Rebecca Long-Bailey is only the latest in a litany of figures on the Labour left to fall foul of the McCarthyite policing of criticism of Israel at the behest of an Israel lobby whose guiding objective is to elide Israel’s brutal apartheid character behind an iron wall of obfuscation, while extending itself in demonising and smearing as antisemitic those who would dare elicit more than the most tepid solidarity with the Palestinians.

On the actualite of Long-Bailey’s sacking by Sir Keir Starmer, the now former education secretary made the mistake of retweeting an interview in The Independent involving the actress and prominent left Labour voice, Maxine Peake, during which the latter claimed that the knee on the neck of George Floyd by racist white cop Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis a few weeks ago is a tactic that was learned from the Israelis. Long-Bailey was sacked despite posting a later Tweet stating that she did not agree with everything that Maxine Peake said in the interview, while Maxine Peake herself later retracted the claim that the murder of George Floyd had anything to do with Israeli policing tactics.

So far so very unusual in this censorious climate when it comes to dancing around the apartheid elephant in the room of Labour internal party politics.

Whether George Floyd perished as a result of Israeli policing tactics or not is really beside the point. Racist policing in the US, along with the lynching of black men whether at the hands of the police or the Klan (and increasingly the distinction between both becomes harder to discern), is not a product of Israel or any other external entity. On the contrary, it’s as American as apple pie – a symptom of the country’s white supremacist past and present which lies at the heart of the country’s dominant cultural values.

With this being said, though, writing in Middle East Eye recently, Sheren Khalel points out that though “The Israeli police force has tried to distance itself from any perceived similarities [between the manner of George Floyd’s death and its own methods], issuing statements denouncing what happened and stating that its officers are not trained to use knee-to-neck techniques…photographs taken as recently as March have shown Israeli forces using the same restraint on unarmed protesters just yards from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City.”

Coincidence? People can make up their own mind.

Perhaps a more pertinent question to be asked is what exactly are the Israelis teaching various US police departments? And what is it, precisely, that US police departments believe they can learn from their Israeli counterpart that is applicable to the ethos of protecting and serving people in their own communities?

The sheer number of black victims of police violence across the United States is compatible with an ethos of internal repression rather policing. Along with the overweening militarisation of US police departments, it’s as if your average cop believes him and herself to be engaged in pest control when it comes to black America.

Here the parallel with Israeli security forces vis-à-vis the Palestinians is inarguable. And here we arrive at the proverbial heart of the matter. Black Lives Matter can only ever be anti-colonial in character. Blacks in America and to an extent also here in the UK are victims of domestic colonialism, while the Palestinians are victims of settler colonialism. This makes them natural allies in the same struggle against an apparatus of oppression that is underpinned by white supremacy, of which Zionism is but a species. And at this juncture, digressing for a moment in the interests of pointing out that white supremacy is as much an ideological construct as a racial one, the murals of George Floyd that have appeared on the Falls Road in Belfast in recent weeks are wholly in keeping with an Irish republican tradition that has been forged in resistance to the white supremacist reaction of Ulster loyalism in these here parts too.

In the end, the white supremacist knee that lay on the neck of George Floyd in Minneapolis recently is the same white supremacist knee that lies on the neck of the long suffering Palestinian people.

As for the Labour Party, it has under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership proudly nailed its colours to the mast of apartheid.

The retreat from the truth in the face of the wrath of the Board of Deputies is akin to the disinterment of the corpse of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Whilst there will be no shortage of efforts to apportion blame for the electoral defeat of Labour an indisputable factor was the PLP’s participation in the four year witch-hunt against Jeremy Corbyn. Symptomatic of the rage of sections of the PLP against the membership for having the audacity to elect Corbyn, was the case of Angela Eagle and the brick which was said to have been thrown through her office window, ostensibly by Corbyn supporters. On the back of this ‘incident’ she helped the rabid anti-Labour media to paint his supporters as thuggish bullies. “Call off the dogs”, she said. The only problem was that there was no brick thrown through the window of her office, there was only a cracked window in a shared stairwell. Yet Eagle never apologised for her falsehood. She and others in the PLP gave credence to the lies of the Mail, the Sun, the Telegraph. They facilitated the witch-hunt against Corbyn.

Behind this hostility was a fundamental contradiction between the aspirations and views of the membership and the majority of the Parliamentary Party which was still gripped by the neo-liberal virus of New Labour. After all, one of the key reasons for Corbyn’s victory was the outrage of members at the PLP when Harriett Harman was temporary Leader. Labour abstained on the welfare reforms, the ‘hostile environment’ against the poor and the disabled. Blair had adopted the Clintonite ‘tough love’ which ‘incentivised’ people who were dismissed as scroungers. The abstention was rooted in this reactionary New Labour policy. Only 40 Labour MPs voted against the reforms.

That such a weak creature as the Labour left was able to win the leadership election was a reflection of the bankruptcy of Blairism, made obvious by the global crisis of capitalism. Although it didn’t receive much attention Gordon Brown’s statement in his interview during the recent election campaign was significant. “The neo-liberal consensus was wrong,” he said, admittedly somewhat belatedly. This consensus was the bedrock of New Labour’s politics.

Faced with the ongoing global crisis, with another crash likely sooner rather than later, and deteriorating environmental conditions, the tinkering which most of the PLP seems to want, is the equivalent of playing the fiddle whilst Rome burns. Some of them, such as Gareth Thomas want “moderation, and patriotism”. Others a “progressive patriotism”.

Heaping all the blame on Corbyn is just a convenient excuse. The election of Corbyn was a necessary means of beginning to break from the politics of New Labour. Yet there was no thorough-going critique of New Labour.¹ Not long after Corbyn’s first election I was at a meeting in Bracknell where John McDonnell spoke about the ‘good things’ Labour did in the public sector. This may have gone down well with those still attached to New Labour but it was a travesty of the truth. It was the New Labour government which opened up the NHS to the private sector, sought to eradicate council housing, promoted the growth of the private rented sector by tax breaks to buy-to-let landlords. The deregulation which was de rigueur under New Labour was one of the contributory factors to the Grenfell Fire disaster. It introduced austerity into the NHS with its £20 billion cut just before the 2010 election. The global crisis which resulted from neo-liberalism destroyed the political foundations of New Labour. That was why its supporters lost so heavily in the two leadership contests. They had no credible political perspective.

Let those nostalgic for those good old days (when the Sun supported Labour) explain why it was that after the first four years of government there was an historically unprecedented 12% fall in turnout at the 2001 general election, to 59.4%. Here was the beginning of the ‘disaffection with Westminster politics’. The scale of this fall can be measured by the fact that in the previous 21 general elections the turnout had always been over 70%. There was a widespread sentiment that it was difficult to tell the difference between the two major parties. There was a large scale exodus of Party membership because they could not stomach New Labour’s neo-liberalism and the partnership with the US war machine.

A constructive critique of the leadership – liberalism in the face of a ruthless ruling class

The culpability of the PLP, however, should not stop us from a thorough-going critique of Jeremy and John McDonnell’s leadership and their mistakes. This is not a holier than thou or sectarian criticism but simply the need to learn from experience.

We have just had a salutary lesson in the ruthlessness of the British ruling class, its propagandists and its hangers-on. Any lie, any calumny, however outrageous, will be used to prevent the election of a government and a movement which might threaten their power, their wealth and their privilege. There have been many historical precedents. Despite the Zinoviev letter in 1924 Labour gained an extra million votes. Churchill’s preposterous assertion that Labour would introduce “some sort of Gestapo” had no influence on the outcome of the 1945 election. Today, with 24 hour media and ubiquitous social media, lies have better prospects of being taken as good coin. The witch-hunt against Corbyn has been withering and constant, to an unprecedented degree.

However, the key factor in Labour’s electoral failure is the one-sided class war we have suffered for 40 years since the watershed year of 1979. Jeremy’s injunction of “a kinder, gentler politics” in the face of this was pure small l liberalism. Although he can be very dogged in defending principles that he holds dear he is an instinctive conciliator. But you cannot conciliate with people who are out to destroy you. That was what the worst sections of the PLP wanted to do. They collaborated with the Tory media to keep Corbyn out of Downing Street. ‘Labour cannot win under Corbyn’ became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many of them did not want Labour to win under Corbyn.

Jeremy’s instinctive conciliatory nature was expressed even after the defeat of the attempted coup against him. To take one example, he gave John Healey, one of the coup supporters, his job back even though he was the main obstacle to radicalising Labour’s housing policy. And still members of the Shadow Cabinet were leaking to the press and undermining Corbyn. Deputy Leader Tom Watson was allowed to get away with the most outrageous behaviour without serious challenge.

Momentum and ‘Corbynism’

There were problems from the very beginning of ‘Corbynism’. The Labour Representation Committee, of which John McDonnell was the chair, was effectively frozen out the leadership campaign and Jeremy and John plumped for John Lansman as their main lieutenant. A campaign to democratise the Labour Party therefore rested on a movement, Momentum, which was undemocratic; set up as a company owned by John Lansman. Later on Lansman would change its constitution by fiat. You cannot democratise the Labour Party whilst using undemocratic methods yourself. Symptomatic of Lansman’s approach was the bureaucratic attempt to remove Watson just before the general election by getting rid of the position of Deputy Leader. As an act of stupidity it has rarely been surpassed. The timing was appalling but in any case it was the action of a ‘machine man’ who attempted to tackle a political problem – the treachery of Watson – by a machine manoeuvre rather than openly challenging his collaboration with the anti-Labour media; something which should have been done a long time before that.

In the early days John McDonnell told us that he and Jeremy would come under enormous pressure and that we would have to provide a counter-pressure. However, he and Jeremy were effectively quarantined. It was impossible to get to them, surrounded as they were by ‘advisers’ who, to my knowledge, had little experience in the working class movement, certainly at the grassroots level. Jeremy and John acquiesced at this state of affairs. They chose who they spoke to and who they didn’t.

Anti-Semitism, real and counterfeit

The issue of anti-Semitism was badly mishandled. Jeremy and John, by the way they dealt with it, gave credence to the idea that there was a major problem with anti-Semitism in the Party. Instead of saying let’s examine the evidence of the extent of anti-semitism, real and counterfeit, we heard generalities about opposing anti-Semitism. What has been forgotten was that when the issue first arose the General Secretary was McNichol, who would be one of the key organisers of the attempted coup to oust Corbyn, together with Watson. There was undoubtedly a factional purpose behind this assault, reflected by the fact that Margaret Hodge, sent in hundreds of complaints about online behaviour, the majority of which² were against people who weren’t actually Labour Party members. Instead of being openly transparent and publishing the facts – the number of complaints, how many were found to be true, how many were vexatious, how many were expelled, or warned – the issue was allowed to fester when McNichol was the General Secretary, precisely because it was a useful weapon against Corbyn.

There is, of course, no place for anti-semites in the Labour Party, but opponents of the Israeli state were slandered as anti-semites. The sharpest point of this dispute was between Jewish members of the Party, Zionists and anti-or-non-Zionists. The initial wave of complaints included Jewish members accusing other Jewish members of being anti-Semitic. One example was Glen Secker, Secretary of the Jewish Vocie for Labour group. Even when no case was found in relation to the accusation, there was no apology from McNichol’s apparatus, and no action was taken against the vexatious claimant. There were other examples. When Jenny Formby took over, statistics were published but by then they weren’t believed and they were not detailed enough. Even the latest statistics, recently published, provide only numbers without any indication as to what members have done to merit expulsion or sanction. Without that information then the members cannot judge whether the apparatus has acted fairly nor hold them to account.

The political purpose of the witch-hunt against Jewish members by Jewish members was to outlaw all but the mildest criticisms of Israel. The BDS campaign and deeming Israel to be a racist state were denounced as anti-Semitic. People were denounced for their political views not for anything they had done. The Jewish Labour Movement (a Labour Party affiliate), in particular, launched a war against other Jewish members, as well as Corbyn, ending up with a policy of opposing the election of a Labour government so long as Corbyn was leader. This was clear grounds for disaffiliation, but nothing will be done because it would be denounced as anti-Semitism. Imagine if the left had opposed the election of a Blair government? They would have been swiftly shown the door. Indeed the RMT was disaffiliated for supporting Scottish Socialist Party candidates. The JSM was in breach of party rules which demand support of all Labour candidates but no action has been taken nor even criticism made.

During the election campaign the very people who used the issue as a means of preventing the election of Labour, launched an orchestrated campaign, culminating in the propaganda of the most rabid ex-Labour MPs, Austin and Woodcock, assisted by Rabbi Mervis.

Politically, Jeremy and John’s failure to identify the fact that there was a political aspect of this campaign, designed to make anti-Zionism persona non grata, meant they handed the initiative to those who were trying to bring them down. Whilst there was all manner of offensive rubbish published on social media, at the root of the dispute were conflicting views about the nature of the Israeli state.

Ironically, the very author of the IHRA working definition of anti-semitism, Kenneth Stern has said that anti-semitism has been weaponised by right wing Jews to stop debate on Israel. This opinion, of course, has been sufficient reason for Labour members to be expelled.

During the general election campaign the Jewish Chronicle was found guilty of a breach of press standards in relation to its reporting of events in the Liverpool Riverside Labour Party. It lied about what happened there – the myth of the local MP being “driven out of the Labour Party” – and against an individual member, Audrey White. Needless to say this did not receive much coverage in the press.

When the three Jewish publications issued their joint statement saying that the election of a Corbyn government was an “existential threat” to British Jews, Watson and co did not even object to such ridiculous hyperbole. Their silence in the face of a comment which implied that Jews would not be able to exist in Britain (was Corbyn going to set up concentration camps?) gave credence to such hysteria. When the Jewish Labour movement said they would not support a Labour government so long as Corbyn was leader, Watson and co remained silent.

Recently Barnet Momentum managed to get hold of a video from the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism which shows a gloating Joe Glasman drunk with joy at having ‘killed the beast’ (Corbyn). It expresses a chilling Jewish nationalism which suggests that England’s green and pleasant land has been restored by putting Johnson back into Downing Street. Judge for yourself here .

One of the reasons why supporters of the Israeli state have been able to present political criticism has somehow unfair on Israel, treating it differently to other countries, has been the absence of any campaigning by Labour in support of those struggling against the theocratic or military regimes in the Middle East. This has facilitated the Israeli state’s contrast of itself as “the only democracy in the Middle East”, with the autocratic and dictatorial regimes in other countries. Of course, Israel did nothing to support the democratic struggles of the Arab spring and has quite happily had friendly relations with the some of the regimes such as that of Egypt.

Corbyn’s unpopularity

We are told that Corbyn was “an issue on the doorstep”. Undoubtedly he was unpopular in some quarters. Yet they don’t follow on by asking why was that? Was it all his fault? Much of the material in the media combined the slanderous (the Czech agent) with the ridiculous (his non-existent intention to close down the army). However, what was critical in creating this response on the doorstep was the campaign against Corbyn from within the PLP, supported by Watson, who spared no effort in collaborating with the Tory media. Without any mandate whatsoever, he was regularly promoting his own policy against that agreed by the Party. Jeremy’s instinct was to do nothing to lead to a blow up. Allowing Watson to behave as he did, however, meant that he came across as a weak Leader. Frankly, he should have demanded Watson’s resignation for his undemocratic behaviour. He and others were organising what was in effect a civil war against Corbyn and the elected leadership bodies. MPs like Ian Austin and John Woodcock were saying in the House of Commons that Corbyn was ‘unfit to be Prime Minister’ and generally abusing him (e.g. in defence of the Iraq war). They should have had the whip taken off them but nothing was done against their treacherous behaviour which showed contempt for the membership. After all, if Labour MPs were seen to not support their leader and denounce him as a “terrorist supporter”, why would you expect people to vote for Labour and put him in Downing Street? Yet Jeremy and the NEC did nothing to challenge this. Its repetition over time had an impact. We will never know now but the media witch-hunt may not have had the impact it did but for the fact that sections of the PLP were feeding it. It is an old cliché that voters don’t vote for divided parties.

