Tony Greenstein | 26 June 2020 | Post Views:

It’s Time for Starmer to Go – Israel’s Use of the Knee-on-the-Neck is not an Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theory – It’s a Fact

So now it’s official – the ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign of the past 5 years was, after all, about Israel not hatred of Jews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4T1xGSju10&feature=youtu.be&t=139&fbclid=IwAR1sfij9DLssreRPZrhYAeXS4dhAm6ig_r_yBbAOR42njL5IuBZbOWV3qm4

Only yesterday I posted a blog ‘For 6 years Black Lives Matter Were Attacked as ‘anti-Semites’ by the Zionists – Today they suffer from amnesia’.

I described how Israel was training thousands of US Police in repression techniques, including the knee on the neck.

Today Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow Cabinet for retweeting Maxine Peake who pointed out this elementary fact.

Please sign and share the Petition we have set up calling for Starmer to go. He is unfit to be Leader of the Labour Party. We cannot have a racist and imperialist at the head of a party that claims to be socialist.

We should be grateful to Starmer. He has clarified the situation. As we always said, the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign was always about Israel and never about genine anti-Semitism, i.e. hatred or hostility to Jews as Jews.


Corbyn stupidly accepted that the ‘antisemitism’ campaign to remove him was legitimate

It is unfortunate that Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell gave legs to the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign, whose sole purpose was his removal as Leader by admitting that Labour ‘had a problem’ with anti-Semitism.

It enabled malicious Zionists like Margaret Hodge to then claim that if you denied Labour was anti-Semitic then you were ‘part of the problem’.

Naturally the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Labour Movement welcomed Starmer’s actions because both these bodies are first and foremost Zionist groups, committed to defend the apartheid Israel.

Jon Lansman didn’t condemn Starmer’s actions. It was all ‘a big mistake’. Lansman pleaded that

Sir Keir was elected to end factionalism…and I think he’s made it harder for himself to unite the party.”

Starmer was elected to root out the left in the party. Even more pathetically Lansman went on to explain that‘Rebecca Long-Bailey is just as committed to ending anti-Semitism within the party “as he and I are.”


Instead of defending her tweet RLB dissociated herself from Maxine Peake’s comments on Israel

Lansman and Momentum have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They still don’t get it. This isn’t and never was about anti-Semitism. It was always about support for the world’s only Apartheid State. It was about support for imperialism and bipartisanship in foreign policy with the Tories, which Israel symbolises.


Israel’s finest use the knee-on-neck as a matter of routine

That is why all Momentum can do is to call for the reinstatement of RLB. We do not care about her. She is a weak individual who signed up to the very ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign that has caused her sacking. She calls herself a Zionist. She supported the expulsion of Chris Williamson. She is a victim of her own stupidity.

What matters is that a simple statement of fact that Israel trains thousands of US Police in the techniques of repression has been branded an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

By his action Starmer is now signed up, 100%, behind Israel’s military repression of the Palestinians. He is unfit to be Labour leader.

It is a fact that Israel trains the United States Police in repressive techniques to use against Black people. The major US Zionist group, the Anti-Defamation League boasted that

Over the past decade, we have trained 150,000 law enforcement personnel—at no cost to taxpayers. This work is designed to protect people and communities from hate, extremism and terrorism.

Well we saw what ‘protection’ of people from terrorism meant when 5 days after George Floyd was murdered, Israel’s notorious Border Police gunned down Iyad Hallak, a 32 year old autistic Palestinian in East Jerusalem. They had ‘mistaken’ his mobile phone for a gun. A mistake they never make in the case of Jews.

The details of Iyad’s murder are gruesome. According to Ha’aretz, an already wounded Iyad took shelter in a garbage hut.  His carer screamed that he was autistic.  He cried ‘I’m With Her,‘ ‘The Cop Opened Fire Anyway’ and pumped the final 3 of 7 bullets into his body. Unlike in Minneapolis no police have been arrested, still less charged.  The police killers are still employed. There is an investigation but like all such Israeli police investigations it will go nowhere.

This is what Sir Keir Starmer is defending, just as he defended the murder of Ian Tomlinson by the Metropolitan Police until public pressure forced him to back down.

Starmer sacked Rebecca Long-Bailey for supporting an ‘anti-Semitic conspiracy theory’. By definition an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory such as the belief that Jews are controlling the world, is untrue and has no basis in fact. If it is true they it can’t be anti-Semitic.

Unless Starmer is saying that anti-Semitism is based on fact. If so it is Starmer who is the anti-Semite.

Historically Zionism has always justified anti-Semitism by saying that Jews in the diaspora brought their problems on themselves by not having their own country. As Israel’s first Justice Minister Pinhas Rosen said‘Palestine is an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’.

You can find this quote and many similar ones in Joachim Doron’s Classic Zionism and modern anti-Semitism: parallels and influences’ (1883-1914), in Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983 and the Journal of Israeli history No. 4.

Fundamental to Zionist anti-Semitism towards Jews outside Israel is the foundational principle called the Negation of the Diaspora. It is still common amongst Zionists. When Zionism first arose it was seen by most Jews as a form of Jewish anti-Semitism. Both the anti-Semites and the Zionists said that Jews were a separate nation who shouldn’t live amongst non-Jews.

Do the Israeli Police train Americas Police forces in the Knee on the Neck Hold?

According to Amnesty International, hundreds of US law enforcement officials have gone through training in Israel, while thousands more have been trained by Israeli forces in the United States.

Middle East Eye has documented the similarities between the militarised tactics of US police forces and Israeli police against Palestinian protesters. The use of this form of restraint is very common to Israeli police as this video of its use against a Jewish American protesting at the march of the far-Right in Jerusalem demonstrates.

Neta Golan, of the International Solidarity Movement said:

“When I saw the picture of killer cop Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd by leaning in on his neck with his knee I remembered noticing when many Israeli soldiers began using this technique when we were protesting in the West Bank sometime in 2006.

Israel pioneered the knee-on-neck hold that killed George Floyd. It is not an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say so. It is true.

Starmer is a Racist Hypocrite

Barely two weeks ago Starmer ‘took the knee’ in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. This was an empty and meaningless gesture. He issued a video statement quoting Martin Luther King that ‘injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Starmer even expressed his support for BLM.

In 2016 BLM called Israel an Apartheid and genocidal state and supported BDS. For this they were criticised as anti-Semitic by Zionist groups. Starmer is echoing this criticism of BLM.

Clearly injustice to the Palestinians does not feature on Starmer’s horizon. That is why this pompous starched-white representative of the British Establishment needs to go. He is a racist supporter of Israeli settler colonialism.


Starmer and Rayner take the knee to BLM whilst supporting similar tactics by Israeli Police

In April 2018 Black Lives Matter forced Starbucks into excluding the Anti-Defamation League from training their staff following the arrest of 2 Black men for ‘loitering’ at a Philadelphia coffee house.

Starmer has just demonstrated that Labour is a pro-imperialist pro-Zionist party. That is why he must go.

Posted in

Tony Greenstein

Leave a Comment





This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.