THE NEW ZEALAND LEFT is not alone in being torn apart by what should and should not be tolerated. Only yesterday, the British Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was publicly upbraided for being “an antisemitic racist” by Margaret Hodge, a senior British Labour MP. Hodge was furious that Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) has refused to accept, in full, the definition of antisemitism issued by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
For more than a year now, charges of antisemitism have been driving a debilitating wedge into the British Labour Party. Not that very many people around the world find such charges even remotely credible. The British Labour Party has a long and proud history of standing up for the rights of all Jewish people suffering persecution on account of their religious beliefs and/or supposed “racial” identity. Why, then, are these accusations being made and, more importantly, why are they being taken seriously?
The answer is to be found in the efforts of Zionists (an ideology to be carefully differentiated from the beliefs of Jewish people in general) to expand the definition of antisemitism to include any negative references to the origins, policies and actions of the Israeli state.
On these matters, the British Labour Party can speak with some authority. It was, after all, the 1945-1951 Labour Government, led by Clement Attlee, which withdrew the last remaining British troops from Palestine on 14 May 1948 – clearing the way for the creation of the State of Israel on 15 May 1948.
British military forces, who were responsible for enforcing what was known as Great Britain’s “mandatory power” in Palestine, had come under increasingly violent attack from Zionist terror groups, such as Irgun and the notorious Stern Gang, since the end of the Second World War in 1945. In September 1947, war weary and close to insolvency, the British state announced to the world that it was no longer willing or able to carry out its duties to the Arab and Jewish populations of Palestine.
This did not, however, mean that they were blind to the strategies and tactics of their Zionist antagonists. As the party in power at the time, Labour has always known a great deal more about the nature and birth of the State of Israel than its Zionist defenders would like.
Hence the co-ordinated attack upon the Jeremy Corban-led Labour Party. As a principled leftist, Corbyn has always refused to buy into the Zionist characterisation of Israel as a state more sinned against that sinning. He has never stopped caring about the Palestinians who, for a variety of reasons (some good, some bad) were made homeless by the circumstances of Israel’s bloody birth. Corbyn’s empathy for the people whose survival has, for the past 70 years, depended upon the support and concern of the international community has been unwavering.
The prospect of such a man becoming Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is not something the Israeli Government and its supporters are ready to accept without a fight. Corbyn’s contacts with Palestinian leaders have been challenged.
Does he subscribe to their desire to wipe Israel off the map? Is that why he refuses to declare his unequivocal support for the Jewish homeland. Is he providing aid and comfort to his antisemitic supporters among the Labour Party rank-and-file? And, if he is, doesn’t that prove that he is, indeed, “an antisemitic racist”?
Crucial to the success of this campaign has been the refusal of its promoters to draw that all-important distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. They allow their target audience to assume that their charges relate to behaviour conforming to the traditional definition of antisemitism: hostility to or prejudice against Jews; when what they are really talking about is the IHRA definition of antisemitism – which includes inter alia:
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.
Applying double standards by requiring of it a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Small wonder that the NEC balked at accepting such a tendentious definition “in full”. To do so would render criticism of Israeli policy and Zionist ideology virtually impossible.
Confirmation that proscribing criticism is, indeed, the goal of the campaign against Corbyn and his supporters in the Labour Party has been provided by what theGuardian describes as “a coalition of 36 international Jewish anti-Zionist groups”. The latter have released an open letter in which the Zionist-inspired IHRA definition is condemned as a “distorted definition of antisemitism to stifle criticism of Israel”.
Margaret Hodge owes Jeremy Corbyn an apology.
So weird, the new right wing play, is to brand every body anti semitic.
Well Corbyn was supposed to be an IRA sympathiser, then a Russian sympathiser now his views on Palestine label him an anti semitic. Shrug. Maybe he’s a spy for the Chinese too (sarcasm).
Whatever the media throw at him, just makes him more popular. People are tired of fake news, and stupid politicians like Margaret Hodge, are keeping the conservatives in power by fake news against their own leader. What a traitor!
