Ken Livingstone faces Labour’s Star Chamber as the Witch-hunters Change the Charge

Tony Greenstein | 02 April 2017 | Post Views:

Iain McNicol Avoids Discussing Livingstone’s Accusation of Zionist
Collaboration with the Nazis

Cartoon in the Zionist Press concerning Ha’avara – ‘don’t worry Hitler, the Jews of Palestine are helping you.’

John Mann MP who makes a living out of ‘anti-Semitism’ confronts Ken Livingstone

It is remarkable, after all the
spurious indignation and outrage, not least John Mann’s cameo
performance for the cameras last year, when he accused Ken Livingstone of
being a Hitler apologist, that Ken Livingstone’s remark
that Hitler was a supporter of Zionism was not
the subject of his disciplinary hearing last week. Instead the offence he was charged with was
that he supported Naz Shah when she jokily suggested that the best solution for
Israel’s war mongering was to transfer Israel to the territory of its
benefactor, the United States.

Livingstone waxes lyrical outside his hearing

Naz Shah’s quip was made in the
context of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge when 2,200 Palestinians were
butchered in Gaza and when 551 children were also slaughtered. It was in the context of the very real and
existing threat of transfer of the Palestinians living in Israel and the West
Bank/Gaza. A plurality of Israeli Jews, some 48%, support
the Nazi solution of the forcible expulsion of the Palestinians from where they
live. What we are seeing in Jerusalem today
and elsewhere is the slow transfer and ethnic cleansing of the indigenous
Palestinians.

In the 1930’s the Daily Express was a pro-Hitler paper and this infamous headline, which inverted reality and stated that it was the Jews (‘Judea’) which had declared war on Germany, was used repeatedly by the Nazis to justify their attacks on German Jews

During the attack on Gaza, which
was allegedly in self-defence, we had Israeli mobs chanting that ‘There’s
No School In Gaza, There Are No More Kids Left’. We had the disgusting spectacle of Israelis
taking their armchairs and even a coffee machine to neighbouring hills overlooking
Gaza in order that they could get a better view of the death and destruction
that Israel was causing in Gaza. [Israelis
gather on hillsides to watch and cheer as military drops bombs on Gaza]

Today the Daily Express attacks Livingstone for his ‘anti-Semitism’

This is the reality that
Labour’s witch hunters avoid mentioning.
It says something about the timidity of Corbyn that he has not condemned
the witch-hunt of Ken Livingstone or the false anti-Semitism campaign in the Labour
Party. Corbyn above all should know,
because he himself has experienced false anti-Semitism allegations. Corbyn has also followed Theresa May in endorsing
the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism
which conflates Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Iain McNicol – Desperate to avoid discussion of
‘historical facts’

Labour’s witch hunters are desperate
to avoid any debate about the content of what Livingstone said. We were told a year ago that what Livingstone
said about Hitler supporting Zionism and whether the Zionist movement
collaborated with the Nazis was a heinous example of anti-Semitism. Now it is reported
that:

‘Labour’s
general secretary, Iain McNicol made it clear in a letter to the former mayor
that the case against him was not about the historical facts but whether his
conduct was “grossly detrimental” to the party, especially given his defence of
anti-Semitic Facebook posts by Bradford West MP Naz Shah.”

Germany’s Zionist newspaper, Judische Rundschau, welcomed the 1935 Nuremburg Laws

We should bear in mind that the
‘anti-Semitic Facebook posts’ by Naz Shah included a map of the United States
with Israel transplanted to it. The map
first appeared on the site of the Jewish
Virtual Library, which isn’t known to be an anti-Semitic site!

The catch-all charge, favoured by
McCarthyites, of bringing the Labour Party into disrepute, is of course
entirely subjective. It is a matter of
opinion depending on where you stand.
Some of us think that if anyone brought the Labour Party into disrepute
it was Tony Blair’s support for the Iraq war, but clearly being a war criminal
is not seen as disreputable by crooked McNicol.

