If You had Fought Back Against The Zionists’ False ‘Anti-Semitism’ Narrative Keir Starmer Would Not Be Prime Minister Today
Three months ago I proposed to Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Chris Williamson that we send a joint letter to Jeremy Corbyn saying that it was time for him to admit that the ‘anti-Semitism’ narrative that was used to destabilise his leadership had no basis in fact and was devised purely to destroy his leadership. The chosen instrument was the Jewish Labour Movement which was refounded in 2015.
Marc Wadsworth’s response to the idea of an open letter
Although Marc was at first on board with us he then decided to do his own thing, citing his memoirs as an excuse for not joining us. We also approached Asa Winstanley, a journalist on Electronic Intifada, who was suspended and forced to resign and Anne Mitchell, the former Chair of Brighton & Hove Palestine Solidarity Campaign, who was expelled, to add their names.
This was the Goebbel’s type stuff that was aimed at Corbyn
The ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign, which was fronted by Britain’s racist tabloids, the Guardian andthe Labour Right, to say nothing of the Zionist lobby which today denies genocide in Gaza, had one purpose and one purpose only – to get rid of the only left-wing leader that the Labour Party has ever had. Unfortunately Corbyn and those around him did not push back against this racist and pro-imperialist narrative. Instead they appeased their accusers.
If it was true that Corbyn had attracted anti-Semites to the Labour Party why would the British press and people like Suella Braverman and Priti Patel, who talked about an ‘invasion’ of refugees, be so concerned? What is it about anti-Semitism that distinguishes it from the Islamaphobia that these people revel in?
Corbyn & Marc Wadsworth
The answer is obvious. ‘Anti-Semitism’ today is not a form of state racism. It is a marginal prejudice which is why it is ideally suited to becoming the standard defence that Zionists use to deflect any criticism of Israel. A majority of Jews today support the Israeli state so ‘anti-Semitism’, the conflation of Jewish identity with criticism of Zionism and Israel, is an ideal way of attacking Palestinian supporters in the name of British Jews, who are happy to be the moral alibi for imperialism in the Middle East.
This has nothing to do with genuine anti-Semitism, which has nothing to do with Israel. The standard definition of anti-Semitism is ‘hostility to or prejudice against Jews as Jews.’
The false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ made against thousands of Labour Party members were malicious and contrived. Misspeaking and confusion between Jews and Israel, which after all calls itself a Jewish State, was used to brand people as anti-Semites.
In order to sustain their false allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ the Zionists pushed for the adoption of the IHRA ‘Definition’ of Anti-Semitism which was created in order to conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. Its 11 ‘illustrations’ of anti-Semitism were about hostility to and criticism of Zionism and Israel not the anti-Semitism that led to the gas chambers.
In December 2016 Corbyn made a rod for his own back by voluntarily adopting the 38 word IHRA definition. ‘A spokeswoman for Corbyn said he and Labour agreed with the IHRA’s definition’.
Today it is clear to all but the politically blind, even Owen Jones, that ‘anti-Semitism’ is being weaponised in order to justify genocide. When the International Criminal Court finally agreed to investigate Netanyahu for war crimes his response was that this was ‘pure anti-Semitism’. The same happened when arrest warrants were issued.
Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was like a ship heading for the rocks. Instead of the captain ordering the ship to change course, he urged his crew to speed up. The results were all too predictable.
I was the first Jewish member to be expelled. It was only when I read the Labour Leaked Report that I realised the depths to which Corbyn had gone in order to appease the Right and the Zionists.
Corbyn and his staff had actually urged that the expulsions of Ken, Jackie, Marc and myself be sped up because
‘these cases were of great concern to Jewish stakeholders and that resolving them was essential to “rebuilding trust between the Labour Party and the Jewish community”.
What Corbyn did was not the product of some personal weakness. John McDonnell was even worse in urging that Labour expel everyone in sight. He even defended Margaret Hodge after she called Corbyn a ‘fucking anti-Semite’. He said she ‘had a good heart.’
When it came to the suspension of Chris Williamson, the only MP to stand up in defence of those who had been witch-hunted, McDonnell and the Campaign Group refused to defend him as Tom Watson mobilised right-wing MPs and peers to demand that Chris be re-suspended after having been reinstated.
Corbyn never got it
On 19th June 2019 I wrote a blog: ‘We Are Witnessing the Slow Death of the Corbyn Project’. The Labour Left, or what was left of them, had effectively given up.I said:
I sometimes feel that it would be both cheaper and more efficient if Jeremy Corbyn replaced his advisors, Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray, with a tape recorder with a few pre-recorded messages, ‘I surrender’ ‘I apologise’. ‘I promise to do better’.
