowed to become Labour leader again.

Yates is an uncritical supporter of Zionism and Israel and close to the far-Right Sussex Friends of Israel. He has no problem with an Israeli state that bars its 20% Arab population to access 93% of ‘national’ i.e. Jewish national land. He has no problem with a state where Jewish women can insist that they are able to give birth in a maternity ward free of Arab women, a state where Arabs are barred from any job that is ‘security’ related. He was no problem with a state whose Prime Minister says Israel is not a state of all its citizens just its Jewish citizens.

It is incumbent on the 3 Brighton & Hove Labour Parties to support Anne Pissaridou and demand her reinstatement – by the party nationally and by councillors locally.

If Jews in Britain experienced a tenth of the discrimination of Palestinians in Israel then they would be entitled to shout about anti-Semitism. As it is they are used as an alibi for racists like Dan Yates.

The Left in the Labour Party needs to do what the Right did for the past 4 years. The Right fought Corbyn regardless of the electoral consequences. That is what the Left should also do. Why? Because the election of Tory Starmer would be a bigger disaster than Blair was. Starmer is as much our enemy as Boris Johnson and he should be removed as early as possible The fact that he has been praised by George Osborne should be proof enough.

Tony Greenstein