In 2017, with the support of an extraordinary grassroots movement, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn came close to becoming prime minister. The establishment trembled. Britain stood on the threshold of huge political change. But within three years all, it seemed, was lost. What happened and why?
Produced by award-winning radical film-maker Platform Films, with contributions from Jackie Walker, Ken Loach, Andrew Murray, Graham Bash and Moshé Machover, and narrated by Alexei Sayle, this feature-length documentary film explores a dark and murky story of political deceit and outrageous antisemitic smears. It also uncovers the critical role played by current Labour leader, Keir Starmer and asks if the movement which backed Corbyn could rise again.
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Additional: Cancel culture
Screenings of the documentary “Oh Jeremy Corbyn: The Big Lie” have been repeatedly blocked ever since its release and so embedded below are some of the instances of cancel culture that have dogged the organisers of events:
Above, Chris Jury of the Tolpuddle Radical Film Festival speaks with Crispin Flintoff about the failed attempt to stop the film being shown last June and how people rallied to make sure it was put on.
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Although cleared of anti-Semitism by lawyer working for the festival, the film was likewise blocked at last year’s Glastonbury. Damien Willey explains how the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Marie van der Zyl, was extolling how pleased she was that the Eavis family who run the festival had decided to drop it, and how this caused uproar because it was only back in 2017 that Michael Eavis invited Corbyn to speak on the main stage. Well, look no further than the commercial sponsors to understand how the ban came about:
But due to popular demand, it was finally screened at Glastonbury anyway, albeit in a separate zone.
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Finally, Crispin Flintoff speaks to other organisers across the country including Gill McCall who had by then screened the film three times in Wimbledon; John Kingston who organised five screenings in Bournemouth (of which two were cancelled); and Peter Doyle in Carlisle who managed to organise a screening but only after two cancellations. Predictably, all of the bans and attempts at censorship backfired and simply helped to spark more interest and expand the audience:
It is reported that John Ware, a presenter for BBC’s Panorama, is taking legal action for libel against former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In response a legal fund has been set up by Carole Morgan at GoFundMe. She writes:
The relentless attacks on Mr Corbyn, a man of integrity, honesty and humility cannot be allowed to continue and we have an opportunity here to offer him support in a practical way. It will also let him know that his supporters have not forgotten him, nor have they gone away.
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As a party member, I regard the Labour leadership’s decision to issue an unreserved apology and to pay out substantial damages in out of court settlements to John Ware and the other seven plaintiffs (read more about the story below) as not just another assault on the left-wing of the party but, as Labour Against the Witchhunt states, “a clear misuse of party funds and an insult to all Labour members”.
For these reasons, I fully endorse the campaign to support Jeremy Corbyn.
After only 2 days the legal fund already stands at £239,565.
Click here to read Labour Against the Witchhunt‘s model motion for “no confidence in Keir Starmer”.
And here to add your own support to the legal fund to defend Jeremy Corbyn.
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Update: Campaign for Free Speech!
On July 29th, ‘Labour Against the Witchhunt’ gathered together speakers including Norman Finkelstein, Tariq Ali, Chris Williamson, Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth, David Miller and Tony Greenstein to launch a ‘Campaign for Free Speech’. The event was chaired by Tina Werkmann of Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour Left Alliance:
The programme came directly off the back of an investigation into the party launched by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) “to determine whether the Labour party has unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimised people because they are Jewish” for which its report is expected imminently. And it helped set the tone for what was to become a dominant angle of news coverage, especially during the general election that followed in December last year.
writes Justin Schlosberg in a recent article published by Novara Media entitled “BBC Panorama Investigation Into Labour Antisemitism Omitted Key Evidence and Parts of Labour’s Response”.
On Wednesday 22nd Novara Media’s Michael Walker welcomed Justin Schlosberg on to its ‘Tyskie Sour’ show to discuss the decision by the Labour Party to apologise “unreservedly” and to offer their substantial out of court settlement to Panorama presenter John Ware and the seven ‘whistleblowers’:
Schlosberg, who is a Senior Lecturer in Journalism and Media at Birkbeck College and a former Chair of the Media Reform Coalition, continues:
Along the way, the programme has received nominations for prestigious awards, including a Bafta. And it has seen off over 1,500 complaints, several of which were escalated to Ofcom. A judge recently refused permission for an application I made to the high court, asking for a review of Ofcom’s decision not to investigate the programme.
According to a statement from Jeremy Corbyn [see screenshot below] and to other Labour party sources, including a former member of the party’s national executive committee, the decision to settle was apparently taken despite the party having received “clear advice” from its own lawyers that Labour would have won in court.
The libel claims appear to have been based on the former leadership’s strong defence of its record in response to the programme. A party spokesman described Ware’s documentary as “a seriously inaccurate, politically one-sided polemic, which breached basic journalistic standards, invented quotes and edited emails to change their meaning”. The spokesman went on to accuse the programme-makers of deceiving the British public:
“An honest investigation into antisemitism in Labour and wider society is in the public interest. The Panorama team instead pre-determined an answer to the question posed by the programme’s title. No proper and serious attempt was made to understand our current procedures for dealing with antisemitism, which is clearly essential to reach a fair and balanced judgement. And Panorama distorted and manipulated the truth and misrepresented evidence to present a biased and selective account.”
Since then, critics of the programme have been further outraged by an apparent accountability failure. A scathing letter to the Bafta chair recently called for the nomination to be rescinded, adding that it “should never have passed the BBC’s compliance regime in the first instance”. Signatories of the letter included Mike Leigh (an award-winning film director and Bafta fellow), Sir Geoffrey Bindman (a leading human rights QC) and Tim Llewelyn (a former BBC Middle East correspondent).
The testimony of Ware’s “whistleblowers” has also been brought into question by a leaked report, documenting a culture of intense factionalism at Labour’s Southside headquarters during the period in question. The report drew heavily upon WhatsApp conversations between former Labour staffers, including several of Panorama’s witnesses. Nobody has questioned the authenticity of those messages, which paint a deeply unflattering picture of the protagonists —not least of their track record when it comes to issues of racism and antisemitism in the Labour party.
Now, exclusive new evidence suggests something altogether more serious and damning: the programme-makers overlooked key parts of leaked emails and the Labour party’s reply which fatally undermined the testimony of its whistleblowers.
This stands against the BBC’s repeated assertion that the Labour party was offered “a full right of reply”. And it raises new questions over why and how Ofcom took an extraordinary 63 days to decide simply not to investigate the programme.
Click here to read Justin Schlosberg’s full article at Novara Media.
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Update: message from Carole Morgan, organiser of the petition
Hello, it’s me again. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine when I decided to act in support of Jeremy Corbyn that the fund would make the impact that it has. I have received hundreds of emails from well wishers who have expressed their love and support for Jeremy, and also to me for setting up the fund, for which I thank you.
I had a need to express my gratitude and support for Jeremy and setting up this fund was the only way I could think of to achieve that. I didn’t realise at the time just how many of you shared that same need. Jeremy’s support fund has had an effect in ways that I never expected. Those of us who have always longed for a better world, one that ensures dignity, security and peace for all humanity found ourselves voiceless after the terrible general election result and the subsequent loss of Jeremy as our democratically elected Leader of the Labour Party.
Through Jeremy’s fund we have found our voice again. We are One voice that cries out for justice, not just for Jeremy, but for all the people who have suffered so terribly under the years of austerity here in the UK, those who are suffering political upheaval, wars and genocide around the world. I have received emails from so many like minded people who are struggling to hold their lives together and are not in a position to donate, so I wanted to share with you all that there are still more of us out there than even the fund can reflect.
Of course there are those who oppose what we have achieved in so short a time. I have come to the realisation that this is because they are afraid. The fear they carry is like a disease that has spread through every fibre of their lives and their being. It has always been there and they have learned to see the world only through the eyes of fear. They are afraid of the changes that we want to create in the world; the return of love, compassion, equality and peace. They seek to stamp us out because they are afraid for their very existence. They are unable to understand that they are welcome to share in our world, if they would only let go of their fear.
Of course a platform is just that. It is important to remind yourselves that it is each and every one of you who has turned the platform into a shining beacon of light. Words cannot convey my gratitude to you all, and I thank you from the very bottom of my heart.
As someone who devoted a great deal of time and effort during the 2017 General Election, delivering leaflets, canvassing on doorsteps, and generally working hard in the hope of a Corbyn-led Labour victory, it comes as no surprise whatsoever to learn that a faction within our party were actively working to stop Corbyn.
I have written many previous articles discussing the manufactured smear campaigns and how these were upheld and further amplified by the so-called liberal media which managed to portray a man who has spent his entire life fighting against racism as a racist.
And amongst so many rumours, we also knew with certainty about one of the plots being hatched behind the scenes: the secret weekend gatherings of twelve MPs at a luxury retreat in Sussex, whose number included Liz Kendall, John Woodcock, Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie, and Gavin Shuker. It was always evident therefore that a sizeable faction within the PLP would have preferred to spilt the party (as three of the above attempted to do shortly afterwards) than accept the twice elected leader.
However, fresh evidence which is encyclopaedic in scope, comes to our attention thanks to a leaked release of a 860-page internal report innocuously entitled “The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019” that was published back in March and intended for submission to the Equality and Human Rights Commission. It shows a level of treachery by Labour headquarters (HQ) including the governance and legal unit (GLU) when Iain McNicol served as general secretary that is frankly sickening.
To sift through all of the revelations will take considerable time, and we must anticipate new findings coming to light as the document is more carefully scrutinised. Reprinted below is just a single extract drawn from just one summary section that runs from pages 29– 32: be aware that LOTO refers to ‘the office of the Leader of the Opposition’ (i.e. Jeremy Corbyn and his advisors). But you could drop your finger anywhere randomly and find sections equally or still more inflammatory.
If the Labour Party is to move forward, then it must hold a full and transparent inquiry into the evidence presented in this suppressed report.
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Labour Party staff, who are employed by the Party rather than as political advisers to politicians, are expected to act impartially and serve the Party, regardless of the current Leader, much as the civil service is expected to serve the Government under whichever political party is in power. However, this section shows that much of the Labour Party machinery from 2015-18 was openly opposed to Jeremy Corbyn, and worked to directly undermine the elected leadership of the party. The priority of staff in this period appears to have been furthering the aims of a narrow faction aligned to Labour’s right rather than fulfilling the organisation’s objectives, from winning elections to building a functioning complaints and disciplinary process.
Labour Party staff based at Labour HQ were not obeying secret directives from LOTO. On the contrary, all of the available evidence points to the opposite conclusion – that Labour Party staff based at Labour HQ, including GLU, worked to achieve opposing political ends to the leadership of the Party. This included work to remove supporters of the incumbent leader during the 2016 leadership election, and work to hinder the leader’s campaign in the 2017 General Election. The attitude in HQ towards LOTO could be summed up in one comment from a senior staff member, who said “death by fire is too kind for LOTO”.
Labour officials, including senior staff, expressed hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn and his staff, towards Labour MPs including Andy Burnham, Ed Miliband, Sadiq Khan, Emily Thornberry, Diane Abbott and Dawn Butler. Staff described “most of the PLP” as “Trots” or called them “totally useless” in 2015 for not having yet launched a coup against Corbyn. As one staff member commented, “everyone here considers anyone left of [Gordon] Brown to be a trot.”
Staff repeatedly used abusive and inappropriate language about the leader, MPs, Labour members and about other staff. For example, staff discussed “hanging and burning” Jeremy Corbyn, calling Corbyn a “lying little toerag”; said that any Labour MP “who nominates Corbyn ‘to widen the debate’ deserves to be taken out and shot”; and stated that a staff member who “whooped” during Corbyn’s speech “should be shot”. Senior staff also said they hoped that one Labour member on the left of the party “dies in a fire”. Senior Labour staff used language that was considerably more abusive and inappropriate than that cited as justification for suspending many Labour members who supported Jeremy Corbyn in 2016.
In August 2015 senior staff explored delaying or cancelling the ongoing leadership election when it looked like Jeremy Corbyn was going to win. When Corbyn was elected staff discussed plans for a coup; one staffer said “we need a POLL – that says we’re like 20 points behind”; another suggested a silver lining for Remain losing the 2016 European referendum would be that Corbyn could be held responsible; and another hoped that poor performance in the May 2016 local elections would be the catalyst for a coup.
Staff described “working to rule” when Corbyn was elected and “coming into the office & doing nothing for a few months.” During the 2017 general election, staff joked about “hardly working”, and created a chat so they could pretend to work while actually speaking to each other – “tap tap tapping away will make us look v busy”. Senior staff coordinated refusing to share basic information to LOTO during the election, such as candidates’ contact details. Labour HQ operated “a secret key seats team” based in Labour’s London region office in Ergon House, from where a parallel general election campaign was run to support MPs associated with the right-wing of the party. The description of the workload and budget involved in this “secret” operation contrasts with the go slow approach described by other staff regarding work on the official general election campaign which the leadership was running to return a Labour government.
One senior staff member implied that he would support the Conservatives over Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, saying “who votes for JC? If it’s a choice btwn him & TMay how do WE vote for him?”. Staff sent messages expressing their wish that Labour would perform badly in the 2017 general election, saying “with a bit of luck this speech will show a clear polling decline” and “I CANNOT WAIT to see Andrew Neil rip [Jeremy Corbyn] to pieces over it tonight”. Senior staff commented that the huge rallies for Corbyn late in the election made them “feel ill”, and they reacted to the polls narrowing with dismay, rather than optimism.
On election night on 8 June 2017, when the exit poll predicted a hung parliament, General Secretary Iain McNicol, Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services Emilie Oldknow (who was responsible for overseeing GLU) and other senior staff discussed hiding their reactions, saying “everyone needs to smile” and “we have to be upbeat. And not show it”. Oldknow also described Yvette Cooper and other Labour MPs’ support for Corbyn after the election as “grovelling and embarrassing”.
In January 2017, Iain McNicol, Emilie Oldknow and other senior staff discussed preparing for a leadership election if Labour lost the Copeland and Stoke-on-trent by-elections, and setting up a “discrete [working group]” to determine the rules and timetable. Iain McNicol discussed this with Tom Watson and told him “to prepare for being interim leader”. During the 2017 general election the Director of GLU John Stolliday then drew up these plans, including a rule change to replace the one member one vote system with an Electoral College system to help ensure that a MP from the party’s left could not win.
GLU staff talked openly with each other about using the party’s resources to further the aims of their faction. The Director of the Unit John Stolliday described his work in GLU as “political fixing”, and described overhauling selections of parliamentary candidates and overturning CLP AGM results to help the right of the Party. Emilie Oldknow and GLU staff discussed keeping Angela Eagle MP’s CLP suspended, at Eagle’s request, in order to give her team more time to organise against left-wing members before the AGM. Staff also discussed organising NEC Youth Representative elections on a different election cycle to other NEC elections, to ensure a left-wing candidate would not win, and noted that this was signed off by GLU’s Director.
Staff applied the same factional approach to disciplinary processes. One staff member referred to Emilie Oldknow expecting staff to “fabricate a case” against people “she doesn’t like/her friends don’t like” because of their political views. During the 2015 leadership election GLU and other Labour staff described their work as “hunting out 1000s of trots” and a “Trot hunt”, which included excluding people for having “liked” the Greens on Facebook. One prominent GLU staffer, Head of Disputes Katherine Buckingham, admitted that “real work is piling up” while she and other staff were engaged in inappropriate factional work.
Factional loyalty also determined key recruitment decisions, including in GLU, where people were appointed to senior roles with few apparent relevant qualifications. This had a severe impact on the Party’s ability to build a functioning disciplinary process over the following years.
This section demonstrates that the party machine was controlled by one faction which worked against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and to advance the interests of their faction, and that LOTO did not have authority or influence over GLU or the party machinery more broadly. Factional work appears to have come at the expense of work the staff were being paid to do, including – as will become apparent in Sections 3–6 – building and maintaining a functioning complaints process.
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A helpful summary of some details contained in the report can be found at LabourList.org. Reprinted below are summaries of the actions taken with regard to some of the more prominent Labour activists who were wrongly suspended and dispelled during the witch hunt:
Jackie Walker
Damage done – to me, thousands of members, the Corbyn project…these fuckers hindered and delayed and lost documents.. Damn them and the Party structures that gave peerages and protection to these agents of wickedness https://t.co/xj9C0LPryd
There is also a section on Walker, a party member who was first accused of antisemitism in 2016.
The report says it was decided in May 2016 that Walker had not breached party rules when expressing a belief that there was a “Jewish particularism” about antisemitism. It was recommended that her suspension should be lifted.
Walker then attended party conference as a member and made comments about Holocaust Memorial Day that attracted press attention.
The report asserts that Walker’s case was “deliberately delayed by GLU staff until Jennie Formby became general secretary, and then again by the NCC”.
Walker was ultimately expelled from the party in March 2019.
Moshe Machover
The report confirms that in the case of Moshe Machover, a Jewish academic who was auto-expelled rather than suspended by the party, LOTO actively raised concerns – as opposed to other cases where LOTO was approached by HQ.
It says that LOTO raised concerns with HQ about the auto-exclusion, which was later reversed. It concludes that the case was mishandled because, among other reasons, expertise was sought but not used.
The report says the Community Security Trust was consulted for the cases of both Walker and Machover, but this advice was not shared with LOTO, the NEC or the party staffer who made the decision to lift Walker’s suspension initially.
It says the “GLU could have subsequently brought disciplinary proceedings on the basis of antisemitism allegations [against Moche Machover] but chose not to.”
Chris Williamson
The saboteurs and malcontents inside @UKLabour are bang to right.
The party should make a fulsome apology to me and everyone else who've been so despicably defamed by this contemptible behaviour.https://t.co/BE1MwHFe3j
On the case of Chris Williamson, who had been a Labour MP, the report specifies that Corbyn-aligned general secretary Jennie Formby said in 2019 that he had brought the party into disrepute.
Formby told staffers that she had personally warned Williamson that it was “completely inappropriate for him as an elected MP to campaign with Labour Against the WitchHunt”.
Williamson was suspended and removed as a parliamentary candidate at the 2019 general election.
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Important update:
The original statement released by campaign group Labour Against the Witchhunt (which is maintained below) has since been replaced with a “Joint statement by Labour Against the Witchhunt and the Left Labour Alliance”.
We demand a full investigation into the witch-hunt and the election campaigns!
Now all disciplinary cases of the last five years must be reviewed!
As experienced activists in the Labour Party, we knew that the right in the party was plotting against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters from day one. We knew, because we were the victims of their wrongful suspensions, their expulsions and their public smears and lies, all based on the flimsiest of evidence.
The report ‘The work of the Labour Party’s Governance and Legal Unit in relation to antisemitism, 2014 – 2019’, produced in response to the investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, now gives us irrefutable proof of the plotting and outright sabotage committed against Corbyn and the hundreds of thousands who joined the party to fight for socialist and democratic change.
It is a crying shame that this report was produced only in the last days of Corbyn’s leadership. It is based upon primary evidence showing serious wrong-doing by senior party officials. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the left to radically transform the Labour Party and effect progressive change was ruined by the right in the party.
At the same time, supporters of Corbyn were vilified and slandered, their voices silenced and their votes nullified. Unfortunately, it appears that this was sometimes done with the knowledge and occasionally even with the participation of the Corbyn leadership, as in the expulsions of Jackie Walker and Chris Williamson.
Keir Starmer must ensure the immediate publication of the report and a full enquiry into the facts:
*** The report describes how “the pro-Corbyn left decisively won” at Brighton CLP’s annual general meeting (AGM) in July 2016. Afterwards, two high-ranking Labour officials discussed how to overturn the result: “I say act now and worry about [rules and legal issues] later, so long as we don’t do something that’ll end up f[***]ing everything else up.” Party officials then overturned the AGM’s decisions, the old executive was restored and the local party split into three separate CLPs. (p113)
*** Labour officials discussed how to continue the unlawful suspension of Wallasey CLP, where the left “are properly organised” – in order to save the local right-wing MP, Angela Eagle, from being challenged. (p114)
*** We read that, “in many cases party members at all levels request the suspension of another party member as a way of escalating or indeed resolving a dispute. There is a wrongly-held view that political opponents can be ‘taken out’ of a contest or stopped from attending meetings by making a complaint with the intention of achieving a suspension of that member.” (p533) Clearly, this is exactly what has been taking place, even as recently as during the March 2020 NEC by-election. Half a dozen of the candidates were suspended in the middle of the contest, before any investigation was launched.
*** Sam Matthews, then head of Disputes, was able to single-handedly suspend Glyn Secker (secretary of Jewish Voice for Labour) as recently as 2018 – the case was so weak that he had to be reinstated almost immediately: Following on from a report produced by the disgraced right-wing Corbyn critic David Collier into the Facebook group ‘Palestine Live’ (of which Corbyn was a member), “documentary evidence shows that it was only because James Schneider, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesperson, urged [Sam] Matthews to take action, that the report was examined at all. Of all the examples of extreme antisemitism in the report, GLU picked Glyn Secker, even though the report did not contain allegations of antisemitic comments by Secker and the report stated ‘Glyn Secker has had minimal interaction on the site’.” (p428)
*** The ‘Disputes’ unit desperately looked for reasons to expel the prominent Israeli Jew Moshé Machover. Because of his background, they found it difficult to charge him with racism: “The anti-Semitism stuff just clouds it in my view”. (p373) Instead, they decided to auto-expel him over his alleged membership of the “Communist Party of Great Britain Marxism-Leninism” (they got the wrong CPGB, incidentally) – but he was able to quickly disprove this claim. As party officials “found themselves inundated with emails about the case, including from Jewish socialist groups”, there was pressure to drop the case and rescind his expulsion. Many other, less prominent members, found it much more difficult to challenge their auto-expulsions.
*** We learn that despite some reforms under Jennie Formby, there are huge, ongoing problems with the way the party handles disciplinary cases. For example, the Governance and Legal unit uses a list of “investigatory search terms” to “vet” members, which includes words like ‘Atzmon’ and “a list of 57 (later 68) Labour MPs and their Twitter handles”. In other words, staff “initiate cases themselves by proactively investigating social media comments by Party members” (p17) to create a body of evidence where no basis for a case exists. The report also makes various positive references to Dave Rich from the Community Security Trust (CST), whose views are still being routinely sought as “expert opinion”. But the CST is not a neutral body – it is a pro-Israel charity, which the Tory government started funding in 2015 and has given at least 65 million pounds since.
*** Jackie Walker’s case was deliberately delayed by McNicol and his staff. They were determined to get rid of Tony Greenstein and Marc Wadsworth first in order to build a campaign to justify Jackie’s expulsion. However, the report also states that, “LOTO [Leader of the Opposition’s Office] wanted Walker to be suspended and had briefed the media to that effect”. (p366) In April 2018, “Jeremy Corbyn and Jennie Formby met with the Board of Deputies, Jewish Leadership Council and the Community and Security Trust” and agreed to their demand that “the Party should expedite Ken Livingstone and Jackie Walker’s cases. LOTO and Jennie Formby agreed”. The report quotes questionable evidence by Dave Rich, which implies that Jackie’s views are similar to those of Louis Farrakhan, but omits evidence given by black Jewish Professor Lewis Gordon, a world-leading academic on Jewish/black relations, which contradicts every claim by Dave Rich and supports Jackie’s case.
*** In the case of Chris Williamson, it appears that Jennie Formby was the one driving his expulsion. The report approvingly quotes her long chart sheet against him: “Several of these [complaints], if taken as an isolated incident, may have resulted in no action. However, taken together they add up to a pattern of behaviour that is not only reckless, it has brought the party into disrepute. I would also add that I personally spoke with Chris only two weeks ago and asked him to stop aligning himself with Labour Against the Witchhunt and speaking about antisemitism in the way that he is, because as an MP he does not have the privilege of behaving in the same way as an ordinary lay member does.” (p826)
These examples show just how futile it was of Corbyn and his allies to try and appease the right by going along with some of these injustices – when they should have taken them on in a decisive manner. There can be no compromise, no unity with those who would rather sabotage our party than see a radical Labour movement.
We demand that:
Keir Starmer must officially publish this report and condemn the campaign to undermine and sabotage Jeremy Corbyn and the left.
All disciplinary cases processed during the last five years have to be overturned, pending unbiased re-examination.
We urgently need a radical overhaul of the party’s disciplinary system. Disciplinary procedures should be carried out in accordance with the principles of natural justice, and be time-limited: charges not resolved within three months should be automatically dropped. An accused member should be given all the evidence submitted against them and be regarded as innocent until proven guilty. Those aspects of the Chakrabati report must finally be implemented.
All those mentioned in the document who took part in this sabotage and who are still in their post must be immediately investigated for gross misconduct. That must include Emilie Oldknow (Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services), who is being touted as Keir Starmer’s preferred choice as new general secretary and who is shown to have actively taken part in the witch-hunt against Corbyn and his supporters.