Throughout Corbyn’s leadership I posted over 70 blogs urging that he fight back. Together they make for a fascinating history of how Corbyn and the Labour left surrendered to the narratives of the Right.
It should have been obvious to Corbyn and the Campaign Group that an anti-Nato candidate gaining the position of leader of one of the two major political parties in Britain would be seen by the United States and its racist Rottweiler, Israel, as a threat to their interests.
It took time before the Labour Right settled on ‘anti-Semitism’ as its favoured tactic in the destabilisation of Corbyn. Disloyalty to the monarchy, ‘terrorism’ and patriotism had all been tried and had ended up in the near victory of June 2017.
Yet Corbyn and the Labour left were not able to capitalise on the general election result. Their whole strategy was based on reforming capitalism in tandem with the Labour Right. It was Tony Benn himself who had said that the Labour Party was a plane that needed two wings – left and right – to fly. Yet how could you reconcile those who support capitalism and those opposed to it? In practice the left had always surrendered to the right in return for minor concessions.
A rare voice of sanity and honesty among the Zionists was Prof. Geoffrey Alderman – despite being a columnist of the Jewish Chronicle for 14 years he was banned from the paper
In January and March 2016 I wrote two blogs: Jeremy Corbyn and the Retreat from Palestine. I wrote
however much Jeremy Corbyn appeases the Zionist lobby in the Labour Party he will never be acceptable to them unless he dances the hora.
I concluded apropos Corbyn’s appeasement of the Zionists that ‘In politics you cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.’ In March I wrote in Weekly Worker that:
Jeremy Corbyn’s recent statements to the Board of Deputies of British Jews… that he recognises Israel’s ‘right to exist‘ is a formula indicating acceptance of Israel’s right to be an Apartheid state…. it is clear that Corbyn has retreated in regard to his previous support of the Palestinians….
Instead of responding to the Zionist attacks on him by pointing to their hypocrisy, Corbyn has chosen to appease his critics by playing down his support for the Palestinians and retreating into meaningless soundbites.
Corbyn sent a letter to a Zionist heckler at a Labour Friends of Israel meeting at Labour Party conference reassuring him that he was pleased to
have the opportunity to express how I felt about progressing the peace process in the Middle East … Israel has always, and will continue to be, recognised by both myself and the Labour Party.
The Board of Deputies of British Jews responded to Corbyn’s appeasement by saying that they
were pleased that Mr Corbyn gave a very solid commitment to the right of Israel to live within secure and recognised boundaries as part of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict
An article I wrote in the local Brighton & Hove Independent
whilst demanding “more clarity” that the Labour Party “will maintain its longstanding opposition to boycotts against Israel”. I wrote that:
People need to face up to the fact that one of the consequences of the attacks on Corbyn has been a retreat from his previous political positions. I have never heard Corbyn previously speaking about the need to recognise the state of Israel. He used to be more concerned about recognising its repressive qualities. Instead of distinguishing between the oppressor and the oppressed, the coloniser and the colonised, Corbyn has depoliticised the issue, calling for peace in the abstract.
It is as if Corbyn had called for peace between white proponents of apartheid and black South Africans rather than supporting the abolition of apartheid. … Instead of opposing imperialism and Zionist settler colonialism, Corbyn imagines that ‘conflict resolution’ via United Nations diplomacy will solve what is at heart a political problem – the racist oppression, dispossession and expulsion of the Palestinians….
Corbyn retreats into the weasel words of Israel’s ‘right to exist’. The problem is not Israel’s rights, but the lack of Palestinian rights….
Jeremy Corbyn, as a patron of PSC, was a supporter of boycott, divestment and sanctions. But this is an issue over which he has recently gone very quiet.
I concluded thus:
Appeasement of Labour Friends of Israel will not serve the cause of either socialism or peace in the Middle East. Nor will it help Corbyn’s own precarious position as leader. Quite the contrary.
The question is why Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party turned out to be a disaster and whether it was simply a product of his own character or something more fundamental to the Labour Left and socialists in the Labour Party.
Why is this important? Because Zionism will always weaponise anti-Semitism and the memory of the Jews who died in the Nazi holocaust, in order to deflect criticism of their racist and genocidal state.
‘Anti-Semitism’ can only be weaponised because of two factors: firstly the holocaust and secondly because Jews themselves have changed. Where once being Jewish was a metonym for radicalism, the conclusions drawn from the Nazi holocaust being ones of anti-racism and anti-imperialism, today it anti-Semitism is all too often a metonym for all that is reactionary and racist .
Captain Corbyn
My blog during the Corbyn years is a diary of how Corbyn, the Campaign Group and Momentum blew the best chance the Left had in a generation to shift politics to the left. It is a story of how to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. The failure to confront reactionary identity politics, spearheaded by the likes of Jonathan Freedland, enabled a colourless, characterless and humourless apparatchik like Keir Starmer to become Prime Minister.
My coverage was a damning indictment of the Labour Left’s refusal to grapple with the politics of neo-liberal capitalism and imperialism and how to effect change, indeed whether change is possible via the ballot box.
When the JLM threatened to disaffiliate from the Labour Party Corbyn begged them to stay rather than say ‘good riddance’. They repaid him by passing a vote of no confidence in him!
Our purpose in writing the letter was not to attack Corbyn but to engage him in a discussion of what went wrong. However Corbyn’s refusal to respond to our letter demonstrates that he, like the Labour Left, is adamant in its refusal to draw any lessons from what went wrong between June 2017, when Corbyn achieved the largest swing to Labour since 1945 and the defeat in November 2019, when Labour sank to one of its worst defeats.
The fact that Starmer gained half a million less votes in 2024 than Corbyn did in 2019 demonstrates that there is nothing attractive about Starmer and his acolytes and Labour’s subsequent drop in the opinion polls shows how the Left could pose a serious alternative to a capitalist system based on exploitation, war and privatisation.
Tony Greenstein
Blog Posts I Wrote During the Corbyn Years (2016-2019)
2. The Hypocrisy of Ephraim Mirvis’s Attacks on Corbyn’s ‘Anti-Semitism’ November 2019
3. Why Anyone Who is Jewish and on the Left Should Have no Problem Voting for Jeremy Corbyn November 2019
4. The Hypocritical War by the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Establishment on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party 09-Nov-19
5. Rabbi Jonathan Romain, A Senior Reform Rabbi, Urges Jews To Vote ABC – Anyone But Corbyn November 2019
7. Drifting Without Direction – Are these the Dying Days of Corbyn’s Leadership? 02-Oct-19
8. The BBC’s War on Corbyn – Panorama would have made Pravda Proud 15-Jul-19
9. Corbyn’s Latest Anti-Semitism Proposals Prove that He is a Victim of the Stockholm Syndrome 23-Jul-19
10. If You Can’t Defend Chris Williamson, You Can’t Defend Jeremy Corbyn 07-Jul-19
11. Jeremy Corbyn Must Defend Chris Williamson Instead of Appeasing Tom Watson July 2019
13. Once again Corbyn Has Betrayed his Friends & Appeased his Enemies – Today Corbyn’s very leadership is at stake June 2019
14. We Are Witnessing the Slow Death of the Corbyn Project – June 2019
15. Jewish Chronicle Columnist Geoffrey Alderman Nails the Lie that Corbyn is an anti-Semite May 2019
18. The Lie of Labour Anti-Semitism has but one purpose – the removal of Corbyn (I) April 2019
19. Ha’aretz’s War Against Jeremy Corbyn – Gideon Levy & Amira Hass are the exceptions not the rule March 2019
20. John McDonnell Has Become Tom Watson’s Useful Idiot as Watson Openly Defies Corbyn and Prepares a Coup March 2019
21. The Suspension of Chris Williamson MP is Shameful – This May Be the End of the Corbyn Project February 2019
22. In Office But Not in Power – Jeremy Corbyn seems to have become Tom Watson’s Understudy February 2019
23. Joan Ryan Resigns from Labour – Xmas Comes Early for Corbyn February 2019
24. Shock Horror – Jeremy Corbyn is accused of ‘nodding’ when a Rabbi said that Zionism and Judaism have nothing in common!! January 2019
25. Corbynism without Corbyn – Lansman’s new strategy begs the question – what is the purpose of Momentum? January 2019
26. 29 Rabbis of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations issue statement supporting Jeremy Corbyn – for some reason it is ignored by the BBC and the MSM! September 2018
27. We are facing a Coup by Attrition as the Zionists and the BBC pore over every last word Corbyn has ever uttered August 2018
28. Jeremy Corbyn Must STOP Apologising to the Zionists – he has NOTHING to apologise for August 2018
29. Are there any limits to Corbyn’s ritual self-humiliation? Being a Leader means standing up to your opponents not appeasing them August 2018
30. Nick Lowles and Hope not Hate Join the Zionist attack on Jeremy Corbyn August 2018
33. Just when Labour pulls ahead of the Tories, Margaret Hodge makes false allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn July 2018
34. SCOTTISH LAW TOUR – The ‘antisemitism’ witchhunt has many victims but only one target – Jeremy Corbyn June 2018
35. If Corbyn Doesn’t Slay the ‘Anti-Semitism’ Dragon It Will Slay Him June 2018
36. Jewish Chronicle Editor Stephen Pollard Compares Jeremy Corbyn to Adolf Hitler and the Nazis May 2018
37. The Incremental Coup – How the Labour Right Successfully used ‘anti-Semitism’ to attack Corbyn May 2018
38. Jeremy Corbyn throws Marc Wadsworth overboard in a desperate attempt to save his leadership April 2018
39. Corbyn Should Refuse to Meet Jonathan Arkush and the Board of Deputies as and until they take anti-Semitism seriously! April 2018
40. Jeremy Corbyn Stabs Himself in the Back as the Fake News Anti-Semitism Campaign Gathers Strength April 2018
41. Avi Gabbay, leader of Israel’s Labour Party cuts links with Jeremy Corbyn alleging ‘anti-Semitism’ April 2018
42. If Momentum expels me today they will be joining the false anti-Semitism campaign whose target is Corbyn March 2018
43. A Very British Coup – How the British Establishment and the Israeli Embassy are Using ‘anti-Semitism’ to Destabilise Jeremy Corbyn March 2018
44. EXCLUSIVE – The letter that Corbyn intended to send to Jonathan Arkush at the Board of Deputies March 2018
46. The Guardian and Jonathan Freedland’s tedious Campaign against Corbyn November 2017
47. Corbyn Rally Attracts Thousands in Brighton – But He Refuses to Speak at Labour Friends of Palestine Meeting For Fear of Offending Zionist Lobby September 2017
48. The false ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations at Labour Conference have one purpose only – to destabilise Corbyn’s leadership September 2017
49. Corbyn Must Defend Chris Williamson MP Against False Accusations of Anti-Semitism September 2017
50. Jeremy Corbyn and the Humiliation of Nick Cohen June 2017
53. DEFEND KEN LIVINGSTONE – DEFEND CORBYN – SIGN THE LETTER BELOW April 2017
58. Corbyn’s Disastrous Brexit Strategy – Labour’s slow moving car crash February 2017
59. Sign the Petition – Call on Corbyn to sever all ties with Labour Friends of Apartheid Israel February 2017
60. Fake claims blown apart – Al Jazeera’s The lobby exposes the establishment’s ‘anti-Semitism’ claims for what they are, writes Tony Greenstein January 2017
61. Letter from 112 Labour Party members to Jeremy Corbyn January 2017
62. Jon Lansman’s Xmas Punch Could Sucker Corbyn January 2017
63. As the Guardian’s ‘anti-Semitism’ campaign against Corbyn continues its time to BOYCOTT the Guardian October 2016
64. Victory for Ken Livingstone Despite Corbyn’s Shameful Silence September 2016
65. The Calm Before The Storm – As Corbyn Wins the Right Intensifies Its Destabilisation Strategy September 2016
66. Corbyn Abandons 30 Years of Support for Palestine – But Despite Grovelling He Was Still Booed September 2016
67. Over 1,500 at Brighton Rally for Jeremy Corbyn August 2016
68. Thousands Queue 4 Corbyn In Liverpool August 2016
69. Massive Pro-Corbyn Rally in Brighton & Hove as Left Sweeps to Victory in AGM July 2016
70. Jeremy Corbyn – In Office but Not In Power – Right Gerrymanders to Prevent 130,000 from Voting in Leadership Ballot July 2016
71. The Times & Jewish Chronicle Report our Story on Corbyn Backtracking on Palestine May 2016
72. When Jeremy Corbyn Supported a Democratic, Secular State & Breaking Links with Poale Zion (JLM) May 2016
73. Labour’s Election Results Give Corbyn only a Temporary Reprieve May 2016
74. Open Letter to Jeremy Corbyn on Witch-hunt as McDonnell Tacks to the Right April 2016
75. Brilliant Momentum Rally Says Corbyn Stays March 2016
76. Jeremy Corbyn and the Retreat from Palestine 5 March 2016
78. Jeremy Corbyn & the Retreat from Palestine Jan 20 2016
80. Oxford University Labour Club – An Old Story – Support Palestinians Cry Anti-Semitism – 20 Feb 16
81. Jeremy Corbyn & the Retreat from Palestine – 20 January 2016
82. The Witchhunt of Gerald Kaufman – Crucified for Supporting the Palestinians – 28 November 2015
83. The Board of Deputies Invites Anti-Semitic Attacks on British Jews 10 October 2015
84. The Sad Delusions of New Labour 23 August 2015
Typo here, or punctuation missed? “today it anti-Semitism is all too often a metonym for all that is reactionary and racist .” Not for publication.