The Brexit conundrum

In relation to Brexit Corbyn is now being damned from both sides: for not supporting Brexit and not allowing Labour to become a Remain party. The problem with the compromise position was that it alienated both those who wanted to leave and those who wanted to remain; the leavers, because staying in a/the customs union was being seen as ‘EU lite’ (in Michael Gove’s words) and the remainers because it proposed giving another opportunity to leavers to vote to depart. According to the Ashcroft poll data Labour lost 11% of their voters in areas which voted leave and 6% in those which voted remain. Emily Thornbury’s criticism that we should have had a referendum before the election is spurious because there was no way that a referendum would have been conceded by the Tories.

Jeremy’s liberal streak was expressed in the ludicrous idea that Labour wanted to “bring the country together” as if if had been ‘together’ before the referendum and it was possible (and desirable) to unify the classes. In any case the message was not well received because ‘the country’ did not want to be brought together, it wanted its (opposite) way.

The anti-austerity party?

For all the talk of Labour being an “anti-austerity party”, in practice Labour councils were implementing it. ‘Sorry, it’s not us, it’s the Tories fault’, was not well received by the victims of austerity. Perhaps the key point was when Jeremy and John sent the letter to Labour local authorities telling them to set legal budgets. Whilst there is no simple answer to the difficult circumstances councils face (they have a legal obligation to produce a balanced budget), the fact is that there was no effort to organise a national campaign bringing together councils, unions and community groups, to demand funding based on social needs. The Tories had ended the link between funding and an annual assessment of needs in 2013.

For many years Labour councils, most of them supportive of New Labour’s neo-liberalism (e.g. huge numbers of them transferred their housing stock to housing associations) acted not as representatives of the working class in their area but as administrators of central government decisions. It was no surprise therefore, that after the PLP, Labour councillors had the lowest level of support for Corbyn in the leadership elections. In reality Labour was an anti-austerity party in name only.

Scotland

In relation to Scotland, Jeremy must take responsibility because Labour was pursuing the line that the SNP was some sort of ‘Tartan Tory Party’. Accusing the SNP of implementing austerity when Labour councils were doing the same was not exactly a convincing argument. Labour under his leadership took no account of the fact that New Labour had destroyed Labour’s electoral base. Historically, Labour had been the Party of the establishment in Scotland. It had treated its working class base as electoral fodder. The SNP was to the left of New Labour, not just in its rhetoric but it some of the things it did in government. It ended Right to Buy, prevented the market being introduced into the NHS, opposed tuition fees, ended prescription charges. The last straw, in terms of its electoral consequences, was Labour’s joint campaign with the Tories in the independence referendum, ‘in defence of the Union’.

There were grounds for Labour working with the SNP against the Tories in Westminster but instead of working with them where they could find agreement, Labour’s unrealistic election campaign was based on the unrealistic idea that they could win a majority in Scotland. Whilst the SNP is certainly no socialist Party, the SNP government was more social democratic than New Labour. That’s one of the reasons why there was little ‘Corbyn bounce’ in Scotland, winning only five more seats in 2017. It was no wonder that Labour lost 200,000 votes in Scotland in the 2019 general election.

Labour should now support the right of the Scottish people to self-determination. It should not line up with Johnson in opposition to a referendum. It would be perfectly principled to support a referendum yet oppose independence. Lining up with the Tories on this, though, would deepen its decline.

The worst defeat since 1935?

Labour lost 2.58 million votes in 2019 compared to 2017. It has been described as the worst defeat since 1935, the Party is facing “oblivion” and so on. In terms of the number of seats Labour won, it was the worst result since 1935. But it still received over 10 million votes, more than under Miliband or Gordon Brown (Labour received 8.6 million votes at the fag end of the Blair/Brown incumbency). Obviously the worst feature was the loss of seats in the so-called “Labour heartlands”. What happened in some of these places, though not universally, was the collapse of the Labour vote; the result of abstentions, voting for the Tories, or Brexit Party, and to a lesser extent the Libdems and the Green. See the Appendix for some stats on the seats that the Tories took from Labour.

To large extent the loss of seats was a direct result of the decision of the Brexit Party to act as an auxiliary for the Tories. They decided to withdraw from Tory seats which might have let Labour win some more and concentrate all their fire on Labour. As I have explained elsewhere in 18 of the 54 seats³ lost, the Brexit Party vote was higher than the majority the Tories won the seats by.

Working class people voting for the Tories is hardly a new phenomenon. Historically between a quarter and a third have voted for them at various times. What was new about this was that some of them appeared to vote for them for the first time and Labour lost seats that it had not lost for a long time. Even in the 203 seats it held onto, its vote declined considerably – 916,000 less than in 2017.

Reasons for the defeat

So why did Labour lose the general election badly after the relative advance in 2017 when it gained 3.5 million votes on 2015?

• The PLP gave credence to the witch-hunt against Corbyn in the media. Corbyn was perceived as a weak leader. By allowing the initiative to rest with those in the PLP who wanted to destroy him (even at the cost of losing an election), he could not challenge that perception.

• The Brexit policy was untenable, alienating people on both sides of the divide. Corbyn declaring himself ‘neutral’ (an ‘honest broker’) added fuel to the fire.

• There were, of course, more long-term reasons for a collapse of Labour’s vote in many areas which voted heavily for leave. There has been a big decline in class consciousness. It’s not that people don’t think of themselves as being working class, so much as they do not consider themselves as being part of a collective; a social group with interests in common. Obviously this is the result of the defeats we suffered from the 1980s onwards. Union membership has more than halved. Many younger people have never experienced a union in a workplace. They have to fend for themselves as best they can, as individuals. Even where there are organised unions, many of the members have joined as an ‘insurance policy’. They don’t conceive of themselves as active members who stick together for their common interests. They are in the union so that if they have an individual problem they can have some help. What help they get, of course, is dependent on the volunteer lay organisation in the workplace. Full-time officials cannot possibly handle the weight of individual members’ cases.

• There has been a decline of historical memory which was kept alive by generations of activists who passed on their experience to their children and their workmates. Our sense of our collective power was the result of improving our material conditions through practical action and solidarity. The Heath government, it should be remembered, called an election in 1974 on the basis of ‘who rules, the government or the trades unions?’ and he lost.

• For all the talk about a new radical politics the election campaign was fairly standard. Vote Labour and you will get x amount a year was a traditional appeal to self-interest. Policies were announced with unseemly regularity giving the impression of improvisation which was a desperate attempt to find something to shift the polls.

• Despite the fact that the housing crisis impacts not only on those directly effected, but parents and grand-parents concerned at the circumstances of their children and grand children, Labour’s housing policy was not presented as a key one. In fact a housing policy document was not issued until the day before the election!

• Despite the inclusion of policies of nationalisation there was no overarching theme of ending the market rip-off which has been suffered since Thatcher’s privatisation of the public utilities and council housing. Social needs could have been counterposed to profiteering. Thatcher famously talked of driving back the boundaries of the state, Labour should have spoken of driving back the boundaries of the market.

Crisis of social democracy

What does Labour do now? What will its orientation be? What governmental programme does it need? Finding a solution based simply on electoral tactics, presentation of a saleable leader, ‘acceptable’ to the electorate, is guaranteed to fail. Critics of Corbyn say that the left was not interested in winning power. That’s not true. What does Labour want power for? One way of preventing the media attacking them is for it to adopt an approach which is acceptable to the media tycoons. After all, this was what New Labour did. Who can forget the picture of Tony Blair holding a copy of the Sun with its headline, “The Sun supports Tony Blair”.

The crisis of the Labour Party can only be fully understood in its historic and global context. When the post-war Bretton Woods system was abandoned in 1971, the global architecture of capitalism was fundamentally altered. Liberalisation (the abandoning of the international rules adopted at Bretton Woods) took place, allowing free movement of capital. Social democratic parties abandoned their reformist programmes and implemented neo-liberal policies, including wholesale privatisation. New Labour was no innovation. It merely adopted a philosophy and practice which had already been implemented in France, Germany, Spain, Australia and New Zealand by the social democratic parties there. In Britain the phenomenon was simply delayed by the 18 years in government of the Tories.

After the global crash of 2008-9 many social democratic parties adopted austerity and have been severely punished electorally for it, with historically unprecedented decline of their electoral support. Labour’s electoral advance in 2017, when it gained 3.5 million votes was an exception.

What has kept the Labour Party together as a ‘broad church’ for so long was the absence of a proportional voting system. Elsewhere, there have been splits from social democracy during its neo-liberal phase, and other organisations have grown and sometimes participated in governments. Where PR has been introduced this has been reflected in a break of sections of the electoral base of social democracy to other left wing parties. In Scotland that was first expressed in the election of six Scottish Socialist Party members to the Scottish Parliament. The collapse of the SSP, the reasons for which are beyond the scope of this article, opened the way for the advance of the SNP which increasingly won over ex-Labour voters.

In Greece, the historic social democratic party, PASOK, was virtually wiped out as a result of its involvement in austerity governments, and Syriza was the electoral expression of the attempt of the working class to put in power a government which would serve its interests. The political collapse of Syriza and its adoption of an austerity programme which it had opposed was the result of a political and economic campaign of the EU leaders to prevent the success of a left wing government. What they were really worried about was an example which might spread.

What happened to Syriza was a marker of what a Corbyn government would face. The ruing class would either have tried to neuter such a government or destroy it. As it happened its campaign designed to stop Corbyn getting into Downing Street was a great success. Their efforts were inevitable since any potential government which threatened their wealth, their power and their privilege, could expect the same.

First past the post or PR?

The two party system in Britain has rested on the First Past The Post system. The idea of Labour being ‘a broad church’ is rooted in it. Labour could always realistically say it was the only governmental alternative to the Tories. Even the SDP/Alliance which was the most successful attempt to replace Labour (only 2% behind them in the 1983 general election) failed to make an electoral breakthrough because of FPTP.

This has encouraged a kind of Labour Party arrogance which dismisses all other parties even those with which there may be a lot of agreement on policy and political programme, such as the Green Party. Practically, it is difficult to see how Labour could win a Parliamentary majority today, especially given its collapse in Scotland. Moreover, it faces a task not just of winning a majority within the UK Parliament but of needing to win a majority in English seats. The introduction of English Laws for English Votes, on issues which only relate to England, makes Labour’s task even more difficult. If it won a majority in the UK Parliament but failed to win one on English seats it would be unable to implement its manifesto. That would be likely to produce a parliamentary stasis creating a constitutional crisis.

In the new Parliament today, in English constituencies, Labour has only 180 seats compared to the 345 of the Tories (3.5 million less votes). It would have to take 85 seats off of the Tories to gain a small majority in English seats; a tall order.

Labour should campaign for electoral reform; for proportional representation. It should do so not just for pragmatic reasons or the difficulties of its electoral challenge, but because First Past the Post is undemocratic. It provides the winning Party with a Parliamentary majority which has no relationship with the votes they received. In many areas it has created permanent seats for one Party or another; permanent administrations in local government. This is a corrupting influence. The Poulson/T.Dan Smith affair, associated with local council building, was the classic example. It is also corrupting in the sense that semi-permanent one party states at the local level make for complacent administrations which take their electors for granted. The alienation of much of Labour’s electoral base has been the result of the way that some of these semi-permanent Labour councils have acted.

The classic left argument against PR was that it would prevent a majority Labour government being elected. This was no reason to support an undemocratic system, but in any case, the two Party system has served as a drag on the radicalism of previous Labour governments. Today, the two Party system is dead. The Scottish and Welsh assemblies and the introduction of PR there killed it. It will not be revived.

The other argument is that PR leads to coalitions becoming the norm. There is nothing in principal wrong with coalitions, it depends on who they are with and what their programmes are. The destruction of the post-war gains of the working class which had been introduced by reforming Labour governments underlines the fact that a single Party is no guarantee of preserving social gains it introduces.

Electoralism

One of the defining features of social democracy has been its electoralism. Power has been conceived as simply electing a government. Yet faced with the ruthlessness of the ruling class, any attempt to challenge their wealth, power, and privilege, cannot succeed without building the power of the working class and its organisations, in work and in its communities. Given that we have been on the receiving end of a one sided class war for 40 years, we face the need to rebuild working class organisation, be it trades unions, tenant or community groups. Any attempt to challenge the entrenched wealth and power of Britain’s ruling class needs a powerful mass movement to support it against attempts to bring it down.

The Labour Party was founded by the trades unions as a means of enacting legislation to defend their members against the employer and state assault on their rights and their exploitation in the workplace. It was considered to be a working class party even if it was an alliance between working class and middle class members. Blair changed that when he transformed it into a neo-liberal party. He famously said that the founding of Labour had been a historic mistake which had “split the progressives”⁴. The leader of the Labour Party believed it should never have been founded! If he was unable to achieve what he wanted, a fusion with the Liberals, he managed to destroy the electoral base of Labour and drove out the majority of the membership who could not stomach its neo-liberalism and the alliance with the American ruling class which gave us the Iraq war. The large scale exodus of members in disgust at New Labour led many local parties to abandon their branch/ward structure and move to all member meetings. Those members who did not attend these meetings had no organic connection to the Party.

A ‘social movement’

Under Corbyn there was much talk about Labour building a ‘social movement’. Community organisers were hired and a series of meetings were organised. The main flaw in this was that it was done with electoral advantage in mind. In Swindon the first of these meetings was a wasted opportunity. Instead of a discussion with community activists we had a meeting which was controlled and the speakers chosen by the organiser.

The struggles of the working class and trades unions have always extended beyond the workplace. Trades unions activists were often the backbone of tenant and community organisations. During the First World War it was the rent strikes of working class women and the threat of supportive strike action by trades unions which made the government introduce a rent freeze. This action also was instrumental in the first large scale council house building programme after the war, which was designed to mitigate against the prospects of a post-war radicalisation.

Working class communities have usually got the short end of the stick. They have had to fight for facilities and funding which is more readily available for more well-heeled areas.

Probably two of the most positive phenomenon over the past few years have been

• the growth of ACORN and other tenant/community unions which have succeeded in building collective tenant action. They have had success in tackling landlords and poor living conditions and raising the profile of housing politically on the national level. That is why, for instance, the government has committed to ending Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions from the private rented sector. ACORN also strives to build the collective power of working class communities.

• The success of some small independent unions in organising, for instance, cleaners, often migrant workers, winning the living wage and unionisation. These have been considered to be difficult to organise workers. They have shown what the major unions might do if they organised the most exploited workers. These successes have been based on collective organisation in which the members are involved rather than passive subs payers. On a small scale it has shown the possibility of struggles which can facilitate the rebirth of working class collectivism.

Instead of passively looking towards a future Labour government to do good deeds for us, we need to build our collective strength and fighting capacity. The electoral prospects of Labour will be enhanced by the rebuilding of a working class movement and class consciousness. A sense of powerlessness, the result of defeats and weak organisation, is a drag on its electoral prospects.

Patriotism and our glorious past

The appeal to patriotism exemplified by the article by MP Pat McFadden in the Observer suggests that Corbyn was unpopular because of his ‘world view’, hostile to ‘the west’.