All those involved who have jumped ship and now enjoy well-paid positions in different companies must be named and shamed. They include:
Iain McNicol, formerly General Secretary, now a member of the House of Lords
Sam Matthews, formerly head of Disputes
John Stolliday, formerly Director of the Governance and Legal Unit
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Here is the initial statement released by campaign group Labour Against the Witchhunt:
The 860-page report concluded factional hostility towards Jeremy Corbyn amongst former senior officials contributed to “a litany of mistakes” that hindered the effective handling of the issue.
The investigation, which was completed in the last month of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, claims to have found “no evidence” of antisemitism complaints being treated differently to other forms of complaint, or of current or former staff being “motivated by antisemitic intent”.
The examples from chat archives published in the document include:
– Conversations in 2017 which appear to show senior staff preparing for Tom Watson to become interim leader in anticipation of Jeremy Corbyn losing the election
– Conversations which it is claimed show senior staff hid information from the leader’s office about digital spending and contact details for MPs and candidates during the election
– Conversations on election night in which the members of the group talk about the need to hide their disappointment that Mr. Corbyn had done better than expected and would be unlikely to resign
– A discussion about whether the grassroots activist network Momentum could be ‘proscribed’ for being a ‘party within a party’
– A discussion about ‘unsuspending’ a former Labour MP who was critical of Jeremy Corbyn so they could stand as a candidate in the 2017 election
– A discussion about how to prevent corbyn-ally Rebecca Long-Bailey gaining a seat on the party’s governing body in 2017
– Regular references to corbyn-supporting party staff as “trots”
– Conversations between senior staff in Lord McNicol’s office in which they refer to former director of communications Seamus Milnes as “dracula”, and saying he was “spiteful and evil and we should make sure he is never allowed in our Party if it’s last thing we do”
– Conversations in which the same group refers to Mr. Corbyn’s former chief of staff Karie Murphy as “medusa”, a “crazy woman” and a “bitch face cow” that would “make a good dartboard”
– A discussion in which one of the group members expresses their “hope” that a young pro-Corbyn Labour activist, who they acknowledge had mental health problems, “dies in a fire”
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Update:
With the honourable exception of Sky News which reported on this story from the beginning, most other media outlets have shown incredible reluctance to even acknowledge the leak of this very serious document. When the BBC did quietly publish an article the following day [Monday 13th], it appeared on the ‘politics’ page of their website and tucked away as a secondary item.
But there is more to consider about the BBC piece, which I would say is even titled in deliberately confusing way as: “Opposition to Corbyn ‘hindered’ anti-Semitism action”. Reading this the first time, one wonders, who is ‘hindered’? And why the quotation marks?
It gets much worse, however, before we reach the unashamedly politicised ending. Having failed to reference a single iota of the main content regarding the machinations against Corbyn by Labour HQ, or to offer much insight into the kind of chicanery which ranged from the misallocation of funds to instances of actual bullying, the piece abruptly concludes as follows:
Ongoing row
Labour has been plagued with allegations since 2016.
Mr Corbyn held an internal investigation early on in his tenure, but it was widely criticised by Jewish members of the party, with a number – including MPs – leaving over his handling of the row.
The party’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has apologised to the Jewish community for the ongoing issue.
He has been praised by leaders for “achieving more in four days” than Mr Corbyn did “in four years” on tackling anti-Semitism.
Any excuse, of course, to raise the spectre of Labour as an incurably anti-Semitic party, but in this context the same allegation is repurposed in order to sideline the report itself, presenting it merely as a ploy that in turn is intended to divert attention from the more fundamental issue of Labour’s deep-seated racism. In short, this article is actually a textbook example of the kind of devious meta-reporting which the BBC now unfortunately excels in.
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Novara Media seems to be providing the most detailed scrutiny of the report I have come across so far, and Monday’s Tyskie Sour show includes an interview with founder of Momentum Jon Lansman.
However, I have paused the video to begin at an earlier point where we learn that members of Labour HQ actively conspired with C4 News reporter Michael Crick in attempts to bully Diane Abbott. This incident apparently happened after Abbott had broken down in tears in the aftermath of receiving really disgusting racist abuse:
I would also recommend reading Aaron Bastini’s own initial response to the leak, which is entitled “‘It’s going to be a long night’ – How members of Labour’s senior Management Team Campaigned to Lose”. It includes the following revelation:
“It’s going to be a long night” was the reaction of the party’s general secretary [Iain McNicol], after Labour had deprived the Tories of a governing majority and seen their highest share of the popular vote in twenty years. While an outrageous comment, given McNicol’s elevated status within the party, it is perhaps outdone by Julie Lawrence – former director of the general secretary’s office – who appears to have actively feared Labour entering government. Meanwhile, Emily Oldknow, now assistant General Secretary at UNISON, apparently saw a silver lining, saying: “at least we have loads of money now”.
Activist and academic Sai Englert explains why “anti-Zionism is not the same as anti-Semitism”:
Unfortunately, today anti-Zionism is often conflated with anti-Semitism. It should however be clear that they have nothing to do with one another. The first rejects the idea of an ethnic or religiously supremacist state in Palestine. The second hates Jewish people for being Jewish. But conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism makes a series of assumptions that should never be acceptable.
Firstly, that all Jews are Zionists or that Zionists speak for all Jews. This is a deeply racist idea that assumes that an entire group of people can be essentialised under one ideological banner. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel does not represent the views of all Jews. Many Jews around the world are anti-Zionists for religious and or political reasons, while others might simply know very little about it and not have an opinion.
Secondly, that all Zionists are Jews. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. For example there are many Christian Zionists, especially in the United States, while many politicians and political parties across the West are Zionists. This has nothing to do with Judaism, but with foreign policy and the close alliances that their countries have with Israel.
Finally, the conflation between the two ideas often assumes that Zionism only affects Jewish people. This approach, often repeated in current debates, erases the fact that the primary victims of the Zionist movement, have been and continue to be, the Palestinian people. Their rejection of Zionism, their demands for equal rights, and their desire to be able to return to their homes from which they were expelled has nothing to do with Judaism or Jews in any way. Instead, it has everything to do with their opposition to the settler-colonial project which continues to dispossess and oppress them in their own lands.
Anti-Zionism is therefore, before anything else, a form of solidarity with the demands of a colonised people that continues to struggle for its freedom. There is a simple but powerful principle that states that no-one is free until we are all free. In that sense the struggle against anti-Semitism and the struggle against Zionism are one and the same. They are both struggles against oppression, against racism, and ethnic supremacy – in a word against injustice. In the words of the old slogan: “Anti-semitism is a crime: anti-Zionism, a duty.”
[from 3:00 mins]
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The spurious conflation of antisemitism with anti-Zionism is an issue I have discussed at length in a number of previous posts. I have also presented considerable evidence to show how the so-called “new antisemitism” is a tried and tested formula used by Israel and the Israel lobby to discredit opponents. The introductory passage quoted above from Sai Englert makes the stronger case that the struggle against anti-Semitism and the struggle against Zionism are in fact one and the same.
Additionally, let me remind readers of a statement made by Shulamit Aloni, leading Israeli civil rights activist and former Knesset member who headed the Meretz Party, which ought to settle this matter once and for all. In reply to the question “Often when there is dissent expressed in the United States against policies of the Israeli government, people here are called antisemitic: what is your response?” she said:
Well, it’s a trick. We always use it. When from Europe somebody’s criticising Israel then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country [America] someone is criticising Israel then they are anti-Semitic… It’s very easy to blame people who criticise certain acts of the Israeli government as antisemitic and to bring up the Holocaust and the suffering of the Jewish people and that justifies everything we do to the Palestinian people.
Click here to read a full transcript and to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website. [The extract above begins at 51 mins in]
Today we are in the midst of a political witch hunt. The targets are generally left-wing and, importantly, all have been outspoken opponents against the establishment or else vocally critical of the official narrative whether on Israel or Western foreign policy more broadly. Many are also ardent supporters of Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is himself an outspoken critic of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
It is unnecessary to constantly repeat or reinforce the view that this is a witch hunt, so here instead my wish is to direct attention to three recent occurances of this new McCarthyism. Two of the cases, those of Pete Willsman and George Galloway, have received widespread mainstream attention and both resulted in immediate disciplinary action being taken. In a third instance, the case of Professor Piers Robinson, formerly at the University of Sheffield, no formal disciplinary action was taken but it is likely that Robinson resigned his seat in order to escape an escalating campaign of victimisation. To begin, however, I wish to consider the rather strange and overlooked case of Labour MP, Siobhain McDonagh, whose comparable and arguably worse transgressions were not placed under any close scrutiny by either the mainstream media or the Labour Party, since it is vital to show the double standards now in operation.
Woody Allen as neurotic comedian Alvy Singer speaking to his close friend Rob (Tony Roberts) about what he sees as the rising incidents of antisemitism he has been encountering in Allen’s award-winning comedy “Annie Hall” (1977):
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Siobhain McDonagh
During an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme in March, Siobhain McDonagh, Labour MP for Mitcham and Morden, when answering a straightforward question about whether the party was taking the issue of antisemitism seriously, said:
“I’m not sure that some people in the Labour Party can because it’s very much part of their politics – of hard left politics – to be against capitalists, and to see Jewish people as the financers of capital.”
Digging the hole still deeper, interviewer John Humphrys then reinforced her assertion with this altogether jaw-dropping follow-up question: “In other words, to be anti-capitalist you have to be antisemitic?”
To which McDonagh replied emphatically:
“Yes, not everybody, but absolutely there’s a certain strand of it and these people are not Labour, have never been Labour, but we now find them in our party”. 1
Unsurprisingly, the corporate media paid little attention to the deeply offensive nature of this portion of the Humphrys-McDonagh interview. Their implicit acknowledgement of the antisemitic trope that “Jewish people control capitialism” did not result in either the veteran BBC presenter or Labour MP being subjected to opprobrium, and no disciplinary hearings followed. In fact, although broadcast on Radio 4’s flagship political show, this bizarre outburst was only picked up by the remotest corners of the alternative media. The newspaper with the largest circulation to raise the matter was The Morning Star, which afterwards spoke with leaders of two Jewish organisations and reported on the incident as follows:
Jewish Voice for Labour’s Mike Cushman told the Star McDonagh owed party members an apology.
“McDonagh seems to be suggesting that all or many Labour Party members believe that banks are controlled by Jews, classic Protocols of the Elders of Zion territory,” he said.
“She draws the conclusion that, therefore, Labour’s critique of the financial casino activities that almost crashed the world economy is motivated by anti-semitism.
“She attacks conspiracy theorists by launching a bizarre conspiracy of her own.
“She owes the tens and hundreds of thousands of party members who are campaigning for effective oversight of the banks a speedy and humble apology.
“Fighting for a fairer society and against inequality and austerity is not a symptom of anti-semitism. McDonagh cannot be allowed to silence criticism of capitalism within a socialist party.”
The Jewish Socialist Group’s David Rosenberg said Ms McDonagh and Mr Humphreys’ [sic] comments “made it very clear who is stereotyping the Jewish community.”
“Apart from this disgusting stereotyping,” Mr Rosenberg wrote on Facebook today, “both McDonagh and Humphreys should be ashamed of themselves for their slur on everyone who is fighting poverty, austerity, homelessness, zero-hours contracts in capitalist Tory Britain as anti-semites.
“The Jew=capitalists formula will also be interesting news for the Jews I know who are unemployed, struggling pensioners and single mothers, ordinary workers, secretaries, cab drivers, teachers, social workers, NHS staff.” 2
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Peter Willsman
Pete Willsman is a member of the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). He was elected in 2016 as one of six candidates backed by pro-Corbyn activist group Momentum.
A year ago, recordings of an NEC meeting emerged in which Willsman accused some in the Jewish community of being “Trump fanatics” and also challenged an accusation of “severe and widespread antisemitism” in the Labour Party:
Some at the time, including the right-wing Board of Deputies of British Jews, called for his expulsion, whilst others including Jewish Voice for Labour and Chris Williamson MP stood firmly in support. General Secretary of the Labour Party, Jennie Formby, accepted a formal apology and cautioned Willsman to refrain from making similar comments in future.
In May, another secret recording emerged made in January by Israeli-American author and journalist Tuvia Tenenbom of an informal conversation in which Willsman is heard to say:
“It’s almost certain who is behind all this antisemitism against Jeremy. Almost certainly it was the Israeli embassy.
“They caught somebody in the Labour Party. It turns out they were an agent in the Israeli Embassy. My guess would be, they are the ones whipping it all up.” 3
[I cannot find any audio clip uploads]
Willsman was, of course, referring to the evidence disclosed by the excellent Al Jazeera investigative series The Lobby, a four-part series I have covered in detail in an earlier post. The claim he makes is therefore firmly substantiated and yet in spite of making a factual point Willsman has been suspended to face a disciplinary hearing:
Nothing Pete Willsman said in these comments is anti-Semitic. He does, however, point to some uncomfortable truths exposed by the excellent Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, which has been so willfully ignored by the mainstream media. The documentary reveals a systematic effort by the Israeli embassy to infiltrate the Labour Party and highlights the efforts by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs to label critics of Israeli human rights abuses as anti-Semitic.
Letter sent by Corbyn to May asking for a public enquiry into Israeli interference in British politics… but nothing has happened.
The statement published by Labour Against the Witch hunt (LAW) continues:
This should be the subject of an overdue investigation rather than Pete Willsman’s role in drawing our attention to it. It is an outrage that Labour Party members are being disciplined for correctly stating that much of the anti-Semitism crisis has been manufactured, while anti-Corbyn MPs like Margaret Hodge, Louise Ellman and Tom Watson insult, disrupt, make bogus accusations and work hand in glove with the capitalist media – with no repercussions coming their way. Those making false charges ought to face disciplinary action and should be held accountable for their actions. 4
Click here to read the full post entitled “Reinstate Pete Willsman!” published by Labour Against the Witch hunt on June 2nd.
Provided in an update, the same post also draws attention to background of Tuvia Tenenbom, “the man who secretly recorded Peter Willsman and leaked the audio to the press just as the latest coup against Jeremy Corbyn is hotting up”:
Watch the short clip below and then judge for yourself if this really is a “journalist” whose sound recording guy happened to have left the microphone on… or if this does not look like somebody who might organise a sting operation against the most outspoken Corbyn supporter on Labour’s NEC… kind of proving Pete’s point about “interference”.
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Piers Robinson
As Professor of Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, Piers Robinson came to wider attention after he publicly undertook the deconstruction of the Western propaganda narrative surrounding the “war on terror” and the conflict in Syria.
Robinson is currently a co-Director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies working alongside Professor Mark Crispin Miller (NY University) and Professor David Miller (University of Bristol). Other members of the Advisory Board include Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Mark Curtis. He is also a founding member of the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media which recently released the leaked OPCW FFM assessment that discredits the Douma gas attack allegations and calls into question the impartiality of the OPCW. (Please read this earlier post.)
On April 17th, Piers Robinson left the University of Sheffield (UoS) under a cloud, having been castigated, like Pete Willsman and Chris Williamson before him, for “‘undermining’ anti-Semitism allegations within the Labour Party”:
His exit comes shortly after Forge Press’investigation into his online behaviour in April, however Robinson insists he received no criticism or pressure to leave from the University of Sheffield.
Under the subheading “Exit follows probe into professor’s online behaviour”, the same piece published by the UoS Students Union in-house journal Forge Press, continues:
Forge Press revealed a series of shared posts on Robinson’s social media accounts questioning the validity of widespread claims of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
One post shared by senior academic Robinson decried such claims as “a smear campaign” and another, an article by left-leaning website The Canary, reduced the allegations to a project of the “establishment”. […]
Robinson, also the co-director of the Organisation for Propaganda Studies, denied the accusations. He said: “I do not believe there is no anti-semitism in the Labour Party. I do believe that the problem has been exaggerated for political purposes.”
According to the same piece, Robinson is also guilty of signing a petition calling for the suspension of Chris Williamson to be lifted:
Forge Press’ investigation found that Robinson was sharing posts on his own social media accounts, and signed a petition in defence of suspended Labour MP Chris Williamson, which claimed that anti-Semitism allegations in Labour were “being used as a weapon to silence those who speak out against injustice”. 5
Image of retweet published by Forge Press
I am a fellow signatory to the same change.org petition calling for Williamson’s suspension to be lifted and have already linked to it in a previous article.
Forge Press has to my knowledge received just one reply to their article reporting on Robinson’s resignation, which as yet they have declined to publish.
Here is a screenshot showing MY comment:
Still “awaiting moderation” after nearly two months, it reads:
Congratulations. Another nail in the coffin of free speech! Has the UoS Students Union ever heard of McCarthyism? If this is the level of university debate then I fear we are already doomed.
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George Galloway
As Liverpool fans celebrated another European Cup final victory, George Galloway tweeted the following:
Congratulations to the great people of #Liverpool to the memory of the socialist miner #BillShankley to the fallen #96 to those who fought for justice for them and to the Liverpool dockers. No #Israël flags on the Cup!
Congratulations to the great people of #Liverpool to the memory of the socialist miner #BillShankley to the fallen #96 to those who fought for justice for them and to the Liverpool dockers. No #Israel flags on the Cup!
Fourth fifths is a paean to the city of Liverpool, including a commemoration of the football club’s first great manager, Bill Shankley, and of the horrific tragedy at Hillsborough that cost 96 innocent lives. Galloway might have ended there and in my opinion he should have. The extra six words were intended to incite, and given the current climate, his gesture is an extremely crass one. But, we have entered a new age when insensitivity alone is enough to cost you your job.
TalkRADIO which is owned by Murdoch’s News Corp made the quick and easy decision (since Galloway has evidently been under pressure for some time) to sack him. Afterwards, Galloway defended himself pointing out that a section of Tottenham fans had been flying the Israel flag and thereby showing affiliation to a “racist state”.
On the following Tuesday, Galloway was invited on to Good Morning Britain where he was harangued by the snarling and foul-mouthed Alan Sugar:
On the show Lord Sugar, the former owner of Tottenham, claimed erroneously:
“I did not see and I have never seen an Israeli flag flown – there were no Israeli flags with the fans.” [8:10 mins]
So let’s set the record straight on this central point. Firstly I watched the game live on TV and I was supporting Tottenham. One of the first items I saw at the Tottenham end was an Israel flag. It was something I even remarked upon to my family. And although it is remarkably difficult to find captured images searchable on Google (as Galloway recommends) of Israel flags flown at the European Cup final, it is easy to find evidence of Tottenham fans flying the same flag on many other occasions.
The image below is from a Telegrapharticle published on the eve of the European Cup semi-final match (just a few weeks earlier) between Tottenham Hotspur and Ajax. Although the picture shows Ajax fans, the caption reads “Fans of both Ajax and Spurs regularly fly the Israeli flag at matches”:
And beneath is an image of Spurs fans taken from a Guardian report (read more below):
There is no secret about this, or the well known fact that some Spurs and Ajax fans call themselves the “Yid Army” and “Super Jews” respectively. In 2013, the English FA actually tried to put a stop to it, issuing a warning on the reasonable grounds that “Yid” is a term of racist abuse:
In early September, the FA warned Tottenham fans that using the term “Yid,” an insult to Jews, could lead to criminal prosecution or a stadium ban, and this week the Metropolitan Police announced that it could get fans arrested. But judging from fan behavior during the soccer match against Chelsea on Sept. 28, the FA’s warning has gone unheeded.
From an article published by Spiegel Online, which points out that:
But neither the “Spurs” nor Ajax are Jewish clubs, and their number of Jewish fans is not particularly high. So why the Jewish symbolism? 6
More recently, the World Jewish Congress and the Board of Deputies of British Jews jointly condemned Spurs’ fans for using the nickname “Yids”:
“We would also ask Tottenham Hotspur to take a stand against the use of ‘Yid Army’, ‘Yid’ and ‘Yiddos’ by their fans. Such a long overdue action is important to kick antisemitism off the pitch and create a welcoming environment for all.” 7
To reiterate, I do not defend George Galloway’s judgement in tweeting what he did, but nor do I defend Tottenham fans who bring the flag of Israel to matches. Because the butt of Galloway’s abuse are the fans who choose to wrap themselves in a symbol of apartheid and there is no fault in drawing attention to this.
Finally, in order to remind ourselves of the first rumblings of the current pro-Israel witch hunt, it is worthshile reviewing a scandalous episode of BBC1’s Question Time broadcast in February 2015 in which George Galloway was clearly set up to be grilled by a staunchily pro-Israel audience and panel. I was so deeply shocked by this “show trial by television” that I spent the rest of the night writing a post about it. These were my concluding remarks written four years ago:
Galloway is a politician [at the time he was Leader of the Respect Party and MP for Bradford West] and so it is entirely proper that his opinions and actions are closely scrutinised. As I say, you are absolutely at liberty to detest Galloway, but the issue here is what on earth had led the BBC to consider it justifiable for him (or anyone else for that matter) to be publicly tried in such a fashion?
This was, in my view, an unedifying spectacle, and one that presents us with a terrifying indication of how narrowly restricted real freedom of speech is becoming. These are scary times, and it was not without reason that as I finished watching earlier, I felt shaken.
We know perfectly well where true racism always leads, and so it is our duty to ask with unflinching honesty, who is really inciting racial division and stirring up hatred? In last night’s so-called discussion, I say it certainly wasn’t Galloway. I go further, and say that for all of his faults, Galloway cannot be justly accused of racism. He is not a bigot. And shame on the BBC for ever orchestrating such a disgusting piece of inflammatory propaganda.
To judge for yourself (if you didn’t watch earlier) then click here to see the whole show on BBC iplayer. [And now I must sleep]
Click here to read my earlier post entitled “show trial by television: Galloway was set up by BBC to be accused”.
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Final thoughts
Watching a recent youtube upload by Novara Media, I became so incensed that I felt compelled to comment. This is what I wrote [with links added]:
You’re doing it again. On and on and on again just perpetuating this media manufactured smear about antisemitism. Talking about the Israel lobby isn’t safe ground, you say. Who cares. It exists and it has been exposed very actively undermining Jeremy Corbyn. But you don’t want us to talk about it. Why not? Instead of giving credence to a blatant smear campaign, you could instead be directing viewers to Al Jazeera’s investigative series. So I refer you again to Norman Finkelstein. Listen to him. He understands how this works. Even the son of two Holocaust survivors was not immune to these tactics. Speaking up for the Palestinian cause ultimately cost him his job.
He will tell you that every time Corbyn capitulates, his enemies will simply turn his contrition into an admission of guilt. His every apology picked up and hurled back as a new weapon, readymade to beat him and his base with. That’s how we’ve ended up with staunch anti-racist Jackie Walker and now Chris Williamson suspended – to name but two entirely innocent victims of Labour’s McCarthyite purge. It’s a witch hunt, and the only way to bring an end to a witch hunt is to call it out. Sorry – your analysis is really excellent in most regards – but your cowardice over this issue deeply troubles me.
And this was the response:
I stand by this and all of my previous statements. The rightful stance to the new McCarthyism as with every witch hunt, and aside from our own refusal to bow, is that we make a commitment to speak out and act in solidarity with all of the victims.
Woody Allen as the titular ‘front’ for blacklisted writers, Howard Prince, making his final speech when called upon to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Warning: strong language.
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Update:
George Galloway has since issued an extended statement on Youtube in which he apologies for the tweet and also discusses the background details and most specifically the central role played by Ofcom in his sacking by TalkRADIO and the cancellation of his political phone-in programme, The Mother of All Talk Shows (TMOATS). He also takes the opportunity to announce a new platform for TMOATS which will be relaunched on Sunday 16th:
On June 26th Galloway was welcomed as the guest on The Jimmy Dore Show. He again discussed the significant role Ofcom played in the cancellation of TMOATS and talked more broadly about his own participation in the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa that was spearheaded by Jewish anti-racist activists, as well as his continuing anti-racist commitment to fighting the apartheid system in Israel:
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Addendum: Reinstate Jackie Walker!
“If they accuse anybody of antisemitism, it’s basically as bad as kind of accusing somebody of being a paedophile or a murderer. And it’s really hard to come back from that.” — Jackie Walker, long-standing anti-racist campaigner and former Vice Chair of Momentum. 8
The Guardian has refused to print this letter signed by almost 400 people within 48 hours of Jackie’s expulsion (including Noam Chomsky, Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell, Alexei Sayle and Ken Livingstone). It deems the issue “sensitive” and “controversial”. We believe the real controversy is that hundreds of good socialists and anti-Zionists like Jackie Walker have been investigated, suspended and expelled. This witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters must stop!
