The Belief that Jews were responsible for the Holocaust is common to Jewish Orthodoxy

‘Lib Dem Cowardice over Jenny Tonge and Jewish Racism

Some of you will recall how Jenny Tonge was forced to resign from the Liberal Democrats because at a meeting she chaired, an Orthodox Rabbi from the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect blamed Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise in America in 1933 for declaring a Boycott of Nazi Germany. Liberal Democrats Suspend British Peer for Supporting Palestinian Rights

In fact the Rabbi was not only stupid but historically wrong.  Wise did his best to stop the Jewish Boycott of Nazi Germany, alongside the Zionists who reached a trade agreement with the Nazis (Ha'avara) in August 1933.  The pressure for a Boycott came from the Jewish working class in America and elsewhere, alongside the international labour movement.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira - he co-wrote 'Torat HaMelech' (the King's Torah) which is a guide book to how you can legally kill a non-Jew, including non-Jewish children and infants 

It was both the Zionist movement and the Jewish bourgeoisie who vehemently opposed the Boycott.  Wise in 1933 went along with a Boycott only to sabotage its implementation when the time arose.  The real leader of the Boycott Samuel Untermeyer in the United States spoke of Wise as ‘the kingpin of mischief-makers whose support for Boycott depended on the audience he was addressing.’  But on August 14^th 1933, Wise was sufficiently stung by Untermeyer’s criticism to declare his support for the Boycott when addressing the Prague Jewish community. [Edwin Black,  The Transfer Agreement, pp. 276-7]

Ovadia Yosef surrounded by Eli Yishai, an out and out racist and Aryeh Deri, the leader of Shas who has already served time in Israeli prisons for corruption

As Untermeyer said of Wise ‘You cannot put out a fire… by just looking on.’ He called on the AJC’s members to ‘instruct these false leaders in no uncertain terms as to the stand they must take… or resign their offices.’

In any event the Boycott had nothing to do with the Holocaust and everything to do with the war on Russia in June 1941. 

One particularly stupid MP, David Davies said "May we have a debate on the use to which these premises may be put following reports that outrageously a member of the House of Lords presided over an event at which Israel was compared to Islamic State, and the Jews were even blamed for their own genocide?"

Shapira was briefly arrested after Torat HaMelech became controversial - however he was soon released.  A Palestinian who had written a book on how to kill Jews would be looking a a prison sentence of years.

If Davies or the other hypocrites and ignoramuses had knew anything about the Holocaust or Jewish religious orthodoxy  then they would have realised that the idea that the Jews who died in the Holocaust were being punished for their own sins is a common one amongst the religious Orthodoxy – both Zionist and anti-Zionist.  No less than the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef said in a sermon that:

 “The six million Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things which should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.”

Banned from Britain Rabbi Elitzur co-wrote Torat HaMelech - briefly arrested in Israel he was released without charge.

Weekly Saturday night sermon in August 2000

Pastor John Hagee, President of Christians United for Israel said something very similar.   Quoting Jeremiah 16 he intoned:  

‘Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them" — that will be the Jews — "from every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks." If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust — you can't see that.’ 

In other words Hitler was sent by god as a hunter to drive the Jews to Israel.  Yet Zionist groups rushed to support him.  Why?  Because he was, in addition to being an anti-Semite a strong supporter of Israel.  

Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, one of the main Zionist groups in the USA from saying of Hagee, after he had ‘clarified’ his comments that

‘Pastor Hagee has devoted his life to combating anti-Semitism and supporting the State of Israel.  We are grateful for his efforts to eradicate anti-Semitism and to rally so many in the Christian community to stand with Israel.’

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef didn’t only confine his comments to the Holocaust though. In 5 of Ovadia Yosef’s most controversial quotations Rabbi Yosef also explained the real reasons for Hurricane Katrina.  It was a divine punishment for godlessness and American support for the disengagement from Gaza:

Other pearls of wisdom include:

3) The purpose of Gentiles — to serve Jews:

Ovadia Yosef had very fixed views about non-Jews (Goyim) like the idiot David Davies MP. 

 “Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.”

Warming to his theme, the good rabbi explained of non-Jews that:

“In Israel, death has no dominion over them… With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they’d lose their money.

“This is his servant… That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew.”

“Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat… That is why gentiles were created.”

— Weekly Saturday night sermon in October 2010

4) On making peace with Arabs:

“How can you make peace with a snake?”

“Those evildoers, the Arabs — it says in the Gemara [Talmud] that God is sorry he ever created those sons of Ishmael.”

— Weekly Saturday night sermon in August 2000

So the attack on Jenny Tonge was particularly hypocritical as the Zionists certainly are aware that there is a large strand in Orthodox Jewry which holds that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves because of their sinfulness.

You may think that Ovadia Yosef was just one made Jewish Rabbi but you'd be wrong.  Yosef was a man who could and did break government coalitions in Israel, because he was the spiritual head of Shas, the main Sephardic party in the Knesset.  Today they have 7 seats and are represented in the governing coalition of Netanyahu.  If they were to pull out the coalition would fall.  It is bigots such as this on whom Israel's governing coalition rests.

Iain McNicol Now Forbid Discussion on Zionism, anti-Semitism and the Witch-hunt

Iain McNicol Steps Up the Attack on Free Speech as Corbyn’s office gives the OK

Iain McNicol - as shifty as he looks - responsible for the attack on free speech and the Left - came from the GMB as their political officer - close ally of Tom Watson, who was also an employee of the GMB

In what is, even for New Labour, a quite unbelievable decision, Labour Party Headquarters has stepped in with an instruction, behind which lies of course the threat of suspension and worse, that a motion on the fake ‘anti-Semitism’ witch-hunt cannot be discussed at a local party branch.  According to Ben Westerman of the ‘governance and legal unit’ (Compliance Unit I guess) the motion was ‘objectionable on almost every level’. 

After his victory we didn't hear much about a probe as Corbyn set about appeasing McNicol and Tom Watson - his office's support for this attack on free speech will rebound on him

If that was true, then I’m sure members were quite capable of deciding that for themselves.  Instead, no doubt at the urging of the pro-Israel/Zionist lobby, Iain McNicol, the General Secretary has laid down a dictat forbidding discussion.  In a new and quite novel pretext the reasoning given was that it might give the ‘wrong impression’ to new members.  Perhaps clamping down on free speech might give an even worse impression to new members.

Stanley Keabble of the Labour Party Marxists group

Even in the bad old days of the Right this level of attack on basic and fundamental rights did not occur.  If the Leader’s Office, whomsoever that was, was complicit in McNicol’s actions, then that is not only wrong but counter-productive.  Does Seamus Milne or Corbyn really believe that attacks on free speech in the Labour Party is going to shore up his position?  McNicol might be lying low for the moment but when the chance to wield the assassin’s knife comes round again he won’t be found wanting.  What the Leader’s office should be doing is encouraging the maximum debate on these topics.

It probably hasn’t occurred to Mr Westerman that forbidding free speech and treating members as children who are too precocious to debate and discuss what is happening in the Labour Party might also give the wrong impression?  But that is not the real reason why this pettifogging bureaucrat has stepped in.  It is because the Labour Party bureaucracy has stepped in to prevent what it sees as a political critique and attack on itself and its actions over the past months.  Like all such bureaucracies what they are best at is forbidding something.

Ronnie Draper - one of the early victim's of crooked McNicol's purge

There is nothing in the least objectionable about discussing where the ‘anti-Semitism’ witch hunt has come from or rejecting the concept of ‘new anti-Semitism’ which holds that criticising Israel is a form of anti-Semitism.  If it is forbidden to mention the word ‘Zionism’ as some would like then maybe those same people can explain why the term is in common parlance in Israel.  Zionism in short means today Jewish supremacy and domination in the Israeli state.  The World Zionist Organisation, which is a living and breathing organisation, funds the West Bank settlements and settlement expansion.  The WZO founded the Israeli state.

What is involved here is an attack on free speech of anti-imperialists using the pretext of ‘anti-Semitism’.  It is sad, to say the least that Jeremy Corbyn, given his own record of support for the Palestinians, is now so cowed that he does not face down those who have done their best to remove him.  Just as it is shameful that instead of telling McNicol to this face, after his re-election, that he had no confidence in him and that he should go, said that he had never challenged him.   Caving in to the right-wing like this only embolden’s Corbyn’s enemies.  It is a stupid and counter-productive decision and should be reversed without delay.

Tony Greenstein

crooked Iain McNicol - did his best to swing Labour's election Owen Smith's way

Gagged - Labour HQ forbids branch motion

Discussion of political differences over the issue of anti-Zionism and alleged anti-Semitism was blocked at the November 10 AGM of Ravenscourt Branch Labour Party in the Hammersmith constituency - on explicit instructions from Labour HQ.

My motion (see below), condemning "the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and witch-hunt against the Labour left and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn", had been circulated with the agenda to the 231 members of the branch - 70 of whom joined during 2016. Four new members were among the 26 present. Members looking forward to an open discussion between comrades - the best way to overcome misunderstandings and mistrust, and to clarify different opinions - were dismayed by the bureaucratic gagging of debate from above, and made "nervous" by the dangerous precedent that party HQ can control discussion in a branch.

The branch secretary read out an email received earlier that day from a Mr Ben Westerman of the party's "governance and legal unit", endorsed by "the leader's office" - ie, by Jeremy Corbyn himself - instructing the branch to rule the motion out-of-order.

When members asked "Why?", the secretary confirmed that no reason was given in the email, but gave an indication of some of the reasons Mr Westerman gave in a phone conversation, including that the motion was "objectionable on almost every level" and was the kind of thing that "should not be put before new members" as it "would give the wrong impression of what the Labour Party is about".

Such patronising nonsense, sacrificing debate to sanitise appearances, is characteristic of New Labour's discredited method, and the antithesis of Corbyn's "straight talking politics" brand, and must be overcome in the struggle to democratise Labour and advance socialist politics in the party.

Stan Keable

Motion:        ‘Anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and witch-hunt:

This Branch/Constituency Labour Party/Conference:

1. Rejects the Zionist concept of so-called ‘new anti-semitism’, which conflates anti-Jewish racism with political criticism of the state of Israel and its ongoing colonisation of Palestinian land, and with criticism of the political ideology of Zionism.

2. Condemns the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and witch-hunt prompted by the Israeli establishment and carried out by the mass media, the Tory Party and the Labour right against the Labour left and supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. The claim that anti-Semitism – ie, anti-Jewish racism – is rife in the Labour Party, particularly in the left wing of the Labour Party, is simply untrue.

3. Calls for the immediate lifting of all of the suspensions and expulsions from Labour Party membership in any way connected to the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and witch-hunt. That includes Jackie Walker, Ken Livingstone, Tony Greenstein, Gerry Downing and numerous other supporters of the Palestinian cause.

4. Calls for disciplinary proceedings to be instigated against John Mann MP. He publicly attacked Labour NEC member Ken Livingstone in front of TV cameras, calling him a “disgusting Nazi apologist” - an accusation without foundation. Mann’s attack played a key role in stepping up the ‘anti-Semitism’ smear campaign and witch-hunt and could only but damage Labour’s chances in the May elections. Presumably the aim was to create the conditions for the removal of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.

5. Condemns the willing collaboration in the witch-hunt of the Labour Party’s Compliance Unit and the Labour Party general secretary, Ian McNicol. They have been more than ready to accept at face value obviously false and malicious complaints of anti-Semitism.

6. Condemns the lack of due process in the suspensions and expulsions of Labour Party members. The failure to apply the principles of natural justice brings the Labour Party into disrepute.

7. Calls for the abolition of the Labour Party Compliance Unit and for the establishment of democratic, transparent disciplinary procedures which follow the principles of natural justice, and in which disciplinary decisions are made by elected representatives, not by paid officials.

NOTE:

The misnamed 'Jewish Labour Movement' - a political Zionist organisation, formerly 'Poale Zion' - continues to assert that the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism’s working definition on antisemitism is the standard definition. However, its successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency, has junked this definition, which equates criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism.

Clarion, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty Momentum blog attacks Jackie Walker

Ironically their paper is called Solidarity 

Mike Chessum, a member of the Steering Committee of Momentum recently wrote a dismally argued article for Clarion, the AWL's Momentum blog, explaining why he voted to remove Jackie Walker as Vice-Chair of Momentum.  In order that he could justify his vote, he consistently misquoted what she said.  

Jackie Walker has been subject a sustained racist witch-hunt by the Zionists and the Jewish Labour Movement - the AWL's Zionist politics have aided and abetted this witch-hunt

Jackie submitted a reply and never heard any more from the editorial collective, which styles itself as ‘'An unofficial magazine by Momentum activists'.  In fact it is full of people who are either in the Zionist Alliance 4 Workers Liberty (see Debate Between Tony Greenstein & Daniel Randall of the Alliance for Workers Liberty with the exception of Rhea Wolfson, a new member of Labour’s NEC and a left-Zionist.

I submitted a reply two days ago and followed it up with the message below.  Needless to say I have not received a response.

Clarion have printed a response from veteran political activist Pete Firmin Why Momentum was wrong to remove Jackie Walker as Vice Chair which takes the AWL to task but this is no excuse for not carrying anything from Jackie Walker, since she is in a position to rebut the false allegations and misquotes of Chessum, nor its failure to acknowledge my own submission.

My own response is longer than Pete Firmin's and it concentrates on some of the central aspects of Chessum’s nonsense, such as his inability to understand the connection between the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, Zionism and Israel.

There is no excuse with a web journal for excluding well researched articles, other than a desire to narrow political debate and frame it in terms of their own Zionist ideology.

Below is the the message that I sent to the Clarion yesterday alongside my submission. 

Dear Comrades,

now it might just be possible that none of the editorial board of The Clarion, which describes itself as 'An unofficial magazine by Momentum activists' haven't checked their inboxes since yesterday.  That would be one explanation for why my email submitting a reply to the article by Mike Chessum 'Why I voted to remove Jackie Walker as Momentum's Vice Chair' has not yet received a response.  However I think you will agree that that is most unlikely.

More likely, judging by the composition of the editorial board, which has at least 3 members of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty on it Maria Exall, Sacha Ismail and Jill Mountford, and probably more that I don't recognise, the reason is that any critique of the decision to remove Jackie from Vice Chair of Momentum is also a criticism of the decision of the AWL and its Steering Committee member, Jill Mountford, to support Jon Lansman's witch hunting of Jackie.  Thus it might be more honest and truthful if the subtitle above describing Clarion were to be amended to say that it is 'An attempt by the Alliance 4 Workers Liberty to recruit Momentum activists under false pretences.'

At least then you might be able to reconcile your consciences with what you write on the 'About' page of Clarion's website when you quote John Milton that “Truth is… a streaming fountain; if her waters flow not in a perpetual progression, they sicken into a muddy pool of conformity and tradition”.  But after all hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue.

I also understand that you have ignored a similar request by Jackie Walker.  It is difficult to know what you think you will gain by not agreeing instantly to a right of reply.  After all, on the Internet and social media it is easy to post such replies elsewhere and embarrass you into the bargain.  The days when one version of the truth was the only one that was allowed has, in case you didn't realise it, gone forever.

I attach my submission once again

In solidarity comrades

Tony Greenstein

A Response to Michael Chessum’s

Why I voted to remove Jackie Walker as Momentum’s Vice-Chair

Michael Chessum - formerly a student activist but politically close to the AWL, on Momentum's Steering Committee and voted to remove Jackie Walker as Vice Chair

Michael Chessum says he had no alternative but to vote to remove Jackie Walker as Vice-Chair of Momentum’s Steering Committee.  On the contrary, as a socialist he had no alternative but to defend Jackie Walker from the attacks of the media and the Zionist Jewish Labour Movement [JLM].  Perhaps I should dispose of some red herrings that Chessum  uses to defend voting the way he did:

Jill Mountford - the AWL member on Momentum's Steering Committee voted alongside Jon Lansman to remove Jackie Walker as Vice-Chair

i.               I do not believe that his vote was motivated by an attempt to stitch up factional opponents in order to protect Lansman and Momentum’s unaccountable leadership. 

ii.             Nor do I believe that Chessum’s vote is explained by a ‘Zionist conspiracy’   This is the normal caricature of their opponents argument that AWL and Zionists indulge in.

iii.           Clearly Chessum’s politics are close to those of AWL as his reasoning demonstrates.  Agreement with AWL’s politics (a ‘sleeper’) has clearly played a part in his vote. Writing for Clarion, an AWL front magazine, confirms that.

iv.            Chessum’s vote was, as he all but admits a result of pressure from the right and the press.  As he concedes, there is more than a grain of truth in it.  Indeed it is more than just a grain.  When socialists are under attack by the bourgeois press, the Labour Right and the Zionist movement, we defend them.  Period.

Jim Murphy used 'anti-Semitism' as a weapon to prevent Rhea Wolfson 'below' gaining a nomination for the NEC because she was in the 'anti-Semitic' Momentum

Rhea Wolfson - new NEC member and Jon Lansman protege - a member of the Jewish Labour Movement and a left-Zionist - clearly AWL are hoping to bring her within their orbit

There was a wall to wall attack on Jackie Walker. The Sun’s view was ‘ANTI-SEMITISM ROW Fury as Jeremy Corbyn ally claims Holocaust Memorial Day is not inclusive enough’  The Telegraph’s take was Momentum chief Jackie Walker suspended from Labour over Holocaust Memorial Day comments citing ‘the outspoken campaigner (as) saying she had not found a definition of anti-Semitism she could work with’ although this was more accurate than Chessum’s rendering of what Jackie said!  The Independent reported Momentum set to sack vice-chair Jackie Walker after Holocaust Memorial Day comments which was clearly leaked: The Jewish Chronicle, edited by ex-Express editor Stephen Pollard, reported that Jon Lansman had ‘reached the end of his tether”.

The deliberate leaking to the press of the intention to remove Jackie as Vice-Chair was clearly approved of by Jon Lansman.  It replicates the methodology of the Compliance Unit against peoples who are suspended. 

Chessum freely admits Momentum leaked to the right-wing press and seems to have no problem with it.  Having stabbed Livingstone in the back, Lansman had no difficulty in repeating his party trick with Jackie Walker.  That Chessum and Jill Mountford of the AWL went along with this, when it was in their power to put a stop to it, is an act of betrayal. 

Ken Livingstone, former London Mayor, who said that Hitler supported Zionism.  It is a fact that the Zionists in Germany were, by their own admission, the Nazis favourite Jews.  AWL support his expulsion.

Chessum says, quite disingenuously, that ‘Walker is still on the Steering Committee [SC], and is being actively defended against expulsion from the Labour Party.’  He is so naive that he doesn’t understand that the very act of removing Jackie as Vice-Chair has increased her chances of being expelled.  The fact that the SC voted to refuse to oppose her suspension is proof enough.

After Owen Smith attacked the AWL as ‘anti-Semites’ during his debate against Jeremy Corbyn, the AWL’s Daniel Randall was forced to admit that the Labour Right were ‘instrumentalising’ i.e. weaponising anti-Semitism in its attacks on the Left. Debate Between Tony Greenstein & Daniel Randall of the Alliance for Workers Liberty.  An example of this was Jim Murphy’s attempt to block Rhea Wolfson from standing for the NEC because of her association with the ‘anti-Semitic’ Momentum.

The suggestion that ‘none of Walker’s reported comments have been about Palestine and Israel.’ is unreal and demonstrates how Chessum has imbibed the crude Zionist apologetics of the AWL.  Jackie Walker’s comments were about the Holocaust and anti-Semitism, which are intimately related to Palestine, Zionism and Israel.  Anti-Semitism is the first defence of Zionism when accused of atrocities against the Palestinians.

Jon Lansman, the éminence grise behind leaks to the press which led to Jackie Walker's removal. Although AWL voted with him they opposed his attempts to do away with the National Committee and a founding conference 

The Holocaust has been repeatedly used as a justification for Israel’s apartheid rule over the Palestinians.  The Holocaust is the primary justification for the existence of the Israeli state itself.  Menachem Begin, Israel’s Prime Minister, compared Yassir Arafat during Israel’s siege of Beirut to Hitler in his bunker in 1982.  According to Begin the alternative to Israel’s genocidal war was ‘Auschwitz’.  Calling your political rival a Nazi is a time-hallowed tradition in Israel.

Israel’s Labour Foreign Minister, Abba Eban told the UN that “I do not exaggerate when I say that it [the June  1967 map] has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz.”  The Green Line border between Israel and the West Bank is referred to in Israel as the ‘Auschwitz border’.  Netanyahu told the 2015 World Zionist Congress that it was the Palestinian Grand Mufti who was responsible for Hitler’s Final Solution.  As Tom Segev, an Israeli historian explained, the only image of a Palestinian in Yad Vashem, the Zionists Holocaust museum in Jerusalem ‘(is) a photo featured prominently on a wall depicting the Mufti sieg heiling a group of Nazi storm troopers’.  Its purpose is to ensure that ‘the visitor is left to conclude that there is much in common between the Nazis’ plan to destroy the Jews and the Arabs’ enmity to Israel.’ [The 7^th Million, p.425]  The effigy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, was dressed in Nazi uniform by his political opponents. 

On 17th September, over a week before Labour Party conference, I wrote a blog post The Jewish Labour Movement and its Political Lynching of Jackie Walker.  It was clear then that Jackie Walker was being set up for a new witch-hunt by those who refused to accept her original reinstatement.

Jackie spoke on 12^th September alongside John McDonnell at an LRC fringe meeting at TUC Conference in Brighton.  McDonnell came under severe criticism in the Jewish Chronicle from amongst others Jeremy Newmark, Chair of the JLM.  This resulted in McDonnell withdrawing from a JLM rally at which he had been due to speak on 25^th September.

Jackie walked into a honey trap when she attended the JLM ‘training event’ at Labour Party conference.  However the remarks she made were not, in anyway, ‘insensitive’, ‘anti-Semitic tropes’ ‘ill-informed’ or ‘a distortion of history’ as Chessum maintains.

Chessum repeatedly misquotes Jackie Walker alleging she said ‘Holocaust Memorial Day should focus on other genocides as well, or non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust’   In fact she said ‘‘wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day were shared by all people who had experienced genocide’.   But even if she had said what Chessum falsely claims, what is anti-Semitic or offensive about it?

Zionism has consistently reserved the Holocaust as something unique to the Jews.  To Elie Wiesel to compare the Holocaust with the sufferings of others was a “betrayal of Jewish history”. [Wiesel, Against Silence, 146]. According to Prof. Yehuda Bauer Zionism’s pre-eminent Holocaust historian [The History Teacher, Vol. 26, No. 3. pp. 385-386] the Nazis only attempted to annihilate one people, the Jews: “Roma were not Jews, therefore there was no need to murder all of them.” To this day the US Holocaust Museum refuses to include the Roma victims of the Holocaust.

If you go to the HMD web site, and click on Nazi Persecution you will be taken to a page that says ‘Between 1941 and 1945, the Nazis attempted to annihilate all of Europe’s Jews.’  There is no mention of the Holocaust beginning in 1939 with the extermination of the Disabled, the Euthanasia or T-4 program, the Roma/Gypsies or any other victims.

If you click the second link you will come to a page which begins ‘Singling out Jews for complete annihilation in the Holocaust was not the full extent of Nazi persecution.’  Although it goes on to mention other groups, they do this in the context of the ‘persecution of disabled people and gay people’.  They do not mention that they were exterminated. 

Although Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur are listed underneath Nazi Persecution, it is clear that these are lesser genocides.  There is no mention of the extermination of 10 million Africans in the Belgian Congo or the estimated 14 million Africans in the slave trade.

This is why Jackie was quite correct to say what she did.  Michael Chessum passes judgement over something which he knows nothing about.  What he did do was to vote to restrict freedom of speech in the Labour Party and Momentum to debate these issues, which is precisely what the Zionist movement wants.  In Israel free speech can cost you your liberty if you are Palestinian in Britain you get defamed and vilified.

Chessum also misquotes Jackie as saying that ‘‘Jewish schools may well not need police protection.’  There has however been a deliberate campaign to stoke up Jewish fears of anti-Semitism in Britain in order to alienate them from British society.  The right-wing Zionist ‘charity’, the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, has deliberately gone about inflating the threat of anti-Semitism through the use of bogus, self-selecting polls.  The Institute for Jewish Policy Research described CAA’s poll, which claimed ‘more than half of all British Jews feel that antisemitism now echoes the 1930s” as verging into ‘irresponsible territory’.  There is no reason to believe that Jewish schools are under more of a threat than for example Muslim schools. 

Again Chessum misquotes Jackie as saying that ‘there was no definition of anti-Semitism that she could agree with’ rather that she had heard no definition of anti-Semitism she could work with at the ‘training event’.  That was a statement of fact.  The JLM ‘trainer’ had been pushing the EUMC Working Definition of Anti-Semitism which conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism.  It is a  discredited definition and in 2013 it was removed by the Fundamental Rights Agency from its website.  EU drops its ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism The recent Home Affairs Select Committee Report, which called for anti-Zionism to be criminalised, has tried to resurrect the Working Definition in the guise of a new definition.  There are a number of definitions of anti-Semitism.  I prefer the simple ‘hostility to Jews as Jews’ or ‘hostility towards Jews as not Jews’ [Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 37 No. 2 June 2003]. 

Jackie attended what was supposed to be a training session not ‘a semi-public event’.  Jackie Walker not only had the right, but the duty, to raise such questions since the definition of anti-Semitism  is contested.  In Chessum and the AWL’s simple universe there is only ‘left anti-Semitism’ and ironically they too have been caught up by it!  Jackie was not at the event as Momentum Vice-Chair but as an individual.  She was of course targeted as Momentum’s Vice Chair but it is to the shame of those who voted to remove her from Vice Chair that Chessum and the AWL chose to go along with the JLM’s witch-hunt of her.

Chessum repeats the Zionist libel, for which Jackie was acquitted, that ