McDonnell’s Pathetic Acceptance of the Right’s Fake ‘Anti-Semitism’ Campaign is akin to flying the White Flag of Surrender
I know it is difficult for Labour politicians to absorb, but for a decade the Tories have been in alliance with a host of genuinely anti-Semitic parties in the European parliament. Parties like Poland’s Law & Justice Party or Latvia’s LNNK, whose MEP Robert Zile goes on a walk each March with veterans of Latvia’s Waffen SS who did their duty helping out with the Holocaust. What is it that prevents them mentioning this every time someone accuses the Labour Party of ‘anti-Semitism’? Stupidity? Cowardice? Take your pick. Labour’s antisemitism fantasists don’t even refer to Boris Johnson and his racist comments.
Of course these anti-Semitic parties that the Tories are in alliance with are also devoted supporters of Israel, so perhaps this is not something worth mentioning? I refer to e.g. Viktor Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, who is busy trying to rehabilitate Admiral Horthy, Hungary’s war-time Nazi ruler who presided over the deportation of nearly half a million Jews to Auschwitz. The fact that he is of the opinion that Horthy was an ‘exceptional statesman’ doesn’t prevent Netanyahu establishing a solid friendship with him or the Tories, alone amongst conservative parties in the European parliament, supporting him in a censure motion.
Horthy is a genuine anti-Semite unlike those accused in the Labour Party anti-semitism witch-hunt so what is it that prevents McDonnell engaging his brain with his mouth?
It seems to be a little difficult for McDonnell and Labour’s so-called leftwingers, such as Angela Rayner or Rebecca Long-Bailey, to get their collective heads round the fact that genuine anti-Semites, like Richard Spencer, neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right, support Israel and even declare that they are ‘white Zionists’. Most anti-Semites today are supporters of Israel and Zionism. Israel is the ideal ethno-nationalist state, something to model themselves on. That is why allegations of Nazi-Zionist collaboration were no aberration. Zionism has always worked with genuine anti-Semites.
What is unforgivable is that McDonnell, Corbyn, Formby and the rest seem incapable of doing anything but retreating in the face of the Zionist and right-wing ideological onslaught. Of course it’s not helped by the fact that Jon Lansman, Momentum’s dictator, is a paid up supporter of Israel and Zionism.
Perhaps the most abject moment in John McDonnell’s interview with Sky was when he said how much he regretted the resignation of Joan Ryan, Chair of Labour Friends of Israel. Ryan was the person who deliberately invented false allegations of anti-Semitism against Jean Fitzpatrick, a delegate to the 2016 Labour Party Conference who had the effrontery to challenge her over LFI’s claim to support the Palestinians. Ryan was also filmed discussing a £1m contribution by Israeli agent Shai Masot to her slush fund.
Ryan has consistently been the front person for the Israeli state. Ryan it was who claimed that Jean had mentioned Jews and bankers in the same breath when criticising LFI. Fortunately the whole incident was secretly recorded by Al Jazeera’s The Lobby. Ryan, who is not even Jewish, has been assiduous in spreading the myth that the Labour Party is ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’. Far from regretting Ryan’s departure it is one of the few good things to have happened lately. The pity is that more of the racist rats have not departed.
McDonnell is allowing this man to set the pace
Although McDonnell rebutted the suggestion that the Labour Party is ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ he accepted that anti-Semitism was a major problem in the Labour Party. It was only two weeks ago at the Labour Representation Committee, of which he is honorary President, that McDonnell gave his support to Jackie Walker, the Black Jewish activist who is currently suspended and facing expulsion on March 26th. He also gave support to Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt whose candidature in Thanet South was rejected by the NEC Panel.
McDonnell has no problem in acknowledging the fact that the Witchhunt has predominantly netted anti-Zionist Jews and Black anti-racists but he seems unable to put two and two together and work out exactly why there never seems to be any evidence of ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party. There are just assertions.
It was good that Jennie Formby wrote a stiff letter to Tom Watson calling him out over his vague parallel complaints monitoring system. Unfortunately she also went and appointed an ‘independent’ overseer to the complaints system, Lord Falconer, Blair’s former flat mate and ex- Attorney General. It’s called shooting yourself in the foot.
It is difficult to know whether McDonnell is simply stupid or disingenuous. My preference is for the latter but it is a close run thing.
It is should be clear with anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear that the anti-Semitism campaign is a fake and that anti-Semitism has been weaponised by the Right. On LBC, in response to a caller who said that he was ‘killing Labour’ Tom Watson said that he won’t rest until he drives every last anti-Semite from the Labour Party.
Leaving aside the absurdity of thinking that a mass party can simply purify itself 100% of any bigotry or prejudice (does the same apply to homophobes, Islamaphobes and any other form of prejudice?) it is a fact that Watson is extremely unconcerned when it comes to racism against Black people and Muslims. He went along with all New Labour’s anti-terrorism and Prevent measures.
Tom Watson also abstained on Theresa May’s 2014 Immigration Act (ie. supported it) which introduced the ‘hostile environment policy’ which led to the deportation of hundreds of Black people. If Watson is into expelling every last anti-Semite then presumably he is in favour of expelling himself as an incorrigible racist? And given the way Ed Miliband pandered throughout his miserable leadership to racists, with those Labour Immigration Control mugs, presumably we can start by purging the Parliamentary Labour Party?
