Month: May 2016

Letter sent by Professor Jonathan Rosenhead to Labour Party General Secretary Iain McNicol, 5 May. Rosenhead was reacting to the latest, most egregious case: the Labour Party suspension of anti-racist campaigner, Jacqueline Walker.

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Dear Mr McNicol

I am frankly flabbergasted. As a Jew brought up in the Zionist tradition, who first joined the Labour Party in 1961, and who was subsequently a Labour Parliamentary candidate, I find the current wave of suspensions on suspicion of antisemitism beyond belief.

There is antisemitism in this country, so there is undoubtedly antisemitism in some Labour Party members. Maybe I am lucky, but I have never actually experienced it within the party in either word or deed. It is rare. Whether it is going up or down is hard to tell, because it is so insignificant. So why these suspensions? Why Tony Greenstein, a committed anti-racist campaigner? Why Jackie Walker for God’s sake? Both, extra-ordinarily, of Jewish heritage.

What has been going up, both within the Labour Party and in civil society generally, is an unwillingness to keep quiet about what Israel is inflicting on the Palestinians. What has been going up is the effort put out by Israel (and its unconditional supporters) to brand those who criticise Israel as, on the slightest excuse, antisemitic.

Why is the Labour Party buying this pernicious nonsense? Surely by now you must be aware of the downright lies being manufactured to ‘incriminate’ targets (and intimidate others). This is a mendacious campaign to which the Labour Party is giving credibility by its supine behaviour.

I have been campaigning for the Labour Party here in Hackney over the past weeks and today. It makes me sick at heart to see the Party brought into such disrepute by actions for which, I assume, you take ultimate responsibility. That means that you have the power to stop it.

Yours
Jonathan Rosenhead

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Dear Jonathan

Thank you for your email.

Jackie Walker has been suspended pending an investigation and, therefore, no further comment can be made at this time.

Yours sincerely
Iain McNicol
General Secretary

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Please sign the petition calling for Jackie Walker to be reinstated to the Labour Party

On Mondoweiss, Donald Johnson asks why no one calls out anti-Palestinian bigotry:

Excerpt: ‘…In the British argument over whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, the pro-Israel side is lumping in defensible statements, dumb or insensitive statements, and actual antisemitic statements from the anti-Zionists into one big pot. And so the well-intentioned commentator, like Gaby Hinsliff, in this Guardian piece (“Antisemitism has rocked Labour’s self-belief”) is too lazy to try and make the distinctions and then screws up herself– when she says it’s anti-Semitic to deny “Israel’s right to exist” without seeming to realize that Israel wouldn’t exist as a Jewish state without ethnic cleansing and discrimination.

Because nobody cares about anti-Palestinian bigotry.

‘No other human rights movement I can think of is automatically accused of being racist. The underlying assumption is that Palestinians just don’t matter that much, so anyone who expresses moral outrage or uses the normal tools of protest, like boycotts, can’t possibly be motivated by human rights concerns. They must be antisemites or at least examined very closely for antisemitism before being given a clean bill of health.

‘Who examines the examiners for their bigotry? No one….’

Continue reading here

Presenting her contribution to the Labour antisemitism controversy as an unpleasant obligation reluctantly fulfilled, Spectator columnist Tanya Gold delivers one of the more muddled opinions on the subject in the Telegraph.

Gold declares that ‘the intensity of the loathing for Israel – the Jewish state – in parts of the far Left is curious.’ Any serious reflection on the subject would lead to the conclusion that it is one of the least curious phenomena in the post-colonial era to – in her emotive language – ‘loathe’ a state that exists because of large-scale, ongoing ethnic cleansing and racial discrimination. It’s what the far Left does, when not cowed by false accusations of racism.

Gold has reduced a righteous anger at the total impunity Israel enjoys for its serial atrocities to an irrational and very personal emotional response to something disgusting.

She then asks a facile question: ‘Where is the similar loathing for hosts of countries who observe no human rights whatsoever, including Israel’s Arab neighbours?’ Her failure to acknowledge the relevance of successive British governments’ consistent and unequivocal condemnation of Israel’s neighbours – backed up by sanctions – is comprehensible only if one accepts her premise that this is about personal hatred, not outrage at impunity. Gold confuses her growing feelings of resentment at outrage on the Left, with a legitimate grievance. Again, this is understandable given she gets the power asymmetry the wrong way round: she thinks she is backing Israel the victim, not the aggressor. Continue reading “Tanya Gold doesn’t want to hear about Israel’s atrocities – the left is just being antisemitic”

Dave Rich is Deputy Director of Communications at the Community Security Trust. CST is a registered charity.

Writing in today’s Jewish Chronicle, Dave Rich provides what he calls a guide to ‘Jew-hate for the perplexed.’ It is impossible to take seriously the views of someone that believes Naz Shah’s satirical Facebook post (shared via American Jewish scholar, Norman Finkelstein’s website) was tantamount to

Endorsing the mass deportation of its citizens – ethnic cleansing, effectively and denying the legitimacy of Jewish sovereignty in the region.

By using the term ‘Jewish sovereignty‘ he – unwittingly – underlines the reality of Israel as an ethnic-supremacist state, like Apartheid-era South Africa.

Rich divides language used to criticise Israel into two types: he reluctantly concedes that although the first type used to criticise Israel, involving ‘human rights,’ ‘discrimination,’ and ‘inequality’ is ‘inaccurate,’ it is more likely to be legitimate.

The second type, he writes, ‘is the reservoir of antisemitic ideas that lies deep in Europe’s culture.’ As an example, he cites the alleged use of “Zio” by members of the Oxford University Labour Club. Electronic Intifada’s investigation concluded that cases of antisemitism at OULC were fabricated.