Historically, Labour had an ‘Atlanticist’ position, reflected in their support for the ‘special relationship’ with the USA. During the 2^nd world war and the cold war this alliance was presented as defending the ‘free world’. This myth persists to this day. Yet the camp of the ‘free world’ included the British empire, what remained of it, and the apartheid system in the USA. Of course, the Russian regime, with its gulag, was no friend of the working class, but the alliance was fraudulent because the US regime’s idea of ‘freedom’ included vehement and violent opposition to democracy where it conflicted with US interests. And Britain connived with some of this, for instance in relation to Iran, where support for the dictatorial regime of the Shah opened the way to the theocratic dictatorship of Khomeini and the Islamic republic. Britain supported the 1953 coup against the government of Mossadeq because it wanted to keep ‘its’ oil in Iran. The Iranian government had nationalised it.

The Atlee government’s domestic programme was hampered by its decision to support the Korean War and to launch a rearmament programme. The Wilson government which, although it would not commit to troops, supported America’s war in Vietnam and in a case which has recently been in the courts, emptied the Chagos islands of its population to facilitate a US base; one of the worst stains on Labour’s record. The attempt to maintain Britain as a “global power” would lead to the debacle of Suez and much later, Iraq.

Rebecca Long Bailey, in her Guardian article, somewhat confusingly wrote of “progressive patriotism” in the context of the support of British workers for the boycott of the US southern states during the civil war. In fact it was an example of selfless working class solidarity. A more recent example was the boycott of Chile by Scottish workers, recorded in the film Nae Pasaran. Any socialist policy needs to be based on working class internationalism; direct solidarity between workers in different countries and support for democratic struggles. Diplomacy or ‘strategic interests’ are based on the idea of the ‘national interest. We need to support democratic struggles be they in the USA, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Israel. Our enemy’s enemy is not our friend. The USA is not our ‘ally’. Its rulers never did anything which wasn’t rooted in self-interest and the national arrogance of an imperial power. Even at the end of the Second World War it was quick to abandon support for Britain despite the fact that the war had exhausted its resources. The USA remains an imperial power which seeks to impose its interests on the world, be it with Obama or Trump in the White House.

What next?

Obviously the election of Leader and Deputy Leader will have a big influence on the direction of the Party. However, whoever is elected, there will be pressure to shift the direction of the Party, to shift it rightwards. Even the candidate labeled as ‘continuity Corbyn’ has said she would press that nuclear button if necessary (commit mass murder – “if you’ve got a deterrent you have to be prepared to use it”) and sign up to the Board of Deputies ultimatum (its 10 Pledges). There will undoubtedly be a battle to defend some of the policy advances won over the last few years. Yet the key question in terms of the evolution of the Labour Party is will it mobilise opposition to the Tory government? Jeremy Corbyn has said that Labour is the resistance to this government, but it failed to build any resistance under the previous government, especially in the local government sphere.

With no prospect of a Labour government and a workable majority for the Tories in Parliament, Labour cannot defeat the government in Parliament. If it continues to just function as an electoral machine it will not succeed in shifting the balance of forces and opinion in the country. Despite all the talk of the Tories turning into “the party of the working class” it remains a Party shich supports an economic system based on the exploitation of labour.

Whoever is elected Leader there needs to be a thorough-going discussion about the strategy and aims of the Labour Party in the global context. We face an unprecedented crisis of capitalism on a world scale combined with the environmental crisis which is worsening the conditions of life. Social democratic tinkering cannot address these issues. Rebuilding working class organisation is critical if we are to break out of the cycle of defeats.

Martin Wicks

February 2020

The election of 2019 has given Boris Johnson the majority he craved. His campaign was fought on the most fundamentally dishonest basis: that he could provide a Brexit that would regenerate run-down post-industrial communities and restore Britain to its mythical place in the sun. In reality, this new government will smash or sell off the remnants of the welfare state, destroy all remaining rights and protections, and further reduce the living conditions of those hardest hit by years of neo-liberalism to those currently experienced by the US underclass. In the process, social conservatism will increase, accompanied by violence and intolerance, feeding the far right and its most extreme elements.

Labour fought to win, on a programme that would have brought about a sea change in British social, economic and political life. But the valiant efforts of tens of thousands of Labour Party activists, who worked tirelessly to try and defeat the Tories, were unable to turn back the tsunami of lies and disinformation that the establishment and its allies, in the press and media, wove through the entire campaign. There were two key messages that the Tories stuck to and which enabled their victory: Get Brexit Done and the vilification of Corbyn as a traitor and an anti-semite. The Labour Party’s compromise position on Brexit did not win back Leave voters and lost the party support from some who’d voted to remain. More than 80% of the Tory vote intersected with the Leave vote. In the final days of the campaign the Tories ramped up the racist rhetoric around migration and Brexit with Johnson saying ‘EU migrants have been able to treat the UK as if it’s part of their own country for too long’. Nobody should doubt that a vote for the Tories was a vote for bigotry, xenophobia and racism.

This is a new political situation. It was no ordinary defeat but one which marks the entry of the far right into mainstream British political life via the Tory Party. The Brexit Party was smashed by the Cummings strategy and gained no seats but Farage will no doubt still have his political reward for standing aside in Tory-held seats. This new government is already far to the right of any previous Tory administration. There will be new draconian legislation on sentencing, on migration and new restrictions on trades union rights and attacks on the independence of the judiciary. There will be changes to the voting system with the introduction of photo ID. The more liberal sections of the media are already under attack – Channel 4 News have had their license to broadcast threatened. The NHS will be opened up to US pharma companies and further privatisation. A ‘no deal’ Brexit is now on the cards with all the economic chaos that would entail. This is a victory for the most reactionary forces in British society.

We must now prepare for a long period of bitter defensive struggles. The analysis of this defeat must focus not just on the proximate causes but also its deeper roots. The neo-liberal onslaught of the last 40 years, privatising and deindustrialising, destroyed working class communities, many of which turned away from Labour to enable Johnson’s victory. These old industrial areas suffered not just from Thatcher’s policies but were also left to rot under New Labour. Poverty and social decay had provided an ideal breeding ground for far right ideas, uncontested by a Labour Party which had itself embraced neo-liberalism. Corbyn’s policies correctly identified and sought to address these long standing problems with strategies of investment and economic regeneration but confidence in Labour had been long destroyed.

This breaking of the relationship of trust between Labour and sections of the working class took place incrementally over many years. Labour abandoned its traditional role as tribune of the working class, from the late 1980s onwards, and parties of the far right moved to fill that space in former industrial areas which often were treated by Labour merely as reliable voting fodder, safe seats for party front-benchers. In general elections from 1997 to 2010, throughout the New Labour period, the British National Party (BNP) vote rose from 35,000 to over 560,000 and many of the largest votes were in these areas. As the BNP went into decline the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) emerged and it built on those votes. And just as the BNP vote morphed into a much larger UKIP vote in those areas, so this laid the ground for the turn to the Tories in this election. Paul Mason wrote about Leigh, the old mining seat where he was born, ‘Voting Ukip turned out to be a gateway drug to voting Conservative’.

The defeat mirrors Trump’s 2016 victory in the rust-belt states in the US; Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, and Marine Le Pen’s rise in the former industrial areas of northern France. Johnson’s victory is based on the further erosion of Labour’s vote in its traditional heartlands; up until the election most of these new Tory seats had been Labour’s for generations. He achieved this through convincing enough former Labour voters in the Midlands and the North that the ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan stands for them. Indeed it has come to represent many things to many people and often little to do with EU membership: giving the elite a kicking, keeping out foreigners, taking back control of their own lives and making Britain great again. Johnson’s brand of English nationalism has subverted the pride in community that existed formerly though the collective strength and dignity of the organised working class and steered it towards xenophobia and intolerance devoid of class consciousness and solidarity. But however voters have interpreted Johnson’s promises, he will deliver nothing for these communities.

The trade union and labour movement is deeply conscious of the social deprivation in these areas and many had identified the real problems that Labour would have in sustaining its vote. But the very different prescriptions on offer were insufficient to stem the tide. When dissatisfaction with Labour was far more deep-rooted than simply appearing to be a Remain party, and the Leave vote had come to represent a much more complex set of factors than simply leaving the EU, Labour’s last minute attempts to nuance its approach to a second referendum, or to send out more Leave shadow cabinet members to canvass in working-class Leave constituencies, were hardly going to touch the problem.

For the last 40 years the trade union movement has been substantially weakened by the neoliberal offensive. The anti-trades union laws that Thatcher introduced in order to curtail trade union power were never challenged in the New Labour years. There were many bitter battles starting with the steelworkers’ strike in 1980 in which major sections of the working class came into struggle but all were left isolated and all went down to eventual defeat. The most important and decisive was the great miners’ strike of 1984/5. This was a heroic struggle by the most important section of the working class and it contained the possibility of defeating Thatcher and changing the course of recent history. The miners were betrayed by the leadership of both the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress and we are still living with the outcome of that betrayal.

The UK now has the most restrictive anti-trade union legislation in Europe. This October members of the Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) voted for strike action. It was one of the biggest turnouts in a ballot for many years and 97.1 per cent backed a strike. However the employers went to court and got an injunction to prevent the action on a small technical point. There was little response to this from the broader trade union movement. All hope rested with a new Labour government which would repeal the anti-trade union laws.

Trades union membership has been seriously eroded, halving since 1979. Four million workers are already either on zero-hours contracts or casual contracts with ‘hours to be notified’ or suffering from intermittent employment or underemployment. This section of the working class – the ‘precariat’ – is not unionised and will expand under this new Tory regime.

We have reached the point where it is almost impossible for strikes to take place or to be effective. The Johnson government will introduce more laws to curb the unions and Brexit will see workers’ rights further undermined. The Tories want a cheap labour force unprotected by trade unions or employment rights. The post-Brexit economic model that the Tories are proposing is that of the authoritarian city-state Singapore with low corporation tax, low wages, weak trade unions, and few welfare provisions. Migrant labour will still be employed in the agricultural and other sectors but these will be guest workers with no rights at all and therefore prey to the worst employers. However, the Tories’ plan for a deregulated casualised economy won’t overcome the relative decline of British capitalism.

The anti-semitism campaign

The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is enormously popular amongst Labour’s activists and amongst young people generally but there was a considerable antipathy to him in those areas where Labour lost heavily. Much of this was manufactured by the media, the establishment and by his opponents within his own party. It is to Jeremy’s enormous credit that he emerges from this campaign with great honour having withstood the most sustained personal vilification of any politician of modern times.

The political assassination of the Labour leader has been the central preoccupation of both the establishment and the right-wing within the Labour Party since he won the leadership in 2015. Former members of the security services have presented him as a threat to national security. He has been maligned as unpatriotic, a supporter of terrorism, a Stalinist, and an anti-semite. He has faced every possible smear, but the most effective and the one most developed over the last four years has been the anti-semitism campaign.

Anti-semitism exists in British society and across all political and religious groupings. The 2017 Staetsky report, ‘Anti-semitism in contemporary Great Britain’, does not show higher levels of anti-semitism on the left than on the right. In fact the reverse is the case and there is no serious analysis showing that the Labour Party is institutionally anti-semitic and therefore there are no grounds for the malicious statements during the election, by the Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, that Jeremy Corbyn was unfit for high office because he has been ‘complicit in prejudice’ and allowed the ‘poison of anti-semitism to take root in the party’.

This hostile campaign has been deeply damaging. It has been a manufactured and fraudulent, almost evidence-free, offensive. Central to this campaign has been the attempt to re-define anti-semitism to include opposition to the policies of Israel, and to curb criticism of these policies, particularly in relation to the suppression of the Palestinian people. This campaign to de-legitimise criticism of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is international. Thus two new members of the United States Congress Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, were denied visas to visit Israel because of their support for the pro-Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The Labour Party has been unable to counter this campaign, despite having adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-semitism in full and making speeding up and strengthening of its disciplinary procedures a top priority. The truth is that this is a campaign little concerned with racism; its central aim is to destroy the Corbyn leadership. It has sought to redefine anti-semitism and politically weaponise it against the left. Comrades from Jewish Voice for Labour have worked tirelessly to counter this campaign but it also needed support from the leadership which has not been forthcoming.

Socialist internationalism

Following this defeat Jeremy Corbyn will resign and the right wing will seek to blame him personally for this defeat. However the argument that Labour would have won under a different leader is wrong. The campaign against Corbyn has been vicious and any Labour leader proposing the changes that Corbyn did would have faced a similar onslaught. A new leader will not in itself resolve the political crisis Labour now faces. It would be a mistake and a misunderstanding of the political landscape and the source of this defeat to believe so.

In the election the Labour Party tried to face both ways on Brexit. This was not a credible policy; it was unsustainable and it lost more votes than it gained. The Tories’‘Get Brexit Done’ slogan dominated the campaign and left little room for the Labour manifesto to make the kind of impact it had in 2017.

Brexit has been the vehicle for the far right’s ascendency. The hard right has taken over the Tory Party, driving out ‘one nation Tories’, transforming the Tory Party into a new UKIP. Brexit facilitates a reactionary anti-migrant nationalism and must be fought from an internationalist socialist perspective. Solidarity with migrants from inside and outside the EU and opposition to the proposed Tory migration laws is an essential part of our campaigning work and will become even more so.

Brexit is the attempt to resolve the deepening contradictions of post-war British capitalism through economic nationalism. However it is presented by sections of the pro-Brexit left, it is a false solution. In the era of world economy and world politics it is not possible for the problems of war, poverty, unemployment, racism and environmental destruction to be dealt with at the level of the nation state. The nature of the system we face demands an internationalist strategy.

The present conditions of capitalist reproduction cannot be made eternal. The globalisation of capital deepens the growing rivalries between states. The contradictions within the world economy have been sharpened by the policy prescriptions taken to resolve the 2008 crisis. The US/China trade war has already led to a decline in world trade and Trump threatens to open new fronts at every turn. French luxury goods will be subject to 100% tariffs if Macron implements a digital services tax aimed at Google and Amazon. Thus the re-assertion of economic protectionism and nationalism echoes that of the 1930s which saw the preparations for a world war. US power has been ebbing since the 1960s and the immediate crisis revolves around the challenge from China to US dominance over world economics and politics.

The financial deregulation of the 1980s makes it now impossible for any state, and this includes the USA, to carry out an independent economic policy. It is not possible therefore for any government of the left to establish socialism within national boundaries. The labour movement must make central the question of internationalism and its opposition to Brexit located within that understanding. The lesson from Syriza in Greece – and this election – is that the left must propose policies within the framework of systemic change.

The world is more globalised, more integrated and joined up than ever before. There is no going back. There are no national solutions to our economic and social problems. Whether it is the environmental crisis or the disastrous economic system, we must work across national borders.

What Next?

This new Johnson government will be vicious but it has no underlying policy narrative and no solution to the problems facing British capitalism beyond subservience to US capital. The political crisis that the Brexit vote unleashed is not resolved. Scotland has swung significantly towards the SNP and there will be pressurefor  a second independence referendum.

Only a genuine democratic mass movement can defeat this government and that must be organised both in parliament and on the streets. There must be the widest and most open discussion throughout the labour movement about our strategy going forward.

There may now be some demoralisation among activists but there will also be anger. That anger will be the base on which working class struggle is rebuilt. Those of us who hold to an internationalist, anti-capitalist, pro-migrant perspective must unite our forces and find those forms of organisation that will enable us to forge a path that takes that offensive to this government.

The mass movement that propelled Jeremy to the leadership still has enormous potential. There is a deep desire particularly among young people for social change. Momentum which was set up to support Jeremy’s leadership has a membership of many tens of thousands and is an effective organisation for campaigning within the Labour Party and for electoral work. The World Transformed has developed an impressive range of political education. Many young activists are working within these structures – this is necessary work, but the centralised nature of these organisations can stifle the dynamism that is essential in building inclusive mass movements.

The concentration on political struggle has been focused within the Labour Party itself sometimes to the detriment of wider struggles and crucial social and political movements. This was partly explicable by a defensive focus when Jeremy faced almost constant attack from the right-wing in the party and repeated attempts to undermine his leadership. No doubt there will be further battles within the Labour Party and this defeat will strengthen the right-wing but it must also mark a turning point for us on the left. We require a new strategy to defeat this Johnson/Trump government. Let us unite our forces and bring together those activists both within and outside the Labour Party who share a common political understanding, recognising the shift to the far right that has taken place.

A central part of the work we now face is the rebuilding of the fighting capacity of our trades unions. The older larger unions could take some lessons from the small new unions that have emerged over the last few years. Organising amongst migrant and very low-paid casualised workers, unions such as the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain have had some very successful strike actions, for example, with groups of outsourced workers at the London School of Economics and with Uber drivers and others.

We cannot wait for the next election in order to challenge the anti-trade union laws. The entire movement will have to face the necessity of more generalised strike and solidarity actions. This will be essential if we are to defend workers’ rights, mount a defence of the NHS or to push for the action necessary to stop climate change. Let us link together the campaigns which already exist.

Johnson’s victory will empower every racist and fascist in the land and therefore anti-racist and anti-fascist work must be central to our activity. We are proposing to the European Left Party a second No Pasaran European-wide conference in 2020 bringing together all those opposing racism and fascism.

At the heart of our work now must be the building of concrete links across borders bringing together campaigns to defend migrants, to resist the rise of the far right, to fight climate change and to co-ordinate action against capitalism. The French general strike and events in Latin America and the Middle East show the scale of working class resistance and the determination to build an alternative.

A radical alternative that challenges the system of capital itself and unites social, industrial and political struggles is necessary.

Source: Haaretz

What’s anti-Semitic about persons of conscience who believe that an apartheid state deserves to be boycotted?

The Bundestag has defined the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel as anti-Semitic. Benjamin Netanyahu and Gilad Erdan rejoiced. Germany ought to be ashamed.

From now on, Germany will consider every supporter of BDS to be a Jew-hater; saying “the Israeli occupation” will be like saying “Heil Hitler.” From now on, Germany cannot boast of its freedom of speech. It has become an agent of Israeli colonialism. While some are indeed anti-Semites, the majority of BDS supporters are persons of conscience who believe that an apartheid state deserved to be boycotted. What’s anti-Semitic about that? The majority of parties in the Bundestag supported the resolution, including that of Chancellor Angela Merkel, the conscience of Europe. How sad. So paralyzing are the guilt feelings, so effective the propaganda.

Does Merkel think that Daniel Barenboim – the musical director of the Berlin State Opera and the principal conductor for life of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle, a prime example of an artist who is committed to conscience and morality, a proud Jew and embarrassed Israeli, the co-founder of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an Israeli patriot, yes patriot, who fears with every fiber of his being for the future of the country of his youth – is also an anti-Semite? Barenboim may not explicitly support BDS, but for years he has quietly boycotted Israel’s concert halls. He cannot bring himself to play for Israelis when, less than a one-hour drive from the auditorium, a nation is groaning under the occupation. That is his noble way of expressing his protest. Merkel is his friend. She undoubtedly admires his sense of justice. What will she say to him now?

What will the German legislators say about those who call to boycott the products of sweatshops or of the meat industry? Will they criminalize them as well? What about the sanctions on Russia, over its invasion of Crimea? Why is one occupation worthy of a boycott and another of cheers? What did Germans think about the sanctions on South Africa? What is the difference?

It’s permissible to call for a boycott against a tyrannical regime; in fact, it’s obligatory. It’s also permissible to think differently, to think there is no Palestinian people and no occupation, only a chosen people in the promised land. But to criminalize justice-seeking Germans as anti-Semites? I know a few of them, and they have absolutely nothing in common with anti-Semites. One more push from the Erdans, and BDS will be designated as a terrorist organization.

Guilt feelings are always a bad counselor. This time they turned out to be a particularly terrible one.

Germany is not a country like any other. It carries a deep obligation to the state of the Jews. It is duty-bound to contribute to its security and its growth, but that duty must not be allowed to include moral blindness and automatic license for Israel to do whatever it wants and to scorn the resolutions of the international institutions that were established in the wake of the war that Germany instigated.

Germany has a duty to support Israel, but like any true friend it must also do everything possible to prevent it from being an evil state. Fighting opposition to the occupation is not friendship.

Germany may supply Israel with submarines, but it must also place ethical demands on the state. On the margins of its guilt toward the Jews, it also carries an indirect moral responsibility for the fate of the people that lives in the land to which the Jews fled from Germany in terror and in which they created a state. Germany also has an obligation to those who would not have been deprived of their land and their rights if not for the Holocaust. This people has been living for decades under the Israeli boot. Germany must aid in its liberation.

In passing this resolution, the Bundestag did not do right by Israel, by justice or by international law. Only the Israeli occupation profited from it. The Bundestag does not have to support BDS, it’s permissible to object to the boycott movement, but to criminalize it as anti-Semitic, especially in Germany? The “other Germany” betrayed its duty to its own conscience-driven civil society, to the Palestinians and also to Israel.

Source: al Jazeera

Public figures who criticise Israel are attacked as anti-Semites, as shown by the witch-hunt against members of the British Labour Party.

Apartheid is alive and well and thriving in occupied Palestine.

Palestinians know this. South Africans know this. Many Israelis have accepted this as part of their political debate. Americans are coming to terms with this, with new voices in Congress and NGOs like Jewish Voice for Peace unafraid of speaking this truth.

Only in Europe is there a steadfast denial of Israeli apartheid over Palestinians despite overwhelming evidence underlining it.

Israel’s restrictions on freedom of movement in the occupied Palestinian territory are a resurrection of South Africa’s hated pass laws, which criminalised black South Africans without a permit or pass to be in a “white” city. Israel’s policy of forcible population removals and destruction of homes resembles the relocation of black people from areas zoned for exclusive white occupation in apartheid South Africa.

The Israeli security forces engage in torture and brutality exceeding the worst practices of the South African security apparatus. And the humiliation of black people that was a feature of apartheid in South Africa is replicated in occupied Palestine.

Racist rhetoric in the Israeli public debate offends even those familiar with the language of apartheid South Africa. The crude racist advertising that characterised campaigning in Israel’s recent elections was unknown in South Africa.

Of course, there are differences that arise from the different histories, religions, geography and demography, but both cases fit the universal definition of apartheid. In international law, apartheid is a state-sanctioned regime of institutionalised and legalised racial discrimination and oppression by one hegemonic racial group against another. 

In some respects, apartheid in South Africa was worse. In some respects, Israeli apartheid in occupied Palestine is worse. Certainly, Israel’s enforcement of apartheid in occupied Palestine is more militaristic and more brutal. Apartheid South Africa never blockaded a black community and methodically killed protesters as Israel is currently doing along its fence with Gaza.

These facts are well known. No one who follows the news can claim to be ignorant of the repression inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Israeli occupation army and Jewish settlers. It is common knowledge that the different legal systems for settlers and Palestinians have created a regime of separate and grossly unequal legal statuses.

Why then do Europeans consistently deny the existence of apartheid in occupied Palestine? Why is it business as usual with Israel? Why is Eurovision to be held in Tel Aviv? Why does Europe sell arms to Israel; trade with it, even with its illegal settlements; maintain cultural and educational ties? Why is Israel not subjected to the kind of ostracism that was applied to South Africa and complicit white South African institutions?

Why were sanctions against apartheid South Africa welcomed while European governments take steps to criminalise the nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to secure freedom, justice and equal rights for Palestinians?

There are three explanations for this conundrum.

First, pro-Israeli lobbies in many European countries are as effective as their US counterparts without the same degree of visibility.

Second, there is Holocaust guilt. The policies of some countries towards Israel, such as the Netherlands, are still determined by guilt stemming from the failure to have done more to save Jews during World War II.

Third, and most important of all, there is the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic. Encouraged and manipulated by Israel and Israeli lobbies, the concept of anti-Semitism has been expanded to cover not only hatred of Jews but criticism of Israeli apartheid.

In the case of South Africa, President PW Botha was hated because he applied apartheid and not because he was an Afrikaner. It would seem obvious that in the same way many hate Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because he enforces apartheid and not because he is a Jew. But this distinction is increasingly blurred in Europe. To criticise the government of Israel for applying apartheid is seen as anti-Semitism. And so it becomes dangerous and unwise to criticise Israel.

In Europe, criticism of apartheid in South Africa was a popular cause. The Anti-Apartheid Movement, which lobbied for the boycott of South African exports, trade, sport, artists and academics was encouraged and subjected to no restrictions. Governments imposed different kinds of sanctions, including an arms embargo. Public protests against apartheid were a regular feature of university life.

Criticism of Israel’s discriminatory and repressive policies, on the other hand, can result in one being labelled anti-Semitic with serious consequences for one’s career and social life. Consequently, there are fewer protests against Israeli apartheid on European campuses and less popular support for BDS. Public figures who criticise Israel are attacked as anti-Semites, as evidenced by the witch-hunt against members of the British Labour Party.

Until Europeans have the courage to distinguish criticism of Israel for applying apartheid from real anti-Semitism – that is, hatred of Jews – apartheid will continue to flourish in occupied Palestine, with the direct complicity of Europe.

John Dugard is Professor Emeritus at Universities of Leiden and the Witwatersrand.

All who wish to see an end to bigotry and racism, and who seek a more just society, should give their support to the Labour party.

We are Jewish members and supporters of the Labour party concerned about the current rise of reactionary ideologies, including antisemitism, in Britain and elsewhere across Europe.

We note the worrying growth of populist rightwing parties, encouraging racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism. In Britain the far right is whipping up these prejudices, a threat that requires a resolute and energetic response. But instead we have seen a disproportionate focus on antisemitism on the left, which is abhorrent but relatively rare.

We believe that the Labour party under the progressive leadership of Jeremy Corbyn is a crucial ally in the fight against bigotry and reaction. His lifetime record of campaigning for equality and human rights, including consistent support for initiatives against antisemitism, is formidable. His involvement strengthens this struggle.

Labour governments introduced both the anti-racist and human rights legislation of the 20th century and the 2010 Equalities Act. A Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn will be a powerful force to fight against racism, Islamophobia and antisemitism.

It is in this context that we welcome the Labour party’s endorsement of freedom of expression on Israel and on the rights of Palestinians. Labour is correct to recognise that while prejudice against Jewish people is deplorable, criticism of Israel’s government and policies can and must be made.

We urge all who wish to see an end to bigotry and racism, and who seek a more just society, to give their support to the Labour party.

Prof Elizabeth Dore
Prof David Epstein
Prof Gene Feder
Mike Leigh
Prof Mica Nava
Prof Michael Rosen
Prof Donald Sassoon
Prof Avi Shlaim
Gillian Slovo
Prof Annabelle Sreberny
Walter Wolfgang
Prof John Yudkin
John Abraham
Kate Adams
Rebecca Amiel
Ruth Appleton
Tasha Barlow
Graham Bash
Dr Shereen Benjamin
Jeremy Bernhaut
Frances Bernstein
Dr Jon Berry
Cllr Jo Bird
Rica Bird
Frank Black
Jay Blackwood
Pamela Blakelock
Alice Bondi
Tony Booth
Jenny Malca Brown
Peter Buckman
Andy Burkitt
Erica Burman
Samuel Burrowes
Keith Burstein
Rose Challands
Brian Chinnery
Eve Cina
Andrew Clifford
Emma Clyne
Jonathan Clyne
Mike Cohen
Ron Cohen
Amnon Cohen
Ruth Cohen
Kathy Cohn
Rita Craft
Judith Cravitz
Prof. David Curtis
Mike Cushman
Miriam David
Steven Davidson
Hilary De Santos
Alan Deadman
Greg Douglas
Elizabeth Dresner
Linda Edmondson
Ros Edwards
David Einhorn
Mark Elf
Michael Ellman
Prof Debbie Epstein
Javier Farje
Pia Feig
Jack George Field
Arye Finkle
Nick Foster
Roisin Francis
Esther Freeman
Debbie Friedman
Danny Friedman
Kenny Fryde
Carolyn Gelenter
Mike Gerber
Vicki Gilbert
René Gimpel
Prof. Jane Ginsborg
Claire Glasman
Murray Glickman
David Goldberg
Paul Goldman
Simon Goodman
John Goodman
Peter Gorbach
Tony Graham
Rosalind Grainger
Alice Gray
Ilse Gray
Elleanne Green
Heinz Grünewald
Ash Hardenne
Alison Harris
Jeanne Heal
Prof Susan Himmelweit
Andrew Hornung
Katharine Hoskyns
Mike Howard
Jonathan Hyams
Selma James
Lin James
Riva Joffe
Ann Jungman
Michael Kalmanovitz
L Sasha Kaplin
Stephen Kapos
Jenny Kassman
Richard Keidan
Monash Kessler
Jenny King
Godfrey King
Katherina Kohler
Simon Korner
Dr Agnes Kory
Debbie Krantz
Richard Kuper
Jon Kurta
Prof Frank Land
Michelle Laufer
Pam Laurance
Daniel Laverick
Mike Layward
Dr Sydney Leaman
Joanna Leigh
Jessica Leschnikoff
Cllr Leah Levane
Rachel Lever
John Lipetz
Robert Lizar
Ruth Lukom
Simon Lynn
Deborah Maccoby
Dorothy Macedo
Nikki Mailer
Jenny Manson
Jessica Manson
Helen Marks
Stephen Marks
Gillian McCall
Jeff McCracken-Hewson
Terence McGinity
Ros Meadow
Rita Mendelson
Dr Heather Mendick
Angie Mindel
Prof David Mond
Diana Neslen
David Nissen
Gary Ostrolenk
Jonathan Parish
Susan Pashkoff
Helen Pearson
Jacob Prager
Caroline Raine
Reuben Ramsay
Roland Rance
Tom Reed
Jenny Richardson
Siôn Rickard
Prof Marion Roberts
Prof Jonathan Rosenhead
Benny Ross
Carolyn Roth
Richard Saffron
Esther Saraga
Ian Saville
Monika Schwartz
Josepha Scotney
Mike Scott
Amanda Sebestyen
Glyn Secker
Jenny Secretan
Irene Sedler
Marian Sedley
Ruth Selwyn
Brian Shade
Janet Silver
Liz Silver
Ludi Simpson
Pam Singer
Mark Smithson
Stephen Solley QC
David Sperlinger
Ruth Steigman
Dr Alexandra Stein
Adrian Stern
Martin Stevenson
Benny Talbot
Deborah Talmi
Inbar Tamari
Norman Traub
Tessa van Gelderen
Daniel Vulliamy
Brian Warshaw
Sam Weinstein
Charlotte Prager Williams
George Wilmers
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi
Debbie Windley
Roy Wolfe
Miriam Yagud
Dr Gillian Yudkin

Source: Counterfire

Other forms of racism are downplayed – notably Islamophobia, which is a form of ‘respectable racism’ firmly in the political mainstream.

While there have indeed been instances of antisemitism from some Labour members, the evidence shows overwhelmingly that it is not a widespread problem in the party, it has increasingly been addressed in a serious way, and the notion that Corbyn personally is complicit is absurd.