Dear Sir/Madam,
The decision of the Labour Party to expel Jackie Walker for ‘“prejudicial and grossly detrimental behaviour” is both unfair and dishonest. Jackie was suspended over two years ago because of accusations of anti-Semitism yet her expulsion was for ‘misconduct’. [Labour expels Jackie Walker for leaked antisemitism remarks, March 27th]
Jackie’s original remarks, such as “not having heard a definition of anti-Semitism I can work with”, were obviously not anti-Semitic. Jackie’s real offence was being an anti-Zionist. Because of the difficulty of making a charge of anti-Semitism stick, Jackie’s alleged offence was changed to the subjective catch-all one of ‘misconduct’.
If anyone is guilty of misconduct it is those in Labour Friends of Israel who defended Israel’s murder of over 200 unarmed demonstrators in Gaza over the past year. False accusations of ‘anti-Semitism’ are the Zionists’ only method of defending the Israeli state.
Jackie’s expulsion is an attack on free speech. Rather than defend the world’s only apartheid state Israel’s supporters in the Labour Party cry ‘anti-Semitism’.
Over the past two years Jackie has been the victim of numerous attacks on social media which have questioned her Jewishness and talked about lynching and burning her. Not only has the Labour Party failed to defend her but it included some of this vile material within the dossier used to expel her, such as alleging she is “a white woman in dreadlocks”.
The expulsion of Jackie Walker is a matter of shame and we demand her immediate reinstatement.
Yours faithfully,
1. Noam Chomsky
2. Ken Livingstone
3. Miriam Margolyes
4. Alexei Sayle
5. Asa Winstanley
6. Steve Bell
7. Tony Greenstein
8. Jonathan Cook
9. Prof. Haim Bresheeth
10. Professor Dr Marco Chiesa
11. Prof. James Dickins
12. Prof. Yosefa Loshitzky
13. Prof. Wade Mansell
14. Prof. Dr. Willie van Peer
15. Prof Megan Povey
16. Prof. Chris Knight
17. Prof. Stephen Wagg
18. Kate Adams
19. Philip Adams
20. Alison Aiken
Reprinted below are extracts from two excellent articles by independent journalist Jonathan Cook.
In the first, published by Counterpunch on March 1st and entitled “Britain’s Witchfinders are Ready to Burn Jeremy Corbyn”, Cook begins:
“McCarthyism” is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning – and horror – has been increasingly obscured.
McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination – denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.
McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.
In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women.
And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism.
Cook then cross-examines the case against Chris Williamson in order to elucidate the McCarthyite modes of prosecution:
[But] The witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war – a policy of “zero tolerance” – to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed “hard left” given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.
This is the context for understanding Williamson’s “crime”.
Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic.
One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics this week in trying to prove Williamson’s anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a “Jew baiter” because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.
Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed his guilt to the inquisitors.
First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour “anti-semitism crisis”, he argued that the party had been “too apologetic” in dealing with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party.
In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed dealing with what he called the “scourge of anti-semitism”, and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn’t “institutionally anti-semitic”. Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.
As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn, noted:
“The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to.”
As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power.
So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches.
He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson’s statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.
Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker.
He had booked a room in the British parliament building – the seat of our supposed democracy – so that audiences could see a new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims.
The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled [as subsequently happened – read my previous post]. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn.
Although Jewish and black, Jackie Walker, a co-founder of the grassroots pro-Corbyn group Momentum, was one of the first to be victimised by an orchestrated campaign to defame leftist party members – something I have discussed at greater length in an extended post.
Cook continues:
First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour party bureaucracy – framed in the context of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west – called The Lynching.
And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt. It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour’s closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party.
For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the “witches” they have hunted down.
But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.
Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn’s, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was “outed” last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party “into disrepute”.
Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn’s solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a “zero tolerance” policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.
Cook then questions fellow Momentum founder Jon Lansman’s recently stated call for “making Labour a safe space”. He writes:
First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party’s Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed.
A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception. […]
Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance any meaningful curbs on Israel’s abuses of Palestinians – and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel – then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism of Israel. It will tie the party’s hands on supporting Palestinian rights.
In the name of protecting the “Israel right or wrong” crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have to provide institutional support for Israel’s racism towards Palestinians.
In doing so, it will in fact simply be returning to the status quo in the party before Corbyn, when Labour turned a blind eye over many decades to the Palestinians’ dispossession by European Zionists who created an ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one’s ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship.
Those in Labour who reject Britain’s continuing complicity in such crimes – ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration – will find, as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.
If the creation of a “safe space” for Jews in the Labour party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles.
Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that anything and everything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.
In a more recent article published on March 7th by Middle East Eye and entitled “Labour’s civil war on Israel has been a long time coming”, Cook returns to this point:
Threats by a Jewish group to split from Labour is not evidence of anti-semitism, but of the party’s long indulgence of anti-Palestinian racism.
An announcement this week by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that it is considering splitting from the British Labour Party could not have come at a worse moment for Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is already besieged by claims that he is presiding over a party that has become “institutionally anti-semitic”.
The threats by the JLM should be seen as part of concerted efforts to oust Corbyn from the leadership. They follow on the heels of a decision by a handful of Labour MPs last month to set up a new faction called the Independent Group. They, too, cited anti-semitism as a major reason for leaving.
On the defensive, Corbyn was prompted to write to the JLM expressing his and the shadow cabinet’s “very strong desire for you to remain a part of our movement”. More than 100 Labour MPs, including members of the front bench, similarly pleaded with the JLM not to disaffiliate. They apologised for “toxic racism” in the party and for “letting our Jewish supporters and members down”.
Their letter noted that the JLM is “the legitimate and long-standing representative of Jews in the Labour party” and added that the MPs recognised the importance of “calling out those who seek to make solidarity with our Jewish comrades a test of foreign policy”.
That appeared to be a swipe at Corbyn himself, who is the first leader of a British political party to prioritise Palestinian rights over the UK’s ties to an Israeli state that has been oppressing Palestinians for decades.
Only this week the Labour leader renewed his call for Britain to halt arms sales to Israel following a UN report that said the Israeli army’s shooting of Palestinian protesters in Gaza’s Great March of Return could amount to war crimes.
He concludes his criticism of JLM, an organisation he lambasts as “a relic of a period when it was possible to claim to be anti-racist while turning a blind eye to the oppression of the Palestinian people”, as follows:
Under Corbyn and a much-expanded membership, these prejudices are being challenged in public for the first time – and that is justifiably making the party an “unsafe” space for groups such as the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel, which hang on to outdated, hardline Zionist positions.
The JLM’s claim to speak for all Jews in Labour has been challenged by anti-racist Jews like those of the Jewish Voice for Labour. Their efforts to defend Corbyn and Labour’s record have been widely ignored by the media or, encouraged by JLM, dismissed as “downplaying” anti-semitism.
The JLM’s discomfort may be unfortunate, but it cannot be avoided. It is the price to be paid for the continuing battle by progressives to advance universal rights and defeat racism. This battle has been waged since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was published in 1948 – paradoxically, the year Israel was established by violating the core principles of that declaration.
Israel’s racism towards Palestinians has been indulged by Labour for too long. Now history is catching up with Israel, and with groups such as the JLM.
Labour MPs have a choice. They can stand on the wrong side of history, battling the tide like some modern King Canute, or they can recognise that it is time to fully enter the modern era – and that means embracing a programme of anti-racism that encompasses everyone, including Jews and Palestinians.
Click here to read Jonathan Cook’s full article entitled “Labour’s civil war on Israel has been a long time coming” on his official website.
The conclusion to Cook’s Counterpunch articleis more worrisome for supporters of Corbyn. As he writes:
Right now, the establishment – represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 – is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn’s main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.
While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a “pattern of behaviour” in Williamson’s efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10.
Corbyn’s allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.
Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly.
If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it’s time to dust off a Yellow Vest.
Click here to read Jonathan Cook’s full article entitled “Britain’s Witchfinders are ready to Burn Jeremy Corbyn” published by Counterpunch on March 1st.
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Additional:
“It’s all about the Benjamins, baby” | Jeff Cohen
The following extract is taken from an article written by Jeff Cohen, former director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College and co-founder of the online activism group RootsAction.org, in which he discusses the case of Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar and the furore that was sparked over two of her tweets. Cohen, who describes himself as “a proud Jew raised in a liberal family that supported civil rights and human rights”, titles his piece “This Jew Tells Speaker Pelosi: ‘You May Well Prove Ilhan Omar Correct’”. It was originally published in ‘Counterpunch’ on March 7th.
The initial media frenzy in February over two of Omar’s tweets was so huge that it obscured the fact that the uproar was sparked by a total of seven words – and six of those words are the refrain of a famous Puff Daddy song.
It began when Omar retweeted Glenn Greenwald’s comment about GOP congressional leader Kevin McCarthy’s “attacking the free speech rights” of Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib for criticizing Israel – to which Omar, a known critic of money in politics, simply added the Puff Daddy refrain: “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.” (Benjamins refer to $100 bills.) When a tweeter asked her who Omar thinks is funding politicians to defend Israel, Omar responded with a one-word tweet: “AIPAC!”
The feeding frenzy over these two flippant but truthful tweets forced Omar to apologize (something Trump has not been forced to do over hundreds of dishonest, racist and/or threatening ones).
Yet if you spend a day on Capitol Hill and talk (off-the-record) with a member of Congress about this topic, you’ll hear plenty about AIPAC’s awesome clout and its ability to unleash “Benjamins” to bully Congress. Books and articles have documented this truism.
Click here to read more of Jeff Cohen’s defence of Ilhan Omar and why the campaign against her has so badly backfired.
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“Criticizing Israel isn’t Anti-Semitic, Here’s What Is” | Sarah Gertler
The following article is another written in defence of Ilhan Omar. Sarah Gertler shares, like Cohen, a Jewish background, and tells us that in her formative years:
Like most American Jewish youth, I grew up knowing Israel. During holidays, I sang prayers about Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. In Hebrew school, I learned about the country’s culture, its cities, its past prime ministers. At my Jewish summer camp, we started every day with the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah.
My image of Israel was a rosy one. When I finally visited it in college, I was spellbound by the lush landscapes and sparkling cities, certain I would one day move to this golden ancestral home myself.
All this emotional buildup made it all the more sickening when, in the years that followed, I learned the realities of the Israeli occupation.
Published by ‘Counterpunch’ on March 8th, her full article (with the paragraph above replaced by ellipsis) is reprinted below:
Weeks ago, when the first accusations of anti-semitism were being leveled against Representative Ilhan Omar, I was deeply agitated.
Not long ago I saw her address these accusations at a local town hall. She reminded the world that, as a Black Muslim woman in America, she knows what hate looks like — and spends her life laboring against it. Her words were clear, bold, and unflinching.
When members of Congress not only continued to gang up and falsely smear Omar as anti-semitic, but even created a House Resolution painting her words as hateful, I wasn’t just agitated. I was absolutely disgusted.
Omar has criticized the U.S. government’s support for Israeli actions that break international law. And she’s spoken out against the role money in politics plays in shoring up that support.
Neither is anti-semitic.
What is anti-semitic is the cacophonyofmainstreammedia and politicians saying that criticizing U.S. policy toward the state of Israel is the same as attacking Jewish people. […]
The modern state of Israel was established by Zionists — a nationalist movement started by European Jews with the aim of creating a “Jewish state” as a refuge for persecuted Jews.
It’s true that Jews have faced centuries of brutal persecution in Europe. But the Zionists’ project shared unmistakably European colonialist roots.
In 1948, Israel’s war of independence led to the Nakba, an invasion driving 700,000 Palestinians from their homes. These Palestinians were never allowed to return, creating a massive refugee population that today numbers over 7 million.
While I was able to travel freely up and down Israel, the Palestinians who once lived there are legally barred from returning. While I wandered the marketplaces trying stews and shawarmas, Palestinians in Gaza can’t afford even the gas to cook their food because of the Israeli blockade.
Zionism didn’t create an inclusive Jewish refuge either. In fact, the diverse Mizrahi — or Arab — Jewish population that was already thriving in Palestine was pushed out of Israeli society as Ashkenazi — or European — Jews became the elite class.
What it did create is an imperialist stronghold that continues to break international law by building settlements deeper and deeper into Palestinian territory, giving Jewish Israelis superior legal status to Arab Israelis and Palestinians, and attacking all who protest.
Since Israel’s origin, the U.S. has supplied tens of billions of dollars of military aid and ardent political support. Congress consistently ignores dozens of UN resolutions condemning Israeli abuses, and year after year gives it more resources to violently oppress impoverished Palestinians.
Pro-Israel lobbying groups’ considerable political influence has even pushed Congress to consider bills punishing Americans who support Palestinian rights. (Around half of all states already have such laws.)
More broadly, they rely on villainizing critics with false claims of antisemitism — especially when the criticism comes from a person of color, as we’ve seen with Angela Davis, Marc Lamont Hill, and Michelle Alexander before Rep. Omar.
What is anti-semitic — always — is saying that all Jews support violence and imperialism.
Click here to read Sarah Gertler’s article in its original form at Counterpunch.
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“Anti-Semitism Pandemic!” | CJ Hopkins
CJ Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and satirist based in Berlin. In this climate of stifling ‘political correctness’ and suffocating insincerity, I find his writing is a breath of fresh air. The following excerpts are taken from his latest piece in which he locates the origins of the “deadly anti-Semitism pandemic”:
The origins of this pernicious, panic-inducing pestilence remain shrouded in mystery, but epidemiologists now believe that it began in the Spring of 2015, shortly after the resignation of Ed Milliband as UK Labour Party leader, and went global in the Summer of 2016, right around the time of the Brexit referendum and the nomination of Donald Trump…
Virologists are working around the clock to map the genome of this scurrilous scourge, about which very little is known, other than that it has a sudden onset, and attacks the language center of the brain, causing the sufferer to express opinions about “Zionism,” “globalism,” “the Israel lobby,” “banks,” and other code words for “Jews.” Patients appear to be unaware that they are spouting these anti-Semitic code words until they are told they are by the corporate media, or their colleagues, or some random account on Twitter, at which point their symptoms alter dramatically, and they suffer a series of petit mal seizures, causing them to repeatedly apologize for unintentionally advocating the extermination of the entire Jewish people and the establishment of a worldwide Nazi Reich.
At the moment, Britain is taking the brunt of it. Despite the best efforts of the ruling classes and the media to contain its spread, several new cases of anti-Semitism have been reported throughout the Kingdom, or at least among the Labour Party, which, at this point, has been so thoroughly infected that it resembles a neo-Nazi death cult.
Jeremy Corbyn, who contracted the virus more or less the moment he assumed the leadership, is now exhibiting symptoms of late-stage disease. Reliable sources close to the party, reached for comment at a brunch in Qatar with Tony Blair and a bunch of Saudis, report that Corbyn is running around Momentum HQ in full Nazi regalia, alternately heiling Hitler and looking for journalists to apologize to.
Another Labour MP, Chris Williamson, had to be summarily quarantined after publicly apologizing for not apologizing for inciting a gathering of Labour members to stop apologizing for refusing to apologize for being disgusting anti-Semites … or something basically along those lines. Owen Jones is fiercely denying denying that the party is a hive of Nazis, and that he ever denied that denying the fact that there is zero actual evidence of that fact is essential to preserving what is left of the party, once it has been cured of anti-Semitism, or disbanded and reconstituted from scratch.
Emergency measures are now in effect. A full-scale Labour Party lockdown is imminent. Anyone not already infected is being advised to flee the party, denounce anyone who hasn’t done so as “a Hitler-loving Corbyn-sympathizer,” and prophylactically apologize for any critical statements they might have made about Israel, or “elites,” or “global capitalism,” or “bankers,” or anything else that anyone can construe as anti-Semitism (preferably in the pages of The Guardian).
Click here to read CJ Hopkin’s full piece as reprinted by OffGuradian.
“Some of us would say it was mostly a constructed crisis for political ends. I would say there was a crisis of the way that antisemitism is being manipulated and being used by certain parts of, not just the Labour Party but other parties, and the media to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and a number of his supporters. I mean let’s disagree politically: I’m anti-Zionist, they’re pro-Zionist… Let’s have THAT argument. Not this one that’s going on at the moment.”— Jackie Walker1
Embedded below is the short documentary film WitchHunt by Jon Pullman (duration: 60 mins) in which he puts into wider historical context the ongoing defamation of Labour Party members who have faced investigation for allegations of antisemitism after taking a stance on pro-Palestinian rights.
Released in February, the main focus of the film is the case of Jackie Walker, a black-Jewish political activist since been expelled from the party in March on the spurious charge of “misconduct”:
To provide further context I have also reprinted statements made by Jackie Walker and others writing in support, both in response to her initial suspension, and following her more recent expulsion.
Click here to reach the official website for the documentary.
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Praise for WitchHunt:
“Anyone who speaks or writes in the public domain about antisemitism and the current state of the Labour Party has a duty to see this film and address the issues it raises.” — Avi Shlaim, historian
“This impeccably-executed film exposes with chilling accuracy the terrifying threat that now confronts democracy, and the depressing intractability of the Israel-Palestine situation.” —Mike Leigh
“The case of Jackie Walker is important. This film asks whether her lengthy suspension from the Labour Party and attempts to expel her are fair, or an injustice which should be challenged. She is not the only one in this position. See the film and make up your own mind” — Ken Loach
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In Defence of Jackie Walker
We are Jewish Labour activists who were with Jackie Walker at the training session on antisemitism led by Mike Katz, vice chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday September 26. Like her, some of us were heckled when we raised questions unpalatable to others in the audience who share the JLM’s bias towards Israel, its coupling of Jewish identity with Zionism and its insistence on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.
Jackie had every right to question the JLM’s definition of antisemitism and the tendency of mainstream Jewish organisations to focus entirely on the slaughter of Jews when they commemorate the Nazi Holocaust. We share her determination to build greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. Jackie responded appreciatively when one audience member described Holocaust memorial events involving Armenians and others. She has since issued a statement on this issue, reproduced below.
We were shocked at the way the level of barracking rose as soon as Jackie began to speak. JLM supporters demonstrated contempt for her as a Jewish woman of African heritage who is a lifelong anti-racist advocate for the rights of minorities and a leading Labour Party activist in her Thanet constituency.
We unreservedly condemn allegations of antisemitism made against Jackie Walker. Calls for her to be disowned by the Momentum movement of which she is vice-chair, and for her to be suspended for a second time from the Labour Party, are reprehensible instances of the witch hunt to which she and other Corbyn supporters have been subjected over recent months.
The way Jackie has been treated demonstrates the unfitness of the JLM to deliver training on antisemitism. It is an organisation committed to one, contested strand of Jewish labour tradition to the exclusion of any other; it relies on a definition of antisemitism that conflates Jewish identity with Zionism; and it exploits its interactions with party members to set the limits of political discourse about the Middle East in accordance with its own partisan ideology.
By promoting the witch hunt, the JLM has helped to relegate the vile prejudice of antisemitism to a tool in the armoury of pro-Israel advocates, backed by Corbyn’s enemies in the political and media establishment.
Signed:
Graham Bash, Hackney North CLP
Rica Bird, Wirral South CLP
Leah Levane, Hastings and Rye CLP
Jonathan Rosenhead, Hackney South and Shoreditch CLP
Glyn Secker, Dulwich and West Norwood CLP
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, Chingford and Woodford Green CLP
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Original statement by Jackie Walker
“A number of people made comments in a private training session run by the Jewish Labour Movement. As we all know, training sessions are intended to be safe spaces where ideas and questions can be explored. A film of this session was leaked to the press unethically. I did not raise a question on security in Jewish schools. The trainer raised this issue and I asked for clarification, in particular as all London primary schools, to my knowledge, have security and I did not understand the particular point the trainer was making. Having been a victim of racism I would never play down the very real fears the Jewish community have, especially in light of recent attacks in France.
In the session, a number of Jewish people, including me, asked for definitions of antisemitism. This is a subject of much debate in the Jewish community. I support David Schneider’s definition and utterly condemn anti-Semitism.
I would never play down the significance of the Shoah. Working with many Jewish comrades, I continue to seek to bring greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. If offence has been caused, it is the last thing I would want to do and I apologise.”
Click here to read both statements at Free Speech on Israel published in September 2016.
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Press release by Jackie Walker – denied right to speak in her own defence
Today Jackie Walker was forced to withdraw from a Labour Party disciplinary hearing when the panel due to pronounce on her case refused to allow her to make a short opening statement in her defence. This was essential given the party’s refusal last week to deal with urgent questions from her lawyers about alarming last minute additions to the charges against her.
Background
Jackie Walker (a black Jewish Woman) was suspended from the Labour Party 2 ½ years ago for asking a Labour Party antisemitism trainer, at an antisemitism training event, for a definition of antisemitism. Since then she has been the subject of the most appalling and unrelenting racist abuse and threats, including a bomb threat.
Today Jackie Walker attended her long delayed Labour Party disciplinary hearing. She was accompanied by her defence witnesses and legal team; she had submitted over 400 pages of evidence in her defence but had been given no opportunity to respond to extra charges sent to her last week, along with a major revision to the basis on which allegations of antisemitism would be assessed. At the beginning of the hearing, the Chair advised Jackie Walker that this was to be an informal hearing and that she could address him by his first name. The Chair then invited procedural questions. Jackie asked to be allowed to make a brief opening address to the Chair and Panel. The team of Labour Party lawyers objected. The Chair adjourned the meeting to consider Jackie’s request to speak, and then ruled that she must remain silent. Jackie Walker had no alternative other than to withdraw from the hearing, as the panel’s decision demonstrated that she had no chance of a fair hearing in a process that has lacked equity and natural justice from the start.
Jackie Walker said:
“After almost three years of racist abuse and serious threats; of almost three years of being demonised, and now being ambushed by a batch of last minute changes, I was astounded that the Labour Party refused to allow me a few short moments to personally address the disciplinary panel to speak in my own defence. What is so dangerous about my voice that it is not allowed to be heard?”
All I have ever asked for is for equal treatment, due process and natural justice; it seems that this is too much to ask of the Labour Party.”
STATEMENT OF JACKIE WALKER
Today (26 March 2019) I (Jackie Walker) attended the long overdue Labour Party disciplinary hearing, before the Labour Party’s highest disciplinary panel (National Constitutional Committee). I was accompanied by my defence witnesses and legal team; I had submitted over 400 pages of evidence in my defence.
At the beginning of the hearing, the Chair advised me that this was to be an informal hearing and that I could address him by his first name. The Chair then invited procedural questions. Through my lawyer I asked to be allowed to make a brief opening address to the Chair and Panel. The large team of Labour Party lawyers objected. The Chair adjourned the meeting to consider my simple request to speak. Despite repeated requests from my lawyer that I be allowed to speak at the outset of my hearing, the Chair ruled that I remain silent. I therefore had no alternative other than to withdraw from the hearing, as it was clear to me that I would not receive a fair hearing.
Background
It is vital to appreciate the astonishing background of the process that has been applied by the Labour Party apparatus to me.
On 25 September 2016, at the Labour Party (LP) Conference in Liverpool, I attended a LP training event entitled ‘Confronting antisemitism and engaging with Jewish voters’. The training session was co-hosted by the LP with the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), and was presented by the vice-chair of the JLM, Mike Katz. The session was open to all LP members attending the Annual Conference. As is normal practice the presenter encouraged and engaged in discussion and debate with attendees throughout the hour-long training session.
Towards the end session I put my hand up to speak and was invited by Mr Katz to ask a question/make a comment.
I asked for a “definition of antisemitism”
I commented “wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all people who experience holocaust”, and
I asked about security matters relating to the Jewish community.
I was secretly filmed by an unknown person who released the film of my contribution at the meeting to the media and footage of the closed training event was published online by newspapers. On 29 September 2016 the LP suspended me and subsequently charged me that my words were:
antisemitic;
inappropriate; and
undermined Labour’s ability to campaign against racism.
I am black. I am Jewish. I am a woman. I have spent my life fighting racism and inequality. My ethnicity, Jewish heritage and gender have brought me into direct conflict with those who abuse and threaten others on the basis of colour of skin, race, religion and gender. I abhor antisemitism. I abhor discrimination against black people. I abhor all discrimination. I abhor the differential treatment of women. I absolutely and vehemently reject the charges made against me by the LP. For 2 ½ years I have faced a grossly unfair disciplinary process that has now reached new heights of staggering unfairness.
The increasing instances of serious unfair process have become intolerable in the weeks leading up to this hearing. Unfair process had infected all aspects of the LP investigation and prosecution. My fundamental right to a fair hearing has been wholly compromised by the conduct of the LP.
1. LP submission on what constitutes anti-Semitism
The definition of what is antisemitism (as opposed to legitimate criticism of the state of Israel) deserves serious respectful political debate, including controversial debate. It defies all logic, and threatens the essence of free speech, to be accused of antisemitism for simply asking the fundamental question: what is antisemitism?