Rich claims ‘Zio’ is a term ‘only used by people who are hostile to Zionism’:

Jewish students do not call each other “Zio” as a term of endearment…. “Zio” is a derogatory term used in an abusive and bigoted way.

He dismisses the idea that it is ‘simply an abbreviation of “Zionist” with no further meaning.’ He is correct to observe that the term is pre-dominantly (though not exclusively) used by those critical of political Zionism, particularly on Twitter. But his fixation on the abbreviation of ‘Zionist’ serves to obscure his central argument: that it must never be used in a pejorative way. On this, he is in agreement with Momentum’s Jon Lansman. Continue reading “CST implies ‘Zionist’ should only be used as a term of endearment”

John Mann MP has given an interview to the BBC on election night, in which he appears to gloat over losses in Jewish majority wards.

John Mann, the MP for Bassetlaw and chair of the all-party group against anti-Semitism, said the results in Jewish areas had been a “sub plot” of the night – and predicted a similar impact in London.

Jewish News reports that Mann told the BBC:

It is clear the Jewish vote, which for generations in families has been Labour, has gone against Labour tonight. We’ve seen that Bury, in Glasgow, I think we’ll see it in parts of London.

This is going to define Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership – he’s got to get on top of this because Labour is not going to win power of it doesn’t get on top of the problem.

JN don’t add, however, that he also insisted “now is not the time” for any challenge to Mr Corbyn. Continue reading “Labour MP John Mann: ‘The Jewish vote’ has gone against Labour”

Please sign and share petition started by Bridget Chapman on ‘Change’ here

Continue reading “Petition: Reinstate Jacqueline Walker to the Labour Party”

Please read article in full on Middle East Eye here

Excerpt: ‘… Whatever the Zionists in Britain point to, as an expression of anti-Semitism, which in the main are legitimate criticism of Israel, have been said before in the last 50 years. The pro-Zionist lobby in Britain, under direct guidance from Israel, picks them up because the clear anti-Zionist stance of BDS has reached the upper echelons. They are genuinely terrified by this development. Well done the BDS movement!

The reaction, one has to admit, is powerful and vicious. However, succumbing to it by suspending party members, firing student leaders and unnecessarily apologising for crimes not committed is not the right way to confront it.

‘We are in a struggle for a free and democratic Palestine and Israel: fear of Zionist intimidation is not the way forward. The coming days will be very tough and we would need to be both patient and go back to the podium, the website, the radio and television and re-explain what for many of us is obvious: Zionism is not Judaism, and anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

‘Zionism was not the antidote for Europe’s worst chapter of anti-Semitism: the Holocaust. Zionism was the wrong answer to that atrocity. In fact, when European leaders lended without hesitation their support for Zionism their motives in many cases were anti-Semitic. How else can one explain a Europe that stood by when the Nazi regime genocided the Jews and asked for forgiveness by supporting a new plan to get rid of the Jews by despatching them to colonise Palestine? No wonder this absurd logic did not kill the anti-Semitic impulse but rather kept it alive. Continue reading “Ilan Pappe: Don’t surrender to Israel’s bullying on ‘anti-Semitism’”

Kamel Hawwash is a British Palestinian academic and vice-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, writing in a personal capacity.

Please read article in full on Electronic Intifada

Excerpt: ‘… The chief rabbi and Zionism both ask us to accept that only Jews have a right to determine where they live and never mind the impact of their demand on whoever already lives on that land.

‘In his article, Mirvis astonishingly fails to mention my people, the Palestinian people, even once. His anger with the left has unfortunately left him ignorant of our plight.

‘To the chief rabbi, we are invisible.

‘He did not once acknowledge our existence on the land, our own unshakable connection to it or that it was and still is our home – whether for those living in historic Palestine or in the diaspora.

‘We are in the diaspora because of Zionism.

‘The chief rabbi implies that we cannot disassociate Zionism from Judaism – by implication accusing all Palestinians who oppose Zionism – as indeed we do – of anti-Semitism.

‘This is why Ephraim Mirvis is wrong, with the greatest respect to him, to conflate the two – a religion and a political ideology….’

Tony Klug’s piece is by far the more thoughtful, altruistic contribution to the debate. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle today, Tony Klug warns that,

this whole saga might generate a resentment against Jews, producing the very opposite effect to that which newspapers like the JC claim they want to achieve – fomenting anti-Jewish feeling rather than combatting it.

It is time to calm down, end the hysteria and restore a sense of proportion.

While on Medium, Keith Kahn-Harris says he doesn’t ‘feel that the Labour Party has become “institutionally antisemitic”,’ and sets out in detail why ‘Labour’s antisemitism row is scaring’ him ‘(but, perhaps, not for the reasons you might expect)’:

Even if you think that the examples of Labour antisemitism that have been highlighted in the last few weeks are exaggerated, one-off incidents or simply not antisemitism at all, the controversy over these incidents may well lead to antisemitism.

Tony Klug appears to accept the premise that there is a problem on the left, albeit a small one – and refers to the ‘ignorant cynicism of Ken Livingstone’ –  but asserts that,

While antisemitism is monstrous – and, like all forms of racism, should be vigorously dealt with – false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too. Not only are they damning, they diminish authentic occurrences, of which, sadly, there are still many.

and further cautions:

Some of these explanations are patently spurious, unfairly charging people genuinely committed to universal human rights with being antisemites because they grieve for the Palestinian plight. By abusing the charge of antisemitism, there is a danger that it could turn into a badge of honour.

Continue reading “Kahn-Harris and Klug warn: antisemitism hysteria could lead to antisemitism”