‘Whatever the anti-Semitism witch-hunt is about it isn’t
anti-Semitism’ Tony Greenstein
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| Ken Loach addressing the meeting |
Over 70 people crammed into London’s Conway
Hall last night (January 29) to discuss the ongoing witch-hunt against the Left
in the Labour Party and what can be done to stop it. Hundreds of left-wing and pro-Palestinian members remain expelled or suspended, many
of them on trumped up charges of anti-Semitism.
have attracted an amazing amount of vitriol from the ruling class’s prostitute
press. When it comes to Liberal or the
Tory press – whether it is the Mail or
the Guardian/Independent – there is no difference, they are all against
‘anti-Semitism’ – at least when it comes in the form of anti-Zionism and
support for the Palestinians!
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| LAW’s first public meeting was packed out |
commentators like Richard Littlejohn are all opposed to anti-Semitism whilst demonizing
Black people and asylum seekers. You’d need to have a lobotomy not to realize the
gross hypocrisy of these ruling class scribes.
Editor Marcus Dysch, who seems reluctant to follow up his threats
to sue me for calling him a racist, seems obsessed with us. Virtually every week there is a story about
Labour Against the Witch-hunt.
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| Our first successful action – the picket of Labour’s NEC |
Labour activist wins High Court injunction to delay
disciplinary hearing on antisemitism charges
MP accuses Jackie Walker of ‘fantasy’ over claim she
is being targeted by Israel
Labour hearing into activist who abused Jewish MP
postponed indefinitely
Momentum director expected to get control of key
Labour disciplinary committee, says party insiders
Group set up to protest against Labour’s expulsion of
members accused of antisemitism expels members for alleged antisemitism
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| Tony Greenstein in full flow |
Commons recently that
“I do not wish to step into party politics
too much, but it is important that in debates like this we call out campaigns
such as Labour Against the Witchhunt, which has called for ‘the immediate
lifting of all suspensions and expulsions from Labour Party membership which
were…connected to the antisemitism smear campaign’.
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| Marc Wadsworth and Jackie Walker – Jeremy Newmark’s nightmare |
How
kind of this execrable Tory, who has nothing to say about the racism of his own
party, to be outraged when members of the Labour Party complain about false
allegations of anti-Semitism. It would
seem that even to point out the fact that anti-Semitism has been weaponised
against anti-Zionists and supporters of the Palestinians is anti-Semitic! Thus has free speech been outlawed.
this Percy is so concerned about ‘anti-Semitism’ then perhaps he might ask why
his own party is in alliance with Poland’s Law
and Justice Party in the European Conservative and Reform group in the
European parliament. The same party
whose government has just introduced a bill making it a criminal offence to make
mention of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.
Anna Bikont’s book The Crime and the Silence about the
massacre in 1941 in Jedwabne when up to 1600 Jews were burnt alive in a barn by
their fellow Polish citizens has been outlawed at a stroke. Likewise Jan Thomas Gross’s ‘Neighbours’ yet this hypocritical scoundrel
dares accuse Jewish anti-Zionists of ‘anti-Semitism’. See Is
Michal Kaminski fit to lead the Tories in Europe? And Jewish group seeks
Tory assurance
Establishment. Percy decries Labour
‘anti-Semitism’ and at the same turns a blind eye to the alliance of his own
party with Holocaust deniers in the European parliament. He has nothing to say about the inclusion in
the ECR group of Robert Zile of the Latvian LNNK. The same Zile who marches each year with the
veterans of the Latvian Waffen SS.
it is a fact that false allegations of anti-Semitism have been made in
abundance. Indeed one of the most
remarkable things about the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt is that it has not
uncovered any anti-Semitism. Jackie
Walker is suspended for not uttering one word ‘among’ in a casual private conversation that was broken into by the
Israel Advocacy Movement. See The
lynching of Jackie Walker
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| Naomi, David Watson (suspended Walthamstow), Jackie & Cheryl |
Livingstone is suspended for telling the truth about Nazi support for the
Zionist movement in Germany. It is a
fact that the Nazis did support the Zionist movement in Germany over and above
the anti-Zionists. As Zionist historian
David Cesarani conceded in his book The Final
Solution, (p.96) citing the Gestapo itself:
‘The efforts of the Gestapo are
oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending its support to
its efforts to further emigration.’
