Just when Labour pulls ahead of the Tories, Margaret Hodge makes false allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn

Tony Greenstein | 20 July 2018 | Post Views:

According to Margaret Hodge
an anti-Semite is someone who disagrees with her!

Given her cover up of Child Abuse, Hodge should never have been an MP let alone Blair’s Minister for Children

Last week it was announced that
Labour had taken a 4% point lead over the Conservatives. In jest I remarked on Twitter that it was
time to bring out the anti-Semitism allegations. Little did I know that at that very
moment Margaret Hodge, whose main claim to fame was covering up child abuse when Leader
of Islington Council, was preparing to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of being ‘a fucking anti-Semite.’

The purpose of Hodge, Berger and Smeeth is to damage the Labour Party and give comfort to this woman

Of course there has been total
unanimity in the media that Hodge was right to attack Corbyn. From the Sun to the Guardian, the British press
has spoken with one Orwellian voice. It is like the days of Pravda and Izvestia and on BBC24 New’s What The Papers Say
both journalists sang from the same song sheet. We are witnessing what Chomsky
called the ‘manufacturing of consent’.

Simon Kelner in the ‘i’ repeats the same hackneyed arguments of the press – without an iota of originality

The Zionist argument was summed up by
Simon Kelner in the ‘i’:

‘Who is, in fact, better qualified to judge? An
understandably sensitised community on one side, or an apparently disinterested
party on the o ther? Does the Chief rabbi believe that if a Jewish person feels
he or she has been on the receiving end of anti-Semitic behaviour, that is – by
definition – anti-Semitic behaviour?’

The argument is as attractive as it’s
wrong. Surely, the argument goes, any
community or group should be able to ‘define’ what their oppression is? In fact the answer is no. Because all sorts of groups who are anything
but oppressed can decide to define political criticism of them as a form of
oppression.

I had an idea that antisemitism hadn’t run its course!

Many lesbians are defining their
oppression in ways that many people would say is transphobic. The Paedophile
Information Exchange (with which it has been alleged Hodge had connections)
used to define hostility to them as a form of oppression? How about
anti-abortionists and the hunting brigade? The National Front and fascist
groups define opposition to racism as being nothing more than anti-white racism
as did the proponents of Apartheid.

Supporters of Israel, who are the
real proponents of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition
of anti-Semitism, are not oppressed. Jews
in this country, many of whom identify with Israel, do not suffer from state
racism. They are not pulled over by the
Police because they are Jewish, nor are there Jewish deaths in custody or deportations
because they are Jewish. The Jewish community
in this country is a privileged White community.

I had a feeling that antisemitism would rear its head

If members of the Jewish community
choose to define their identity as support for Zionism and the oppression of
the Palestinians then they should be criticised, called out not flattered. If Jews in this country are racist they should
be condemned not allowed to pass it off as opposition to anti-Semitism.

Hodge’s Attack on Jeremy Corbyn Demonstrates why the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism is not fit for purpose

No group should be allowed to define its
own oppression. That is precisely the
pitfalls of identity politics in which you get competing oppressions and
subjective definitions which lack all objective justification. Oppression is
real, it isn’t a form of words or an international agreement. As if the anti-Semitic Hungarian government endorsing
the IHRA makes it somehow kosher. And
amongst British Jews many disagree with Zionism and the IHRA definition. Are we to be ignored because Jewish ‘community
leaders’ are in bed with Benjamin Netanyahu?

It’s no accident that Sajid David and Chuka Ummuna say almost exactly the same – the time has come for Ummuna to be deselected

Zionists pray in aid the MacPherson
Report which recommended that the victims of racial incidents be able to define
what had happened. However that was in the context of forcing the Police to record an
incident as racially motivated. It did not mean that the allegation was necessarily true or that the person against whom an allegation was guilty.

This week Israel officially declared
itself an Apartheid state. The Knesset passed
the Jewish Nation State Law. In the words
of Bradley Burston, a Senior Editor on Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper, this is:

a law which effectively repealed and superseded the
equality and democracy provisions of Israel’s Declaration of Independence
as a guide for the future of the country. Gone is any mention of equality. In
its place, directives that veer Israel towards genuine apartheid, including a
downgrading of the status of the Arabic language and therefore of Arab citizens
of Israel.

This is the context of the attempts
by the Zionists to impose the IHRA definition on the Labour Party. No longer is there even any pretence that the
false anti-Semitism allegations which have been made against the Labour Party for
the last 3 years are about Israel.

