Labour’s fake anti-Semitism crisis outlives Corbyn

Asa Winstanley Lobby Watch 16 January 2020

Labour leadership candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey instantly agreed to all 10 demands.

Adam Gerrard MirrorPix

Candidates for the leadership of the UK’s Labour Party have capitulated to new demands from the Israel lobby.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is insisting that whoever replaces Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in April should effectively institute purges of the party membership.

So the fabricated “anti-Semitism crisis” in Britain’s main opposition party rages on, despite Corbyn’s defeat last month – which other Israel lobbyists have now claimed responsibility for.

The Board of Deputies on Sunday issued 10 “pledges” – or “demands” as The Jewish Chronicle reported – “to end the anti-Semitism crisis.”

In what was clearly a coordinated action, all five candidates who have received sufficient nominations to be on the ballot paper in the leadership contest instantly agreed to the Board’s demands.

These included the supposedly left-wing shadow minister Rebecca Long-Bailey. She commands the most support among Labour members, according to one opinion poll, with Keir Starmer, the party’s main spokesperson on Brexit, in second position.

The group Labour Against the Witch Hunt has condemned the demands, calling on candidates to reject them.

Fawning

Long-Bailey posted a fawning blog post on The Times of Israel website acceding to all the Board of Deputies’ demands.

In a sign of how the witch hunt has becoming increasingly McCarthyite, she committed to expelling Labour members supposedly guilty of “diminishing the problem of anti-Semitism.”

Her blog post was promoted online by her campaign manager Jon Lansman – who has been part of the witch hunt for some time now.

Emily Thornberry, another shadow minister now running to be leader, published an even more disgusting blog post on The Times of Israel.

Thornberry gives the game away by openly stating that the so-called crisis is really all about defending Israel. She reveals that she launched a “battle” against Corbyn’s advisers over the 2019 manifesto’s Palestine policy – which included a commitment to an arms embargo against Israel for the first time.

Blackmail

The Board of Deputies is an organization that spends most of its time lobbying for Israel, but is also a Jewish communal body.

In its list of 10 demands, it said that Labour members who “support, campaign or provide a platform” to anyone disciplined by the party for alleged anti-Semitism “should themselves be suspended.”

Another of the stipulations would give “Jewish representative bodies” – presumably including the Board itself – an effective veto over Labour’s disciplinary processes, including the handling of confidential data.

The Board is also demanding that the Jewish Labour Movement be put in charge of “anti-racism education” and run the party’s anti-Semitism training.

The Jewish Labour Movement is an openly Zionist organisation with intimate ties to the Israeli embassy in London. It has been at the forefront of the manufactured “Labour anti-Semitism” campaign against Corbyn over the last four and a half years.

The Board also calls for Labour to endorse the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance “working definition” of anti-Semitism “without qualification.” That controversial document has not been drawn up as a tool to fight genuine anti-Semitism; most of the “examples” cited by it concern Israel.

Among other stipulations, the document prohibits denying “the Jewish people their right to self-determination” by criticizing Israel as “a racist endeavor.” This potentially forbids Labour members from advocating for a unitary democratic state for everyone in historic Palestine.

In 2018, despite opposition by Palestinian, Black and other ethnic minority groups, and despite wide grassroots opposition, Labour fully endorsed the controversial document.

But Corbyn unsuccessfully attempted to append a qualifying statement to the document before it formally became party policy. Corbyn had sought to give Labour activists the freedom to describe Israeli policies as racist.

Dissent

Labour is also running an election for deputy leader. That post became vacant following the resignation of Tom Watson last year.

Of the five candidates to fill the vacancy, only Dawn Butler and Richard Burgon have not agreed to the Board’s demands.

The left-wing group Jewish Voice for Labour has condemned the Board’s interference. “That this hostile body should be given a prominent – if not dominant – voice in the internal affairs of the Labour Party beggars belief,” the group stated.

The Jewish anti-Zionist and socialist campaigner Tony Greenstein wrote a blog post at the weekend condemning the Board’s hypocricy over the fabricated crisis.

“The Board of Deputies have never fought anti-Semitism,” he wrote. “My father, like Jeremy [Corbyn’s] mother, took part in the 1936 Battle of Cable Street against [Oswald] Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. The Board of Deputies told him and other Jews to stay at home.”

Other anti-Palestinian activists have made their own demands on Labour.

David Hirsh, an academic who campaigns against the Palestinian call for a boycott of Israel, tweeted that Labour must “beg” Luciana Berger, Joan Ryan and Louise Ellman – three former MPs who are part of the Israel lobby – to come back.

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Comments

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tom hall replied on

The situation is rapidly approaching the point at which there's no longer is any need for a primary vector of "antisemitism" from which to project secondary crimes of association. We are now witnessing such a pervasive assault on political discourse that our mere affinity for one another is in itself sufficient to incur condemnation. There's no further requirement for a Ken Livingston, a Jackie Walker, a Chris Williamson, to be used as a lightning rod from which to radiate implications of guilt through close circles of associates.