In the US, meanwhile, there has been an outpouring of vitriol directed at Ilhan Omar, a newly-elected congress member, for critical comments of Israel that have been tendentiously spun as antisemitic. In January, Omar became one of the first two Muslim women members of the US Congress in history, alongside Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib. Together with another new left-wing Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Omar and Tlaib have rapidly developed a high profile for challenging the conservative status quo in Washington politics. They have been faced with the inevitable backlash.

In both cases – Corbyn here, Omar in the US – antisemitism is being weaponised. It is wrongly treated as a smear tactic, cynically deployed to attack the left. This is motivated, above all, by the fear of the kind of politics represented by a new left.

In the UK there is real anxiety among the political establishment, and in the British state and ruling class, that a socialist could become prime minister. In the US the threat is less serious, but the trio of refreshing new voices in Congress – together with Bernie Sanders’ campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination – represents a growing rejection of the old order, and a burgeoning interest in broadly socialist ideas.

These campaigns around antisemitism are therefore a misuse of a real form of racism, geared towards political ends: weakening, stigmatising and dividing the left. They involve ignoring or downplaying the more serious instances of antisemitism on the far right and, by weakening the Left, threaten to damage the political forces that can actually confront the growing far right and its racism. There is also a massive downplaying of other forms of racism, notably Islamophobia – which is a form of ‘respectable racism’ firmly in the political mainstream.

There was recently a triple whammy of insulting comments by senior Tory ministers in the space of just 48 hours that illustrated the point. Amber Rudd referred to shadow home secretary Diane Abbott as ‘coloured’. Andrea Leadsom responded to a request – from a Muslim Labour MP – for a debate on Islamophobia by saying it was a Foreign Office matter. Karen Bradley, meanwhile, caused great offence to Northern Irish Catholics by suggesting that killings by British security forces in Northern Ireland had not been crimes.

These ‘gaffes’ were swiftly followed by the news of the death of Shamima Begum’s baby in a refugee camp, exposing the callousness of Sajid Javid, home secretary, who had made Begum stateless. Yet, in this context, it is Labour – not the Tory Party – that receives the lion’s share of media denunciation and whipped-up controversy.

Opposition to Israel is not antisemitic

One thing that the sustained attacks on both sides of the Atlantic have in common is the question of Israel. Ilhan Omar faced a backlash due to comments she made about Aipac, the American umbrella group for pro-Israel lobbying  campaigns, and its influence on US politics, and for wider criticisms of the Netanyahu government and Israeli abuses of Palestinians’ human rights. Last summer’s furore over alleged antisemitism in the Labour Party pivoted around how to define antisemitism. There was a major campaign to force the party to adopt the full definition, including very controversial examples relating to Israel, proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).

The IHRA code was subsequently adopted by the Labour Party’s national executive committee. It treats as antisemitic such things as saying that Israel is a ‘racist endeavour’ or challenging Jews’ right to self-determination, which in practical terms means the state of Israel. Many Jewish organisations worldwide have condemned the definition on the grounds that it extends the meaning of antisemitism to encompass fair criticism of Israel. Attitudes towards Israel have always varied within Jewish communities, which have rich traditions of anti-Zionism and of non-Zionist currents. These Jewish groups have also expressed concern that it makes the struggle to defeat antisemitism harder by focusing on the wrong targets.

This does not mean that the entire weaponising of antisemitism is driven by Israel or its lobbyists. That is to grant them an exaggerated influence. Their objectives – to delegitimise opposition to Israel’s apartheid regime and its violence, racism and colonisation of Palestinian land – dovetail with how significant parts of the US and UK political establishments view the strategic interests of their own countries.

It also fits neatly with their wider opposition to a rising Left, especially in the field of foreign policy. A great many of the attacks on Corbyn’s politics have focused on foreign policy, such as his personal background of opposition to Nato and nuclear weapons, with senior figures from the British state (former generals or security services chiefs) warning darkly of a Corbyn premiership.

Similarly, Omar’s support for justice for Palestine goes together with a refreshing opposition to US imperialism which is almost unprecedented in mainstream US politics. Her highly critical comments about Barack Obama’s extensive deployment of drones caused outrage in the Democratic Party elite.

The conflation of antisemitism with opposition to Israel does not stand up to scrutiny. Israel is a state built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1948-49, creating a huge refugee population. It has been characterised, for the last 70 years, by dispossessing Palestinians of their land, often through force. Israel has developed a system of control that fragments the Palestinian people: Palestinians inside Israel are second-class citizens, those in the West Bank live under military occupation, Gaza’s two million Palestinians endure an open-air prison and the effects of a long-running blockade, and millions more are refugees unable to return to historic Palestine. Opposing all of this is a political and moral matter, not a question of antisemitism.

The ‘New Antisemitism’

Why has the defining of antisemitism become so contentious? It is no accident. There has been a concerted push by Israel, and by its political supporters elsewhere, to tarnish opposition to Israeli policies with the smear of antisemitism.

The concept of the ‘new antisemitism’ developed in response to growing resistance by Palestinians in the Second Intifada (2000-05), followed by the growth of international solidarity with Palestinians in the wake of 2005’s international BDS call. This was the appeal by Palestinian civil society for international efforts at boycott, divestment and sanctions. It has since grown into a diverse, multi-faceted and truly international movement of solidarity that has damaged Israel’s reputation and global standing, challenging governments and corporations to break their complicity in the apartheid state’s routine abuses of human rights.

The Israeli state has become more and more strategic in its response, pouring considerable funds into propaganda and lobbying to counter this threat. An integral component of these efforts has been the re-defining of antisemitism to protect itself against criticism. This is necessary because the realities of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians have only got worse.

The military assaults on Gaza in 2009, 2012 and 2014 have galvanised widespread public outrage across the world, as more recently has the murderous suppression of Palestinian protests near the Gaza/Israel boundary. Settlement building has continued, in defiance of international law and United Nations condemnation. Last year’s Nationality Law enshrined apartheid inside Israel by declaring that it is a state for its Jewish citizens only, formally sanctioning the discrimination and segregation that was already part of Israeli life.

The tight alliance between Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and President Trump has helped open up serious cracks in support for Israel among American Jews, the majority of whom are anti-Trump.  This fraying of support for Israel is part of the context for the viciousness and the weaponising of antisemitism directed at Israel’s critics in both the US and the UK. The rise of the BDS movement and threat to the old order posed by a reviving Left are other crucial factors.

We should not be deflected – from both building a mass solidarity movement with Palestine and developing a stronger Left – by the spurious attempts at weaponising antisemitism.

Alex Snowdon is a Counterfire activist in Newcastle. He is active in the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Stop the War Coalition and the National Education Union.

National Demonstration for Palestine
Sat 11 May | Assemble 12 Noon
Portland Place | London
March to Whitehall

Details…

Source: Twitter thread by novelist Simon Maginn, which can be read @simonmaginn

15 steps in the fabrication of an “antisemitism crisis” in the Labour Party and the smearing of its socialist leader.

1. Select your cause. This could be anything, but it’ll work better if it’s simultaneously highly emotive, imprecise, and presented as something people will find it difficult to argue against. (‘Let’s fight antisemitism’, for instance.)

2. Find ‘evidence’. Social media is a supremely rich source of possible ammunition, and accounts can be combed and pored over to find what looks like incriminating material.

3. Denounce. Denounce publicly, denounce often, denoune repeatedly. Repetition is key: the messages must be repeated sufficiently that they become ‘common sense’, something people keep on hearing about so it ‘must be true’.

4. Anyone who questions your narrative must be denounced as guilty thremselves. Denying your issue means ‘not taking the issue seriously’.

5. Divide. Make sure your issue is one that will cause division. Set factions against each other, foment intra-party tensions and get party members fighting each other.

6. Find ‘ambassadors’. People in the arts or entertainment sector are invaluable. They’re publicity hungry anyway and can be flattered easily. Their sense of self-importance will drive them to work for you, and they will have a wide base of fans who will become messengers in turn

7. Recruit the media. Make sure your issue is one the media will find ‘sexy’, and will want to report. Your ‘ambassadors’ will have good links and contacts here. Media are scandal-hungry and credulous. Flood them with stories.

8. Comedy is a key battleground. Once an issue has become the subject of TV comedy, it becomes cemented as ‘true’ in people’s minds. Your issue will gain far greater reach through TV comedy than any other route.

9. So give comedians material. Give them caricatures of reality, exaggerated characteristics. Comedians, like your media ambassadors, will be eager to be recruited if they can ‘make material’ out of your issue.

10. Swamp. The party will have some kind of complaints procedure. This must immediately be incapacitated by sheer volume. Complaints need not have any substance, it’s the volume that matters.

11. Now complain the complaints process itself is ‘too slow.’ The massive backlog you’ve created becomes a new campaigning tool. The party is ‘in denial’, ‘not taking the issue seriously’, etc.

12. When complaints are dismissed for lack of evidence, complain again that this shows the party isn’t taking the issue seriously. Dispute anything that suggests false accusations exist: the accusation of false accusations can itself become a new form of ‘denialism’.

13. Demand ‘action’. Your demands must increase as concessions are made. Every concession muct be denounced as insufficient. Whatever is offered, it must be refused and condemned. No apology should be accepted, but rejected as ‘too little too late’.

14. Be implacable. No attempt shoud be made actually to resolve the issue. Resolution is not your goal: destruction of the party is. The party must be damaged so significantly that your issue becomes definitional in people’s minds.

15. Be relentless. Never stop.

What people are afraid of is that there are two Muslims in Congress that have their eyes wide open, that have their feet to the ground, that know what they’re talking about, that are fearless.

On 27 February 2019, Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, the first Muslim women elected to the US Congress, spoke at a public meeting in Washington DC. This is a transcript of Ilhan Omar’s speech.

But we never really allow space for the stories of Palestinians seeking safety and sanctuary to be uplifted. And to me, it is the dehumanization and the silencing of a particular pain and suffering of people, should not be ok and normal. And you can’t be in the practice of humanizing and uplifting the suffering of one, if you’re not willing to do that for everyone.

And so for me I know that when I hear my Jewish constituents or friends or colleagues speak about Palestinians who don’t want safety, or Palestinians who aren’t deserving I stay focused on the actual debate about what that process should look like. I never go to the dark place of saying “here’s a Jewish person, they’re talking about Palestinians, Palestinians are Muslim, maybe they’re Islamophobic.” I never allow myself to go there because I don’t have to.

And what I am fearful of is that because Rashida and I are Muslim, that a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of our Jewish constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be anti-Semitic, because we are Muslim. And so to me, it is something that becomes designed to end the debate.

Because you get in this space, of like, I know what intolerance looks like and I’m sensitive when someone says that the words you use Ilhan, are resemblance of intolerance. And I am cautious of that and I feel pained by that.

But it’s almost as if every single time we say something, regardless of what it is we say, that it’s supposed to about foreign policy or engagement, that our advocacy about ending oppression, or the freeing of every human life and wanting dignity, we get to be labeled in something, and that’s the end of the discussion, because we end up defending that, and nobody gets to have the broader debate of “what is happening with Palestine?”

So for me, I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is ok for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country. And I want to ask, why is it ok for me to talk about the influence of the NRA, of fossil fuel industries, or Big Pharma, and not talk about a powerful lobby that is influencing policy?

And I want to ask the question, why is it ok for you to push, for you to be… there are so many people… I mean most of us are new, but many members of Congress have been there forever. Some of them have been there before we were born. So I know many of them were fighting for people to be free, for people to live in dignity in South Africa. I know many of them fight for people around the world to have dignity to have self-determination. So I know, I know that they care about these things.

But now that you have two Muslims that are saying “here is a group of people that we want to make sure that they have the dignity that you want everyone else to have!” …we get to be called names, we get to be labeled as hateful.

No, we know what hate looks like. We experience it every single day. We have to deal with death threats. I have colleagues who talk about death threats. And sometimes… there are cities in my state where the gas stations have written on their bathrooms “assassinate Ilhan Omar”. I have people driving around my district looking for my home, for my office, causing me harm. I have people every single day on Fox News and everywhere, posting that I am a threat to this country. So I know what fear looks like.

The masjid I pray in in Minnesota got bombed by two domestic white terrorists. So I know what it feels to be someone who is of a faith that is vilified. I know what it means to be someone whose ethnicity that is vilified. I know what it feels to be of a race that is, like I am an immigrant, so I don’t have some of the historical drama of some of my sisters and brothers have in this country, but I know what it means for people to just see me as a black person, and to treat me as less than a human.

And so, when people say “you are bringing hate,” I know what their intention is. Their intention is to make sure that our lights are dimmed. That we walk around with our heads bowed. That we lower our face and our voice.

But we have news for people. You can call us any kind of name. You can threaten us any kind of way. Rashida and I are not ourselves. Every single day we walk in the halls of Congress and we have people who have never had the opportunity to walk there walking with us.

So we’re here, we’re here to stay and represent all the people who have been silenced for many decades and many generations. And we’re here to fight for the people of our district who want to make sure that there is actual prosperity, actual prosperity, being guaranteed.

Because there is a direct correlation between not having clean water, and starting endless wars. It’s all about the profit and who gets benefit.

There’s a direct correlation between corporations that are getting rich, and the fact that we have students who are shackled with debt.

There is a direct correlation between the White House and the people who are benefiting from detention beds that are profitized.

So, what people are afraid of is not that there are two Muslims in Congress. What people are afraid of is that there are two Muslims in Congress that have their eyes wide open, that have their feet to the ground, that know what they’re talking about, that are fearless, and that understand that they have the same election certificate that everyone in Congress does.

Source: Electronic Intifada

More than 400 French intellectuals, artists and activists sign an open letter to Macron: “If you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us, well, you can come and get us.”

More than 400 intellectuals, artists and activists have signed an open letter to Macron that was published on 28 February in the national newspaper Libération.

“Mr. President, we are French citizens who respect the laws of the republic, but if you adopt a law against anti-Zionism, or if you officially adopt an erroneous definition of anti-Semitism that permits outlawing it, please know that we will break this law with our words, our writing, our art and our acts of solidarity,” the letter states.

“And if you decide to pursue us, to silence us, even to imprison us for that, well, you can come and get us.”

Among the signatories are academics and educators Ariella Azoulay, Sonia Dayan-Herzbrun and Michèle Sibony; filmmakers Jean-Luc Godard, Simone Bitton and Eyal Sivan; writers Nancy Huston and Abdellatif Laabi; and veteran journalist Alain Gresh.

“Anti-Zionism is an opinion, a current of thought born among European Jews at the moment when Jewish nationalism was taking off. It opposes the Zionist ideology that advocated (and still advocates) the installation of the world’s Jews in Palestine, today Israel,” the letter adds.

It notes that the essential argument of anti-Zionism is “that Palestine was never an empty territory that a ‘people without land’ are free to colonize based on a divine promise, but a country populated with real inhabitants for whom Zionism would soon become a synonym for exodus, despoilation and the negation of all their rights.”

During his speech to CRIF, a major Jewish communal organization and pro-Israel group, Macron claimed “anti-Zionism is one of the modern forms of anti-Semitism” and pledged that France would formally adopt the so-called IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Supported by the Israel lobby, the definition deliberately conflates criticism of Israel and Zionism on the one hand, with hatred of Jews, on the other.

Macron did not promise a change in the penal code to outlaw anti-Zionist speech, but said that instructions would be issued to police, judges and teachers “to permit them to better combat those who hide behind the rejection of Israel and even the negation of its existence.”

The French president’s move, praised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is part of a transatlantic campaign to weaponize often false accusations of anti-Semitism to smear and silence critics of Israel.

But while Macron is so far not proposing to change the law, some 30 lawmakers are pushing just such an initiative and said in February that they have been working up proposals for several months.

“What we want to outlaw is denying the existence of Israel,” Sylvain Maillard, a lawmaker from Macron’s La République en Marche party, said. “Of course one can continue to criticize Israeli governments.”

In his speech to CRIF, Macron seemingly sought to allay demands to outlaw anti-Zionism directly by touting French authorities’ legal crackdown against BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.

Macron pointed to convictions against boycott activists, and said there would be more.

The campaign group BDS France took aim at the president’s renewed attacks on the boycott movement.

“In reality, the vast majority of complaints against BDS activists do not result in convictions,” BDS France stated. “They either are not prosecuted, or are resolved by acquittals.”

The group noted that even the staunchly pro-Israel European Union has conceded that boycott activism to pressure Israel and complicit institutions and companies to end abuses of Palestinians is protected free speech.

“Let’s recall that boycott is a frequent form of protest against injustice practiced by such historic figures as Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela,” the group asserted.

Paraphrasing Macron’s own words, BDS France vowed that none of the president’s repressive measures would succeed in “erasing from our society the anti-apartheid struggle or the criticism of Israeli policies.”

“We will hold on and, in the end, we will win,” BDS France stated.

Ali Abunimah is the co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of The Battle for Justice in Palestine. He blogs regularly at Electronic Intifada.

Source: Jonathan Cook Blog

Too busy making sure they keep the left down with smears to notice that the far-right is rearing up behind them, posing the real threat of Jew hatred.

Source: Rebel Notes

We need some perspective about where the real boost to the antisemites, racists and fascists in Britain and the wider world is coming from.

The two partisans were Ivan Burudzhiev who fired the first shot, and Violeta Yakova, a Sephardic Jewish communist who fired two more shots and killed him after the wounded Lukov fought back and shot Burudzhiev. Yakova was later hunted down by the Bulgarian security forces (she had also assassinated the pro-Nazi chief of the Bulgarian police). In June 1944, she was captured, tortured and killed in the city of Radomir, After the war she was recognised as a “national heroine” and a memorial statue stands in Radomir today

There were hundreds of counter-protesters organised through Antifa Sofia. They confirm that alongside openly Nazi parties there were participants from IMRO – the Bulgarian National Movement, who are part of the United Patriots alliance that is a partner in the Bulgarian government.  More significantly for anti-racists and anti-fascists in Britain, IMRO are a junior partner in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group of the European Parliament that is dominated by Britain’s Conservative Party and the Polish Law and Justice Party – a party that has antagonised Jews within and beyond Poland with its Holocaust revisionism and outlawing of narratives that suggest there was collaboration by some Poles with the Nazis as they exterminated Jews. The Bulgarian IMRO have helped to mobilise for the Lukov march, alongside other ultra-nationalists and open antisemites for several years running, yet they  were welcomed into the Conservative Party’s European-group in 2014 by David Cameron.

Since Theresa May became leader in 2016 she has not questioned the participation of IMRO in this group, but has the gall to throw cheap accusations at the Labour Party, with regard to antisemitism, despite the Labour Party’s long record of involvement in anti-racist and anti-fascist causes.

The number of far-right and openly Nazi groups participating in the Sofia march last weekend (some of whom are banned in their own countries) is testimony to the alarming growth of Islamophobic, anti-Roma and antisemitic forces across Europe – all of them boosted since Donald Trump’s election in America, and benefiting too from Trump’s former advisor, Steve Bannon’s growing operations in Europe.

Statistics from surveys in many countries have shown a rise in antisemitic incidents ranging from physical threats and violent assaults, daubings of synagogues and cemeteries, to verbal abuse and incitement on social media. In pretty much every country around the world concern about this is expressed first and foremost towards the governing party in each country, the people with the power to take action internally against far right groups, to undertake educational work, and to exert an influence on the national atmosphere towards one that promotes respect for minorities.

There were hundreds of counter-protesters organised through Antifa Sofia. They confirm that alongside openly Nazi parties there were participants from IMRO – the Bulgarian National Movement, who are part of the United Patriots alliance that is a partner in the Bulgarian government.  More significantly for anti-racists and anti-fascists in Britain, IMRO are a junior partner in the European Conservatives and Reformists Group of the European Parliament that is dominated by Britain’s Conservative Party and the Polish Law and Justice Party – a party that has antagonised Jews within and beyond Poland with its Holocaust revisionism and outlawing of narratives that suggest there was collaboration by some Poles with the Nazis as they exterminated Jews. The Bulgarian IMRO have helped to mobilise for the Lukov march, alongside other ultra-nationalists and open antisemites for several years running, yet they  were welcomed into the Conservative Party’s European-group in 2014 by David Cameron.

Since Theresa May became leader in 2016 she has not questioned the participation of IMRO in this group, but has the gall to throw cheap accusations at the Labour Party, with regard to antisemitism, despite the Labour Party’s long record of involvement in anti-racist and anti-fascist causes.

The number of far-right and openly Nazi groups participating in the Sofia march last weekend (some of whom are banned in their own countries) is testimony to the alarming growth of Islamophobic, anti-Roma and antisemitic forces across Europe – all of them boosted since Donald Trump’s election in America, and benefiting too from Trump’s former advisor, Steve Bannon’s growing operations in Europe.

Statistics from surveys in many countries have shown a rise in antisemitic incidents ranging from physical threats and violent assaults, daubings of synagogues and cemeteries, to verbal abuse and incitement on social media. In pretty much every country around the world concern about this is expressed first and foremost towards the governing party in each country, the people with the power to take action internally against far right groups, to undertake educational work, and to exert an influence on the national atmosphere towards one that promotes respect for minorities.

It is absolutely astounding that in Britain, where antisemitic incidents have been growing year on year recently under the watch of a Tory government, infamous for the hostile environment it has operated towards migrants and refugees, aided and abetted by the pro-Tory press, that undoubtedly boost the rhetoric of Far Right ideologues, that the fire has been misdirected away from the Tory party and towards the Labour Party. It was misdirected there again yesterday, as one of the excuses for their door-slamming exercise by the Independent 7 who have splintered from the Labour Party.

They began to plan their departures in 2015 when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader, a democratic decision that they refused to accept then or in 2016 when he was emphatically elected again by the membership. And while they were busy calling the party they have just left, “institutionally racist and antisemitic” at their somewhat shambolic launch, one of their number, Angela Smith, made a disgraceful racist comment. Equally disgracefully, the figure among the 7 who has made the biggest noise around antisemitism (Luciana Berger) has not even commented on her colleagues remark, which was broadcast live yesterday.

That is not to say there are no incidents connected with Labour Party members. There have been many allegations, though 40% of the incidents reported to the Labour Party since April last year, for which Labour members were being blamed, were found to have nothing to do with any Labour Party members, and in a further 20% of cases the investigations found no evidence of a case to answer. In the remaining 40% of cases, mostly to do with social media comments, including hyperbolic comments about the Israeli government and military’s racist and repressive actions, there have been a range of sanctions and 12 members were expelled.

Such hyperbolic comments, sometimes mixed in with antisemitic tropes, are undoubtedly hurtful and need to be exposed and challenged. They also taint rather than help the Palestinian cause they allegedly support, but can anyone seriously suggest that such social media comments compare in any way with the Tory Party’s openly hostile policies towards the Windrush generation and a range of migrants and refugees, that have seen them lose their livelihoods, become destitute and face forcible deportation, or that they can compare with the Tory Party’s verifiable links and collaboration since 2014 with a party that has participated with neo-Nazis marching in Sofia not just last weekend but for several years in a row. We need to call out antisemitism wherever it appears, but we also need some perspective about where the real boost to the antisemites, racists and fascists in Britain and the wider world is coming from in 2019.

David Rosenberg is an anti-fascist historian and activist.

Corbyn and his supporters are being witch-hunted, chased from pillar to post by a feral UK mainstream media that has entered full firing squad mode.

Source: Infernal Machine

In the panoply of sleazy demagogues, charlatans, populists, white supremacists and outright fascists who have become paladins of the people these last few years, Orbán has acquired a special place in the far-right imagination.

One minute you’re staring into their eyes and nodding approvingly as they tell you that your heritage and your identity are in grave danger from immigrants and ‘aliens’, and then you realise that you and your country have got poorer while your would-be saviours have mysteriously got a lot richer.

Take Hungary’s Victor Orbán. In the panoply of sleazy demagogues, charlatans, populists, white supremacists and outright fascists who have become paladins of the people these last few years, Orbán has acquired a special place in the far-right imagination.

Orbán’s Fidesz party has been in power since 2010, but he first established his international reputation as a defender of ‘Christian Europe’ in 2015, when Hungary began trapping migrants within its borders even though most of them didn’t even want to stay there, and were trying to get to Germany.

After allowing his police to attack migrants with tear gas and water cannons, Orbán went on to build a border fence along Hungary’s borders with Serbia and Croatia.

When the EU asked Hungary to accept quotas of refugees, Orbán refused, declaring that Muslim immigrants were incompatible with Hungary’s Christian culture.  Such defiance led Marine le Pen to describe him gushingly as ‘the only one protecting the external borders.’

This was how Orbán appeared to his foreign admirers and perhaps to himself: a modern incarnation of the Magyar soldiers who once patroll the perimeter of the Hapsburg-Ottoman militargrenze (military frontier), now defending Hungary and ‘Christian Europe’ from the refugee hordes.

In the face of the ‘globalists’ and ‘liberal elites’ intent on promoting Muslim immigration, Orbán proudly proclaimed Hungary to be an ‘illiberal democracy’ and a ‘Christian democracy’.  He identified the far-right’s bete noir George Soros as the enemy of  Christian Hungary and Europe, passing a ‘Stop Soros’ law enabling the government to fine and imprison NGOs who helped refugees.

Orbán also closed down the Soros-funded Central European University, in order to defend Hungary against political enemies he described as ‘ not national, but international. They do not believe in work, but speculate with money. They have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.’

No prizes for guessing who those enemies might be.  But Orbán’s many fans, from Nigel Farage to Steve Bannon, didn’t ask.  Orbán also acquired a fan in Vladimir Putin, giving Russia a 12 million euro contract to build Hungary’s only nuclear plant.

All this has transformed Orbán into a key player for the European far-right; the mitteleuropean strong man who is now supporting the Salvini-Polish proposal to remodel the European Union on far-right, anti-immigrant lines in the forthcoming EU parliamentary elections.

Until recently Orbán was rarely questioned inside Hungary itself, even when his party gerrymandered electoral boundaries to keep itself in power, and set out to control the media and judiciary.   Orbán also cultivated an oligarchical  political network based on gross levels of corruption and nepotism, handing out jobs and contracts to his friends and family, and enriching himself in the process.

Most Hungarians didn’t know about this,  because Fidesz controls ninety percent of Hungary’s newspapers, television and radio stations.  That’s what ‘illiberal democracy’ means.  It’s a new kind of fascism that acquires power not through streetfighting and military coups, but through stealth and a veneer of legality – culminating in a reconfiguration of norms in favour of a particular party or leader.

Orbán has played this game well,  but too much power can go to anyone’s head.

This month he installed himself in Budapest’s Buda Palace complex – the former seat of the Hungarian government more than four centuries ago – which Orbán is having expensively refurbished.  No one knows how much this restoration has cost, but estimates reach as high as $92m.  He has even got a luxury restaurant to provide the food for its canteen.

But then last December Orbán’s government passed a law raising the overtime cap from 250 hours 400 hours, and giving companies three years to pay workers for it instead of one.  400 hours is a lot of unpaid overtime, in a country where forty-two percent of the population earn the minimum wage and have no choice but to work extra hours.

The government justified this measure because of Hungary’s labour shortage – a shortage caused partly by high rates of Hungarian emigration – some 350,000 people, and also – who would have thought it? – a lack of immigration.

For the first time since coming to power, Orbán found himself under serious pressure, as tens of thousands of people took to the streets and rejected the government’s ‘slave law.’  These demonstrations are still ongoing.  Hungarian trade unions are now threatening a general strike on January 19, unless Orbán concedes a series of demands including the abrogation of the ‘slave law’ and a public sector pay rise.

Suddenly, it seems, the saviour of Christian Europe may no longer be impregnable.   And that is good news, not only for Hungary but in the other ‘illiberal democracies’ that have sprung up in Eastern Europe in Slovakia, Serbia and Poland, where civil society has begun to mobilise against their own authoritarian governments

But Orbán is one leader who needs to be weakened.  And better still he needs to go.  Because Hungary doesn’t need politicians like this.  And Europe doesn’t need them either.

And instead of looking to men like this to save us, we would do better to look more closely at how we can save ourselves from them.

Source: Rogue Journalist

The foundations of oligarchy and imperialism have nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or Jewishness but with the way the dynamics of money and power interact.

I don’t have anything interesting or insightful to say about America’s mass shootings, other than to repeat the point I always make that the effects of modern war propaganda on American psychology are wildly under-appreciated and ignored by scientific research. I believe the subject of US gun control is a bit outside my sovereign boundaries as an Australian writer as it only affects Americans, so I don’t really have anything to contribute in the primary debate surrounding the attack. It’s a debate for Americans to have with one another, so I tend to avoid it.

What I do have to offer is a brief description of my experience with conspiracy theories about Judaism and Jewish people as a fringe blogger who writes a lot about conspiracies, and the impression those encounters have left me with.

To be clear, when I talk about antisemites I mean the actual bigots who promote hatred of Jewish people, paranoia about Jewishness, or any type of violence against or mistreatment of Jews as a race.

I do not mean people who voice legitimate criticisms of Israel and its government, I do not mean people who criticize the way Zionism is used as a tool of manipulation to advance geopolitical agendas, I do not mean people who question the justification for the creation of Israel in the first place, I do not mean people who defend Palestinians, and I do not mean people who voice valid, factual criticisms of George Soros or any other billionaire who happens to be Jewish.

I make this distinction because when I try to talk about antisemitism publicly I get critics of Israel confusing the two groups, saying they only ever encounter people who absurdly call you an antisemite for condemning the slaughter of unarmed Palestinians by sniper fire, not people who actually promote the hatred of Jews. And that may indeed be true for them in their case, but as someone who writes a lot about oligarchy, the media, and war in the Middle East I most definitely find myself brushing up against the pernicious mind virus of antisemitism on a regular basis.

It typically happens one of two ways:

1) I’ll be there minding my own business happily attacking CNN or decrying war propaganda against Syria or whatever, and then BAM! Some random asshole splats one of those Jewish caricature memes on the lovely post I spent lots of time and energy creating. It’s always jarring and feels creepy and invasive in the same way as receiving an unsolicited dick pic.

2) They sort of sidle up alongside me on social media, making vague, side-mouthed insinuations which become increasingly specific over time, and before I know it they’re telling me I need to “name the Jew” and talk about “the JQ”.

I hate antisemites. Hate them, hate them, hate them.

Not only are they vile racists whose particular brand of hatred should be easily recognized as uniquely toxic by anyone who’s ever skimmed a history book, but they heap other layers of personal obnoxiousness on top of that as well. They’ll accuse you of being a “coward” if you reject their pet medieval superstitions, but they themselves speak only in coded language and oblique, side-mouthed innuendo because they are too cowardly to come right out and state their points in plain language. They’re arrogant, they’re condescending, and they’re impervious to reason, and they always expect you to treat their vapid, slug-brained perspectives with the same respect you’d treat someone who is making real arguments using actual facts.

More annoyingly, they derail some of the most important conversations that critical thinkers and skeptics of establishment narratives need to be having in the new media environment. The foundations of oligarchy and imperialism have nothing whatsoever to do with Jews or Jewishness but with the way the dynamics of money and power interact with human behavioral tendencies, which I discuss at length in the article hyperlinked here.

One need only to look at the way Jeff Bezos, who is not Jewish, rose to the top of the plutocratic class and began instantly buying up media and forming alliances with intelligence and defense agencies to see how the dynamics of oligarchy play out with no difficulty when Jewishness is completely removed from the equation. One need only look at the prominence and influence of bloodthirsty psychopath John Bolton, who is not Jewish, to see the how dynamics of neoconservative warmongering play out with no difficulty when Jewishness is completely removed from the equation.

Conspiracies happen all the time in the upper echelons of power, and it’s important to examine and talk about the aspects of this reality that are visible to the general public. But the fact that there’s a group of idiots moving throughout conspiracy circles who insist those conspiracies have something to do with Jewish people having some sort of predisposition toward nefarious behavior or global domination gums up the gears of that dialogue, and is used to discredit perfectly legitimate skepticism toward establishment-endorsed narratives about the world and how it works.

Money rewards the sociopath’s ability to step on anyone and do whatever it takes to get ahead, and large amounts of money can be used to buy up political influence. In a dynamic wherein money both rewards sociopathy and translates directly to political power, we naturally wind up ruled by sociopaths who have no problem keeping everyone poor to ensure the dominance of the plutocratic class and creating chaos throughout the world for power and profit.

One of the many reasons antisemitic conspiracy theories gain traction is because those who are devout acolytes of the cult of capitalism will often be resistant to the idea that it is in this way responsible for the worst problems on earth, so to avoid cognitive dissonance they cook up theories about a greedy race of subhumans who suck up power and money because they are intrinsically evil. It allows them to blame Jews for the problems of money and power dynamics. Because Jews as a culture have tended to be generally decent at finance (a trend that probably emerged exactly because of their persecution), they make convenient scapegoats.

In the same way, patriots and nationalists who like to think of their country as sovereign and independent will be resistant to the idea that the lines between nations are increasingly irrelevant at the highest levels of power. The notion that their country is just one branch of a giant, globe-spanning empire of which Israel is also another branch will be far too challenging for their worldview, so they cook up theories about their nation being ruled by a Jewish state via lobbying, media influence and conspiracies.

In reality, the globe-spanning empire which includes Israel and the US is not ultimately controlled by any nation or government, but by a class of nationless corporate and financial powers with no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Functionally Israel is nothing more than the Middle Eastern military branch of the empire, and it is so deeply involved in military conflicts because the Middle East is such a strategically crucial region to control. Zionism is just one of the propaganda narratives used to help manufacture support for that branch, and lobbying and media psyops are just the glue which holds the empire together.

Follow Caitlin Johnstone via her website, Facebook, Twitter, and her podcast. Her articles are entirely reader-supported and you can donate on Patreon or Paypal, or by buying her new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or her previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

Source: Counterpunch

It is no secret that he makes common cause with the Palestinians and supports the Boycott and Divestment Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

Spearheaded by Israeli human rights activist Eitay Mack, the request targets Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs to “verify that these play no part in the de-legitimization waged in recent years on the UK Labour Party and Mr. Corbyn.”

The Labour leader has been called an “anti-Semite and a racist” by one of the Party’s members of Parliament, and in a recent tweet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Corbyn of honoring Palestinians who took part in the attack on Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Corbyn has long been a leader in the fight against racism and played a key role in helping to bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. He has also made it no secret that he makes common cause with the Palestinians and supports the Boycott and Divestment Sanctions (BDS) aimed at forcing Israel to withdraw from the Occupied Territories.

In 2014, the Labour Party went through a sea change politically, moving away from the centrist programs of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and embracing left social democratic positions that Labour had not advocated for more than two decades. Corbyn resisted the endless austerity and privatization program of the Conservatives—many of which Labour had gone along with—and called for a robust program of re-nationalizing transport and energy, pumping money into health and education, and raising taxes on the wealthy.

The platform re-energized Labour’s grassroots, and hundreds of thousands of young people joined up. At 600,000 members, the UK Labour Party is now the largest party on the European continent. In the 2015 election, Labour picked up 33 seats in the Parliament and turned the Tories into a minority government.

Almost as soon as Corbyn took over the Party, the attacks that he was anti-Semitic—or at least tolerated anti-Semitism—started up. He was accused of comparing Israel to the Nazis. He was charged with honoring the Black September Palestinian group, whose 1972 attack in Munich resulted in the death of 11 Israeli athletes. He was denounced for backing a London street mural that had clear anti-Semitic images.

Finally, the three leading Jewish newspapers in the UK jointly declared that there was a “crisis of anti-Semitism” in the British Labour Party and that Corbyn was “an existential threat to Jewish life in the UK.”

But once one begins to unpack the charges it is hard to find much evidence for a “crisis.” Polls show the Labour Party is considerably less anti-Semitic than the Conservative Party, and it appears that anti-Semitism has declined since Corbyn took over.  A number of the things Corbyn is accused of have been either distorted or fabricated.

Corbyn did not compare Israel to the Nazis. It was Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer who did so in a 2010 panel discussion that the Labour Party leader took part. Meyer was upset with the 2009 Israeli bombing of Gaza—Operation Drop Lead—that killed 1391 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians. He was referring to the fact that Gaza’s residents could not leave the strip and compared it to Jews unable to flee the Warsaw Ghetto.

Corbyn did not place a wreath to honor the Black September group. The event was to commemorate a 1985 attack on the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Tunisia by Israeli warplanes that killed 47 people and wounded 65 more. The attack was officially condemned by the UN Security Council with the assent of the U.S. The Black September members killed in Munich are buried in Libya, not Tunesia, although one of the group’s leaders, Salah Khalaf, is interned near where the memorial took place.

On the basis of free speech, the Labour leader initially did defend a mural with anti-Semitic elements. But when he looked at the painting closely, he apologized and said that free speech should never be used to mask anti-Semitism.

Lastly, Corbyn’s wing of the Labour Party is accused of resisting adopting an 11-point definition of anti-Semitism created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 2016. Corbyn did resist parts of the definition because many Labour activists fear that the list conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Even the architect of the document, Kenneth Stern, said it was meant to be a “working definition,” not a way to curb academic research and free speech. “Yet that is how it has come to be used.”

There is evidence that the Netanyahu government is trying to do exactly that by “de-legitimizing” Israel the growing boycott movement constitutes anti-Semitism, thus equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.

A study by historian David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Birkbeck College, found that the overwhelming majority of charges against Labour Party members concerned statements about Israel, not Jews.

Stephen Oryszcuk, foreign affairs editor of the leading Jewish newspaper, Jewish News, said that criticizing Israel “was not anti-Semitism,” and that the charges against Corbyn were “repulsive,” adding “This is a dedicated anti-racist we are trashing.”

As the two-state solution disintegrates under the relentless expansion of Jewish settlements—one recent plan calls for reaching a goal of one million settlers by the end of this year—and the controversial move to favor Jewish Israelis over other citizens, Israel may indeed be more vulnerable to a boycott movement. It is hardly surprising then that the Netanyahu government would try to nip the BDS in the bud.

Israeli lawyer Mack is looking for evidence that the campaign against Corbyn is encouraged and supported by the Foreign Affairs and Strategic ministries and is suspicious that a “crisis” exists in the Labour Party. “Israel is strengthening its relationships in Eastern Europe, with countries like Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, where they have problems with anti-Semitism. On the other hand you see the Israeli government making their political struggle with Jeremy Corbyn a main issue.”

That suspicion is supported by a 2017 sting operation by Al Jezeera that uncovered a direct liaison between diplomat Shai Masot of London’s Israeli embassy and organizations like Labour Friends of Israel that are leading critics of Corbyn. Masot works for the Ministry of Strategic Affairs. And more than encouragement was exchanged. According to Al Jezeera, up to 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) were made available to fuel the campaign.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published a cable from Israel’s London embassy complaining that Strategic Affairs was breaking British law by encouraging political activities by Jewish charity groups.

In addition to the Jewish establishment newspapers, virtually every tabloid in the British Isles has joined the hue and cry. The publication ColdType counted more than 500 articles on the subject from July to August of this year. Nominally liberal publications like the Guardian have led the campaign. Most newspapers in the UK are more conservative than their continental—or American—counterparts, and, in the Guardian’s case, the publication is carrying water for the Labour Party’s rightwing.

In short, Corbyn is up against a powerful alliance of the mainstream media, the Conservative Party, and “Blairites” in the Labour Party, with Israel in the wings. And Corbyn’s response to apologize—what for is not exactly clear—and to drum dissidents out of the Party has not quelled the fires, but added fuel to them. Labour finally adopted the 11 definitions of anti-Semitism.

What about the effect of all this is on the electorate?

According to You/Gov, many of the stories that “obsess the Westminster media” don’t resonate much with the wider public. In spite of non-stop and widespread coverage, only 6 percent of the public say they are following it closely, 20 percent fairly closely and 54 percent are either not following it or are unaware the story exists. The poll concludes that while the “affair may entrench existing negative views of Corbyn among those who already held them, it seem unlikely to do much to reduce his support.”

Labour leads in the polls, but its margin is thin, drawing between 38 and 40 percent support to the Conservatives 37 to 38 percent. The Liberal Democrats are polling around 10 percent, and the racist United Kingdom Independence Party 5 percent.

However, British polling has been notoriously wrong-headed in the past. Polls predicted Brexit would fail. It passed. The polls predicted the Conservatives would trounce Labour in the 2017 elections. The outcome was vise-a-versa.

Labour did well in this year’s local council elections, although the media made it seem like a failure by puffing up the numbers the Party was projected to win. Labour picked up 79council seats while the Conservatives lost 35. The Liberal Democrats secured 77 seats, but that was largely a rebound from the disastrous showing in 2014 local elections that saw the Party lose 300 seats.

According to a BBC analysis, if the local election results were replicated in a general election Labour would be the majority party in the Parliament with 283 seats to the Tories 280. While the Conservatives were down 3 percent of the vote over the 2017 local elections, Labour was up 8 percentage points.

“People thought the general election was a fluke,” said John McDonnell, the Labour Party’s Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, “we’ve demonstrated it wasn’t. We’ve consolidated that and we’ve moved it forward in terms of percentage share of the vote.”

Polls do show that anti-Semitic charges may have had an impact on the Jewish community, but those polls require perspective: the Jewish community in Britain tends to be conservative, and many were opposed to Labour in general. In 2017, some 63 percent of British Jews voted Conservative, while 26 percent voted Labour.

Which doesn’t mean the controversy may not have an effect, especially if rightwing Labour supporters bolt and create a new party. That would drain some of Labour’s support and divide the vote in the next general election. Such a split would probably keep the Tories in power. There are some in Labour’s camp who would rather lose an election than have Corbyn and the left wing of the Party in power.

And there is a danger that worries Mack: “Israel is claiming that Corbyn and the Labour Party are putting British Jews at risk. But the bottom line is that the Netanyahu government itself is actually enlarging the risk for the Jewish people around the world, because they are not dealing with real problems, just the artificial problems. They are not concerned with real anti-Semitism, they only want to fulfill their political agenda of taking the issue of the Palestinian people off the world stage.”

And there are growing numbers of “real anti-Semites” in Europe and the U.S. who may not be a threat to Netanyahu, but most certainly are to Jews living outside of Israel.

Source: Middle East Monitor

The more Corbyn concedes, the more his critics will sense weakness, and will continue the smears and character assassinations.

I am one of very few journalists on the left to have covered the Labour Party’s supposed “anti-Semitism crisis” from its beginning three years ago, if not the the only one. I am also one of a handful of people who have even questioned the dominant media narrative of a “crisis”.

In my extensive reporting for The Electronic intifada, and in some of my MEMO columns, I have shown how the story is almost entirely a media fabrication. What we are witnessing from the British press right now is a form of collective hysteria; a McCarthyite witch hunt, in which black is white and up is down. This represents a sustained attempt to gaslight the entire left into believing that the Labour leader – a life-long opponent of racism in all its ugly forms, with a strong track record of combatting anti-Semitism — is actually some sort of closet racist.

As I have stated repeatedly, neither the left nor Labour are immune from the reality of anti-Semitism. However, all available statistical evidence shows that the level of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is far less than such racism on the right. Anti-Jewish hatred extends across society, but is most prevalent amongst right-wingers, and especially so on the far-right.

Why, then, has there been nearly daily headlines over the summer about an “anti-Semitism crisis” in the Labour Party and nowhere else? The answer is clear for anyone who has eyes to see: this is an attempt to assassinate Jeremy Corbyn politically and break up the popular political movement that is close to taking him through that famous door in Downing Street.

Moreover — and let’s be clear about this — the state of Israel is at the forefront of this smear campaign. Corbyn is a lifelong supporter of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, and so a concerted effort is on to smear him and the popular movements that he represents.

One of the pro-Israel Lobby’s most important bodies was quite frank about that fact this week. In a long, boring and arrogant letter to Labour’s General Secretary Jennie Formby (another strong supporter of Palestinian rights), the Jewish Leadership Council stated quite openly that it will continue with its campaign to smear Labour as “anti-Semitic” until the party commits to a “deep cultural change” towards “Zionism and Israel”. That is the reality of the situation.

This is what it is all about and what it has been about all along: protecting Israel and its war crimes from any loss of political support in the West. The prospect of a veteran Palestine solidarity campaigner entering Number 10 as Prime Minister represents the pro-Israel Lobby’s worst nightmare. It would confirm the thinking of the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs that “Europe is lost” and that there is no hope of regaining its support.

The people are increasingly against Israel, so all that remains is to translate that loss of popular support into a loss of top-level political support. Jeremy Corbyn represents hope for that to happen.

The “Labour anti-Semitism” story started in earnest in February 2016 as a complete and total fabrication invented out of thin air by Alex Chalmers, a former intern with the pro-Israel Lobby group BICOM (Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre). He claimed that almost the entire student Labour left in Oxford University was anti-Semitic. There was no real evidence for this, but the mainstream media ran with the story anyway.

Aside from some unspecific slurs (which tellingly named no culprits), Chalmers’ only “evidence” was the fact that the student Labour Society had endorsed Israeli Apartheid Week. This is an annual global initiative by pro-Palestinian activists to educate and inform about the realities of Israel’s racist apartheid regime in Palestine.

Chalmers, in fact, was part of Progress, the Blairite desiccated corporate faction of Labour. He and his co-conspirator exited the Labour Party soon after quitting the club, and joined the Liberal Democrats, but the damage was done in the minds of the hysterical and deluded mainstream media; Corbyn’s Labour has been “anti-Semitic” ever since.

The sad reality, though, is that Corbyn and his team have indeed made mistakes, in that they have indulged this media fantasy far too much. Instead of hitting back strongly and calling out his accusers as the bad-faith smear merchants that they are, Corbyn has instead apologised, backed down and pandered to them, even when he has absolutely nothing to apologise for.

One of the worst mistakes in this regard was to apologise for appearing on a platform with Hajo Meyer, a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. Meyer had compared the situation of Palestinians trapped under Israeli occupation and bombardment with Jews caged by the Nazis in places like the infamous Warsaw ghetto.

Perhaps it was not a comparison that everybody would feel able to make, but Meyer lived under the brutal reality of the genocidal anti-Semitism of the Nazis. He was perfectly within his rights to make it, and those smearing him as anti-Semitic should be ashamed of themselves, but I doubt that they ever will.

Thankfully, in more recent weeks, Corbyn’s office has shown some tentative signs of fighting back, and getting up off their knees. When Benjamin Netanyahu intervened directly via Twitter two weeks ago, for example, Corbyn hit back by insisting that the Israeli Prime Minister’s claims were false, and slammed him for his army’s killing of more than 160 unarmed protesters in the Gaza Strip since the end of March.

This week, Corbyn’s spokespeople put out a good response to the media after former Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue in Britain, Lord Jonathan Sacks, made a disgusting claim that the Labour leader is a racist. They stated that his “comparison with the race-baiting Enoch Powell is absurd and offensive.”

The more Corbyn sticks up for himself, the more his supporters will rally around him. The more he concedes to the pro-Israel Lobby, the more his critics will sense weakness, and will continue the smears, character assassinations and even open incitement to murder him.

Appeasement is a doomed strategy, as the last three years have proven decisively. The Labour “anti-Semitism crisis” smear campaign will only end in one of two ways: either it will have Corbyn deposed, or it will be defeated. The latter is only possible if Corbyn fights back strongly enough.

A member of Momentum says time has come to hold its supine leadership to account for its disgraceful role in the libellous “antisemitism” campaign.

Some in Momentum have lent their support to this in an outrageous betrayal of our own Jewish comrades – in organisations such as Jews for Justice for Palestinians, Jewish Voice for Labour and the Jewish Socialist Group among  others – who have campaigned so bravely against the racist, colonising and apartheid style policies of successive Israeli governments.

And all of this in a month during which the Netanyahu government (under pressure from even extreme right wing pro settler factions) have succeeded in imposing a new Israeli state law which is openly racist and discriminatory against Palestinians, Druze and other minorities.

The object of this libelous campaign is to weaken and if possible force Jeremy Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party. It is a foretaste of what a left led Labour government can expect when it takes office. But what is more dispiriting is the appalling decision of some of the leading personalities for Momentum and the left (including John Lansman and Owen Jones) to do the job of the witch hunting right for them.

Nothing that Pete Willsman said at the last NEC about the pro-Trump sympathies of some in the ‘leadership’ of the Jewish community was in any way ‘antisemitic.’ He should be elected to the NEC now more than ever. Those who say Labour should adopt unchanged the existing international code on antisemitism ignore the view of the man who write it – among others – that without amendment it can be a threat to legitimate free speech.

There IS a problem of anti-semitism in Britain and elsewhere in Europe – on the right. But notice that the Israeli government is happy to invite leaders of far right parties with an historic record of bitter antisemitism as honoured guests to Israel. They may be hostile to Jews but they are happy to ally with the likes of Netanyahu and the Israeli government.

Meanwhile Steve Bannon has chosen a leading hard right Belgian Zionist to head up a new EU wide alliance to encourage the growth of racist and far right parties with a long historic record of antisemitism to help undermine the European Union.

Understandably there are reports of great anger among Momentum members at the actions of Lansman, Jones and others and some comrades are threatening to resign. This would be a serious mistake: the Momentum network is a valuable asset for the left and the cause of a Corbyn led Labour government and should not be the property of any proprietor. But the time has come to hold our own supine leadership to account for the disgraceful role they are playing.

Source: The Guardian

Is it antisemitic to criticise the state of Israel? Or are Jews and non-Jews in the UK entitled to be critical, without being stigmatised as antisemites?

Does joining this protest make Jeremy Corbyn an antisemite?

Stephen Sedley: Freedom of expression is at the heart of this debate

What then is the point of the demand that the Labour party should adopt the verbose and imprecise definition promulgated in the name of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA, an intergovernmental body of 31 states) as a “non-legally binding working definition”? It reads: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

This text reproduces a 2005 draft by an EU body, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, though it was never adopted by it, and was resurrected by the IHRA in May 2016 with the now contentious list of purported examples.

These supposed examples of antisemitism are at the heart of the debate. They include: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, eg by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.” They also include: “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” They point to the underlying purpose of the text: to neutralise serious criticism of Israel by stigmatising it as a form of antisemitism.

The UK government, which has adopted the “working definition” and the examples, was warned by the Commons home affairs select committee in October 2016 that in the interests of free speech it ought to adopt an explicit rider that it is not antisemitic to criticise the government of Israel, or to hold the Israeli government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent. This was ignored.

But freedom of expression is at the centre of this debate. While the IHRA “definition” is not part of our law (at most it is a statement of policy), the right of free expression is. The Human Rights Act enacts article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, guaranteeing the right of free expression and qualifying it only where proportionate restrictions – for instance on hate speech – are imposed to protect the rights of others.

This is why, whatever criticism the IHRA’s “examples” may seek to suppress, both Jews and non-Jews in the UK are entitled, without being stigmatised as antisemites, to contend that a state that by law denies Palestinians any right of self-determination is a racist state, or to ask whether there is some moral equivalence between shooting down defenceless Jews in eastern Europe and unarmed Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza.

• Stephen Sedley is a British lawyer and visiting professor at the University of Oxford. He is a former judge of the court of appeal of England and Wales.

Geoffrey Bindman: The IHRA definition is poorly drafted and has led to the suppression of legitimate debate

Unfortunately, the definition and the examples are poorly drafted, misleading, and in practice have led to the suppression of legitimate debate and freedom of expression. Nevertheless, clumsily worded as it is, the definition does describe the essence of antisemitism: irrational hostility towards Jews.

The 11 examples are another matter. Seven of them refer to the state of Israel. This is where the problem arises. Some of them at least are not necessarily antisemitic. Whether they are or not depends on the context and on additional evidence of antisemitic intent.

Clearly, hostility to Jews could be the motivation for criticism of Israel and the fact that Israel identifies itself as a Jewish state no doubt encourages antisemites to attack Jews through their association with Israel. It is equally clear, however, that the policies and practices of Israel, a sovereign state, must be open to criticism and debate.

While it remains without legal effect, the IHRA definition has been “adopted” by the UK government, and in turn by a number of public and local authorities and by universities and colleges. But all these bodies are bound by international and domestic law not to interfere with freedom of expression except where it is, as one authority says, “a direct or indirect call for violence or as a justification of violence, hatred or intolerance”. Universities and colleges are also bound to ensure freedom of speech by the Education Act 1986, section 43.

The Labour party’s new code of conduct on antisemitism does not set out all the IHRA examples as if they were rules set in stone (as they were never meant to be). The code seeks to establish that antisemitism cannot be used as a pretext for censorship without evidence of antisemitic intent. This is entirely in line with the recommendations of the all-party Commons home affairs select committee in October 2016 that the IHRA definition should only be adopted if qualified by caveats making clear that it is not antisemitic to criticise the Israeli government without additional evidence to suggest antisemitic intent.

Unfortunately the caveats were omitted when the definition was approved by the UK government. Far from watering down or weakening it, Labour’s code strengthens it by addressing forms of discrimination that the IHRA overlooked. For example, the definition omits any reference to discrimination against Jews, a key form of antisemitism.

The attacks on the new code, including those by some Labour MPs and a number of rabbis, are baffling. One has to wonder if all these people have read the code or indeed the IHRA press release. This omission only serves to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.

• Geoffrey Bindman is a QC, solicitor and visiting professor of law at University College London and London South Bank University

Jacqueline Rose: Hannah Arendt should be our guide

In the UK, the Jewish community does not speak with one voice. We should not assume that any one definition that gains predominance at a given time, or even majority support in many strands of the Jewish community, is therefore closed to ongoing discussion. Hannah Arendt has always been my guide on this topic. In her passionate, prescient warning after the Nazi genocide that the view of antisemitism as eternal Jew-hatred, a view that might seem to be so hideously confirmed by that genocide, was as dangerous as it was tempting. We must, she insisted, proceed historically. We must distinguish, for example, medieval Jew-hatred from racist antisemitic science that made possible the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews: “If we actually are faced with open or concealed enemies on every side, if the whole world is ultimately against us, then we are lost.”

Today the argument is different: that we are confronted with a new antisemitism which targets the Jews uniquely as a nation. This view is being mobilised to crush the global grassroots movement Boycott, Divestment and Sanction. Alongside the appeal to international law, BDS, however imperfect, is the only nonviolent protest on offer against the actions of the Israeli state towards the Palestinians. It is a view also being used to clamp down on any comparison of Israeli policies with apartheid. Compare again Barenboim: “It follows that [this law]is a very clear form of apartheid.”

We need to go on debating and talking, always alert to the possibility that any one definition, however well-intentioned, however designed to protect the Jews from the suffering and ravages of their own history, might be harnessed on the side of injustice.

• Jacqueline Rose is co-director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities and co-founder of Independent Jewish Voices in the UK

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The charge ‘anti-Semite’ is used to defend racism, and to sustain a regime that implements racist policies.

Source: London Review of Books

Not long after the eruption of the Second Intifada in September 2000, I became active in a Jewish-Palestinian political movement called Ta’ayush, which conducts non-violent direct action against Israel’s military siege of the West Bank and Gaza.

Its objective isn’t merely to protest against Israel’s violation of human rights but to join the Palestinian people in their struggle for self-determination. For a number of years, I spent most weekends with Ta’ayush in the West Bank; during the week I would write about our activities for the local and international press.

My pieces caught the eye of a professor from Haifa University, who wrote a series of articles accusing me first of being a traitor and a supporter of terrorism, then later a ‘Judenrat wannabe’ and an anti-Semite. The charges began to circulate on right-wing websites; I received death threats and scores of hate messages by email; administrators at my university received letters, some from big donors, demanding that I be fired.

I mention this personal experience because although people within Israel and abroad have expressed concern for my wellbeing and offered their support, my feeling is that in their genuine alarm about my safety, they have missed something very important about the charge of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ and whom, ultimately, its target is.

The ‘new anti-Semitism’, we are told, takes the form of criticism of Zionism and of the actions and policies of Israel, and is often manifested in campaigns holding the Israeli government accountable to international law, a recent instance being the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In this it is different from ‘traditional’ anti-Semitism, understood as hatred of Jews per se, the idea that Jews are naturally inferior, belief in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy or in the Jewish control of capitalism etc. The ‘new anti-Semitism’ also differs from the traditional form in the political affinities of its alleged culprits: where we are used to thinking that anti-Semites come from the political right, the new anti-Semites are, in the eyes of the accusers, primarily on the political left.

The logic of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ can be formulated as a syllogism: i) anti-Semitism is hatred of Jews; ii) to be Jewish is to be Zionist; iii) therefore anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic.

The error has to do with the second proposition. The claims that Zionism is identical to Jewishness, or that a seamless equation can be made between the State of Israel and the Jewish people, are false. Many Jews are not Zionists. And Zionism has numerous traits that are in no way embedded in or characteristic of Jewishness, but rather emerged from nationalist and settler colonial ideologies over the last three hundred years.

Criticism of Zionism or of Israel is not necessarily the product of an animus towards Jews; conversely, hatred of Jews does not necessarily entail anti-Zionism.

Not only that, but it is possible to be both a Zionist and an anti-Semite. Evidence of this is supplied by the statements of white supremacists in the US and extreme right-wing politicians across Europe. Richard Spencer, a leading figure in the American alt-right, has no trouble characterising himself as a ‘white Zionist’ (‘As an Israeli citizen,’ he explained to his interviewer on Israel’s Channel 2 News, ‘who has a sense of nationhood and peoplehood, and the history and experience of the Jewish people, you should respect someone like me, who has analogous feelings about whites … I want us to have a secure homeland for us and ourselves. Just like you want a secure homeland in Israel’), while also believing that ‘Jews are vastly over-represented in what you could call “the establishment”.’

Gianfranco Fini of the Italian National Alliance and Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Party for Freedom, have also professed their admiration of Zionism and the ‘white’ ethnocracy of the state of Israel, while on other occasions making their anti-Semitic views plain.

Three things that draw these anti-Semites towards Israel are, first, the state’s ethnocratic character; second, an Islamophobia they assume Israel shares with them; and, third, Israel’s unapologetically harsh policies towards black migrants from Africa (in the latest of a series of measures designed to coerce Eritrean and Sudanese migrants to leave Israel, rules were introduced earlier this year requiring asylum seekers to deposit 20 per cent of their earnings in a fund, to be repaid to them only if, and when, they leave the country).

If Zionism and anti-Semitism can coincide, then – according to the law of contradiction – anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not reducible one to the other. Of course it’s true that in certain instances anti-Zionism can and does overlap with anti-Semitism, but this in itself doesn’t tell us much, since a variety of views and ideologies can coincide with anti-Semitism.

You can be a capitalist, or a socialist or a libertarian, and still be an anti-Semite, but the fact that anti-Semitism can be aligned with such diverse ideologies as well as with anti-Zionism tells us practically nothing about it or them.

Yet, despite the clear distinction between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, several governments, as well as think tanks and non-governmental organisations, now insist on the notion that anti-Zionism is necessarily a form of anti-Semitism. The definition adopted by the current UK government offers 11 examples of anti-Semitism, seven of which involve criticism of Israel – a concrete manifestation of the way in which the new understanding of anti-Semitism has become the accepted view. Any reproach directed towards the state of Israel now assumes the taint of anti-Semitism.

One idiosyncratic but telling instance of the ‘new anti-Semitism’ took place in 2005 during Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza. When soldiers came to evacuate the eight thousand Jewish settlers who lived in the region, some of the settlers protested by wearing yellow stars and insisting they would not ‘go like sheep to the slaughter’.

Shaul Magid, the chair of Jewish Studies at Indiana University, points out that by doing so, the settlers cast the Israeli government and the Israeli military as anti-Semitic. In their eyes, the government and soldiers deserved to be called anti-Semites not because they hate Jews, but because they were implementing an anti-Zionist policy, undermining the project of settling the so-called greater Israel.

This representation of decolonialisation as anti-Semitic is the key to a proper understanding of what is at stake when people are accused of the ‘new anti-Semitism’. When the professor from Haifa University branded me an anti-Semite, I wasn’t his real target. People like me are attacked on a regular basis, but we are considered human shields by the ‘new anti-Semitism’ machine. Its real target is the Palestinians.

There is an irony here. Historically, the fight against anti-Semitism has sought to advance the equal rights and emancipation of Jews. Those who denounce the ‘new anti-Semitism’ seek to legitimate the discrimination against and subjugation of Palestinians.

In the first case, someone who wishes to oppress, dominate and exterminate Jews is branded an anti-Semite; in the second, someone who wishes to take part in the struggle for liberation from colonial rule is branded an anti-Semite. In this way, Judith Butler has observed, ‘a passion for justice’ is ‘renamed as anti-Semitism’.​＊

The Israeli government needs the ‘new anti-Semitism’ to justify its actions and to protect it from international and domestic condemnation. Anti-Semitism is effectively weaponised, not only to stifle speech – ‘It does not matter if the accusation is true,’ Butler writes; its purpose is ‘to cause pain, to produce shame, and to reduce the accused to silence’ – but also to suppress a politics of liberation.

The non-violent BDS campaign against Israel’s colonial project and rights abuses is labelled anti-Semitic not because the proponents of BDS hate Jews, but because it denounces the subjugation of the Palestinian people. This highlights a further disturbing aspect of the ‘new anti-Semitism’. Conventionally, to call someone ‘anti-Semitic’ is to expose and condemn their racism; in the new case, the charge ‘anti-Semite’ is used to defend racism, and to sustain a regime that implements racist policies.

The question today is how to preserve a notion of anti-anti-Semitism that rejects the hatred of Jews, but does not promote injustice and dispossession in Palestinian territories or anywhere else. There is a way out of the quandary.

We can oppose two injustices at once. We can condemn hate speech and crimes against Jews, like the ones witnessed recently in the US, or the anti-Semitism of far-right European political parties, at the same time as we denounce Israel’s colonial project and support Palestinians in their struggle for self-determination.

But in order to carry out these tasks concurrently, the equation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism must first be rejected.

Israeli Neve Gordon is professor of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. He is at present visiting professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS, London.