The recent NEC Code of Conduct on Antisemitism was not in existence at the time of the training session in September 2016. The endorsement by the LP of the IHRA definition of antisemitism did not take place until after the Conference of 2016. The endorsement by the LP was the subject of significant debate. The endorsement is “to assistin understanding what constitutes antisemitism”. In fact during the training session Mike Katz referred not to the IHRA definition but to the European Union Monitoring Centre’s definition. The LP now submits that the test to be applied to an allegation of antisemitism against me “does not require the NCC to engage in a debate as to the proper definition of anti-Semitism” but rather whether an ‘ordinary person hearing or reading the comments might reasonably perceive them to be antisemitic’. That is an extraordinary dilution of the adopted test of “hatred towards Jews” which is a definition of antisemitism with which I wholeheartedly agree.
2. LP relies on racist statements to prosecute me
It is beyond any sense of fair process that in prosecuting me for antisemitism for my asking a training session for a definition of antisemitism in September 2016, that the LP, astonishingly, has submitted racist and discriminatory statements made about my colour, gender, appearance, ethnicity and heritage, to support its misconceived case against me.
The LP relies on anonymous witnesses who have written:
“[JW is] a white middle-aged woman with dreadlocks”
“Walker- who claims to be part Jewish”
And also on the written witness evidence of Mike Katz who states:
“… JW uses her self-identification as a black woman and a Jew as cover to put her beyond criticism…”
There is no conceivable place in a fair disciplinary process for such statements to be allowed in evidence.
As a black person I have long campaigned for the proper recognition and memorialisation of those who died and suffered during the shameful period of the slave trade. During the training session I was making the point that it would be fitting to include the victims of the slave trade as well as other pre-Nazi genocides in the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations. In prosecuting me for raising that comment, again astonishingly, the LP relies on an anonymous witness who writes:
“I am not at all happy regarding her obsession with African genocide and the holocaust”
I have repeatedly asked those conducting my disciplinary process for anonymous and racist evidence to be removed from the evidence presented by the LP. My applications have not been agreed.
That is unfair.
I applied to the Panel to adjourn my case to allow the reliance on racist material by the LP to be referred to the Equality and Human Rights Commission for investigation. My application was rejected.
That is unfair.
3. Other racist and threatening remarks
I have been subjected to threatening, racist and abusive remarks throughout the time I have had to wait for the LP to carry out its disciplinary process. Some examples of the material sent to me have included:
“Jackie Walker is as Jewish as a pork pie, stop harassing Jews you f―king Nazi scum”
“Jackie Walker and her defenders can go hang”
“Jackie Walker’s Jewishness is a hastily constructed identity to protect her from the backlash of her antisemitic comments”
“Her father whom she barely knew apparently was Jewish so she isn’t Jewish…nothing to do with her colour”
“We should send people like you to the f―king gas chamber! Palestine does not exist, nor did it ever exist. Israel has been a Jewish homeland for 3,000 years! Moron”
“Was that thunderc―t referring to you wanting to see Corbyn shove Jackie Walker into a burning bin? You didn’t mention ethnicity”
“God, what a f―king anti-Semite black Jewish working class female Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker is! Can’t think why Labour want rid”
[expurgated version]
The above examples were submitted by me as part of my documents in the disciplinary process yet the Panel hearing my case still did not allow my application to remove racist and discriminatory evidence being relied on by the LP.
That is unfair.
4. Secret Panel to hear my case
Until this morning I had not been allowed to know the identities of those who are to sit in judgment on my case despite the LP presenter and the LP legal team being aware of the identities since last year.
Initially the LP claimed that it would not release details of the Panel to me or my solicitors, because of security concerns. The clear discriminatory inference is that I as a black person am prone to trouble and/or violence; that whenever black people and their supporters gather to object or protest there is a tendency to disorder causing a security risk. This is plain racist discriminatory negative stereotyping.
When pressed, the LP confirmed it has not received any threats relating to my case but still refused to let me know the identities of Panel members. I could not carry out any background checks on previous statements or connections of the Panel members to assess the risk of bias and lack of independence.
That is unfair.
5. Secret venue
For personal reasons, of which the Panel is aware, I wanted to visit the hearing centre to familiarise myself with the venue. The LP refused to let me know where the hearing was to take place until 4 working days before the hearing which was too late for me to make a familiarisation visit.
That was unfair.
6. Failing to put intended charges to me
I am also charged with bringing the Party into disrepute for pursing my legal rights against the LP for a serious breach of my personal data held by them. I am being charged for defending my rights. The charge was never put to me at the lengthy investigatory meeting I had with the LP investigator or at any other time during the almost 2 year long investigation stage of the process. I was never given an opportunity to explain my position before a one-sided decision was made by the LP to charge me. When I protested that it was a clear breach of natural justice to go straight to a charge without seeking my comment at the investigatory stage I was told by the LP that:
“Natural justice does not require that she [JW] also has the opportunity to respond at an investigatory stage”
Trade Unions built the LP. It is unthinkable that a trade union would accept a disciplinary process that completely by-passes the investigatory stage and goes straight to a disciplinary charge without any input or comment from the person to be charged. It is unthinkable that a police investigation would go straight to charge without interviewing the accused to seek comment.
Yet that is what the LP has done to me.
That is unfair.
7. Lack or loss of investigatory records
When I pointed out that some of the evidence to be relied on by the LP at the hearing had never been put to me during the investigation interview, the LP admitted in writing that:
“The NEC wishes firstly to record that the precise details of the matters put to Ms Walker during the investigatory interview are not known to those now presenting the case, as the interviewer is no longer in post.”
It is incomprehensible that in such a serious case, where charges of antisemitism are being made against me, that an accurate and complete record has not been kept by the LP of their own investigation.
In light of my previous grave concerns about the unlawful handling of my personal data I am extremely concerned that there have been further breaches of Data Protection laws concerning the management by the LP of my personal data.
That is unfair.
8. Late submission of evidence by LP
On 20 March 2019 the LP served more evidence on me that it intends to rely on at the hearing due to start today. I was not given time to consider the fresh evidence, assess the context of that evidence and to counter that evidence. An application for an adjournment of the hearing to allow me time to deal with the evidence in the nine new documents served so late was not allowed by the Panel.
That is unfair.
9. Prejudicial public statements by Labour MPs
My case has attracted significant public interest and comment in the press, most of which has been ill-informed and biased. However I have also been subjected to significant negative prejudicial statements from Labour MPs making it impossible for me to have a fair hearing within the LP. I have made complaint of this and was told this would be discussed with the General Secretary however, this behaviour persisted. If this were in another setting the MPs could be found to be in contempt of court.
For example, on 27 February 2019 on House of Commons letterhead thirty-eight MPs, members of Labour Tribune, put their names to a letter written to the General Secretary of the Labour Party wherein I was clearly referred to and where it was said that I was:
“…someone who has been thrown out of the party for making antisemitic comments”.
Those MPs would have been aware that their letter, which was published online and in the press, would seriously prejudice my hearing due to take place within a month of their letter. They were giving a clear steer and signal to the Panel of what the outcome of my hearing is to be. They wrongly identified me as someone expelled from the LP and wrongly identified me as someone who has been found to be antisemitic by the LP.
On 22 March 2019 the MailOnline published an article entitled “Shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s ‘anti-Semitic’ ally must be expelled, or Labour ‘has no future ’MPs warn”. The article states:
“Her [JW] case will finally come before Labour’s disciplinary panel on Tuesday after two-and-a–half years of delay. Backbenchers said the party must ensure she is expelled- if Labour is to have any chance of proving it is not institutionally anti-Semitic.
Dame Margaret Hodge said: ‘It’s extraordinary that it has taken so long to bring her to an expulsion hearing. Tough action must be taken but one expulsion will not solve a far deeper cultural problem that has infected the party”
Backbenchers, and in particular Dame Margaret Hodge, have directly interfered in my right to a fair hearing. They have prejudiced a fair hearing by making such prejudicial statements only one working day before my hearing. Their aim is obvious. Hodge has given the clearest possible signal to the Panel of the outcome she wants and expects.
The interference in the disciplinary process by these MPs has made it impossible for me to have a fair hearing.
That is unfair.
My decision to withdraw from this hearing
Faced with an inherently racist disciplinary process where the evidence of abusive racists is relied on by the LP to prosecute me; faced with multiple examples of a grossly unfair process in the investigation and prosecution of my case and the conduct of my case at the NEC and NCC Panel stages; faced with the discriminatory secrecy of the Panel appointed by the LP to hear my case; and faced with the prejudicial public statements by Labour MPs preventing my ability to have a fair hearing, I am left with no confidence whatsoever in the ability of the LP to conduct a fair disciplinary process.
I am expected to appear before an unfair Panel where the LP has ridden roughshod over my rights in its headlong blinkered hankering to expel me from the Party to satisfy the wishes of those who are not involved in the detail of my case but who have judged me unfairly and have already condemned me.
I have spoken of a lynching and a witch hunt. If I were in a fair, independent and unbiased court I would say “I rest my case”.
In such an unfair and biased process I do not now recognise the ability of the LP disciplinary process to investigate and try my case with the equality and blind fairness everyone should expect of a democratic process that recognises the primary importance of the rule of law and fair due process.
“As a result of the truly astonishing decision this morning to prevent me from even addressing the disciplinary panel at the outset in my own defence, I was left with no option but to withdraw from the disciplinary process”
Jackie Walker
Tuesday 26 March 2019
Click here to read the same press release at Labour Against the Witch Hunt.
All quotes are from episodes 2 and 3 of the Al Jazeera documentary series The Lobby, entitled respectively “The Training Session” and “An Antisemitic Trope”, and both episodes are embedded below.
Here is episode 2:
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“I was seeking information and I still haven’t heard a definition of antisemitism that I can work with”— Jackie Walker2
In episode 2 [of Al Jazeera‘s documentary series The Lobby], undercover reporter ‘Robin’ travels to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. There he meets up with a sizeable pro-Israel delegation, including Russell Langer, who is the former Campaigns Director at the Union of Jewish Students (UJC) and current Public Affairs Manager with the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), an influential umbrella group of Jewish organisations in Britain.
Langer tells ‘Robin’: “There’s a Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East [event] at 2:30, which I’ll be going to, so I need to charge my phone up so I can get some more recordings.”3 Many others within the pro-Israel delegation also attend the event as ‘spies’ (a shared joke amongst themselves). One is Luke Akehurst, someone Shai Masot describes as “a great campaigner” and “one of the best in the inside… in all the party”, 4 and head of We Believe in Israel, itself an affiliated branch of BICOM. We learn that Akehurst is intending to write a report of the LFPME event.
Later, we see secretly recorded footage from a different scheduled event. It is a ‘training session’ hosted by Mike Katz, the Vice Chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM).
Katz opens his session with a presentation entitled “Antisemitism as a phenomenon across the world” during which he informs the delegates about the worrying trend in statistics collected by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity set up to monitor levels of antisemitism across Britain: “they recorded 557 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first six months of 2016. That is an 11% increase in the period in 2015. 2014 was the most antisemitic year on record.”5
Also at the meeting is Labour Party member Christine Tongue who directly challenges the SCT claims saying: “I’m wondering if I’m now going on that list because my MP actually sent a letter to Jeremy Corbyn asking him to bar me from a rally in Ramsgate because I was an example of antisemitism. Because his office had trawled through my facebook page and found an article that I shared by Norman Finkelstein.”6
The son of two Jewish holocaust survivors yet staunchly pro-Palestinian, Finkelstein is the bane of the Israel lobby in America. Apparently, he had jokingly proposed a way of ending the occupation of Palestine by resituating Israel within the territory of the United States.
In reposting Finkelstein’s joke, however, Christine Tongue, certainly in the eyes of the Israel lobby, was deemed guilty of the “new antisemitism”, which, as Katz elucidates during the same session, regards any attacks that delegitimise the state of Israel as antisemitic because: “Israel is an integral part of the vast majority of the Jewish community’s identity”.7 According to this standard, Norman Finkelstein and fellow Jews critical of Israeli policy are likewise denigrated as “self-hating”.
Graham Bash was another Labour Party member who had joined the session. Bash told the audience: “I’m Jewish and I don’t agree with the concept of a Jewish state because it gives me the right to live in Israel whereas a Palestinian who’s been displaced has a lesser right than me. So when you say it’s not appropriate [“to delegitimise the right of Israel to exist”], are you really saying it’s not appropriate for us to have a political discussion?”8
Another outspoken delegate at the same session was Jackie Walker, who along with her partner, is Jewish too. Walker, both a political activist and long-standing anti-racist campaigner, was as then Vice Chair of Momentum. And she responded to Katz as follows:
“If you are saying effectively that Zionism, you know, is not open to debate as a concept, then that is really worrying. Antisemitism, like any form of racism, is deplorable, and my feeling about how to tackle this is for Jews to be standing firmly and squarely alongside our Black comrades, our Muslim comrades, who are much more at the moment the target of racism than thankfully at the moment we are…”9
After delivering her rebuttal, Walker is heard to receive a brief ripple of appreciative applause, and yet soon afterwards she became the centre of a headline-making scandal that would revive allegations of increasing antisemitism within ‘Corbyn’s Labour Party’:
Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker has been suspended from Labour over controversial comments she made at a party training event.
When she was asked whether she had considered resigning given the outrage among some Jewish groups, Walker said: “Some other prominent Jewish groups, of which I’m a member, think a very different thing. What we have to look at when we’re talking about this subject, particularly at the moment, is the political differences that are underlying this as well.”
She said whomever leaked the footage from a Labour party antisemitism training event “had malicious intent in their mind”. She also said she was anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic, adding: “I think Zionism is a political ideology, and like any political ideology, some people will be supportive and some people won’t be supportive of it. That’s a very different thing.” 10
From a report by the Press Association published in the Guardian on September 30th.
Here is an example of the public support she did receive from other Jewish Labour activists but which the mainstream media were determined to overlook:
We are Jewish Labour activists who were with Jackie Walker at the training session on antisemitism led by Mike Katz, vice chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday September 26. Like her, some of us were heckled when we raised questions unpalatable to others in the audience who share the JLM’s bias towards Israel, its coupling of Jewish identity with Zionism and its insistence on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.
Jackie had every right to question the JLM’s definition of antisemitism and the tendency of mainstream Jewish organisations to focus entirely on the slaughter of Jews when they commemorate the Nazi Holocaust. We share her determination to build greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. Jackie responded appreciatively when one audience member described Holocaust memorial events involving Armenians and others. She has since issued a statement on this issue, reproduced below.
Click here to read the full statement by Free Speech on Israel [reprinted above].
Meanwhile, The Board of Deputies of British Jews Vice President actually went so far as to call Walker “an unapologetic Jew-baiter”. 11
This is how Walker afterwards described the events that unfolded to Al Jazeera:
“At the start they seemed relatively relaxed. It was simply a training session. I think some of us had gone along there with the idea it was kind of strange, because in some ways this was against what Shami Chakrabarti had actually advised. So we wanted to see what was going on. […]
By the time the row actually broke out I was on my way home. I mean none of us thought anything about this training session. I was in the car and suddenly I started to get these tweets coming through to me. And these phone calls from the BBC.” 12
As it transpired, a secretly recorded clip from the ‘training session’ had been leaked to a news outlet.
Walker continues: “What was actually leaked was certain little segments that would be as controversial as possible.” 13
The decontexturalised sound-bite that most ignited this very heated though totally belated reaction was this one: “In terms of Holocaust Day, I would also like to say wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who experienced Holocaust…” 14
Out of context, her statement quoted at the top of this section also caused considerable furore: that she hadn’t “heard a definition of antisemitism that I can work with”. Of this, Walker explains: “How it was reported and how it was tweeted was [that] I was basically saying ‘I can’t find anywhere a definition of antisemitism to work with’. That’s total nonsense. I’m an anti-racist trainer. I’ve been an anti-racist trainer for forty years. I’ve been fighting fascists and antisemites on the streets for decades.” 15
Walker concludes: “I’m not just Jewish, I am black. And my ancestry is of African enslavement. Only this year I spoke at Slavery Remembrance Day, and I spoke to a crowd in Trafalgar Square about the African Holocaust. And that is what we call it. You can disagree with me as to whether I should call that a holocaust but it is not antisemitic for me to call what happened to African people in the diaspora, a holocaust. […]
“If they accuse anybody of antisemitism, it’s basically as bad as kind of accusing somebody of being a paedophile or a murderer. And it’s really hard to come back from that.” 16
Later ‘Robin’ speaks with Masot about Jackie Walker. Masot tells him: “Yeah, she is problematic. What can we do…? Do not let it go. That’s all you can do. Do not let it go… that’s the key.”17
Here is episode 3:
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JLM in the campaign against Corbyn
“Some of us would say it was mostly a constructed crisis for political ends. I would say there was a crisis of the way that antisemitism is being manipulated and being used by certain parts of, not just the Labour Party but other parties, and the media to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and a number of his supporters. I mean let’s disagree politically: I’m anti-Zionist, they’re pro-Zionist… Let’s have THAT argument. Not this one that’s going on at the moment.”— Jackie Walker18
It was investigative reporter Asa Winstanley from the Electronic Intifada who first revealed last September that Ella Rose, the Director of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), was working at the Israel embassy as public affairs officer between September 2015 and August 2016, when she joined JLM as its first director:
Jewish critics of the JLM have told The Electronic Intifada that JLM’s link to the Israeli embassy should disqualify it from leading Labour Party trainings on antisemitism.
Ella Rose (second left on right-hand side of table) was part of a January 2015 meeting with then Prime Minister David Cameron which discussed opposing “boycotts and the deligitimization of Israel.” (Photoshot/Newscom)
Importantly, Electronic Intifada also established close ties to the Blairite Labour faction and ginger group ‘Progress’:
Although a dormant organization for many years, the JLM in February rose to prominence not long after it appointed as its new chair Jeremy Newmark, a well-known Israel lobbyist.
Predictably, JLM soon became active in supporting the false narrative that Labour has become a cesspit of antisemitism under the leadership of left-winger and long-time advocate for Palestinian rights Jeremy Corbyn.
At the time, Jackie Walker reportedly told them “that in light of Ella Rose’s role at the embassy, JLM’s claim not to be an Israel advocacy organization was ‘highly doubtful.’”:
Walker, a Jewish anti-racism activist who has been falsely smeared as antisemitic by JLM and others, said it was ironic that members don’t have to be Jewish to join JLM, but they do have to be Zionist.19
Click here to read the full article entitled “New Jewish Labour Movement director was Israeli embassy officer” published by The Electronic Intifada.
Towards the end of episode 2, ‘Robin’ runs into Ella Rose:
“I saw Jackie Walker on Saturday and thought, you know what, I could take her, she’s like 5’2 and tiny… That’s why I can take Jackie Walker. Krav Maga training,”
Still referring to the Israeli army hand-to-hand fighting technique, she then added: “Yeah. I’m not bad at it. If it came to it I would win, that’s all I really care about.”
Jackie Walker again: “What we need to have is some investigation of this from the Labour Party. And I will be making a formal complaint against both Ella Rose and the Jewish Labour Movement” 20
*
1 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 3: An Antisemitic Trope at 4.55 mins.
2 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:45 mins
3 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 11:10 mins
4 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 4:05 mins
5 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 13:45 mins
6 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 14:15 mins
7 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 15:30 mins
8 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 16:15 mins
9 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 17:15 mins
11 I cannot find a link but the evidence of this statement is available in Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 20:15 mins
12 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 13:25 mins and at 18:00 mins
13 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 18:20 mins
14 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 18:30 mins
15 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:50 mins
16 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:10 mins and 21:20 mins
17 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 20:35 mins
18 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 3: An Antisemitic Trope at 4.55 mins.
Update: The article as it was originally posted follows the first asterisk.
Exposing Israel’s racism is all too easy. Mere denunciation, without explanation of its underlying context, may actually be misleading if not counterproductive; it may appear as singling Israel out for some peculiar and exceptional moral defect of its leaders or, worse, of its Jewish majority. In fact, racist structures and attitudes, wherever they occur, are part of the legal and ideological superstructure and cannot properly be understood in isolation from their material base.
In the case of Israel, that material base is the Zionist colonisation of Palestine – a process of which Israel is both product and instrument. That the Zionist project is all about the colonisation of Palestine by Jews is, once again, an indisputable fact. It is how political Zionism described itself right from the start.
So writes Israeli-born pro-Palestinian activist and former Labour member Moshé Machover in an article entitled “Why Israel is a racist state” that featured as part of a pamphlet handed out to delegates attending the Labour Party Conference.
On Sept 29thThe Real News broadcast an interview with Machover in which he stresses that his article does not consider the question of whether Israel is a racist state (since it irrefutably is), but seeks to address the underlying reason for its racism:
As Machover concludes his piece:
In the US Declaration of Independence, the freedom-loving founding fathers – only some of whom were slave owners – complain that the king of Great Britain “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.” In today’s terminology they would no doubt be described as ‘terrorists’. The Palestinian Arabs are Israel’s “merciless Indian savages”.
When viewed against the background of the history of this type of colonisation, Israeli racist ideology and practices are par for the course. The annals of colonisation certainly have grimmer chapters, such as the total extermination of the people of Tasmania, to mention an extreme example. Zionist colonisation is, however, exceptional in being anachronistic: it continues in the 21st century the kind of thing – settler colonialism – that elsewhere ended in the 19th.
To conclude: apart from its anachronism, there is little that is exceptional about Israel’s racism. It is rooted in its nature as a settler state. Uprooting colonialist racism requires a change of regime, decolonisation – which in the case of Israel means de-Zionisation.
Click here to read the article in full on the Labour Party Marxists website.
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The following is reposted from extracts drawn from an article originally published by The Electronic Intifada.
In a historic move, the Labour Party’s annual conference on Tuesday [Sept 25th] voted to end UK arms sales to Israel.
Amid a sea of waving Palestinian flags, and chants of “Free Palestine,” delegates debated a motion condemning Israel’s killing of Palestinian protesters – more than 140 to date – since the Great March of Return protests began on 30 March.
Such a powerful moment when over 1000 Palestinians flags flew in solidarity with #Palestine whilst the #StopArmingIsrael motion was heard at #Lab18. First time in living memory a Palestine motion heard at Labour conference. Palestine will be free. pic.twitter.com/8cGPmB9tps
The motion, passed with almost no votes against, calls for an immediate freeze on UK arms sales to Israel.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s director Ben Jamal stated: “This incredible show of support and this historic motion demonstrate the strength of feeling at the grassroots of the party. Labour members want to show real solidarity with Palestinians.”
“Given Israel’s continuing use of live fire to kill unarmed Palestinian demonstrators, it is no surprise that there’s clear support for an immediate freeze of arms sales to Israel,” Jamal added.
Great News! UK Labour Party has voted to freeze arms sales to Israel, rekindling hope that Israel’s South Africa moment is getting closer. Palestinians had urged Labour to end UK complicity in Israel's crimes against Palestinians, most critically by adopting a military embargo pic.twitter.com/c7xWREjvpa
The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee, the steering group of the international BDS movement, praised the Labour Party vote for “rekindling hope that Israel’s South Africa moment is getting closer.”
Click here to read the original report published by The Electronic Intifada from which these extracts are drawn.
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Emily Thornberry
But The Electronic Intifada has learned that Emily Thornberry, the woman who would become foreign minister were a Labour government elected tomorrow, had privately tried to scupper the motion.
Although Thornberry is a close ally of Labour leader and Palestine solidarity veteran Jeremy Corbyn, she is also a supporter of Labour Friends of Israel and opposes an arms embargo.
Thornberry has said in the past that a Labour government would “review” arms sales to Israel – far short of the freeze called for by Tuesday’s motion.
She repeated her promise to review arms sales to Israel at a meeting of Labour Friends of Palestine at the conference on Monday night, a campaigner told The Electronic Intifada.
But multiple sources told The Electronic Intifada that Thornberry had put pressure on Labour activists behind the motion to make changes to its text that would have gutted it.
Not only did Thornberry demand that the call for an immediate arms trade freeze be removed, she had wanted a line mentioning “Palestinian victims of the Nakba” taken out as well – a reference to Israel’s expulsion of some 800,000 Palestinians to establish a “Jewish state” in 1948.
The proposers of the motion declined to comment on the record.
But sources with knowledge of the discussions told The Electronic Intifada that during an hour-long meeting Thornberry and her people pressured the activists from Harlow and Wolverhampton South West local Labour parties to water down the draft.
Proposer Colin Monehen [featured in the video embedded at the top] made a thinly veiled reference to Thornberry’s interference in his speech to delegates.
As Thornberry sat on the stage nearby, he stated: “There are those that are nervous about the word Nakba. But the Nakba did happen and those people were forcibly removed from their homes, and there has to be a recognition of that.”