All of civil society is now targeted for a massive sweep-up, precisely in the manner of McCarthyist purges in the United States. Anyone who has spoken out for Palestinian rights can be targeted, with resultant loss of job, perhaps of social welfare benefits, even of personal liberty. These people won't stop until they are openly confronted by organisations and individuals willing to risk imprisonment- because that, too, is in the cards. As shameful as is the Labour leadership contenders' abject capitulation to the Zionists' demands, this event at least conveys the stark message now in place, that the cause of Palestine has been cast out completely from the councils of the British Labour Party. If we mean to go on fighting and organising, we'll do so with the clear understanding that we owe these scoundrels nothing, least of all our cooperation. This movement will be built and sustained outside the party political structures. There's no other way, now. Perhaps there never was.

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Frank Dallas replied on

Yes, you're quite right,Tom. This is the world of Franz Kafka. Lansman's comment is Kafka writ large: "Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K because he was arrested on morning though he had done nothing wrong." Lansman is saying that accusation means guilt. Thus, the very basis of due process is eliminated. Justice is short-circuited. Accusation leads directly to punishment with no intervening gathering of evidence, right of defence or question of reasonable doubt. That Starmer, a lawyer, should accede to this is breathtaking. Imagine if the Muslim Council demanded to be directly involved in the disciplinary procedures of the Tory Party. Can you see the headlines in the Daily Express? Imagine if to criticise Daesh was to be deemed Islamophobic. Yet that is exactly where we are in relation to criticism of Zionism or the Israeli State. What this adumbrates is the extension of the hate laws to make any critical comment regarding Zionism a criminal offence: totalitarianism sneaking in the back door. The party structures, whatever they may be good for, are no good for building a movement for the democratisation of Palestine. Labour has failed utterly to make the case that Zionism is racist, and its historical anti-Semitism is well-documented: anyone who is not a Zionist is the wrong kind of Jew. Hence the viciousness towards Jewish Voice for Labour. The western media are in thrall to the "new anti-Semitism" cooked up by the US Zionist lobby: anyone of moderately liberal persuasion must be an anti-Semite. Of course, what is really at stake here is democracy. It isn't possible, as John Kerry pointed out, to be a theocracy and a democracy. One or the other. Israel's pretence of democracy is its flimsy cover for its theocratic totalitarianism. The only answer is a one-state, democratic Palestine. In the long run, we will be proven right, just as were in South Africa. Let cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we fight on with the truth as our weapon.

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Nigel Thompson replied on

I'm desperately hoping for a new effective Labour leader who can deliver Corbyn policies - whilst the 'vacuum' that exists before we find one is sucking in the babies AND the bathwater, 'floaters and all' - a state of affairs which suggests that leaders are now 'made' - as constructs of the MSM and their influencers - and many putative 'born leaders' are strangled by an infiltrated Party system, before they hit the limelight. Politics is increasingly presented by MSM as 'showbiz' and those reluctant but brilliant 'potential leadership candidates' go through a casting process that weeds out those who won't pass autocratic MSM scrutiny before they ever see the light of day. How would a modern day Attlee or Bevan fare under the spotlight of the UK's Footlights Media. The Netlix film portraying AOC's successful fight to get grassroots support for her place in Congress is uplifting; why can't that happen here?

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June Helm replied on

There is no way I would vote for anyone who has put their name up for Labour leader who has signed the so called Rules the BoD have put in place.
No one should be signing this paper which makes anti-semitism more important than other types of racism, which it is not.
All racism should be called out as wrong and should not be tolerated and this includes the Palestinians.

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Caroline Barber replied on

Labour is considered a broad chuch ,we are all considered equal.No religous group can demand special dispensation to dictate policy or membership to any political party.

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David Hawkins replied on

I believe we need to confront and deconstruct Zionist language.
When someone talks of Israel's Right to Exist what does this mean ? It actually means the Right of Israel to exist with a Jewish majority achieved by ethnic cleansing in 1948. Even Labour Friends of Israel admit this because when the wrote to Jeremy Corbyn opposing a Palestinian Right of Return the reason they gave was because it would produce a Palestinian majority in Israel. So Israel only has a right to exist because of premeditated, violent racism in 1948. So if you support Israel's Right of Self Determination you must also support ethnic cleansing because without ethnic cleansing Israel would not have a Jewish majority.
And Jew's "right to self determination". Jews are not a race. What race is there where members of it look so totally different from each other ? And the ancestors of European Jews never lived in Palestine so how can the have a Right of Return to a place where their ancestors never were ? And if you take the biblical justification how can this apply to the many Zionist Jews who are atheists ? The Roma were equally persecuted by the Nazis where is their "Right of Self Determination" going take place ? In Bavaria perhaps ?

Asa Winstanley

Asa Winstanley's picture

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London. He is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and co-host of our podcast.

He is author of the bestselling book Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2023).