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| Candidate for Deselection: Louise Ellman MP, a supporter of the Israeli military’s child abuse, deploys ‘antisemitism’ as a weapon against support for the Palestinians |
am suspended for, amongst other things, calling the reactionary Labour MP
Louise Ellman, a supporter of Israeli child abuse, which she is. Three times in a debate on a Report, funded
by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and backed up by UNICEF, she intervened
in a parliamentary debate to defend the Israeli military’s abuse of Palestinian
children. Ellman should long ago have
been expelled from the Labour Party for her support for war crimes.
laughably Marc Wadworth is suspended for pricking the pretensions of the
haughty Labour MP Ruth Smeeth, who is described by Wiki Leaks as an informant for the US Embassy. Wadsworth, who challenged Smeeth at the
Chakrabarti press conference for trading information with The Telegraph, is
called ‘anti-Semitic’ for having
called Smeeth out. Marc didn’t even know
she was Jewish and a cursory examination of the conversation bears this out –
nothing that was said was anti-Semitic.
What comes across is the arrogant, elitist demeanour of Smeeth who was
outraged that a Black person dare challenge her. She was affronted in much the same way that a
slave owner would be outraged by being called to account by his slave. ‘How
dare you, how absolute dare you’ was this upper class prat’s reaction to
Marc. Watch it here
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| Corbyn with Marc Wadsworth at the Chakrabarti press conference – unfortunately Jeremy hasn’t had the spine to speak up in support of someone he’s known for over 30 years as an antiracist activist |
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| Jackie and Cheryl, with suspended member Simon Hinds at the back – Jeremy Corbyn has failed to speak up on this racist witchhunt |
Honorary President of Law spoke as did Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, Tony
Greenstein and Ken Loach.
do with anti-Semitism, but everything with destabilising Jeremy Corbyn’s
leadership.” When we have the
far-Right, people like neo-Nazi Richard Spencer calling himself a ‘white Zionist’, when virtually every fascist party from our own BNP and EDL to Le
Pen’s Front Nationale, Strache’s Freedom Party in Austria to the neo-Nazi AfD
(alternatives for Germany) all loving Israel, how dare they accuse us of
anti-Semitism? Why do these fascists and
racists love Israel? Because it is the
kind of state that they wish to emulate.
A state that is presently trying to deport 40,000 refugees because they
are Black and not Jewish. What is there
not to like about Israel?
on charges of anti-Semitism, explained that, “Labour Against the Witchhunt demands that there should be no more
disciplinary hearings in the Labour Party until the recommendations of the
Chakrabarti report on natural justice and due process have been implemented.
The current disciplinary system is contrary to the ethics of our party, which
are about protecting the weak against the strong and maintaining principles of
justice for all.”
Smeeth MPin the
press conference that launched the Chakrabarti report – asked: “Why has John Mann not faced
disciplinary action? He openly attacked NEC member Ken Livingstone in front of
TV cameras, using expletives, bringing the Party into disrepute.” He said
that LAW has to “work hard to give the
new left-wing majority on the NEC the strength, the backbone, to stand up to the witch-hunt.”
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| Our first public meeting was highly successful |
Machover reminded the audience that suspensions on
charges of anti-Semitism amount to “character
assassination”, but while he had been accused
of anti-Semitism, he had actually been expelled for having articles published
in the Weekly Worker and Labour Party Marxists. Under the
monstrous rule 2.1.4.B for, a member
or “supporter” of any political organisation which is not affiliated to Labour
and which is not a Labour Party unit can be instantly expelled, with no right
of appeal.
to mean, but I got no reply.” But after
an international protest campaign that saw dozens of Labour Party branches and CLP issue
motions in his support, “the compliance unit suddenly decided that I
did not support either organisation or newspaper, when a few weeks earlier they
had decided exactly the opposite. Needless to say, nothing had changed in the
meantime.” Having been expelled on October 5 2017, he was reinstated on
October 30 – and is still demanding an apology from the compliance unit.