Medal Nazis struck after 6 months trip to Palestine by the head of the Jewish desk at the Gestapo – Baron von Mildenstein

Most people will be under little
doubt that Ken Livingstone’s almost certain expulsion will be because of what
he said about the Zionists collaborating with the Nazis. The truth is also ‘anti-Semitic’. So it is useful to look at the argument of Professor
Rainer Schulze, an academic apologist for Zionism, to understand why McNicol
fought shy of tackling the substance of what Livingstone said.

Edwin Black’s ‘The Transfer Agreement’ is the major work on Ha’avara – Rainer Schulze clearly hasn’t read it

Professor Rainer Schulze – Court Historian to the British Establishment

Professor Rainer Schulze – Court Historian to the Establishment – Defends
Nazi-Zionist Collaboration

Livingstone was attacked a year
ago by Professor Schulze, who is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Essex
in Labour
antisemitism row: there was nothing Zionist about Hitler’s plans for
the Jews. The article was reprinted in
The Independent as Hitler
and Zionism: Why the Haavara Agreement does not mean the Nazis were Zionists.
Unfortunately
being a professor of history doesn’t mean you have to know much about your
subject and this is often the case with Holocaust professors eg. Deborah Lipstadt.

When the Nazi government was put
in power by Germany’s conservative and military in January 1933, world Jewry
reacted by setting in motion an economic boycott of Nazi Germany. Given that it was completely unorganised and
spontaneous, it was remarkably successful.

By mid-April
England had supplanted Germany as the largest exporter to Denmark and
Norway. German exports were 10% down in
April. For June the export surplus was
down by 68% compared to May. For the entire
first half of 1933 exports were down 51%.
‘That six month loss would have
been greater except that the anti-Nazi boycott had not really commenced until
late March.’ [1] German exports to France decreased by
25%. Egypt had an almost complete
Boycott.[2]
Exports were down 22% to America compared with
1932 levels.

Even in
Palestine in the first few days of April thousands of orders for German goods
in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were cancelled.
However the ‘socialist’ Zionists of Mapai, the Israeli Labour Party,
were furious. They wanted to do business
with the Nazis, not campaign against them.
They immediately launched a campaign against the Boycott of Nazi Germany.
On Kol Yisrael, on May 18th, they broadcast that ‘Screaming slogans calling for a boycott… are a crime… We are all
anxious about our brethren in Germany, but we have no quarrel with the
representatives of the German government in Palestine.’ [3]

At the 18th
World Zionist Congress in Prague in 1933 Mapai, which controlled the Congress,
refused to put forward a motion condemning the Nazi regime.

Schulze puts forward the
establishment view of Ha’avara which is that there was nothing wrong in a trade
agreement with the Nazis. Similar
arguments were used by those who opposed a Boycott of South Africa in the
1970’s. Thatcher and Reagan then argued that
‘constructive engagement’ with Apartheid was the best policy. Rainer Schulze is in essence arguing that the Zionist
policy of constructive engagement with the Nazis was the best policy.

In the 1930’s the same establishment
worthies who today are opposed to the Boycott of Israel as ‘anti-Semitic’ were equally
opposed to the Boycott of Nazi Germany. The
Board of Deputies of British Jews voted on July 23 1933 by 110-27 to oppose a
Boycott of Nazi Germany. It was the
occasion for the coming together of the previously anti-Zionist bourgeois
leadership under President Neville Laski and the growing Zionist contingent on
the Board. As Black observed, ‘in July 1933 influential Anglo-Jewish
leaders committed themselves to the Zionist solution of the German Jewish crisis.’
[4]

In the United States the
Roosevelt administration justified its opposition to a Boycott of Nazi Germany
on the ludicrous grounds that it undermined Hitler! Hitler was seen as the ‘element of
moderation’ in the Nazi state! [5] The definition of a ‘moderate’ has always
been flexible.