SaveNZ 1000%
Right wing activists are now infiltraing Labour movements all over the world it seems and I wonder if it is being done with corrupt money from George Soros as he has been actively funding political actions for years and taking over even US voting companies we hear now.
He is somehow even involved in the largest global electronic voting systems company centred in Spain now.
https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/16724-soros-connected-vote-counting-firm-expands-in-u-s
“A Spanish vote-tabulation firm with ties to billionaire globalist George Soros is purchasing software to give it greater power over the voting in U.S. elections.
In a press release under a Barcelona and Tampa, Florida dateline, Scytl announced”
Soros now has bought the ‘New York Times’ also and sends out his own liesthrough the New York Times where the NZ media picks up his lies and parrots when to us now through our own media.
https://yournewswire.com/george-soros-buys-new-york-times/
“After throwing more than $10.5 million into Hillary Clinton’s failed election bid in 2016, Soros has also made no bones about his desire to see President Donald Trump –who he recently called the “ultimate narcissist”– impeached and removed from office. Trump’s victory reportedly cost Soros almost a billion dollars on the market.
Since Trump’s election, Soros has taken to sponsoring leftist candidates in district attorney races across the country, in a bid to reshape the American justice system in his own progressive image. After donating $50 million to the American Civil Liberties Union in 2014, he has spent over $9 million funding candidates in 14 cities. In San Diego alone, he spent $1.5 million propping up Democrat Geneviéve Jones-Wright’s unsuccessful campaign.
“Soros is well known for his liberal views, however, and publicly supports –and funds– a variety of progressive and neoliberal causes, through NGOs like his Open Society Foundations.”
Infiltration is a well established method of persuasion and control.
Look up Operation Mockingbird,
The same mob
Welcome to the true intent of neoliberal identity politics: a weapon to undermine class solidarity
So as a consequence of writing this you will be persona non grata at whaleoil I presume (hope) as that site is a hotbed of Zionist propaganda .
‘Margaret Hodge owes Jeremy Corbyn an apology.’
Damned right she does.
Israel and its more radical supporters have a tremendous backstory to suit their agenda and I certainly don’t believe they are lily-white in their actions over the decades.
I have only just discovered, by reading ‘I am Pilgrim’ that there was a now little-known Nazi concentration camp that slaughtered Gypsies and French Resistance in the foothills of the Vosges mountains, called Natzweiler-Struthof.
There is no backstory for them; no political influence. ‘The Gypsies lost even more in percentage terms than the Jews. They call it The Devouring.’
“Margaret Hodge owes Jeremy Corbyn an apology.”
Why?
That’s her right to free speech. As you’ve pointed out, Mr Trotter. Doesn’t that free speech suit you now?
you really need to think your analysis through.
I have. You simply couldn’t keep up.
Shall I use single-syllabic words? Would that help, Andrew?
Free speech is one thing and what you say is another..
Try not to make one equal the other .
Simple.
There’s no doubt that the ridiculous claims about Jeremy Corbyn being racist (despite him having been the UK’s most virulently anti-apartheid MP at a time when Thatcher supported South Africa’s racist government to the hilt), or that the UK Labour Party has a problem with anti-Semitism, would dry up overnight if UK Labour got itself a new “Israel friendly” leader.
Conflating criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies towards the Palestinians or its wholehearted encouragement of another Middle East conflict with Iran with “anti-Semitism” works wonders for suppressing all legitimate criticism of Israel.
There has never been a UK Prime Minister who was prepared to be even-handed when dealing with Israel and the Palestinians, and as Chris says, Israel and its lobbyists will do everything they can to prevent one coming to power. Accusations of anti-Semitism will be one of their most powerful weapons in meeting this objective.