Of course this won’t happen. Anti-Semitism is the most marginal form of racism in Britain today. The fact that the Labour Party is alleged to be overrun by it is testimony to how a ruling class, narrative, Orwellian in the way Black has become White has come to dominate the media.
What Watson really means by his declaration of running every anti-Semite out of the Labour Party, is that hostilities will continue until Corbyn is removed. It is a declaration of war and for McDonnell to simply mouth the same pieties is unforgiveable. He is in essence giving the green light to Watson and the Labour Right to continue a campaign whose sole purpose is to be rid of Corbyn as leader.
It was therefore pretty sickening to hear McDonnell fawning over Momentum’s latest video attacking the Rothschild’s meme (basically that the Rothchilds finance Israel etc.) At a time when the Home Office is chartering planes to take Black people to the West Indies as part of their hostile environment policy Momentum under Lansman is obsessed by ‘anti-Semitism’, the most marginal of all forms of racism.
Rothschild’s conspiracy theories are believed by nutcases like David Icke. They have no popular purchase and are essentially harmless. For Momentum to concentrate on nonsense like this when there is real state racism, when Tommy Robinson’s thugs are active and when Apartheid Israel is continuing to use snipers to murder unarmed demonstrators is sick.
No one seriously thinks anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is a problem. It barely exists outside of the Daily Mail’s headlines. Luciana Berger and Louise Ellman faced reselection problems not because they were Jews but because they are obnoxious right-wingers.
What is appalling is the way that so called left-wingers and socialists like McDonnell feel unable to stand up and call it out.
Jews in Britain are not being deported back to where their ancestors came from. They don’t die in police custody. They are not disproportionately gaoled. They do not fear (with the exception of the visually distinctive Ultra Orthodox) attacks on the street and the Ultra Orthodox have distanced themselves from the mainstream Zionist Board of Deputies attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, although the media deliberately didn’t report a letter from 29 rabbis last year distancing themselves from the Zionist attacks on Corbyn. Jews are not economically deprived nor do they live in the inner cities. Jews have long moved out of the East End into the suburbs of London.
It is an easily verifiable fact that the false anti-Semitism campaign was launched as soon as a Jeremy Corbyn leadership became apparent.
A month before Corbyn was elected the Daily Mail was accusing Corbyn of associating with a holocaust denier, Paul Eisen. The attention of the Zionists then turned to Jewish MP Gerald Kaufman before the incident of ‘anti-Semitism’ at Oxford University Labour Club. All of these were fake and manufactured incidents as Asa Winstanley documented. The Chair of Oxford University Labour Club, Alex Chalmers, just happened to have worked as an intern for the main Israeli propaganda group in Britain, BICOM.
The witchhunters then moved on. I was suspended in March 2016 and Jackie Walker was suspended two months later. Around the same time Ken Livingstone was demonised for having said that the Nazis supported Zionism during the 1930’s, something clearly a matter of historical record.
f McDonnell ever got anywhere near power the Zionists would turn on him and dig up every ‘skeleton’ from the IRA to the PLO
Only last July the Jewish Chronicle and two other Zionist papers printed a joint editorial United We Stand which spoke of ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government.’ Corbyn was deemed a threat to the very existence of the Jewish community in Britain. In other words he was anti-Semitic. Accusations that Chris Williamson was a ‘Jew Baiter’ have been the staple of Zionist propaganda.
Yet instead of calling these false anti-Semitism attacks out, McDonnell beats his breast about ‘anti-Semitism’ in the Labour Party and how we must engage in a purge. McDonnell is Tom Watson’s useful idiot. Anyone with the slightest guts would call out Watson and the Labour Right for their abysmal record on racism in Britain against Black and Asian people.
The real problem is that Corbyn and McDonnell believe that the road to power is via appeasing the majority of Labour MPs. They are sadly wrong. It will not happen. Last September Corbyn opposed Open Selection, the only device that would have allowed the composition of the PLP to change. He is now paying the price.
They said that adoption of the IHRA would put the anti-Semitism nonsense to bed. A ‘definition’ of anti-Semitism which conflates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism and which defines hostility to Israel as hostility to Jews.
When last year it was seen as possible that Corbyn wouldn’t survive and McDonnell was seen a possible successor the Jewish Chronicle and the Zionists immediately began digging into their files for evidence of McDonnell’s ‘anti-Semitism’.
McDonnell’s embrace of this false narrative, which is counter to the experience of all Labour Party members, is like drinking poison. It is utterly suicidal. It is clear that Watson is involved in preparations for a coup, whether it is a breakaway inside the PLP as the Sunday Times speculates or simply forcing Corbyn to resign. McDonnell’s behaviour is akin to treachery and it is no accident that he and Lansman are thick as thieves.
What McDonnell and the Labour Left, which today is difficult to discern in the PLP, should do is to call out the Labour supporters of Apartheid in Israel, i.e. Tom Watson and company. When edicts are issued in Israel by Chief Rabbis against even Israeli Arabs renting rooms or flats in cities like Safed and members of the Labour Party like Luke Akehurst justify Israel’s use of snipers to mow down peaceful and unarmed demonstrators it is clear that McDonnell and other ‘lefts’ have lost the plot.
Yes there should be a purge but of the racist Right in the Labour Party not the anti-Zionist left.
Tony Greenstein