Rainer Schulze is however correct
on one thing. Hitler wasn’t a
Zionist. Nor did Ken Livingstone claim he
was. It is however indisputable that the
Nazi regime supported and favoured the Zionist movement.

Reinhardt Heydrich, Himmler’s
Deputy and leader of the Reich Security Main Office which combined the Security
and Criminal Police, the Nazi Security Service and the Gestapo, issued on the
28th January 1935 an order which stated that

The
activities of the Zionist-oriented organisations… lies in the interest of the
National Socialist state leadership’ before going on to say that these
organisations ‘are not to be treated with that strictness that it is necessary
to apply to the members of the so-called German-Jewish organizations
(assimilationists).

i.e. the majority of German Jews [6] In Schwarze
Corps, paper of the SS, Heydrich wrote that the Nazi government ‘is in agreement with the great spiritual
movement within Jewry, Zionism…’ [7]

Nicosia, who is a Zionist and Professor
of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University, wrote:

Throughout
the 1930’s, as part of the regime’s determination to force Jews to leave
Germany, there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party
circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews, Jewish emigration from Germany
to Palestine.[8]

If Schulze isn’t aware of this
then he has no business trumpeting his professorial credentials on the
subject. If he is aware of the above
then he is an academic liar, an establishment poodle. The above quotes can be found in books by two
Zionist historians, the late Lucy Dawidowicz’s War Against the Jews and Francis Nicosia’s Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany. The SS, which was the most pro-Zionist of all
the components of the Nazi state and which went on to implement the Final
Solution, saw in the Zionists the ‘volkish’ Jews who accepted that Jews should
play no part in the affairs of Germany.

Jews were, according to the
Zionists, not German but Jewish nationals.
The Zionists alone amongst German Jews welcomed the Nuremburg Laws of
1935, which stripped the Jews of German citizenship. This is not even a matter of serious
dispute. On 21st June 1933, the
German Zionist Federation [ZVfD ]sent a memo to Hitler:

On the foundation of the new state, which
has established the principle of race… fruitful activity for the fatherland
is possible. Our acknowledgement of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and
sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial
realities. Precisely because we don’t wish to falsify these fundamentals,
because we too are against mixed marriages and are for maintaining the purity
of the Jewish group…. Boycott propaganda… is in essence fundamentally
unZionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.[9] Black, who is himself a
Zionist historian observed:

‘It
became that much harder for German Jews to defend against Nazi accusations of
illegitimate citizenship when a loud and visible group of their own continually
published identical indictments … as
Nazi philosopher Alfred Rosenberg made clear … ‘If an organisation inside the state declares
that the interests of the German Reich do not concern it, it renounces all its
civil rights.’ Zionism had become a tool for anti-Semites.’ [10] (my
emphasis)

Ha’avara
and the Saving of Jewish Refugees

Ha’avara had nothing to do with saving Germany’s Jews. No one in 1933 envisaged that the Nazis would
embark on a policy of extermination nor did the Nazis themselves plan for
it. That came later with Operation
Barbarossa and war imperialism. The ZVfD
and George Landeur, its Director, ‘fought
for German regulations that would prevent German Jews from saving their wealth
by any means other than investing it in Palestine.’ [11] Zionism was only interested in building the
Jewish state. Saving the Jews was
secondary to this. ‘By late July, transfer activists spoke increasingly of ‘saving the
wealth’ and ‘rescuing the capital’ from Nazi Germany. The impact on German Jews themselves seemed
to be a subordinated issue.’[12]

The other question is, why did
Nazi Germany agree to a trade agreement whereby German goods were exported but
they were paid not in hard currency but German Reichsmarks? The answer is simple:

Without
the worldwide effort to topple the Third Reich, Hitler would have never agreed
to the Transfer Agreement.[13]

David Ben-Gurion, first Israeli Prime Minister opposed the rescue of Jews if the destination wasn’t Palestine