pro-Corbyn left on bogus charges of anti-Semitism
a nonsense and we have to be clear about calling it that: nonsense. The witch-hunt is part of the right wing attempt to destabilise the
Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. We need a foreign policy
of peace, international law and human rights. When Jeremy became Leader, almost
the entire Parliamentary Labour Party refused to serve. They brought the party
into disrepute. We would have won the
general election with a united party. Many local election pamphlets did not
even mention Jeremy Corbyn and omitted manifesto policies. We now need to
defend and extend the manifesto. We need to get a new party in parliament. And
being a Labour MP is not a job for life. It is the democratic right of members
to select their candidates.”
why it was that Jeremy Corbyn had failed to speak up for those suspended. Corbyn knows many of those involved yet had displayed
a singular lack of backbone despite the fact that Labour Friends of Israel MPs
such as Chair Joan Ryan have been his
bitterest enemies. He is not strengthening
his position by remaining silent about his friends. Privately people tell me that the main
culprit is his poisonous aide Seamus Milne, ex-Guardian journalist and veteran
Stalinist. Milne, even more than Corbyn has
articulated the ‘strategy’ that if Corbyn concededs to the anti-Semitism
witch-hunt then his life will be made easier.
Milne and Corbyn don’t understand that the longer they appease these
racist bastards the greater will be their demands. Racists such as Jeremy Newmark
need to be faced down. My suggestion is
that Corbyn ask Newmark what is the position of the jlmm regarding the deportation
of African refugees from Israel and why the Israeli Labour Party is supporting Netanyahu’s
racist attack on Eritrean and Sudanese refugees.
We heard a number of moving speeches from the floor from people who had been suspended. One, David Watson, from Walthamstow had been suspended because of the Stella Creasy mafia and her abusive partner.
Another Cyril Chilsom is a former Israeli who converted to Catholicism. Cyril is the child of a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. His mother was an inmate in Auschwitz concentration camp. Despite this the vile racists of the Compliance Unit and Crooked Iain McNicol suspended Cyril at the behest of Jeremy Newmark and the racist Jewish Labour Movement.
available on our website soon. There will be another public meeting organised
by Labour Against the Witchhunt tonight in Birmingham. Plans are currently
being finalised for a conference in spring and an intervention at the Labour
Party conference in Liverpool. LAW’s founding principles can be found here.
demands that the NEC, now with a left-wing majority, must introduce some urgent
changes:
1. A
moratorium on any new cases being referred to the National Constitutional
Committee (NCC).
2. The withdrawal of all outstanding NCC cases.
3. The immediate implementation of the Chakrabarti
report recommendations on Labour’s disciplinary procedures in respect of
natural justice and due process.
JOIN
LAW NOW
Jackie Walker’s Report
One of the best – I’ve EVER been to and I’ve Chaired and been to a LOT of meetings. It was packed. The panel – me Chairing, Tony Greenstein (Jewish blogger suspended for AS), Marc Wadsworth
long time black anti-racist warrior (suspended for AS), Ken Loach (not
yet suspended/villified as they wouldn’t dare even though he says/said
some hard hitting things), Moshe Machover (world famous expelled and
re-instated Jewish anti-zionist dissident). Contributions were great,
wide ranging, insightful, inspiring.
Many members from Grassroots Black Left and Jewish Voice for Labour in
the audience but THEN came the audience BIG TIME – ex IDF (Israeli army)
son of holocaust survivor’s testimony on what his suspension for AS has
done to his life, people who have waited 2 years and still dont’ know
what they are accused of. Tales of injustice, torment and the question
WHY? Why do we allow a system that has led already to one suicide, to
torment, depression, to public (metaphorical) lynchings to remain? And
demands – that the left on the NEC should reflect the views of those
who elected them and ACT to implement Chakrabarti. It’s time for the
Leadership to intervene in this debate. That it’s time for us to MAKE
the media, not be their objects. This is the fightback. Join Labour
Against the Witchhunt! Edited highlights to follow!