In the Jewish Chronicle two weeks ago
its editor Stephen Pollard berated
the ‘institutionally anti-Semitic’ Labour Party for refusing to
adopt wholesale the IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism. Pollard complained that

‘instead of adopting the definition as agreed by all
these bodies, Labour has excised the parts which relate to Israel and how
criticism of Israel can be antisemitic.’

This is the same Stephen Pollard who
has not hesitated to defend genuine anti-Semites like Michal Kaminski because
he is pro-Zionist. [see Poland’s
Kaminski is not an antisemite: he’s a friend to Jews]

Anti-Semitism is hostility to or prejudice against Jews it is
not disagreeing with the Chief Rabbi, Margaret Hodge or the Chief Rabbi

The argument
that everyone has the ‘right to define’
their own oppression is an absurdity. Anti-Semitism
is not a difficult thing to define. According
to the Oxford English Dictionary it is ‘Hostility to or prejudice against Jews’ all of 6 words. The IHRA
definition of anti-Semitism is over 500 words.
In the words of Sir Stephen Sedley, a Jewish former
Court of Appeal judge, the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition: it
is indefinite’.

However as I have also said Corbyn has
made a rod for his own back. His fatal
mistake was in adopting the IHRA definition at all. It isn’t about anti-Semitism but about
conflating criticism of Israel and anti-Semitism. Instead of stupidly going along with Theresa May and accepting the IHRA without any
debate Corbyn should have had the courage to say no.

The false anti-Semitism allegations
were never aimed at expelling me or Marc Wadworth or Jackie Walker. That is why it was stupidity itself for Corbyn
to give these bogus allegations the time of day. Zionist MPs like Luciana Berger
and Ruth Smeeth are in the forefront of the attacks on Corbyn. Appeasing these racists has not helped his
situation it has made it worse. The
more you appease racism the more it grows and the Labour Zionists have felt
emboldened.

Now with Hodge’s false accusations
she should not be reprimanded, she should have the whip withdrawn. The electors of Barking are entitled to have a
socialist, not a New Labour millionairess represent them. She should never have been allowed to be an
MP given her record of covering up child abuse in Islington.

Last week we had people like West
Streeting MP calling for sanctions on Israel for the proposed demolition of the
Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmer. This
week he does his usual bowing and scraping whenever the word ‘anti-Semitism’ is
mentioned.

What Streeting and others refuse to
understand, to put it charitably, is that allegations of anti-Semitism are used
to undermine support for the Palestinians.
If Streeting was being genuine in his outrage over Israel’s actions then
he and others should not be supporting an attempt to conflate criticism of Israel
and Zionism. The same people who support Israel right or wrong are those who
proclaim that they are victims of ‘anti-Semitism’. False allegations of anti-Semitism enable the
real anti-Semites to get off the hook by being able to say that people are only
attacking them because of their support for the Palestinians. Zionism historically has always seen genuine anti-Semitism
as a force for good, but it has also tried to redefine anti-Semitism as
hostility to their political project.

With
a past like hers, Margaret Hodge might show a bit more humility. Margaret Hodge is perhaps the last
person to go around throwing stones. As
Matthew Norman wrote
in The Independent

In the Eighties Hodge was aware of previous child
sex abuse in the care homes for which she was responsible, and did nothing
about it.

Hodge was

‘A local politician who had heard the gravest
imaginable allegations about the maltreatment of children, refused to examine
them on budgetary grounds, smeared a victim, attacked the newspaper that did
its duty by investigating, and finally – after years of running for cover –
offered the dismal excuse that people knew less about child abuse back then,
became the national politician with responsibility for children.’

Of course this Uncle Tom is lying. Hodge didn’t ‘raise concerns about racism’ she accused Corbyn of being an anti-semite

We also had other Labour right-wingers jumping on the
bandwagon such as Chuka Ummuna who is politically White inside a Black skin. He
made the fatuous comment that because Hodge had lost relatives in the Holocaust
she was therefore right to defame Corbyn.
By that logic I should be able to accuse Chuka Ummuna of being a racist because
I too have lost relatives in the Holocaust.
A Black politician who supported the Immigration Act 2014, which led to
the Windrush Scandal is in no position to lecture anyone on what racism
is. Ummuna is an Uncle Tom who is
playing to the racist gallery.

For the benefit of those who don’t understand what anti-Semitism
is, I print the following guide to anti-Semitism.

Tony Greenstein