Zionism only supported the rescue of Jews if they
went to Palestine. David Ben-Gurion,
Chairman of the Jewish Agency was quite explicit about this. Ben Gurion argued that:

‘Zionism… is not primarily engaged in saving
individuals. If along the way it saves a
few thousand, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of individuals, so
much the better.’ But in the event of a
conflict of interest between saving individual Jews and the good of the Zionist
enterprise, we shall say the enterprise comes first.’[14]

Saul Friedlander, a Zionist Holocaust historian
noted that ‘the Palestine leadership
refused to extend any help to emigrants whose goal was not Eretz Israel (Land
of Israel).’ [15]

When Britain proposed the Kindertransport which
saved 10,000 German Jewish children after Kristallnacht in November 1938, the
Zionist movement opposed it. Ben Gurion wrote:

If I knew that it would be possible to
save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England, and only
half of them by transporting them to Eretz Yisrael, then I would opt for the
second alternative. For we must weigh not only the life of these children, but
also the history of the People of Israel.[16]

Ha’avara was condemned by virtually the whole of
world Jewry for placing the interests of the Zionist movement and a future Jewish
state above the interests of Germany’s Jews.
Even
the Jewish Chronicle, paper of the Jewish Establishment, opposed it:

we object to the
transfer of their assets in the form of the products of German factories and
German employment. We say that that is
aiding and comforting one of the most savage oppressions, even in Jewish
history…. It breaks the united Jewish boycott front, a front let it not be
forgotten, with which non-Jewish sympathisers were also aligned.[17]

Between 1933 and
1939 Ha’avara accounted for 60% of total capital investment in Jewish
Palestine.[18] Over RM100 million of German goods were exported
from Germany to Palestine.[19] Less than 20% of German Jewish emigrants went to
Palestine and only a minority of them came via Ha’avara. Those German emigrants who did utilise
Ha’avara were the richest German Jews, because you needed the equivalent of
£1,000 in cash in order to qualify for entry to Palestine as a capitalist. The émigrés themselves received a fraction of
what they paid for those goods.

Not once did Schulze even mention
the Boycott of Nazi Germany. This is academic
dishonesty. You cannot understand the
opposition from the overwhelming majority of Jewish people to Ha’avara without understanding
the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany.

Israeli historian Tom Segev
explained why the Zionist movement opposed a Boycott of Nazi Germany.

The
purpose of the boycott was to force the Nazis to halt their persecution, so
that Jews could continue to live in Germany.
Ben Gurion and his associates, by contrast, wanted German Jews to settle
in Palestine and they saw Ha’avara policy as a means toward that end.

In other words, this was the old Zionist
policy of welcoming anti-Semitism as an inducement to Jews to emigrate to Palestine. The Zionists didn’t want Jews to live in the
diaspora. They saw the persecution of
Jews in Germany as the inevitable outcome of Jewish ‘homelessness’ – living in
other peoples’ countries. As Nicosia
observed some Zionists ‘even believed
that the Nazi triumph represented, as Berl Katznelson stated “… an
opportunity to build and flourish like none we have ever had or ever will
have.’ [20]

Contrary to their rhetoric about
‘anti-Semitism’ today, when anti-Semitism was at its height in the Nazi era,
Zionism sought to exploit the tragedy of German and European Jewry. Not once did it seek to combat or oppose Nazism.

The Nazis were frantic in their
desire to destroy the Boycott. By agreeing to Ha’avara, the Zionist movement
helped the Nazi regime survive. As Black
notes, there was a real possibility that without Ha’avara the Nazi regime might
have cracked in the winter of 1933.[21]

Ha’avara, far from being a rescue
scheme for Jews was a rescue scheme for the Nazi state. That the Zionist movement was guilty of
collaboration cannot be doubted, even if the tame establishment historian
Rainer Schulze suggests otherwise. One
of the consequences of Ha’avara was that:

‘The
German economy would have to be safeguarded, stabilized and if necessary
reinforced. Hence the Nazi party and the
Zionist Organisation shared a common stake in the recovery of Germany. If the Hitler economy fell, both sides would
be ruined.’ [22]

The idea that the Zionist
Organisation or the Jewish Agency were concerned with rescuing German Jews in
their own right is for the birds. Their
primary goal was the building up of Jewish Palestine and everything had to be
seen in that light. Werner Senator, a
member of the Zionist Executive told the Jewish Agency office in Berlin that if
it did not improve the ‘human material’
of those it was sending, the Agency would cut the number of Palestine
certificates for Berlin Jews. Indeed it
was decided that those above the age of 35 would receive certificates, ‘only if there is no reason to believe that
they will not become a burden here.’ Tom Segev noted that Eliahu Dobkin, a
member of Mapai and the Jewish Agency Executive considered that those German Jews who were ‘merely refugees’ were ‘undesirable human material.’ [23] The Zionists even used the same terminology
as the Nazis. German Zionism was a
Jewish volkish current.

Zionism as Jewish Self-determination or Settler Colonialism

Rainer Schulze argued that ‘Zionism was a movement based on the right of
self-determination. It originated as a national liberation movement…’ A question I have often asked Zionists is
when they first decided that Zionism was a national liberation movement? I have
never received an answer. The founders
of Zionism, from whatever political persuasion, described Zionism as a colonial
movement at a time when colonialism was still respectable.

The founder of
Political Zionism, Theodore Herzl when he wrote to Cecile Rhodes, the British
colonialist and white supremacist in southern Africa explained thus:

‘How, then, do I happen to turn to you
since this is an out-of-the-way matter for you?
How indeed? Because it is
something colonial.’ [24]

Vladimir
Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism (the equivalent of Likud today)
in his famous essay ‘An Iron Wall’ which was a polemic against his opponents in
Labour Zionism argued that:

‘There can be no voluntary agreement
between ourselves and the Palestine Arabs…. it is utterly impossible to obtain
the voluntary consent of the Palestine Arabs for converting
“Palestine” from an Arab country into a country with a Jewish
majority.

My readers have a general idea of the
history of colonisation in other countries. I suggest that they consider
all the precedents with which they are acquainted, and see whether there is one
solitary instance of any colonisation being carried on with the consent of the
native population. There is no such precedent.[25]

There isn’t even one instance of
any reference to a ‘national liberation movement’ in the writings of the
founders of Zionism. Zionism only became
a national liberation movement when colonialism got a bad name! Today’s Zionists have decided to disguise
what even the Zionists themselves used to admit was a colonialist movement in
the apparel of the oppressed in order to deceive the innocent. Rainer Schulze’s history lessons are in
reality an act of deception.

Rainer Schulze finished his
article by indulging in a piece of straw man rhetoric:

‘Any claim that Nazis and
Zionists ever shared a common goal is not only cynical and disingenuous, but a
distortion of clearly established historical fact.’

That is, of
course, true. But no one has claimed
that they shared common goals. Clearly
the Zionists didn’t support the mass genocide of European Jewry. Marshall Petain collaborated with the Nazis
but that doesn’t mean he supported the aims of the Nazis. He collaborated because he didn’t want a Nazi
occupation of France. When a weaker
party collaborates with a stronger party they rarely if ever share the same
goals. Unfortunately Professor Schulze,
having very little knowledge or understanding of the topic he wrote about
decided to engage in an old debating tactic.
Attack something your opponent hasn’t said!

Tony Greenstein

[1] Edwin
Black, The Transfer Agreement, Brookline
Books, New York, p.223.

[2] Black,
pp.265, 273. This gives the lie to the
myth about Arab support for the Nazis.

[3] Black
p. 144.

[4] Black,
p. 212.

[5] Edwin
Black, The Transfer Agreement, p.19. Brookline Books.

[6] Lucy Dawidowicz, War Against the Jews, p.118,
Pelican.