Thornberry’s pressure tactics failed and, if anything, the final motion ended up slightly stronger. The original draft stated that the arms freeze was pending the results of an independent investigation into Israel’s killings in Gaza, while the adopted text doesn’t make the freeze conditional on an investigation.
Rhea Wolfson chided Wise: “I would ask you to be very careful with your language.”
Wolfson is a member of the Jewish Labour Movement, a group with intimateties to the Israeli embassy.
The massive level of popular support for Palestine at the Labour grassroots put into stark relief the failure of the Israel lobby’s attempts to court support within the party.
As it has become clear how isolated pro-Israel activists are within Labour, some appear to be turning to ever more extreme tactics.
On Tuesday night, a film screening focusing on Black anti-Zionist Jewish activist Jackie Walker was cut short after a bomb threat.
The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker was due to be premiered at a conference fringe showing on Tuesday night. The screening got only 15 minutes in before the venue was forced to call off the event.
Walker told The Electronic Intifada that a phone call to the venue from an unknown person claimed that “There are two bombs in the building that will kill many people.”
Click here to read the original report published by The Electronic Intifada from which these extracts are drawn.
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Update:
As Craig Murray writes:
What is astonishing is that the state and corporate media, which has made huge play around the entirely fake news of threats to pro-Israel MP Luciana Berger leading to her being given a police escort to protect her from ordinary delegates, has completely ignored this actual and disruptive pro-Israeli threat – except where they have reported the bomb threat, using the big lie technique, as a further example of anti-semitism in the Labour Party!
The Guardian’s report in this respect is simply unbelievable. Headed “Jewish event at Labour conference abandoned after bomb scare” it fails to note that Jewish Voice for Labour is a pro-Corbyn organisation and the film, “The Political Lynching of Jackie Walker”, exposes the evil machinations of the organised witch-hunt against Palestinian activists orchestrated by Labour Friends of Israel and the Israeli Embassy. It is not that the Guardian does not know this – it has carried several articles calling for Jackie Walker’s expulsion.
The attempt to spin this as the precise opposite of what it was continues on social media. This chap is followed on Twitter by the Foreign Office.
I want you to undertake a little mental exercise for me, and try it seriously. Just imagine the coverage on Newsnight, the Today Programme and Channel 4 News if a Labour Friends of Israel meeting had been cancelled by a bomb scare. Imagine through the experience of seeing or listening to the coverage, on each of those in turn, of a bomb threat to Labour Friends of Israel.
Done that?
Well the bomb threat to the pro-Palestinian rights Jewish Voice for Labour has so far received zero coverage on those programmes.
Click here to read Craig Murray’s full article entitled “Pro-Israeli Terror Threat at Labour Conference Covered Up By MSM”
Related news: The main article begins after the asterisk.
Last Monday [Feb 27th] 250 academics signed a letter to the UK government criticising their ‘adoption’ of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism:
“which can be and is being read as extending to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights, an entirely separate issue, as prima facie evidence of antisemitism.” 1
The full letter is included as an addition at the end of this post. You can also read it by clicking here.
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This extended post is based around a recent Al Jazeera investigation broadcast as a four-part series titled The Lobby which has uncovered “from the inside how the Israeli embassy penetrates different levels of British democracy”.
All four episodes are now uploaded on youtube and each is embedded below. I encourage readers, and especially those who are members and supporters of the Labour Party, to watch this documentary series in full. Here is the first episode:
The investigation came to wider public attention following the release of shocking footage of “Israeli diplomat” Shai Masot speculating about how to “take down” Deputy Foreign Minister, Sir Alan Duncan, and other senior politicians less than “solid on Israel”. After the story broke, the press were of course compelled to report on it: it was impossible to ignore such serious allegations that a foreign power was trying to subvert Britain’s democracy. Yet reaction both from the media and the government has been remarkably tepid since. There have been no sustained investigations and we see no push for an official inquiry – this in defiance of Labour demands that the government launch an immediate inquiry into what it rightly calls “a national security issue”:
The shadow Foreign Secretary, Emily Thornberry, said:
“The exposure of an Israeli embassy official discussing how to bring down or discredit a government minister and other MPs because of their views on the Middle East is extremely disturbing.” 2
Instead, however, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) promptly issued a statement:
“The Israeli Ambassador has apologized and is clear these comments do not reflect the views of the embassy or government of Israel. The UK has a strong relationship with Israel and we consider the matter closed.” 3
To which Thornberry in turn responded:
“It is simply not good enough for the Foreign Office to say the matter is closed. This is a national security issue.”4
The altogether miserly extent and scope of British media coverage of a plot to subvert our democracy can be usefully measured against the unlimited column inches and headline space given over to unfounded allegations of Russian hacking of the DNC in America. But no less importantly, the plot against Tory ministers occupies a mere ten minutes of one episode of what in full amounts to two hours over four parts of broadcast material. The revelation is damning in the extreme but it should not have been allowed to totally overshadow the real focus of the documentary: a dirty tricks campaign against pro-Palestinian Labour party members and other efforts to subvert the party’s elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn. This chicanery against Corbyn in the interests of a foreign power is something the media has helped to bury.
In this post I will touch on all of the findings of the Al Jazeera documentaries and supplement their revelations with additional background notes and other open source information of relevance. All parts are thoroughly annotated. The cases against Labour members Jean Fitzpatrick, Jackie Walker and others falsely accused of antisemitism are discussed at length.
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Caught in the act
“… seeking to influence decision-makers and opinion-formers to benefit the interests of a foreign power.”— from MI5 definition of ‘espionage’
There is no starker proof of the golden chains in which Israel has entangled the British political class, than the incredible fact that “diplomat” Shai Masot has not been expelled for secretly conspiring to influence British politics by attacking Britain’s Deputy Foreign Minister [Sir Alan Duncan], suggesting that he might be brought down by “a little scandal”. It is incredible by any normal standards of diplomatic behaviour that immediate action was not taken against Masot for actions which when revealed any professional diplomat would normally expect to result in being “PNG’d” – declared persona non grata.
This was the professional verdict of former UK ambassador Craig Murray in light of Al Jazeera’s investigation into Israel’s clandestine interference in British politics. Murray’s thoroughgoing analysis continues:
Obama has just expelled 35 Russian diplomats for precisely the same offence, with the exception that in the Russian case there is absolutely zero hard evidence, whereas in the Masot case there is irrefutable evidence on which to act.
To compare the two cases is telling. Al Jazeera should be congratulated on their investigation, which shames the British corporate and state media who would never have carried out such actual journalism. By contrast, the British media has parroted without the slightest scrutiny the truly pathetic Obama camp claims of Russian interference, evidently without reading them. 5
Episode two:
Craig Murray:
The Israeli Embassy has seventeen Israeli “technical and administrative staff” granted visas by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The normal number for an Embassy that size would be about two. I spoke to two similar size non-EU Embassies this morning, one has two and one zero. I recall I dealt with an angry Foreign Minister during my own FCO career incensed his much larger High Commission had been refused by the FCO an increase from three to four technical and administrative staff.
Shai Masot, the Israeli “diplomat” who had been subverting Britain’s internal democracy with large sums of cash and plans to concoct scandal against a pro-Palestinian British minister, did not appear in the official diplomatic list.
I queried this with the FCO, and was asked to put my request in writing. A full three weeks later and after dozens of phone calls, they reluctantly revealed that Masot was on the “technical and administrative staff” of the Israeli Embassy.
This is plainly a nonsense.
Murray then details the many reasons why he dismisses any claim that Shai Masot is a “diplomat” and simply one of the “technical and administrative staff” of the Israeli Embassy. This is an area I wish to come back to later. Regarding the serious implications of Masot’s role in “subverting Britain’s internal democracy”, Murray continues:
What is it they are always saying to us: if you have got nothing to fear, you have got nothing to hide?
I am confident I know what they are hiding, and that is FCO complicity in a large nest of Israeli spies seeking to influence policy and opinion in the UK in a pro-Israeli direction. That is why the government reaction to one of those spies being caught on camera plotting a scandal against an FCO minister, and giving £1 million to anti-Corbyn MPs, 6was so astonishingly muted. It is also worth noting that while the media could not completely ignore the fantastic al-Jazeera documentaries that exposed the scandal, it was a matter of a brief article and no follow up digging.
This was not just a curiosity, it reveals a deep-seated problem for our democracy. I intend to continue picking at it. 7
Click here to read Craig Murray’s full post entitled “As Netanyahu and May Chat, a Large Nest of Israeli Spies in London Exposed”.
“The pro-Israel lobby in this country is the most powerful political lobby. There’s nothing to touch them.”— Michael Mates, Conservative MP and privy councillor9
The following is a transcript of most damning conversation caught on tape by Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter ‘Robin’. It took place at the Aubaine restaurant close to the Israeli embassy in Kensington, and the videotape captures “senior political officer”, Shai Masot, casually proposing to ‘take down’ Cabinet members with Maria Strizzolo, a civil servant and pro-Israel activist, who was the former chief of staff to Minister of State for Education and former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, Robert Halfon:
Masot: Can I give you names of MPs I suggest you take down?
Strizzolo: Well you know, if you look hard enough I’m sure there is something they’re trying to hide.
Masot: Yeah. I have some MPs.
Strizzolo: Well, let’s talk about it.
Masot: No, she knows which MPs I want to take down.
Strizzolo: Yeah, it’s good to remind me.
Masot: The Deputy Foreign Minister [Alan Duncan].
Strizzolo: You still want to go for it?
Masot: No, he’s doing a lot of problems.
Strizzolo: Really?
Masot: Really. It sounds like a conspiracy.
Strizzolo: I thought you had neutralised it a little bit, no?
Masot: No.
Strizzolo: Ah, Boris [Johnson, Foreign Secretary and Duncan’s boss] is good.
Masot: Boris. He is basically good.
Strizzolo: He’s solid on Israel.
Masot: Yeah. He just doesn’t care. He’s busy with everything else, Boris is busy you know… You know he is an idiot but so far… he became Minister of Foreign Affairs without any kind of responsibilities. So technically if something will happen, it won’t be his fault…
Strizzolo: Rob [Halfon] was writing articles. He was doing everything, asking questions in parliament about the terrorist salaries
Masot: When he was an MP? Ah, when he [Duncan] was in DFID [Department for International Development]?
Strizzolo: Yeah, and after a while though Rob was doing a lot of it, and Alan Duncan took him like I think but I don’t exactly remember where… but he took him to one side and threatened him: “If you don’t stop this I’m going to ruin you, I’m going to destroy you” and all that shit.”
And Rob told the Whips, and the Whips just told him to calm down.
Masot: Okay.
Strizzolo: Yeah, you know, never say never.
Masot: Never say never, yeah but…
Strizzolo: A little scandal maybe? Anyway, please don’t tell anyone about our meeting!
Both Shai Masot and Maria Strizzolo have since resigned.
Here is episode three:
*
The following is part of an anonymous statement made by a former Tory minister in Cameron’s Cabinet and published in the Mail on Sunday in light of these revelations:
For years the CFI and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), have worked with – even for – the Israeli government and their London embassy to promote Israeli policy and thwart UK Government policy and the actions of Ministers who try to defend Palestinian rights.
Lots of countries try to force their views on others, but what is scandalous in the UK is that instead of resisting it, successive Governments have submitted to it, taken donors’ money, and allowed Israeli influence-peddling to shape policy and even determine the fate of Ministers.
Even now, if I were to reveal who I am, I would be subjected to a relentless barrage of abuse and character assassination.
S/he continues:
The CFI is not affiliated to the Conservative Party. It is incorporated in a way that means it is not to transparent about donors. Yet it arranges for the support of MPs and funds regular visits to Israel which distort the truth. Cameron turned a blind eye to Israeli misconduct – if he ever cared about it – because he was persuaded any criticism would reduce Party donations.
It now seems clear people in the Conservative and Labour Parties have been working with the Israeli embassy which has used them to demonise and trash MPs who criticise Israel; an army of Israel’s useful idiots in Parliament.
The statement concludes:
We need a full inquiry into the Israeli Embassy, the links, access and funding of the CFI and LFI, and an undertaking from all political parties that they welcome the financial and political support of the UK Jewish community, but won’t accept any engagement linked to Israel until it stops building illegally on Palestinian land.
This opaque funding and underhand conduct is a national disgrace and humiliation and must be stamped out. 11
The full statement is reprinted in Appendix A below.
*
Joan Ryan and the LFI in the room
“Corbyn is a crazy leader. One of the things he doesn’t understand, he doesn’t get is that the moment you get the leadership, you need to drop all the weirdos. The extremists. It’s good that they were your campaigners. You cannot build a government from extremists. And he doesn’t want to do that. He wants to stay with all those weirdos”— Shai Masot12
Corbyn is a prominent and long-standing campaigner for Palestinian rights. He is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. In short, he is a thorn in the side of the right-wing Zionists who hold power in Israel. From their perspective Corbyn is indeed “an extremist” and so – as the documentaries repeatedly show – this extremely powerful lobby wishes to be shot of him as soon as possible.
Throughout the four parts of the investigation manoeuvres against Corbyn and his base are a constant theme. And their primary tactic is the promotion of claims that the Labour Party under Corbyn is a hotbed for antisemitism. Although founded on bogus allegations (two prime examples are revealed and discussed below), this assertion has been widely promulgated by news outlets including both Channel 4 and the BBC – and more about the BBC below.
Concurrently, the Israel lobby also employs a divide and conquer strategy which is partially exposed during episode 3 when Jeremy Newmark, Chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement (much more on JLM below), is caught on film attempting to drive a wedge between “one of Corbyn’s key lieutenants” and his supporters within Momentum. Here are two quotes revealing the method at work:
“Just to get Clive Lewis, as one of Corbyn’s key lieutenants, onto an openly Zionist JLM platform took a lot of heavy lifting.” 13
And later:
“We already have actual intelligence that from the Momentum political directors’ meeting last night they passed a vote of censure on Clive Lewis, just for coming to our meetings and speaking” 14
In fact, efforts by pro-Israel party members (including some within the PLP) to undermine Corbyn started long before last year’s Liverpool conference. Indeed, the pro-Israel campaign to defeat him predates his first election as Labour leader:
The new chairman of Labour Friends of Israel has acknowledged the “deep concerns” around Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign and urged supporters to instead back a figure who could play a key role in the Middle East peace process.
Joan Ryan was appointed to lead LFI in Parliament on Monday, replacing Anne McGuire who stood down at the general election.
From an article entitled “Don’t vote for Jeremy Corbyn, urges new Labour Friends of Israel chair Joan Ryan” published by The Jewish Chronicle during the 2015 Labour leadership battle which Corbyn won in spite of such well-financed opposition with a massive 59% of the vote.
The same article continues:
[Ryan] pledged to tackle pro-boycott voices within Labour and said she would oppose delegitimisation of Israel. She travelled to the country with LFI last December.
Ms Ryan, who nominated Liz Kendall [of the Blairite group Progress – more below] in the party’s leadership contest, said last month’s Jewish community hustings for the contenders had been a key step in the party’s efforts to “win back the trust and confidence of the Jewish community”.
She added: “We hope that Labour party members and supporters will consider when they vote which candidate is best placed to ensure that the next Labour government can play a constructive and engaged role in the crucial search for a two-state solution.
“We recognise the deep concerns which exist about positions taken, and statements made, by Jeremy Corbyn in the past and recognise the serious questions which arise from these.”
The new chair said Labour must be “steadfast” in its support for Israel.
LFI would “continue to work with progressives in both Israel and Palestine who share our commitment to peace and co-existence.
“At the same time, we remain adamantly opposed to boycotts and sanctions, which delegitimise Israel, do nothing to further these goals and have no place in the Labour party.”
Ms Ryan was ousted from Parliament in 2010 following the expenses scandal but returned with a majority of more than 1,000 in May. 15
[Bold emphasis added]
Here is episode four:
*
So who is Shai Masot?
“The last position that I applied for that there was a slight chance that I will get it actually, is to be the head of the Foreign Affairs Department of the Intelligence Department in Israel. I’m not a career diplomat, I am a political posting, which means that I came for just one position; to assist in political issues that are specific – sometimes you need someone to take care just of them, to be focused on them. That’s what I do. ”— Shai Masot16
Astonishingly, the Israeli Embassy’s Senior Political Officer Shai Masot, implicated in a plot against the Deputy Foreign Minister, was not on the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Diplomatic List, the Bible for the status of accredited diplomats. This opens up a number of extremely important questions. Who was he, what was his visa status and why was he resident in the UK? It is very plain that the work he was doing as “Senior Political Officer” would equate normally to senior diplomatic rank.
writes Murray again in an updated post published two days later on January 10th. He continues:
He was a major in the Israeli Navy – in the FCO’s own table of equivalent rank, Major equates to Second Secretary in the Diplomatic Service.
After that he went on to apparently executive positions in the Ministry for Strategic Affairs, before moving to the Israeli Embassy in London. There he held many recorded meetings with politicians, including giving briefings in parliament and at party conferences, and acted in a way that in general would accord with a rank around First Secretary to Counsellor.
So why exactly has he never featured in the FCO’s Diplomatic List? He very plainly outranks many of those Israeli diplomats who are featured. It should be noted it is perfectly normal for diplomats not to come from a country’s foreign affairs ministry. For one example Ivan Rogers who spectacularly resigned recently as Britain’s Ambassador to the EU, was from the Treasury not the FCO. Several people in the Israeli Embassy, who are on the Diplomatic List, are not from the foreign service. So that is not the reason.
This is not an obscure point. As a former diplomat, my first instinct was to look him up on the Diplomatic List. Every country in the world controls the number of permitted foreign diplomats very closely, for two reasons. Firstly it confers an immigration residency status, and secondly it confers tax exemption and an immunity from prosecution. The Diplomatic List is therefore not a loose thing – there is an entire section of good employees in the FCO tasked with policing it in close liaison with the Home Office.
Embassies are allowed a very small number of technical and support staff – IT people and cleaners – in addition. But these must be what they say they are. Plainly Masot was not in reality one of these, and plainly the official Israeli Embassy explanation that he was a “junior member of staff” is a lie. 17
The Israeli Embassy is not given visas for “junior members of staff” except in very specific job categories which Masot plainly does not meet. It is a lie in which the FCO must have been absolutely complicit in organising his immigration residency status in the UK.
I have contacted the media office of the FCO to query Masot’s immigration status, and so far received no reply. But the key questions are these:
Shai Masot was not on the Diplomatic List. What kind of visa and residence status did he have in the UK? How many other operatives does the Israeli have with the same UK residence status as Masot? Why is the British Government granting Israeli intelligence operatives false residency immigration status in the UK based on a deliberate lie about their role and position? How many other Israeli intelligence officers are active in the UK with a false immigration status? Who, specifically, authorised Masot’s visa, and why?
My advantage as an ex-British Ambassador is that I know the bureaucratically correct questions to ask to get to the heart of a matter. Please do ask them of your MP, and get them to demand answers from the FCO. 18
Click here to read Craig Murray’s full update entitled “Britain’s Most Undesirable Immigrant: Why Was Shai Masot Given a Visa?”
Craig Murray’s formal query to the FCO media department is reproduced below in Appendix B.
Murray first posed these questions on January 10th. On January 12th the FCO asked him to present them in writing. On February 2nd they replied to the first three questions, but refused to comment on questions 4 or 5 about involvement of the intelligence services in Masot’s appointment:
FCO Media Department have replied that they refuse to give me any further information on the subject, and that I should proceed through a Freedom of Information request so the FCO can assess properly whether the release of any further information is in the national interest. 19
As Craig Murray concludes:
The Al Jazeera documentaries plainly revealed that Masot was working as an intelligence officer, acquiring and financing “agents of influence”. It is simply impossible that the FCO would normally grant seventeen technical and administrative visas to support sixteen diplomats, when six of the sixteen are already support staff. The only possible explanation, confirmed absolutely by Masot’s behaviour, is that the FCO has knowingly connived at settling a large nest of Israeli spies in London. I fairly put this to the FCO and they refused to comment.
Click here to read Craig Murray’s full post entitled “As Netanyahu and May Chat, a Large Nest of Israeli Spies in London Exposed”.
“Out of the forty new MPs who just got in at the last elections… all those ones were in the CFI, Conservative Friends of Israel. In the LFI [Labour Friends of Israel], it didn’t happen obviously. And you need to get more people on board. It’s a lot of work actually.” — Shai Masot21
In episode four, undercover reporter ‘Robin’ asks Maria Strizzolo, the former chief of staff to Conservative Minister Robert Halfon, “How many of the MPs from your party are in CFI?”
To which Strizzolo replies:
“Oh, Pretty much all of them. When there is the annual lunch, which is just before Christmas, basically the Whips always make sure that the light votes come after to the CFI lunch because it’s like all the party’s there.” 22
Prompted by Masot, Maria Strizzolo adds: “And the PM, and the Chancellor, and the Foreign Secretary and everyone.” 23
As to how these members might best be influenced, Strizzolo explains her approach as follows:
“If at least you can get a small group of MPs that you know you can always rely on, when there is something coming to parliament, and you know you brief them, you say: ‘you don’t have to do anything, we’re going to give you the speech, we are going to give you all the information, we are going to do everything for you.’ Then I think it becomes easier. And from that little group it might grown and grow and grow.
“So if you prepare everything for them, it’s harder for them to say: ‘Oh no, I don’t have the time…’ So if they already have the question to table for PMQs [Prime Minister’s Questions], it’s hard to say ‘Oh no, no, no I won’t do it.’”24
She also offers an example of how the lobby’s influence has affected policy:
“I was in Israel when they found the three kids that had been kidnapped in 2014. And I was on the phone with Rob [Halfon] to convince him to table a question for Prime Minister’s Question Time for paying tribute… [‘Robin’ interjects “Did he do it?”] Yeah. And also tabling an urgent question to get a statement from the government on the three kids.”25
In fact, Al Jazeera includes footage of Robert Halfon tabling the question in which he says:
“For the world to see the tragic and brutal murders of three Israeli youngsters most probably by Hamas. Will my honourable friends give the Israeli government every possible support at this time? And does he [Prime Minister David Cameron] not agree with me, that far from showing restraint, Israel must do everything possible to take out Hamas terrorist networks, and will he give the Israel government support in this?”
Cameron replies:
“I think it’s very important that Britain will stand with Israel as it seeks to bring to justice those who are responsible.” 26
*
In 2009, Channel 4 broadcast a highly commendable episode of their flagship investigative series Dispatches. “Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby” looked into the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), a lobby group which then as now claims some 80% of all Conservative MPs as members of whom more than half then made up the Tory shadow cabinet as they now make up the government. Household names include former leaders David Cameron, Iain Duncan-Smith, William Hague; the former Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Sir Malcolm Rifkind; current Cabinet colleagues Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and Liam Fox; and the previous Chairman of the Conservative Party and current Chairman of CFI, Sir Eric Pickles.
Political columnist Peter Oborne, who also presented the Dispatches programme, wrote three years after the broadcast:
There is no doubt that the CFI has exercised a powerful influence over policy. The Conservative politician and historian Robert Rhodes James, writing in the Jerusalem Post in 1995, called it “the largest organisation in Western Europe dedicated to the cause of the people of Israel”. Its power has not waned since. On Tuesday, it hosted approximately 100 Tory MPs, including six Cabinet ministers, and a further 40 peers, at a lunch in central London. The speaker was David Cameron, who pronounced himself a “passionate friend” of Israel, making clear (as he has done in the past) that nothing could break that friendship.
This speech can be seen as part of a pattern. The CFI can call almost at will upon the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary. The Palestinians enjoy no such access. They would be lucky to get a single Conservative MP in the audience for their events, and perhaps some moribund peer to make an address. There is no such organisation as the Conservative Friends of Palestinians. 27
Click here to read Peter Oborne’s full article entitled “The Cowardice at the heart of our relationship with Israel”.
Conservative Friends of Palestine is still yet to be founded (don’t hold your breath!), but interestingly there does exist a variety of other parliamentary lobby groups including Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, Northern Ireland Friends of Israel, European Friends of Israel as well as Labour Friends of Israel, about whom the Al Jazeera series was mainly focussed. According to some reports, there is also a fledgling ‘SNP Friends of Israel’:
The pro-Israel group, whose three founding members are Joe Goldblatt, activist Sammy Stein, and Frank Angell, plan to pay out thousands of pounds for a stall at next month’s SNP conference to challenge support for justice in Palestine within the party. […]
While the group denies connections to support for Israel, its military occupation of Palestinian land, or Israel’s bombing campaigns on Gaza, its members have numerous links to pro-Israel campaigns.
Jeremy Stein said it was unclear where the group would receive the thousands of pounds required to buy access to the conference. He also questioned their claim to be a ‘neutral’ organisation.