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20180515-labour-friends-of-israel-blames-palestinians-for-their-own-deaths/
Right and wrong. This is neo Marxism aka post modernism….I won’t split hairs because regardless of doctrinal nitpicking it’s one and the same. It needs a victim narrative,. It’s not neo Liberal but it’s bloody useful for divide and rule. Hence they tolerate and when useful encourage.
Who remembers now the first ideologically pure revolutionary? Robespierre, the purist of the pure, the new man of reason.
We should remember at our peril. When others failed to meet his rigorous standards the “national barber” awaited. Eventually it consumed him too. And that is the risk the Left runs today as we label and demand uniform adherence with well laid out victim narratives. A church built on many strong pillars is infinitely preferred.
Chris,
An interesting article, but I feel you have made a fatal error in referring to those of the
Judaic faith as a “people”.
I would refer you to the well researched treatises by Israeli historian Shlomo Sand namely The Invention of the Jewish People and The Invention of the Land of Israel.
In any discussion concerning Israel or its state religion it essential to accurately separate history from mythistory as it is the latter that is used in spurious claims of antisemitism
So how do I stand in accusations of Anti- Semitism ?
1.Many Jews act like their priority is the Zionist State of Israel, rather than their own country.Look at the behaviour of U.S. Jews in particular.
2.I deny the” Jewish people” in Israel their right to self determination in the Zionist State of Israel because they say it is primarily a country for Jews. 80% of them are genetically not Jews, they are converts to Judaism.
3.The existence of the Nazi Zionist State of Israel is a racist endeavor. They are ethnic cleansing the Palestinian people. I have posted in the past and carefully itemised all the similarities between Nazi Germany and the Israeli Zionist state , and come to a clear affirmation that it is a Nazi state.
4. I do not expect Nazi Zionist Israel to behave in a way of any democratic country because it is not a democratic country. In a democratic country all citizens have the same rights, and this is clearly not the case in Israel.
How did I do? !!
Well, uncovering the tip of the iceberg.
If the Zionists want criticism to stop, they can pressure the Tel Aviv government to return to their 1948 UN- mandated borders and abandon their colonisation of the West Bank.
Smearing critics as “anti semitic” is a cheap trick.
“Zionist-Inspired Definition Of Antisemitism Deployed Against Jeremy Corbyn.”
But Chris, didn’t YOU deploy the term “free speech denier” against those who did not support those two Canadian neo-fascists to speak in Auckland Council public venues? Pot/kettle when you yourself label those you disagree with with a demeaning term, so as to marginalise their views.
The religious idea of a Jewish return to Palestine had nothing to do with
the political enterprise of Zionism. “Jewish tradition,” writes Rabkin,
“holds that the idea of return must be part of a messianic project rather
than the human initiative of migration to the Holy Land. It then becomes
much easier to understand why the Zionist enterprise, reflecting as it did
Christian motifs, was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Jews at the
turn of the 20th century” Prof Rabkin, Univ Montreal
It seems that the zionist jews who make up the ruling class in Israel are squandering the good will of the world that accepted that they should have a place. A base for a nation scattered throughout the world for centuries , and resented everywhere.
The place carved out for them needed to be at a cost to the indigenous population to some extent, there was nowhere that was entirely empty, but it should have been possible to look after the Palestinian Arabs needs to some extent. Buying land from freely motivated sellers seems OK. But they seem to have behaved from the beginning, and worse now than ever, in the most unacceptable and violent manner to their unwilling hosts. Far from showing gratitude and humility.
I don’t think they will survive there. They are making it impossible to support them. Is this how they have always behaved within the communities all over the world where they have lived ? Is this why they seem to have been persecuted throughout history ?
D J S
There is a large core of Labour Party members and MPs who belong to the Labour Friends of Israel group, many of whom are the bitter enemies and critics of Jeremy Corbyn and who are feeding the case of antisemitism against him. They would rather uphold the interests of the state of Israel than support their own leader and interests of the Labour Party and wider British values. The now defunct English statute of praemunire (this did for Cardinal Wolsey) should be reinstated!
Comments are closed.