[7] Francis Nicosia, Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi
Germany, p.119, Cambridge University Press.

[8] Nicosia,
p. 79.

[9] Lucy
Dawidowicz, A Holocaust Reader, p.150-153.

[10] Black
p. 173.

[11] Black,
p. 258.

[12] Black
p. 288.

[13] Black
xxiii.

[14] Shabtai
Teveth, ‘The Burning Ground 1886-1948’,
Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1987 p. 855, speech to the Mapai Council 1933.

[15] Saul
Friedlander, Germany and the Jews – 1933-1945, p. 57, Phoenix, London, 2009.

[16] Zionism
and the Holocaust, http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/631/zionism-and-the-holocaust,
Yoav Gelber, ‘Zionist policy, p.199, Segev, p.28. Ben-Gurion at the Mapai CC, 7.12.38, Teveth,
p.855.

[17] JC,
The Unclean Thing, 27.12.35.

[18] David
Rosenthall, Chaim Arlosoroff 65 Years After his Assassination, Jewish
Frontier, May-June 1998, p. 28, New York http://www.ameinu.net/publicationfiles/Vol.LXV,No.3.pdf.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B-DwJUnaW0sMb3dxRzd5NkExaEE
accessed 13.11.15. In 1937 over 31m RM
was transferred. Nicosia, The Third Reich, p.213.

[19] Francis
Nicosia, The Third Reich and the
Palestine Question, p. 213, Hilberg fn9. p. 139, Saul Friedlander p. 26.

[20] Nicosia,
Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany, p. 91 citing Friedlander, pp 15,
63-4.

[21] Black
p. 189.

[22] Black,
p. 253.

[23] Tom
Segev, The Seventh Million, p.44, Hill and Wang, New York.

[24] Diaries of Theodor Herzl, Vol. 4, page
1194.

[25] Vladimir
Jabotinsky, “The Iron Wall (We and the Arabs),” Rassvyet (Berlin),
November 4, 1923. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/quot-the-iron-wall-quot

Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone

31 March
2017

Jonathan Cook

The
ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more preposterous.
After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when
he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended
Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive
and false historical claims.

Now as
Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion before a
closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges
that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone
saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his
statements or whether what he said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is
about whether his conduct has been “grossly detrimental” to the party.

In other
words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have
been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful
Israel lobby. That is the same lobby – directed by the Israeli embassy and
working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently
exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a
British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly
detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before
they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.

That is
why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the
liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep
helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis” in Labour, acerbating the
very problems they blame Corbyn for creating.

In this
context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to
air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case
Livingstone makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the
more detriment the JLM and others will do to the Labour party. Certainly,
JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will
benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.

McNicol’s
logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM
leadership, and continues to draw a veil over Israeli oppression of
Palestinians, the party will have a quiet life. If Labour tries to do
the right thing – promoting justice for the Palestinians, upholding international
law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle
East – it will face a perfect storm from the JLM.

Remember
as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture
this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to conceal
the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the
democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour
as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it
has him in a bear hug.

Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone

31 March 2017

The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet more
preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler
was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations that he had made anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.

Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion
before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional
committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has
written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the
historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he
said was anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been
“grossly detrimental” to the party.

In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course
Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least,
they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby
– directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the
Jewish Labour Movement – that was recently exposed by an undercover Al
Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government
minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the
party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it,
or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.

That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and
its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and
Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism
crisis” in Labour, acerbating the very problems they blame Corbyn for
creating.

In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying
Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing.
Because the better the case Livingstone makes for collaboration between
the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do
to the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified
against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public
scrutiny of his statements.

McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as
Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil
over Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party will have a quiet
life. If Labour tries to do the right thing – promoting justice for the
Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering
wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East – it will face a perfect
storm from the JLM.

Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture
this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother
to conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government
than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones
cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with
a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.

– See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2017-03-31/labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone/#sthash.X7EuVwmm.dpuf