“It’s dishonesty on their part,” Jeremy Stein [co-chair of the Glasgow Jewish Education Forum] added. “They don’t support peace in any meaningful sense of the term. They don’t support Palestinian rights.”
From a report published by CommonSpace last September entitled “Jewish community leader speaks out over SNP ‘Israel Front Group’”. It continues:
Jeremy Stein warns that in reality some major funders and supporters of Israel come from a ‘neo-conservative, christian zionist’ perspective, from the more extreme rightwing end of the political spectrum.
“[They have] politics on the far-right of the Israeli political spectrum. They don’t represent mainstream Israeli opinion. A great deal of harm to Israel because they promote the most extreme policies,” he added. 28
*
Reframing the campuses
“The Labour Party at the moment is not in a good place to say the least. There are lots of young people coming through who are moderate, with good views on Israel. I think we haven’t really paid attention to those people, you know, people that are going to be in parliament in ten to fifteen years’ time.”
— Michael Rubin, Parliamentary Officer for the LFI
In episode 1, Al Jazeera’s undercover reporter, identified as ‘Robin’, asks Masot about the formation of a youth group within Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI). In response, Masot confides that it was “my idea” but that having established a youth group within CFI “when I tried to do the same in the Labour [Party], they had a crisis back then with Corbyn.” Adding: “Specifically, LFI young people doesn’t exist. That is the only place where there is a vacuum.”
The investigation then reveals links between Masot, the Israel Embassy’s “Senior Political Officer” and a whole host of pro-Israel groups which include The Parliamentary Friends of Israel, We Believe in Israel and its parent body, the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM). 29
It transpires that Masot has also been directly involved with Young Conservatives, the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and the youth arm of the Fabian Society and says he knows nearly all the activists in the Young Fabians and that he took a Fabian group on a visit to Israel. 30
Moreover, Masot has a close liaison with The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the predominant pro-Israel lobbying group in America, with whom, as we learn in episodes 2 and 4, he is building ties to an organisation called The City Friends of Israel. In fact, on the train to Liverpool in episode 2, Masot announces to colleagues that this is a group he is helping to establish – although later we discover the group is already founded after he invites ‘Robin’ to a function they are holding.
Masot tells ‘Robin’:
“I went to AIPAC last year because I organised the American-British delegation to AIPAC. It was me and the British donors: around thirty, forty rich families which have sponsored CFI. The Conservatives were with us and some from Labour as well, and we all went together to AIPAC. But the bottom line [is] we had a donor meeting with the head of strategy at AIPAC and he met us basically to teach us, you know, give us some ideas for Britain.” 31
In episode four, Masot even discusses a more audacious plan to tackle the BDS movement involving a front company set up by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs:
“So the Strategic Affairs they asked me, they are establishing a new company – a new private company that basically will work for the Israeli government.
“It’s going to be an office of twenty people, so the position that they suggested to me to do is to be the liaison for the international communities around the world. So it’s good sometimes because you know it’s good to work with AIPAC and all the others, CFI and LFI. It is cool, it’s good.” 32
However, Masot is very careful to distance himself from claiming direct involvement in the formation of any of this multitude of outwardly appearing pro-Israel grassroots organisations, even while, as ‘Robin’ impresses, he encourages him to push ahead with the launch of a new youth branch of LFI. Soon thereafter Masot puts ‘Robin’ in touch with one of his close contacts, Michael Rubin, the Parliamentary Officer for the LFI.
Although prior to contacting Rubin, Masot actually cautions ‘Robin’ saying: “LFI is an independent organisation. No one likes [to think] that someone is managing his organisation.” 33
Later Michael Rubin confides to ‘Robin’ that:
“The Embassy helps us quite a lot. When bad news stories come out about Israel, the Embassy sends us information so we can counter it. Getting it directly from the horse’s mouth, as it were, is quite helpful… We work really closely together, but a lot of it is behind the scenes” 34
Adding, with regards to ‘Robin’s proposed formation of a youth branch:
“We’ve got to be careful because I think there are some people who would be happy to be involved in a Young LFI but wouldn’t necessarily be happy if it was seen as an embassy thing… I think we just have to be careful we’re not to be seen as, you know, ‘Young Israeli Embassy’. You know, we want it to be distinct by itself… We do work really, really closely together. It’s just publicly we try to keep the LFI as a separate identity to the Embassy.” 35
Rubin then proposes they get in touch with Joan Ryan MP, the Chairperson of the LFI, whom he says “work[s] with the ambassador and the embassy quite a lot, so she’ll speak to Shai most days.” 36
The investigation also steadily reveals how the powerful American lobbying group AIPAC is beginning to channel funds to British campuses through an intermediary known as the Pinsker Centre which was jointly set up by Adam Schapira and Elliot Miller.
Elliot Miller: “I spent a year working in the government of Israel. I was doing a fellowship at the foreign ministry, in the congressional affairs department, so all Congress as far as AIPAC and stuff.”37
Adam Schapira: “Elliot and I have set up the Pinsker Centre. Our aim is to reframe the rhetoric on UK campuses. I feel like a lot more needs to be done in the educational field, bringing more diverse speakers from across the political spectrum on campus… to present another narrative.” 38
*
The blacklisting of Jackie Walker
“I was seeking information and I still haven’t heard a definition of antisemitism that I can work with”— Jackie Walker39
In episode 2, undercover reporter ‘Robin’ travels to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. There he meets up with a sizeable pro-Israel delegation, including Russell Langer, who is the former Campaigns Director at the Union of Jewish Students (UJC) and current Public Affairs Manager with the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC), an influential umbrella group of Jewish organisations in Britain.
Langer tells ‘Robin’: “There’s a Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East [event] at 2:30, which I’ll be going to, so I need to charge my phone up so I can get some more recordings.” 40 Many others within the pro-Israel delegation also attend the event as ‘spies’ (a shared joke amongst themselves). One is Luke Akehurst, someone Shai Masot describes as “a great campaigner” and “one of the best in the inside… in all the party”, 41 and head of We Believe in Israel, itself an affiliated branch of BICOM. We learn that Akehurst is intending to write a report of the LFPME event.
Later, we see secretly recorded footage from a different scheduled event. It is a ‘training session’ hosted by Mike Katz, the Vice Chairman of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM).
Katz opens his session with a presentation entitled “Antisemitism as a phenomenon across the world” during which he informs the delegates about the worrying trend in statistics collected by the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity set up to monitor levels of antisemitism across Britain: “they recorded 557 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first six months of 2016. That is an 11% increase in the period in 2015. 2014 was the most antisemitic year on record.” 42
Also at the meeting is Labour Party member Christine Tongue who directly challenges the SCT claims saying:
“I’m wondering if I’m now going on that list because my MP actually sent a letter to Jeremy Corbyn asking him to bar me from a rally in Ramsgate because I was an example of antisemitism. Because his office had trawled through my facebook page and found an article that I shared by Norman Finkelstein.” 43
The son of two Jewish holocaust survivors yet staunchly pro-Palestinian, Finkelstein is the bane of the Israel lobby in America. Apparently, he had jokingly proposed a way of ending the occupation of Palestine by resituating Israel within the territory of the United States.
In reposting Finkelstein’s joke, however, Christine Tongue, certainly in the eyes of the Israel lobby, was deemed guilty of the “new antisemitism”, which, as Katz elucidates during the same session, regards any attacks that delegitimise the state of Israel as antisemitic because: “Israel is an integral part of the vast majority of the Jewish community’s identity”. 44 According to this standard, Norman Finkelstein and fellow Jews critical of Israeli policy are likewise denigrated as “self-hating”.
Graham Bash was another Labour Party member who had joined the session. Bash told the audience:
“I’m Jewish and I don’t agree with the concept of a Jewish state because it gives me the right to live in Israel whereas a Palestinian who’s been displaced has a lesser right than me. So when you say it’s not appropriate [“to delegitimise the right of Israel to exist”], are you really saying it’s not appropriate for us to have a political discussion?” 45
Another outspoken delegate at the same session was Jackie Walker, who along with her partner, is Jewish too. Walker, both a political activist and long-standing anti-racist campaigner, was as then Vice Chair of Momentum. And she responded to Katz as follows:
“If you are saying effectively that Zionism, you know, is not open to debate as a concept, then that is really worrying. Antisemitism, like any form of racism, is deplorable, and my feeling about how to tackle this is for Jews to be standing firmly and squarely alongside our Black comrades, our Muslim comrades, who are much more at the moment the target of racism than thankfully at the moment we are…” 46
After delivering her rebuttal, Walker is heard to receive a brief ripple of appreciative applause, and yet soon afterwards she became the centre of a headline-making scandal that would revive allegations of increasing antisemitism within ‘Corbyn’s Labour Party’:
Momentum vice-chair Jackie Walker has been suspended from Labour over controversial comments she made at a party training event.
When she was asked whether she had considered resigning given the outrage among some Jewish groups, Walker said: “Some other prominent Jewish groups, of which I’m a member, think a very different thing. What we have to look at when we’re talking about this subject, particularly at the moment, is the political differences that are underlying this as well.”
She said whomever leaked the footage from a Labour party antisemitism training event “had malicious intent in their mind”. She also said she was anti-Zionist rather than antisemitic, adding: “I think Zionism is a political ideology, and like any political ideology, some people will be supportive and some people won’t be supportive of it. That’s a very different thing.” 47
From a report by the Press Association published in the Guardian on September 30th.
Here is an example of the public support she did receive from other Jewish Labour activists but which the mainstream media were determined to overlook:
We are Jewish Labour activists who were with Jackie Walker at the training session on antisemitism led by Mike Katz, vice chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) during the Labour Party conference in Liverpool on Monday September 26. Like her, some of us were heckled when we raised questions unpalatable to others in the audience who share the JLM’s bias towards Israel, its coupling of Jewish identity with Zionism and its insistence on the uniqueness of Jewish suffering.
Jackie had every right to question the JLM’s definition of antisemitism and the tendency of mainstream Jewish organisations to focus entirely on the slaughter of Jews when they commemorate the Nazi Holocaust. We share her determination to build greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. Jackie responded appreciatively when one audience member described Holocaust memorial events involving Armenians and others. She has since issued a statement on this issue, reproduced below.
Click here to read the full statement by Free Speech on Israel and see Appendix C to read Jackie Walker’s personal statement.
Meanwhile, Vice President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews actually went so far as to call Walker “an unapologetic Jew-baiter”. 48
This is how Walker afterwards described the events that unfolded to Al Jazeera:
“At the start they seemed relatively relaxed. It was simply a training session. I think some of us had gone along there with the idea it was kind of strange, because in some ways this was against what Shami Chakrabarti had actually advised. So we wanted to see what was going on. […]
By the time the row actually broke out I was on my way home. I mean none of us thought anything about this training session. I was in the car and suddenly I started to get these tweets coming through to me. And these phone calls from the BBC.” 49
As it transpired, a secretly recorded clip from the ‘training session’ had been leaked to a news outlet.
Walker continues: “What was actually leaked was certain little segments that would be as controversial as possible.” 50
The decontexturalised sound-bite that most ignited this very heated though totally belated reaction was this one: “In terms of Holocaust Day, I would also like to say wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who experienced Holocaust…” 51
Out of context, her statement quoted at the top of this section also caused considerable furore: that she hadn’t “heard a definition of antisemitism that I can work with”. Of this, Walker explains:
“How it was reported and how it was tweeted was [that] I was basically saying ‘I can’t find anywhere a definition of antisemitism to work with’. That’s total nonsense. I’m an anti-racist trainer. I’ve been an anti-racist trainer for forty years. I’ve been fighting fascists and antisemites on the streets for decades.” 52
Walker concludes:
“I’m not just Jewish, I am black. And my ancestry is of African enslavement. Only this year I spoke at Slavery Remembrance Day, and I spoke to a crowd in Trafalgar Square about the African Holocaust. And that is what we call it. You can disagree with me as to whether I should call that a holocaust but it is not antisemitic for me to call what happened to African people in the diaspora, a holocaust. […]
“If they accuse anybody of antisemitism, it’s basically as bad as kind of accusing somebody of being a paedophile or a murderer. And it’s really hard to come back from that.” 53
Later ‘Robin’ speaks with Masot about Jackie Walker. Masot tells him:
“Yeah, she is problematic. What can we do…? Do not let it go. That’s all you can do. Do not let it go… that’s the key.” 54
*
JLM in the campaign against Corbyn
“Some of us would say it was mostly a constructed crisis for political ends. I would say there was a crisis of the way that antisemitism is being manipulated and being used by certain parts of, not just the Labour Party but other parties, and the media to discredit Jeremy Corbyn and a number of his supporters. I mean let’s disagree politically: I’m anti-Zionist, they’re pro-Zionist… Let’s have THAT argument. Not this one that’s going on at the moment.”
It was investigative reporter Asa Winstanley from the Electronic Intifada who first revealed last September that Ella Rose, the Director of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), was working at the Israel embassy as public affairs officer between September 2015 and August 2016, when she joined JLM as its first director:
Jewish critics of the JLM have told The Electronic Intifada that JLM’s link to the Israeli embassy should disqualify it from leading Labour Party trainings on antisemitism.
Ella Rose (second left on right-hand side of table) was part of a January 2015 meeting with then Prime Minister David Cameron which discussed opposing “boycotts and the deligitimization of Israel.” (Photoshot/Newscom)
Importantly, Electronic Intifada also established close ties to the Blairite Labour faction and ginger group ‘Progress’:
Although a dormant organization for many years, the JLM in February rose to prominence not long after it appointed as its new chair Jeremy Newmark, a well-known Israel lobbyist.
Predictably, JLM soon became active in supporting the false narrative that Labour has become a cesspit of antisemitism under the leadership of left-winger and long-time advocate for Palestinian rights Jeremy Corbyn.
At the time, Jackie Walker reportedly told them “that in light of Ella Rose’s role at the embassy, JLM’s claim not to be an Israel advocacy organization was ‘highly doubtful.’”:
Walker, a Jewish anti-racism activist who has been falsely smeared as antisemitic by JLMand others, said it was ironic that members don’t have to be Jewish to join JLM, but they do have to be Zionist. 56
Click here to read the full article entitled “New Jewish Labour Movement director was Israeli embassy officer” published by The Electronic Intifada.
Towards the end of episode 2, ‘Robin’ runs into Ella Rose:
“I saw Jackie Walker on Saturday and thought, you know what, I could take her, she’s like 5’2 and tiny… That’s why I can take Jackie Walker. Krav Maga training,”
Still referring to the Israeli army hand-to-hand fighting technique, she then added: “Yeah. I’m not bad at it. If it came to it I would win, that’s all I really care about.”
Jackie Walker again: “What we need to have is some investigation of this from the Labour Party. And I will be making a formal complaint against both Ella Rose and the Jewish Labour Movement” 57
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Outside the comfort zone
“It’s in a way pathetic, but it’s also worrying how such pathetic evidence can be used to intimidate Jeremy Corbyn into publishing an inquiry commission, making daily confessions that he’s not antisemitic. And so on…”
Members, activists and at least one MP of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party described as “anti-Semitic” a member who challenged their pro-Israel ideas, despite some uncertainty over whether the member’s comments were actually racist, an investigation by Al Jazeera has found.
The charges, made at September’s Labour Party conference, led to the member being suspended pending a full investigation.
In total, the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) said it had seen three cases of anti-Semitism during the first day of September’s Labour Party conference, with the group of Israel supporters later debating the validity of two of them.
The complaints came in the wake of the Chakrabarti Inquiry, an investigation during summer 2016 into anti-Semitism within the Labour ranks. That report had concluded racism, including anti-Semitism, was not endemic within Labour.59
Click here to read the full Al Jazeera article – Note that:the link did work prior to posting but the page seems to have been since taken down.
The member in question is Jean Fitzpatrick and it happened during her first visit to a party conference. Joan Ryan was overseeing the LFI stall when Jean Fitzpatrick arrived to pitch a question about the FLI’s stance on Israel’s illegal settlements. After a few minutes, Ryan tells Fitzpatrick that she has decided to end the conversation and it is better that they agree to disagree. But Fitzpatrick persists, and says (correctly) that she has not had a reply to the LFI’s policy regarding the settlements. Then she makes a claim. She says: [LFI] is a “stepping-stone to good jobs”, before adding “a friend of mine’s son’s got a really good job at Oxford University on the basis of having worked for Labour Friends of Israel.”
Afterwards ‘Robin’ records a conversation between Michael Rubin, Jennifer Gerber, Director of LFI, and Alex Richardson, who is Joan Ryan’s Parliamentary Assistant:
JG: “If an antisemite comes up, somebody says to me: ‘Jews, they’re all f**king big noses and control the world’ I’m like wow, you’re an antisemite, that’s terrible. Someone like her [Jean Fitzpatrick] worries me more because is she an antisemite? I don’t know, but she basically denies the fact that it [antisemitism] exists, she just thinks it’s made up…”
“Is that antisemitic guys, I don’t know, like…?”
MR: “I don’t know where that line is anymore…
AR: “I think if it makes you feel uncomfortable, that’s the point which you call it out and report it, and that’s why Joan convinced me to report the one yesterday [with Jean Fitzpatrick] because I was made to feel uncomfortable and though nothing antisemitic was said I’m sure there were undertones of it and it was brought upon by that context.
“At the end of the day, if you feel offended by it and uncomfortable for it – this should be a safe space and anything that breaks that should be reported I think. But there is that line, obviously, I don’t know.” 60
Later Alex Richardson emails undercover reporter ‘Robin’ to ask him to act as a witness to what is now alleged to have been act of antisemitism.
Richardson says:
“I kind of feel it was an antisemitic trope, against Israel. Like Jews controlling and having power and money… although she didn’t say Jews and she said Israel. It is definitely on the line, do you know what I mean? If she had said the word ‘Zionist’ I would have said one hundred percent. A hundred percent.” 61
Notwithstanding his misgivings, Richardson is apparently keen to see Fitzpatrick expelled from the Labour Party:
“How it works is that you make a complaint within the Labour Party and their own rules will decide. I suspect, I don’t know. But I suspect that this woman might be potentially banned because she said something that was antisemitic.” 62
Joan Ryan also discusses it with colleagues.
“They’re antisemitic… you heard her say, you know… ‘join you lot and you get into Oxford’ or ‘you get into working in the bank’ or… That’s antisemitic.”
And later the same evening, at a rally held ‘to combat antisemitism’ that was organised by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), Joan Ryan describes her day at the stall:
“We have also had three incidents of antisemitic harassment on our stand, to the people who are staffing that stall today. And that, I think tells you something about why we need to be having this ‘Against Antisemitism Rally.’”
A formal complaint is made against Jean Fitzpatrick and in episode 4, we learn how she too has become the subject of a formal Labour Party investigation regarding her conduct. In this formal complaint, it is alleged that she had “constantly suggested” that the LFI has “lots of money and power” when in actual fact what she said was the LFI has “money and prestige” and she said it just once. Indeed, as the recording shows, it is Joan Ryan herself who used the alleged words saying: “Labour Friends of Israel have got a lot of power, a lot of money…” presumably in an attempt to elicit a reaction.
The concluding paragraph of the statement against Fitzpatrick read:
“The above incidents and allegations levelled at JF left the complainants feeling victimised, intimidated, and both felt the incident contained what they both described as incidents of anti-Semitism.” 63
In other words, and to quote Joan Ryan’s Parliamentary Assistant, Alex Richardson, again: “I was made to feel uncomfortable and though nothing antisemitic was said I’m sure there were undertones of it…”
Jean Fitzpatrick’s name was cleared. Reflecting on the incident afterwards, she told Al Jazeera:
“I’m just a regular citizen who is concerned about what is happening in the Middle East. And not to be able to talk about that, without being accused of being antisemitic, I find deeply worrying.” 64
A full transcription of the conversation between Joan Ryan and Jean Fitzpatrick (as broadcast) is available in Appendix D below.
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The ‘new antisemitism’ and the PLP’s witch hunt
“The fashion is, if you are on the left today, you are probably very hostile to Israel, if not antisemitic… Some of the people [in the Labour Party] are more Palestinian than the Palestinians”— Mark Regev, Ambassador of Israel65
Charley Allan, a Jewish member of the party, and a Morning Star columnist, has described the current atmosphere in the press and Labour Party as a “witch hunt.”
It has reached such an absurd volume that any usage of the word “Zionist” is deemed to be anti-Semitic – although tellingly not when used by self-described Zionists.
From an article by Asa Winstanley published last April. The same piece continues:
Smears of anti-Semitism against Corbyn started even before he was elected.
During his leadership campaign in the summer of 2015, the establishment media worked itself into a frenzy of anti-Corbyn hysteria, led more than any other paper by the liberal Guardian.
One of the recurring themes in this campaign was Corbyn’s long-standing support for Palestinian human rights.
Because of this, attempts were made to say outright, or to imply, that Corbyn was a secret anti-Semite, or that he associated with, or tolerated “notorious” anti-Semites.
Although these hit jobs gained some traction, they were soon debunked, and ultimately seemed to have little impact on the leadership election.
Winstanley then unpicks the “anti-Semitism scandal” which allegedly erupted in the Oxford University Labour Club and became a focus of huge media attention:
In a public Facebook posting Alex Chalmers, the co-chair of the club, resigned his position over what he claimed was anti-Semitic behavior in “a large proportion” of the student Labour club “and the student left in Oxford more generally.”
But as evidence he cited the club’s decision, in a majority vote, to endorse Oxford’s Israeli Apartheid Week, an annual awareness-raising exercise by student groups which support Palestinian rights.
This connection was clearly designed to smear Palestine solidarity activists as anti-Semites – a standard tactic of the Israel lobby …
The Electronic Intifada can reveal for the first time evidence that Chalmers himself has been part of the UK’s Israel lobby.
Chalmers has worked for BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre.
Funded by the billionaire Poju Zabludowicz, BICOM is a leading pro-Israel group in London. […]
Chalmers has also been accused of disseminating a false allegation that a left-wing Labour student at Oxford had organized people into a group to follow a Jewish student around campus calling her a “filthy Zionist,” and that he had been disciplined as a result.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the accused student said that he had reason to believe Chalmers may have been behind the dissemination of this smear.
Paul Di Felice, the current acting principal of the Oxford college in question, confirmed to The Electronic Intifada the authenticity of a statement from its late principal denying all the allegations. “I have found no evidence of any allegations being made to the college about” the student “involving anti-Semitism, or indeed anything else, during his time at the college,” the statement read.
The Electronic Intifada put all this to Alex Chalmers in an email, but he failed to reply.
In the same article, Asa Winstanley also draws attention to the “large crossover between right-wing, anti-Corbyn Labour and the pro-Israel lobby within the party”:
[MP Wes] Streeting has a long history in Progress, a right-wing faction within the party that continues to support former prime minister Tony Blair.
One of Progress’ leading supporters has described the group as“an unaccountable faction” dominated by the “secretive billionaire” Lord Sainsbury. […]
Streeting and [Chair of JLM, Jeremy] Newmark are arguing for tougher action and changes to the party’s rules.
The head of Progress proposed rule changesin the Mirror which would put “a modern understanding of anti-Semitism” into the party. “It is not acceptable to use the term ‘Zionism’ as a term of abuse,” the article stated, arguing for people who did so to be expelled.
This proposal echoes efforts pushed by Israel lobby groups,including at the University of California, to legislate that opposition to Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – is itself a form of antisemitism. 66
Click here to read the full article entitled “How Israel lobby manufactured UK Labour Party’s anti-Semitism crisis” published by The Electonic Intifada in April 2016.
Back in April 2016, Wes Streeting and Jeremy Newmark were given a free platform by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to accuse Corbyn of not doing enough to stem the alleged rise in antisemitism, and to call for changes to Labour’s rule book that would make it easier to expel members over charges of antisemitism:
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Meanwhile, there is another battle in Liverpool where MP Louise Ellman, who is the former Chair of the JLM as well as the current Vice Chair of LFI, has called for the suspension of Labour’s Riverside constituency party on the basis of an anonymous dossier:
Momentum and Labour party member Audrey White has now written to the party’s general secretary Iain McNicol urging him to step in, saying the document which was used to accuse far left groups of infiltrating the party, contains “libellous mis-information”.
In her letter to party bosses Audrey White says: “I have recently read that Ms Ellman sent this document to the general secretary of the Labour Party urging the suspension of the Riverside CLP relying on information from this report.
“If this is true, I ask that the NEC not accept this document and give it no credibility whatsoever as this document not only contains falsehoods and whispers, it includes libel.”
Mrs White told the ECHO the MP should “apologise to me and to members of the party” and said: “It’s clearly a dodgy dossier – anything that is unauthored like this is dodgy, and it’s scurrilous. She should be apologising to me, for the hurt to my family from the lies in it, and to the constituency.”
