Day: 20 May 2016

Mike Cushman

On Thursday I attended a strange event: a debate on antisemitism and anti-Zionism between Alliance for Workers Liberty, a sub-Trotskyist splinter group, and Progress, the Labour Party Blair legacy group.

But it wasn’t a debate it was a love-in between two factions you would be surprised to find in the same room without blood and severed limbs on the floors and walls when they departed.

What was their common object of affection? Why Israel, of course, but not the Israel we see every day abusing Palestinians and harassing dissident anti-Zionists. It was an Israel of their imagination moving gracefully to a two-state solution, abandoning settlements and occupation on the way.

They were joined in their embrace by representatives of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and reciprocated their affection by continually praising the JLM as the true and only representatives of Jews in the Labour Party.

Everyone, including the JLM speakers condemned the occupation but never mentioned the Nakba. They appear to believe the occupation is an accidental aberration and not implicit in the Zionist programme from the start. Not only was the Nakba absent from their discourse so, largely, were the Palestinians even those living in 48 Israel: they were an unspoken context; only Jewish Israelis, and diaspora Jews, were objects of their concern.

In order to advance their argument they relied heavily upon a construct of ‘left antisemitism’ conceived as a visceral irrational hatred of Israel and variously described as a legacy of Stalinism and a core belief of the ultra-Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party. Obviously, like the Jew of antisemitic myth, left antisemitism is everywhere and capable of infinite disguise and malice. We were continually informed that left antisemitism was not racism but political opposition to Israel. If indeed it is a political stance one is entitled to oppose it so why is it, then, a marker for proscription and expulsion? Left antisemitism of course was not born in Stalinist Russia, they had enough old fashioned antisemitism there, they didn’t need a new variety: it was born in Israel. It was created to put a derogatory and delegitimising label on growing worldwide opposition to Israel’s crimes among progressive movements.

None of this is to deny that some people the left can be antisemitic, regrettably some fall short of the higher standards we expect of those on the left than those on the right; anyone who does fall short must be confronted, challenged and if necessary disciplined. This does not produce a political category of ‘left antisemites’ or a justification for witch hunting.

Both the speakers applauded the JLM and endorsed their claim to be the only authentic voice of Jews in the Labour Party and accordingly to be the only people who could, not educate, but train the Party on antisemitism. The JLM speaker informed us that the JLM was, in fact, highly critical of actually existing Israel and its current right-wing leadership and it was our fault for not knowing that. I have accordingly checked their website where there is no trace such demurral. What can be found is a proud statement that “We support Havoda (The Labor Party) in Israel.” The same Labor Party that, led by Ben-Gurion, orchestrated the Nakba. The party historically that has been the party of the Israel Defence (sic) Force and its assaults on Palestinians. The Party that, in its current guise of the Zionist Union, is angling to join the same right-wing coalition that the JLM claimed to abhor. No distance from Apartheid apparent there. Continue reading “A love-in with a mythical Israel”

This week, Rod Liddle was suspended from the Labour party, allegedly for Islamophobia. When he shared his thoughts with the Sun’s Harry Cole on why he had been suspended following his post on the Spectator Coffee House blog, 3 May, he coyly said that, ‘Perhaps it is my suggestion that many Muslims are not favourably inclined towards Jews that provoked my suspension from the party.’

As Zelo Street pointed out, both Liddle and Cole, as well as the Spectator editor Fraser Nelson, knew there was more; this is what Liddle wrote

Re the anti-Semitism. There are a number of broad points to make. First, it is absolutely endemic within two sections of the Labour Party – the perpetually adolescent white middle-class lefties, and the Muslims – the latter of which now comprise a significant proportion of Labour activists and voters in parts of London and the dilapidated former mill-towns of West Yorkshire and East Lancashire. And Luton. And parts of the midlands.

For many Muslims the anti-Semitism is visceral, an ingrained part of their unpleasant ideology. For the idiotic white lefties it is an adjunct to their self-loathing and hatred of firstly Britain and second the West. In both cases it is predicated as much upon envy – at Jewish success, worldwide and in Israel – as anything else. If you handed over Israel to the Palestinians they would turn it into Somalia before you could say Yom Kippur.

Liddle’s words are uncannily like those of a member of the House of Lords, Baroness Deech. Writing in Haaretz on 4 May, Deech blamed British politicians for ‘appeasing their Muslim voters,’ specifically upbraiding Corbyn for not acknowledging that anti-Semitism is ‘special’ and has ‘roots in the religion and culture of Islam.’ Deech then implied that our government is putting at risk the lives of British Jews by allowing Muslims to make their home here. Like Liddle, she views English towns with large Muslim populations as hotbeds of antisemitism, and has been keeping a wary eye on the census:

The U.K. census of 2011 revealed that Bradford’s population was 24.7% Muslim, and no doubt it’s higher by now. There are wards of Bradford, Blackburn and Burnley (the suspended councilors’ constituencies) where British Muslims reach 70% of the local population.

Even the Independent published an article by the Jewish Chronicle‘s new columnist Ben Judah that implied Bradford is a no-go area for Jews. Liddle has a well-deserved reputation as a foul-mouthed bigot whose opinions are commonplace in the right-wing media. But, as evidenced, you don’t have to look hard to see these views reflected in the liberal press, by Zionists. Pro-Israel groups with charity status are no less impolitic.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was formed during the attack by Israel on the Palestinians in Gaza in 2014, during which over 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 551 children. It was born from a desire not to combat anti-Semitism, but to support Israel right or wrong, and to portray anti-Zionism as anti-Semitic.

In April, within 48 hours of the publication of the flawed Channel 4/ICM survey of Muslim attitudes in Britain, CAA had produced a ‘report’ British Muslims and Antisemitism, which included this racist infographic: Continue reading “Rod Liddle and the Campaign Against Antisemitism”