In her letter complaining about the MP she said: “It is wrong for a person holding public office to rely on, quote or promote an anonymous document which is full of lies and scurrilous comments.”
The letter ends: “I find it intolerable that an MP can act in this way and hope that you will take the necessary action.” 67
More recently, veteran activist Audrey White has written to the NEC to say she has no confidence in the investigation – her letter reads:
“Before you make any decisions regarding the future of our CLP I wish to remind you that the Labour Party officials who made unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism at Riverside meetings have a duty of care to all their constituents. What they did amounts to inciting racial tension.
“The many years of work to unite the different communities in our city has been seriously damaged by their actions.
“The fact that these claims were not investigated by the CLP executive or NW Labour for 10 months has helped to create divisions both locally and nationally.
“I am sorry to say I have no confidence in this investigation which I believe is a smokescreen to hide and excuse these powerful people. I fear that in an effort to protect Louise Ellman and (assistant mayor) Nick Small this investigation will produce a headline grabbing false narrative using the words bullying, toxic, intimidation and antisemitism while the solid facts are cast aside.
“There was no bullying and antisemitism this is a fabrication and we will not let this slur against us and our city go unchallenged.” 68
The investigation is ongoing. A list of the allegations contained in the ‘dodgy dossier’ and further responses from the defendants and the Labour NEC can be read in Appendix E.
On January 28th, George Galloway interviewed Audrey White for the second half of his RT show ‘Sputnik’ embedded below:
Click here to watch the same show on the RT website.
The so-called “new antisemitism” – this conflation of antisemitism with all forms of criticism of Israeli policy and its far-right Zionist agenda is Israel’s preferred way to shutdown the debate as I explained in two earlier posts on the subject here and here.
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The BBC and its routine bias against Corbyn
“I am pro-Israel. I believe in the State of Israel”— James Harding, Director of BBC News
The BBC broke accuracy and impartiality rules in a News at Six report about Jeremy Corbyn’s view on shoot-to-kill, the BBC’s governing body has said.
The item, by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was shown three days after the Paris attacks in November 2015.
So begins a damning BBC retraction hidden away in its ‘Entertainment and Arts’ section. The same BBC report then provides a blow-by-blow account of how the interview with political editor Kuenssberg had been deliberately manipulated:
In the News at Six report, Kuenssberg said she had asked Mr Corbyn “if he were the resident here at Number 10 whether or not he would be happy for British officers to pull the trigger in the event of a Paris-style attack”.
He was seen to reply: “I am not happy with a shoot to kill policy in general. I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often be counter-productive.”
The actual question Kuenssberg had asked during the interview was: “If you were prime minister, would you be happy to order people – police or military – to shoot to kill on Britain’s streets?”
The previous question in the interview, in a section that was not used on the News At Six, he had been asked specifically about his response to a Paris-style attack if he was prime minister and whether he would “order security services onto the street to stop people being killed”.
In answer to that question, Mr Corbyn had replied: “Of course you’d bring people onto the streets to prevent and ensure there is safety within our society.” 69
The BBC Trust was strong in its condemnation of Kuenssberg saying:
“The breach of due accuracy on such a highly contentious political issue meant that the output had not achieved due impartiality.”
But in response, James Harding, Director of BBC News, said:
“While we respect the Trust and the people who work there, we disagree with this finding.” 70
But then Harding, director of BBC News, is very far from an impartial observer. Here is what he said at a media event organized by The Jewish Chronicle in 2011:
“I am pro-Israel. I believe in the State of Israel. I would have had a real problem if I had been coming to a paper [The Times] with a history of being anti-Israel. And, of course, Rupert Murdoch is pro-Israel.”
The strongly Zionist Jewish Chronicle reprinted those words with glee as news of Harding’s BBC appointment broke. And it also took the opportunity to remind its readers that, during the Israeli massacre in Gaza in late 2008 and early 2009, when more than 1,400 Palestinians were slaughtered, Harding wrote a Times editorial titled, “In defense of Israel” (“Signs of The Times at JCC,” 14 April 2011).
Now bringing his pro-Israel biases into the top ranks of the BBC, Harding will be in charge of its flagship news and current affairs programs including Today, Newsnight, Panorama and Question Time. He will also be responsible for daily news bulletins on the BBC’s main television channels and radio stations.
The news of his appointment to the £340,000 ($518,000) per year post comes just a fortnight after the former Labour Party minister James Purnell took up his new position at the BBC as director of strategy and digital.
Purnell, who was one of Hall’s first appointments, served for two years while in Parliament as chairman of the Westminster lobby group Labour Friends of Israel. 71
Click here to read the full article entitled “Apologists for Israel take top posts at the BBC” published by The Electonic Intifada in April 2013.
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Click here to read a Guardian article published on May 12th 2016 entitled “BBC may have shown bias against Corbyn, says former trust chair.”
The BBC was also declared guilty of “marked and persistent imbalance” in a report released by the researchers from the Media Reform Coalition and Birkbeck, University of London, which found that “almost twice as much unchallenged airtime was given to people criticising Mr Corbyn than his allies on the BBC”.
Click here to read an Independent article published on July 30th entitled “Media ‘persistently’ biased against Jeremy Corbyn, academic study finds”
The above links were previously appended to this earlier post about last year’s leadership challenge from Owen Smith.
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The scandal of Fox, Gould and Werritty revisited
“If neo-cons such as yourself, Robert [Halfon], are plotting a war in Iran, we should know about it.”— Paul Flynn MP72
In Craig Murray’s analysis of the revelations involving Shai Masot, he once again draws attention to connections with an earlier scandal surrounding undisclosed and illicit British-Israel relations – the briefly disgraced Liam Fox (quietly rehabilitated and back in May’s cabinet as Secretary of State for International Trade), former UK Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, and their close association with a shadowy figure named Adam Werritty (you can read much more about this in earlier posts here):
The two stories – Russian interference in US politics, Israeli interference in UK politics – also link because the New York Times claims that it was the British that first suggested to the Obama administration that Russian cyber activity was targeting Clinton. Director of Cyber Security and Information Assurance in the British Cabinet Office is Matthew Gould, the UK’s former openly and strongly pro-Zionist Ambassador to Israel and friend of the current Israeli Ambassador Mark Regev. While Private Secretary to David Miliband and William Hague, and then while Ambassador to Israel, Gould held eight secret meetings with Adam Werritty, on at least one occasion with Mossad present and on most occasions also with now minister Liam Fox. My Freedom of Information requests for minutes of these meetings brought the reply that they were not minuted, and my Freedom of Information request for the diary entries for these meetings brought me three pages each containing only the date, with everything else redacted.
I managed to get the information about the Gould/Werritty meetings as a result of relentless questioning, where I was kindly assisted by MPs including Jeremy Corbyn, Caroline Lucas and Paul Flynn. The woman with whom Shai Masot was conniving to undermine Alan Duncan, was Maria Strizzolo, who works for Tory Minister Robert Halfon. It was Halfon who repeatedly tried to obstruct Paul Flynn MP from asking questions of Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell that threatened to get to the heart of the real Adam Werritty scandal.
Both Robert Halfon and Adam Werrity received funding from precisely the same Israeli sources, and in particular from Mr Poju Zabludowicz. Halfon also formerly had a full time paid job as Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel. Halfon’s assistant is now caught conspiring with the Israeli Embassy to attack another Tory minister.
Murray then supplies notes from the House of Commons Public Administration Committee, dated 24/11/2011, which you can find reprinted in Appendix F.
Here are the opening exchanges:
Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.
In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—
Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?
Paul Flynn: Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.
Chair: I have to take a point of order.
Robert Halfon: Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.
Back to Murray:
It is shocking but true that Robert Halfon MP, who disrupted Flynn with repeated points of order, receives fundingfrom precisely the same Israeli sources as Werritty, and in particular from Mr Poju Zabludowicz. He also formerly had a full time paid job as Political Director of the Conservative Friends of Israel. It is not surprising that Shai Masot evidently views Halfon as a useful tool for attacking senior pro-Palestinian members of his own party.
But despite the evasiveness of [Gus] O’Donnell and the obstruction of paid zionist puppet Halfon, O’Donnell confirmed vital parts of my investigation. In particular he agreed that the Fox-Werritty-Gould “private dinner” in Tel Aviv was with Mossad, and that Gould met Werritty many times more than the twice that O’Donnell listed in his “investigation” into the Werritty affair. The truth of the Werritty scandal, hidden comprehensively by the mainstream media, was that Werritty was inside the UK Ministry of Defence working for Israel. That is why it was so serious that Defence Minister Liam Fox had to resign
Of the eight meetings of Fox-Gould-Werritty together which I discovered, seven were while Fox was Secretary of State for Defence. Only one was while Fox was in opposition. But O’Donnell let the cat much further out of the bag, with the astonishing admission to Paul Flynn’s above questioning that Gould, Fox and Werritty held “meetings that took place before the election.” He also referred to “some of those meetings” as being before the election. Both are plainly in the plural.
It is evident from the information gained by Paul Flynn that not only did Fox, Gould and Werritty have at least seven meetings while Fox was in power – with no minutes and never another British official present – they had several meetings while Fox was shadow Foreign Secretary. O’Donnell was right that what Fox and Werritty were up to in opposition was not his concern. But what Gould was doing with them – a senior official – most definitely was his concern. A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid Israeli lobbyist.
All of this underlined the pernicious influence that Israel has in the political class, which is founded on the Israeli lobby’s shameless use of cash for influence – as witnessed in the discussion between Shai Masot and Labour Friends of Israel and his flaunting of a million. Attitudes towards the plight of the Palestinians are an extreme example of the disconnect between public opinion and the views of the political class, and Al Jazeera should be congratulated heartily on giving us a peek into that.
No further evidence is required. There could be no more conclusive evidence of Israel’s undue and pernicious influence than the astonishing fact that Shai Masot has not yet been expelled. 73
Click here to read Craig Murray’s full post entitled “Why Has Israeli Spy Shai Masot Not Been Expelled?”
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The co-opting of Owen Jones
On February 14th, JLM announced that Owen Jones would be appearing in conversation with their Vice-Chair Sarah Sackman for the inaugural Henry Smith Memorial Lecture on the April 2nd. He is going to speak on “left anti-Semitism, the Middle East and the Labour Party.”
In view of the extraordinary revelations of the recent Al Jazeera documentaries and the prominent role played by JLM in the dirty tricks campaign against Corbyn and his supporters, the timing of Jones’ invitation is highly politically charged. So why did Jones accept?
Here was his offhanded response to criticism from independent journalist Jonathan Cook:
And here is part of Cook’s reply to Jones:
Owen Jones has responded to this blog post both on Twitter, calling it “tedious nonsense” in his usual, dismissive style, and with a post here that tries to deflect attention from my argument with a straw man: that a conspiracy theory is painting him as a stooge of the Israeli government.
No conspiracy is being posited here – only very, very poor judgment. I have also not accused him of working on behalf of the Israeli government. Only of assisting, presumably thoughtlessly, those who are working on behalf of the Israeli government inside the Jewish Labour Movement, including most definitely its current director, Ella Rose.
Sadly, though predictably, he has avoided addressing the point of my criticism. 74
Click here to read the full post on Jonathan Cook’s blog.
Jones ought to be aware, but seems oblivious to the fact, that he is being used:
The Jewish Labour Movement scoring Jones appears to be a high-profile instance of a new push endorsed by Israel’s government to ensure that Palestine solidarity “instigators” are “singled out” from so-called “soft critics” of Israel.
According to The Jewish Daily Forward, the strategy – jointly developed by the Reut Institute and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – “calls for a big tent approach that accepts progressive critics of Israel” while also demanding “an all-out assault on leading critics of Israel, sometimes using covert means.”
“The instigators must be singled out from the other groups, and handled uncompromisingly, publicly or covertly,” the Reut-ADL report states, according to The Forward, which obtained a copy on condition it not publish the entire document.
The Jewish Labour Movement, a pro-Israel organization within the UK’s main opposition Labour Party, appears to be on board with this strategy.
From a more recent article written by Asa Winstanley and published in The Electronic Intifada. The piece continues:
Following the announcement that Jones would headline the Jewish Labour Movement event, Nazareth-based journalist Jonathan Cookcriticized the Guardian columnist for promoting a group “shown to be acting as a front for the Israeli government’s efforts” in Labour.
Jones replied with a blog post calling his critics conspiracy theorists and reaffirming that he was “very glad” to speak at this pro-Israel group’s event.
“I am a passionate opponent of anti-Semitism in all its forms, overt or subtle. It has to be fought, relentlessly, wherever it appears, including on the left,” Jones asserted – an implication that his critics might condone or tolerate anti-Semitism.
Whether Jones realizes it or not, he is facilitating the strategy of isolating Palestine solidarity campaigners by performing the role of “soft critic” of Israel.
Any division in Labour ranks over Jones’ decision will likely be seen by Jewish Labour Movement leaders as a success. 75
Click here to read Asa Winstanley’s full article published on February 21st.
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Appendix A: Anonymous statement from Tory ex-minister 76
‘Poisonous conduct is a disgrace’: Minister who served in David Cameron’s government says it is time to end the problem of Israel buying UK policy
Last month Theresa May, like David Cameron each year before her, spoke to the annual lunch of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI).
She oozed praise for Israel as a democracy, spoke of the constant terrorist threat they face, and condemned the way that Palestinians supposedly incite violence and anti-Semitism.
Her own policy that considers Israeli settlements on Palestinian land illegal received only a passing mention.
The reason is clear: the Conservative Party wants pro-Israel donors’ money, and principle in the Government’s foreign policy has been relegated.
Matters deteriorated further over Christmas after US Secretary of State John Kerry’s forceful condemnation of the extremism and conduct of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government.
Instead of agreeing with his comments – which are identical to her own policy – she criticised Kerry.
Behind this inconsistent and concerning attitude lies a serious and troubling problem. British foreign policy is in hock to Israeli influence at the heart of our politics, and those in authority have ignored what is going on.
For years the CFI and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), have worked with – even for – the Israeli government and their London embassy to promote Israeli policy and thwart UK Government policy and the actions of Ministers who try to defend Palestinian rights.
Lots of countries try to force their views on others, but what is scandalous in the UK is that instead of resisting it, successive Governments have submitted to it, taken donors’ money, and allowed Israeli influence-peddling to shape policy and even determine the fate of Ministers.
Even now, if I were to reveal who I am, I would be subjected to a relentless barrage of abuse and character assassination.
The CFI is not affiliated to the Conservative Party. It is incorporated in a way that means it is not to transparent about donors. Yet it arranges for the support of MPs and funds regular visits to Israel which distort the truth. Cameron turned a blind eye to Israeli misconduct – if he ever cared about it – because he was persuaded any criticism would reduce Party donations.
It now seems clear people in the Conservative and Labour Parties have been working with the Israeli embassy which has used them to demonise and trash MPs who criticise Israel; an army of Israel’s useful idiots in Parliament.
This is politically corrupt, and diplomatically indefensible. The conduct of certain MPs needs to be exposed as the poisonous and deceitful infiltration of our politics by the unwitting agents of another country, which acts in defiance of international law, and whose government Kerry called its most extreme ever.
We need a full inquiry into the Israeli Embassy, the links, access and funding of the CFI and LFI, and an undertaking from all political parties that they welcome the financial and political support of the UK Jewish community, but won’t accept any engagement linked to Israel until it stops building illegally on Palestinian land.
This opaque funding and underhand conduct is a national disgrace and humiliation and must be stamped out.
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Appendix B: Craig Murray’s query to the FCO media department
For over twelve hours there has been stunned silence from the FCO media department in reply to my questions about the Shai Masot case – I am an NUJ member, and I think the idea of a British journalist actually doing real journalism and asking real questions has astonished them. They have now asked me to put them in writing, and I have just done so. This is what I have submitted.
I am investigating the status of Shai Masot, the Israeli Embassy officer caught plotting against Alan Duncan and who was very active with UK political parties.
I appreciate the FCO line is that the case of his conduct is now closed. But I am not investigating his conduct, I am investigating the improper conduct of the FCO in granting him a visa and residency status in the first place.
My initial questions are these:
1) On what basis was Mr Masot in the UK?
2) He was not on the Diplomatic List, but plainly was a senior officer (an ex Major and current executive in the Directorate of Strategic Affairs) and therefore not qualified in the normal categories of technical and support staff. What precise visa and residence status did he hold?
3) How many more officers does the Israeli Embassy have with that same visa and residence status?
4) Has the FCO connived with the Israeli Embassy to allow many more Israeli intelligence operatives residence in the country than the official and reciprocated diplomatic staff allocation of the Embassy?
5) Did MI5, MI6 or any other of the security services have any input into Mr Masot’s acceptance and visa/residency status?
It is over 12 hours since I contacted the FCO’s media people with these questions. I would appreciate your earliest contact. My number is …
“A number of people made comments in a private training session run by the Jewish Labour Movement. As we all know, training sessions are intended to be safe spaces where ideas and questions can be explored. A film of this session was leaked to the press unethically. I did not raise a question on security in Jewish schools. The trainer raised this issue and I asked for clarification, in particular as all London primary schools, to my knowledge, have security and I did not understand the particular point the trainer was making. Having been a victim of racism I would never play down the very real fears the Jewish community have, especially in light of recent attacks in France.
In the session, a number of Jewish people, including me, asked for definitions of antisemitism. This is a subject of much debate in the Jewish community. I support David Schneider’s definition and utterly condemn anti-Semitism.
I would never play down the significance of the Shoah. Working with many Jewish comrades, I continue to seek to bring greater awareness of other genocides, which are too often forgotten or minimised. If offence has been caused, it is the last thing I would want to do and I apologise.”
*
Appendix D: The conversation between Jean Fitzpatrick and Joan Ryan at LFI stall †
Labour Party member Jean Fitzpatrick, who was attending her conference, had heard about the Labour Friends of Israel stall and took it upon herself to ask about their position regarding the building of settlements. The dialogue ran as follows [from 8:10 mins]:
Jean Fitzpatrick: Can I just ask you if you’re very anti the settlements – what is Labour Friends of Israel doing about that?
Joan Ryan: We make our view clear and we meet people at all levels in Israeli politics and diplomatic circles, etc. And we make it absolutely clear we’re not friends of Israel and enemies of Palestine, hence our new campaign launching next month and that we’re showcasing here. We believe in a two-state solution and the coexistence and self-determination of both peoples and that’s really important.
JF: And how will that come about do you think?
JR: Well our job is to support any possible means that can bring it about and facilitate…
JF: So what has sort of… come about so far?
JR: Well what we are supporting is coexistence projects, which is what this is about.
JF: But what about Israeli occupation?
JR: Well what we want is a two-state solution and the reason we’ve not got it now at the moment is because there is a distinct lack of security…
This is a big picture situation and we want a two-state solution that is good for all…
JF: No I know, you’ve said that a number of times. But what steps, because you know… So the Labour Party is saying…
JR: Well I’ve told you what steps we’re taking… I’m not going to defend or criticise…
JF: But it seems you are defending Israel.
JR: No. I would defend Israel, I defend Israel’s right to exist. I defend Israel as a democracy, and a social democracy.
JF: But at what expense?
JR: I think we have to be very, very careful not to let our feelings about this morph into anti-Zionism.
JF: So no feelings come into account? No, I’m not being anti-Zionist…
JR: You have to be very careful I think… Don’t we all want a two-state solution based on coexistence and peace?
JF: But I’m asking you how you are bringing about…
JR: So you make your effort and we make ours… Thank you Jean, I’ve enjoyed the conversation, I’m leaving it there.
JF: No, no, I’m asking you about settlements…
JR: Well I’m not answering it anymore, sorry Jean.
JF: … they’ve totally atomised the whole of the West Bank. I’m asking you, I’m really genuinely interested how a two-state solution…?
JR: I’m just working for a two-state solution.
JF: But how can it come about if the whole of the West Bank is atomised?
JR: We’re trying to do everything we can to support and facilitate that solution.
JF: Okay, but in practical terms?
JR: That’s what we’re doing as Labour Friends of Israel, that’s what you’re doing as Palestine Solidarity Campaign. That’s good isn’t it?
JF: No, but I’m asking in terms of the West Bank is atomised, where will the state be? That’s a genuine, genuine question. Where will the state be?
We go over there, we witness, but nothing changes.
You’ve got a lot of money, you’ve got a lot of prestige in the world.
JR: I don’t know where you get that from?
JF: Sorry?
JR: Labour Friends of Israel have got a lot of power, a lot of money… that’s just not…
JF: Well I think so – that’s what I hear. That, you know, it’s a stepping-stone to good jobs. A friend of mine’s son’s got a really good job at Oxford University on the basis of having worked for Labour Friends of Israel.
JR: If you just believe rumours then I…
JF: It’s not a rumour, it’s a fact.
JR: It’s antisemitic.
JF: No it’s not.
JR: It is. It’s a trope.
JF: No it’s not antisemitic, it’s not.
JR: It’s about conspiracy theorists.
JF: It’s not.
JR: Sorry, it is. Anyway, that’s my view and I think we’ll have to agree to differ.
JF: No, I don’t think we do have to agree to differ.
JR: Well I’m agreeing to differ and I am ending the conversation because I am not really wishing to engage in a conversation that talks about getting involved with this [i.e., LFI] and then you get a good job in Oxford or the City or… and that is antisemitic, I’m sorry.
Shortly after her conversation with Jean Fitzpatrick, Joan Ryan discusses it with colleagues.
They’re an antisemitic… you heard her say, you know… “join you lot and you get into Oxford” or “you get into working in the bank” or… That’s antisemitic.
That evening, at a rally to combat antisemitism organised by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), Joan Ryan describes her day at the stall:
We have also had three incidents of antisemitic harassment on our stand, to the people who are staffing that stall today. And that, I think tells you something about why we need to be having this Against Antisemitism Rally.
*
Appendix E: The ‘dodgy dossier’ against Riverside CLP
The dossier includes claims that:
* Members and former members of far left groups banned by Labour were attempting to take control of the local party
* A small number of members were attempting to deselect local MP Louise Ellman and local councillors
* Far left members conspired to undermine a local investigation of antisemitism complaints
* The dossier concluded these members were “clearly operating against the best interests of and, in many instances, in direct opposition to the Labour Party”.
But some local party members have said the dossier is “nonsense” – and in her latest letter Ms White says the dossier “contains lies and libel”.
She said: “This is fake news at its most insidious”.
A Labour spokesperson said: “We do not comment on internal party matters. All complaints are taken seriously.”
A Liverpool Labour spokesperson said: “These are serious allegations that have been made in good faith.
“They are being investigated by the Labour Party NEC. They need to be investigated thoroughly.
“What’s important is that everybody gets behind whatever the recommendations are from the NEC, whatever they are, and that people move forward on that basis.”
Louise Ellman’s office said the MP would not comment on Audrey White’s letter and was awaiting the results of the inquiry. 78
Click here to read the full report in the Liverpool Echo.
*
Appendix F: House of Commons Public Administration Committee, 24/11/2011
Q Paul Flynn: Okay. Matthew Gould has been the subject of a very serious complaint from two of my constituents, Pippa Bartolotti and Joyce Giblin. When they were briefly imprisoned in Israel, they met the ambassador, and they strongly believe—it is nothing to do with this case at all—that he was serving the interest of the Israeli Government, and not the interests of two British citizens. This has been the subject of correspondence.
In your report, you suggest that there were two meetings between the ambassador and Werritty and Liam Fox. Questions and letters have proved that, in fact, six such meetings took place. There are a number of issues around this. I do not normally fall for conspiracy theories, but the ambassador has proclaimed himself to be a Zionist and he has previously served in Iran, in the service. Werritty is a self-proclaimed—
Robert Halfon: Point of order, Chairman. What is the point of this?
Paul Flynn: Let me get to it. Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran.
Chair: I have to take a point of order.
Robert Halfon: Mr Flynn is implying that the British ambassador to Israel is working for a foreign power, which is out of order.
Paul Flynn: I quote the Daily Mail: “Mr Werritty is a self-proclaimed expert on Iran and has made several visits. He has also met senior Israeli officials, leading to accusations”—not from me, from the Daily Mail—“that he was close to the country’s secret service, Mossad.” There may be nothing in that, but that appeared in a national newspaper.
Chair: I am going to rule on a point of order. Mr Flynn has made it clear that there may be nothing in these allegations, but it is important to have put it on the record. Be careful how you phrase questions.
Paul Flynn: Indeed. The two worst decisions taken by Parliament in my 25 years were the invasion of Iraq—joining Bush’s war in Iraq—and the invasion of Helmand province. We know now that there were things going on in the background while that built up to these mistakes. The charge in this case is that Werritty was the servant of neo-con people in America, who take an aggressive view on Iran. They want to foment a war in Iran in the same way as in the early years, there was another—
Chair: Order. I must ask you to move to a question that is relevant to the inquiry.
Q Paul Flynn: Okay. The question is, are you satisfied that you missed out on the extra four meetings that took place, and does this not mean that those meetings should have been investigated because of the nature of Mr Werritty’s interests?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: I think if you look at some of those meetings, some people are referring to meetings that took place before the election.
Q Paul Flynn: Indeed, which is even more worrying.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: I am afraid they were not the subject—what members of the Opposition do is not something that the Cabinet Secretary should look into. It is not relevant.
But these meetings were held—
Chair: Mr Flynn, would you let him answer please?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: I really do not think that was within my context, because they were not Ministers of the Government and what they were up to was not something I should get into at all.
Chair: Final question, Mr Flynn.
Q Paul Flynn: No, it is not a final question. I am not going to be silenced by you, Chairman; I have important things to raise. I have stayed silent throughout this meeting so far.
You state in the report—on the meeting held between Gould, Fox and Werritty, on 6 February, in Tel Aviv—that there was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK ambassador was present. Are you following the line taken by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who says that he can eat with lobbyists or people applying to his Department because, on occasions, he eats privately, and on other occasions he eats ministerially? Are you accepting the idea? It is possibly a source of great national interest—the eating habits of their Secretary of State. It appears that he might well have a number of stomachs, it has been suggested, if he can divide his time this way. It does seem to be a way of getting round the ministerial code, if people can announce that what they are doing is private rather than ministerial.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job. It is totally natural, and I do not think that you should infer anything from that about the individual’s biases. That is what ambassadors do. Our ambassador in Pakistan will have exactly the same set of wide contacts.
Q Paul Flynn: I have good reason, as I said, from constituency matters, to be unhappy about the ambassador. Other criticisms have been made about the ambassador; he is unique in some ways in the role he is performing. There have been suggestions that he is too close to a foreign power.
Robert Halfon: On a point of order, Chair, this is not about the ambassador to Israel. This is supposed to be about the Werritty affair.
Paul Flynn: It is absolutely crucial to this report. If neo-cons such as yourself, Robert, are plotting a war in Iran, we should know about it.
Chair: Order. I think the line of questioning is very involved. I have given you quite a lot of time, Mr Flynn. If you have further inquiries to make of this, they could be pursued in correspondence. May I ask you to ask one final question before we move on?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: One thing I would stress: we are talking about the ambassador and I think he has a right of reply. Mr Chairman, I know there is an interesting question of words regarding Head of the Civil Service versus Head of the Home Civil Service, but this is the Diplomatic Service, not the Civil Service.
Q Chair: So he is not in your jurisdiction at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: No.
Q Paul Flynn: But you are happy that your report is final; it does not need to go the manager it would have gone to originally, and that is the end of the affair. Is that your view?
Sir Gus O’Donnell: As I said, some issues arose where I wanted to be sure that what the Secretary of State was doing had been discussed with the Foreign Secretary. I felt reassured by what the Foreign Secretary told me.
Q Chair: I think what Mr Flynn is asking is that your report and the affair raise other issues, but you are saying that that does not fall within the remit of your report and that, indeed, the conduct of an ambassador does not fall within your remit at all.
Sir Gus O’Donnell: That is absolutely correct.
Paul Flynn: The charge laid by Lord Turnbull in his evidence with regard to Dr Fox and the ministerial code was his failure to observe collective responsibility, in that case about Sri Lanka. Isn’t the same charge there about our policies to Iran and Israel?
Chair: We have dealt with that, Mr Flynn.
Paul Flynn: We haven’t dealt with it as far as it applies—
Chair: Mr Flynn, we are moving on.
Paul Flynn: You may well move on, but I remain very unhappy about the fact that you will not allow me to finish the questioning I wanted to give on a matter of great importance.
*
Additional: Open letter to British government signed by 250 academics
Yet the government has “adopted” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which can be and is being read as extending to criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights, an entirely separate issue, as prima facie evidence of antisemitism. This definition seeks to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Now Jo Johnson, the government minister whose brief includes universities, has written to Universities UK asking for this definition to be disseminated throughout the system. His letter specifically mentions Israeli Apartheid Week (a worldwide activity at this time of year since 2005) as a cause for concern.
The response has been swift. Late last week, in haste and clearly without legal advice, the University of Central Lancashire banned a meeting that was to be addressed by journalist Ben White as well as by academics. The university statement asserted that the meeting on “Debunking misconceptions on Palestine” contravened the definition of antisemitism recently adopted by the government, and would therefore not be lawful.
Meanwhile, the Campaign Against Antisemitism, a body set up during the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014, cites this definition in asking its supporters to “record, film, photograph and get witness evidence” about Israeli Apartheid Week events; and “we will help you to take it up with the university, students’ union or even the police”.
These are outrageous interferences with free expression, and are direct attacks on academic freedom. As academics with positions at UK universities, we wish to express our dismay at this attempt to silence campus discussion about Israel, including its violation of the rights of Palestinians for more than 50 years. It is with disbelief that we witness explicit political interference in university affairs in the interests of Israel under the thin disguise of concern about antisemitism.
Prof Jonathan Rosenhead, Prof Conor Gearty, Prof Malcolm Levitt, Tom Hickey, Prof Dorothy Griffiths, Prof Moshé Machover, Sir Iain Chalmers, Prof Steven Rose, Prof Gilbert Achcar, Prof Penny Green, Prof Bill Bowring, Mike Cushman, Jim Zacune, Dr Jethro Butler, Dr Rashmi Varma, Dr John Moore, Dr Nour Ali, Prof Richard Hudson, Dr Tony Whelan, Dr Dina Matar, Prof Marian Hobson, Prof Tony Sudbery, Prof John Weeks, Prof Graham Dunn, Dr Toni Wright, Dr Rinella Cere, Prof Ian Parker, Dr Marina Carter, Dr Shirin M Rai, Andy Wynne, Prof David Pegg, Prof Erica Burman, Dr Nicola Pratt, Prof Joanna Bornat, Prof Richard Seaford, Dr Linda Milbourne, Dr Julian Saurin, Dr Nadia Naser-Najjab, Prof Elizabeth Dore, Prof Colin Eden, Dr Neil Davidson, Jaime Peschiera, Catherine Cobham, Prof Haim Bresheeth, Dr Uriel Orlow, Dr Saladin Meckled-Garcia, Dr Abdul B Shaikh, Dr Mark Leopold, Prof Michael Donmall, Prof Hamish Cunningham, Prof David Johnson, Dr Reem Abou-El-Fadl, Dr Luke Cooper, Prof Peter Gurney, Dr Adi Kuntsman, Prof Matthew Beaumont, Dr Teodora Todorova, Prof Natalie Fenton, Prof Richard Bornat, Dr Jeremy Landor, Dr John Chalcraft, Milly Williamson, David Mabb, Dr Judit Druks, Dr Charlie McGuire, Dr Gholam Khiabany, Glynn Kirkham, Dr Deirdre O’Neill, Dr Gavin Williams, Prof Marsha Rosengarten, Dr Debra Benita Shaw, Dr João Florêncio, Prof Stephen Keen, Dr Anandi Ramamurthy, Dr Thomas Mills, Dr Don Crewe, Prof Robert Wintemute, Andy Gossett, Prof Mark Boylan, Angela Mansi, Dr Paul Taylor, Tim Martin, Keith Hammond, Karolin Hijazi, Dr Kevin Hearty, Prof Daniel Katz, Dr Richard Pitt, Prof Ray Bush, Prof Glenn Bowman, Prof Craig Brandist, Prof Virinder S Kalra, Dr Yasmeen Narayan, Prof Michael Edwards, John Gilmore-Kavanagh, Prof Nadje Al-Ali, Prof Mick Dumper, Graham Topley, Dr Shuruq Naguib, Prof David Whyte, Peter Collins, Dr Andrew Chitty, Prof David Mond, Prof Leon Tikly, Dr Subir Sinha, Dr Mark Berry, Dr Gajendra Singh, Prof Elizabeth Cowie, Dr Richard Lane, Prof Martin Parker, Dr Aboobaker Dangor, Dr Siân Adiseshiah, Prof Dennis Leech, Dr Owen Clayton, Dr John Cowley, Prof Mona Baker, Dr Navtej Purewal, Prof Mica Nava, Prof Joy Townsend, Dr Alex Bellem, Dr Nat Queen, Gareth Dale, Prof Yosefa Loshitzky, Dr Rudi Lutz, Dr Oliver Smith, Tim Kelly, Prof Laleh Khalili, Prof Aneez Esmail, Fazila Bhimji, Prof Hilary Rose, Dr Brian Tweedale, Prof Julian Petley, Prof Richard Hyman, Dr Paul Watt, Nisha Kapoor, Prof Julian Townshend, Prof Roy Maartens, Dr Anna Bernard, Prof Martha Mundy, Prof Martin Atkinson, Dr Claude Baesens, Dr Marijn Nieuwenhuis, Dr Emma Heywood, Dr Matthew Malek, Prof Anthony Milton, Dr Paul O’Connell, Prof Malcolm Povey, Dr Jason Hickel, Dr Jo Littler, Prof Rosalind Galt, Prof Suleiman Shark, Dr Paula James, Dr Linda Pickard, Pat Devine, Dr Jennifer Fortune, Prof Chris Roberts, Dr Les Levidow, Dr Carlo Morelli, Prof David Byrne, Dr Nicholas Cimini, Prof John Smith, Prof Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Dr Peter J King, Prof Bill Brewer, Prof Patrick Williams, Prof Daphne Hampson, Dr Wolfgang Deckers, Cliff Jones, Prof Luis Pérez-González, Prof Patrick Ainley, Dr Paul Kelemen, Prof Dee Reynolds, Dr Enam Al-Wer, Prof Hugh Starkey, Dr Anna Fisk, Prof Linda Clarke, Prof Klim McPherson, Cathy Malone, Prof Graham Dawson, Prof Colin Green, Prof Clément Mouhot, Prof S Sayyid, Prof William Raban, Prof Peter Hallward, Prof Chris Rust, Prof Benita Parry, Prof Andrew Spencer, Prof Philip Marfleet, Prof Frank Land, Dr Peter E Jones, Dr Nicholas Thoburn, Tom Webster, Dr Khursheed Wadia, Dr Philip Gilligan, Dr Lucy Michael, Prof Steve Hall, Prof Steve Keen, Dr David S Moon, Prof Ken Jones, Dr Karen F Evans, Dr Jim Crowther, Prof Alison Phipps, Dr Uri Horesh, Dr Clair Doloriert, Giles Bailey, Prof Murray Fraser, Prof Stephen Huggett, Dr Gabriela Saldanha, Prof Cahal McLaughlin, Ian Pace, Prof Philip Wadler, Dr Hanem El-Farahaty, Dr Anne Alexander, Dr Robert Boyce, Dr Patricia McManus, Prof Mathias Urban, Dr Naomi Woodspring, Prof David Wield, Prof Moin A Saleem, Dr Phil Edwards, Dr Jason Hart, Dr Sharon Kivland, Dr Rahul Rao, Prof Ailsa Land, Dr Lee Grieveson, Dr Paul Bagguley, Dr Rosalind Temple, Dr Karima Laachir, Dr Youcef Djerbib, Dr Sarah Perrigo, Bernard Sufrin, Prof James Dickins, John Burnett, Prof Des Freedman, Dr David Seddon, Prof Steve Tombs, Prof Louisa Sadler, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, Dr Rashné Limki, Dr Guy Standing, Dr Arianne Shahvisi, Prof Neil Smith, Myriam Salama-Carr, Dr Graham Smith, Dr Peter Fletcher 79
6 On the train to the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, Masot announces the launch of a new organisation with the help if a US congressman, with direct ties to AIPAC it is to be called The City Friends of Israel.
Once at the conference Masot formally introduces undercover reporter ‘Robin’ to Joan Ryan at the LFI stall. They also discuss paying for influential MPs to take a government-run tour of Israel, and Masot tells Ryan that he has received the approval for funds of “more than one million pounds… from Israel”.
Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 7:55 mins
“Masot was plainly not carrying out technical and administrative duties. The term is a formal one from the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, and it is plain from the convention that technical and administrative staff are in official status lower than the diplomatic staff. The majority of support activities are carried out in all Embassies by locally engaged staff already resident in the host country, but a very small number of technical and administrative staff may be allowed visas for work in particularly secure areas. They may be an IT and communications technician, possibly a cleaner in the most sensitive physical areas, and perhaps property management.
“These staff do not interact with politicians of the host state or attend high level meetings beside the Ambassador. The level at which Shai Masot was operating was appropriate to a Counsellor or First Secretary in an Embassy. Masot’s formal rank as an officer in his cover job in the Ministry of Strategic Affairs would entitle him to that rank in the Embassy if this were a normal appointment.”
29 Shai Masot: “We Believe in Israel is sitting together in the offices of BICOM. But it’s not the same organisation.”
Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 3:40 mins.
30 “I went on one of the trips of the Conservative Friends of Israel to the Middle East. It was brilliantly well arranged. [You were] very well looked after – you got fantastic access. You did meet Palestinians. If all you did was to rely on that one trip, you would have a very one-sided point of view.” – Peter Oborne
Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 1: Young Friends of Israel at 8:10 mins
31 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 4: The Takedown at 19:30 mins
32Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 4: The Takedown at 20:00 mins
33Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 4:50 mins
34 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 5:05 mins
35Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 5:25 mins
Rubin then adds: “Being LFI allows us to reach out to people who wouldn’t want to get involved with the Embassy. Keeping it as a separate thing is actually best for everyone because ultimately we want the same goal of getting more people to be pro-Israel and understand the conflict. It’s just how you do it.”
36Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 1: Young Friends of Israel at 16:20 mins
37Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 1: Young Friends of Israel at 23:45 mins
38 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 1: Young Friends of Israel at 24:35 mins
39Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:45 mins
40Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 11:10 mins
41 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 4:05 mins
42Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 13:45 mins
43 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 14:15 mins
44 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 15:30 mins
45 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 16:15 mins
46Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 17:15 mins
48 I cannot find a link but the evidence of this statement is available in Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 20:15 mins
49 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 13:25 mins and at 18:00 mins
50 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 18:20 mins
51 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 18:30 mins
52 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:50 mins
53 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 19:10 mins and 21:20 mins
54 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 2: The Training Session at 20:35 mins
55 Quote from Al Jazeera Investigations – The Lobby Part 3: An Antisemitic Trope at 4.55 mins.
Ask yourself a simple, but serious, question. You go for a job interview. Which trait is most likely to work against you: if you’re ugly, if you’re fat, if you’re short, or if you’re Jewish? It’s perhaps a sad commentary on our society’s values, but the trait most likely to elicit a rejection letter is if you’re ugly. Then fat; then short. The factor least likely to work against you is, if you’re Jewish.
says American Jewish scholar Norman Finkelstein.
Finkelstein, who is the son of holocaust survivors, a leading authority on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and a fierce opponent of Zionism, was replying to questions about Labour’s alleged “antisemitism problem”. Asked about the current campaign against Corbyn, he continued:
The question you have to ask yourself is, why? Why has this issue been resurrected with a vengeance, so soon after its previous outing was disposed of as a farce? Is it because of a handful of allegedly antisemitic social media postings from Labour members? Is it because of the tongue-in-cheek map posted by Naz Shah? That’s not believable. The only plausible answer is, it’s political. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the factual situation; instead, a few suspect cases of antisemitism – some real, some contrived – are being exploited for an ulterior political motive. As one senior Labour MP said the other day, it’s transparently a smear campaign.
Finkelstein has chosen to break his silence on this latest pro-Israel witch hunt by giving an interview to Jamie Stern-Weiner. A transcript published May 3rd is available here.
He concludes the interview as follows:
Labour has now set up an inquiry that is supposed to produce a workable definition of ‘antisemitism’ – which is to say, to achieve the impossible. It’s been tried countless times before, and it’s always proven futile. The only beneficiaries of such a mandate will be academic ‘specialists’ on antisemitism, who will receive hefty consultancy fees (I can already see Richard Evans at the head of the queue), and Israel, which will no longer be in the spotlight. I understand the short-term political rationale. But at some point, you have to say, ‘enough already’. Jews are prospering as never before in the UK. The polls show that the number of, so to speak, hard-core antisemites is miniscule. It’s time to put a stop to this periodic charade, because it ends up besmirching the victims of the Nazi holocaust, diverting from the real suffering of the Palestinian people, and poisoning relations between the Jewish and Muslim communities. You just had an antisemitism hysteria last year, and it was a farce. And now again? Another inquiry? Another investigation? No.
In order to put an end to this, there has to be a decisive repudiation of this political blackmail. Bernie Sanders was brutally pressured to back down on his claim that Israel had used disproportionate force during its 2014 assault on Gaza. He wouldn’t budge, he wouldn’t retreat. He showed real backbone. Corbyn should take heart and inspiration from Bernie’s example. He has to say: no more reports, no more investigations, we’re not going there any more. The game is up. It’s long past time that these antisemitism-mongers crawled back into their sewer – but not before humbly apologising to Naz Shah, and begging her forgiveness.
It is true that Bernie Sanders’ response is an exemplary one, but we should of course bear in mind that he is a Jewish candidate. This provides immunity (at least to some extent – though not entirely as we shall see) from spurious charges of antisemitism.
Incidentally, the published interview was afterwards appended with the following clarification:
Readers have expressed shock at the scandalous remarks attributed to Jonathan Freedland. Finkelstein decided to amend the paragraph so as to quote Freedland word-for-word. Readers will now perhaps be even more shocked.
Here’s what Finkelstein said that caused such a furore:
You can see this overlap between the Labour Right and pro-Israel groups personified in individuals like Jonathan Freedland, a Blairite hack who also regularly plays the antisemitism card. He’s combined these two hobbies to attack Corbyn. Incidentally, when my book, The Holocaust Industry, came out in 2000, Freedland wrote that I was ‘closer to the people who created the Holocaust than to those who suffered in it’. Although he appears to be, oh, so politically correct now, he didn’t find it inappropriate to suggest that I resembled the Nazis who gassed my family.
We appeared on a television program together. Before the program, he approached me to shake my hand. When I refused, he reacted in stunned silence. Why wouldn’t I shake his hand? He couldn’t comprehend it. It tells you something about these dull-witted creeps. The smears, the slanders – for them, it’s all in a day’s work. Why should anyone get agitated? Later, on the program, it was pointed out that the Guardian, where he worked, had serialised The Holocaust Industry across two issues. He was asked by the presenter, if my book was the equivalent of Mein Kampf, would he resign from the paper? Of course not. Didn’t the presenter get that it’s all a game?
Click here to read the full transcript of Finkelstein’s scathing rebuke of all accusations of latent racism within the Labour Party, including those levelled at Ken Livingstone.
*
Naz Shah has been hung out to dry today. She has confessed, recanted and repented. Her shame is absolute. She has had the Labour Party whip withdrawn and people like the rapidly moving rightwards airhead, Owen Jones, was in the vanguard of the witch hunt calling for her suspension John McDonnell was right to swiftly force Naz Shah’s resignation – but now the party has to suspend her. All we need is the scaffold and then she could literally be hung out to dry.
writes founding member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods, Tony Greenstein, who has also written a number of articles for the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’, before “being censored because he rejected the idea that comparing Zionism and the Israeli State to the Nazis was anti-Semitic.”
Greenstein continues:
Indeed Naz Shah has confessed to her comments being anti-Semitic. Isn’t that enough proof? No. The defendants in the Stalin purge trials also confessed to being Trotsky’s agents and more. It is perfectly possible to create a psychological atmosphere such that people will confess to all manner of things, even though they are not guilty. Police interrogators have, throughout the years, been quite skilled in obtaining false confessions without the need to beat people up or torture them.
So let me say it here – there is nothing anti-Semitic in what Naz Shah has said. She made what was quite a flippant humorous joke in the midst of something that was anything but funny – the merciless use of American planes, white phosphorous and the most modern missiles and rocket technology against a people who had nothing except pea crackers to fire back with (the ‘rockets’ that Israel used as a pretext for the bombardment and invasion). Let us not forget that 2,200 people were murdered in Gaza including 551 ‘terrorist’ children.
He adds:
The anti-Semitism talked about today is nothing more than an attempt to defend Israel. It has nothing to do with actual anti-Semitism. Zionists (no it’s not a term of abuse it means those who defend the State of Israel – they do after all have a World Zionist Organisation) find it difficult to defend incarceration and torture of children as young as 12 (if they are Palestinian). Jewish children of course can’t be locked up unless they are at least 14 and they have social workers and parents accompanying them unlike Palestinian children who are kept in solitary confinement, beaten and worse. It is difficult defending a system where 93% of Israeli land is reserved wholly for Jewish use. It is much better to cry ‘anti-Semitism’ and attack the messenger rather than the message.
What is happening is that the millions of pounds that the Israeli government has devoted to propaganda is being spent now to destabilise Jeremy Corbyn and the new Labour leadership. They are hunting down every tweet, email etc. in order to create an atmosphere of permanent instability. I know because tweets I have issued have been taken totally out of context to suggest I am anti-Semitic. If someone calls me a ‘self-hater’ ‘anti-Semite’ etc. I will accuse them of being ‘zio scum’ or whatever. Anti-Semitic? Get a life.
Greenstein is another to have been caught up in the recent witch hunt, when he was prominently featured in an article published by The Telegraph on April 1st entitled “Activist who derides critics as ‘Zionist scum’ admitted to Labour in latest anti-Semitism scandal to hit the Party”. The piece very studiously avoids any mention of the rather glaring fact that Greenstein is from an Orthodox Jewish family, although at the end a clarification has since been added that “we have been asked to make clear that we had not intended to imply that Tony Greenstein is anti-Semitic. We are happy to do so.”
Click here to read more from Tony Greenstein’s extended piece entitled “Naz Shah – More False Allegations of ‘anti-Semitism’ – British Jews are NOT oppressed: This is a Bogus Campaign Worthy of Stalin’s Purges”
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As the witch hunt gathered pace, the Jewish Socialists’ Group issued a formal statement. Thanks to social networking forums it quickly gathered a sizeable audience across the internet. However the corporate media turned an immediate blind eye instead.
I recommend reading the full statement, but here is a flavour:
Accusations of antisemitism are currently being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour party with claims that Labour has a “problem” of antisemitism. This is despite Corbyn’s longstanding record of actively opposing fascism and all forms of racism, and being a firm a supporter of the rights of refugees and of human rights globally. […]
The attack is coming from four main sources, who share agendas: to undermine Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Labour; to defend Israeli government policy from attack, however unjust, racist and harmful towards the Palestinian people; and to discredit those who make legitimate criticisms of Israeli policy or Zionism as a political ideology. As anti-racist and anti-fascist Jews who are also campaigning for peace with justice between Israelis and Palestinians, we entirely reject these cynical agendas that are being expressed by:
The Conservative Party
Conservative-supporting media in Britain and pro-Zionist Israeli media sources
Right-wing and pro-Zionist elements claiming to speak on behalf of the Jewish community
Opponents of Jeremy Corbyn within the Labour party.
[…]
The Jewish Socialists’ Group sees the current fearmongering about antisemitism in the Labour Party for what it is – a conscious and concerted effort by right-wing political forces to undermine the growing support among Jews and non-Jews alike for the Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, and a measure of the desperation of his opponents.
We stand against antisemitism, against racism and fascism and in support of refugees. We stand for free speech and open debate on Israel, Palestine and Zionism.
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Concluding remarks:
Back in March, as the current witch hunt was just brewing, I posted an extended article entitled “anti-Zionism ≠ antisemitism: playing the race card cannot diguise Israel’s guilt”. As an epigraph, I quoted a dictionary definition of the word ‘racism’. My idea was to encourage readers to reflect on the strict meaning of the word so as to reach an appreciation that this has significantly drifted and, more importantly, been diluted.
On reflection the use of such a device was gauche and may have appeared sententious, although in light of what has since transpired my concern was surely a justifiable one. Indeed, the need to reclaim the word ‘racism’ is becoming an urgent one. Casually brandished by those whose sole purpose is to blacken the name of their opponents, its proper meaning is cheapened. This is an exceedingly dangerous game. For words very often act as safeguards against the gravest of our errors: ‘racism’ serves as just such a safeguard. We undermine its correct meaning at our collective peril.
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Update:
Jackie Walker, Vice Chair of the grassroots movement Momentum that helped Jeremy Corbyn become party leader, is another Labour activist who was suspended over alleged antisemitic comments posted on social media.
Walker, who is a black activist of Jewish heritage and lifelong anti-racist campaigner as well as a signatory to Jews For Justice For Palestinians was interviewed by Afshin Rattansi on RT’s Going Underground on March 21st:
On May 21st, Walker was invited back on the show to speak about the charge of antisemitism against her and how the suspension has affected her life:
wall of controversy 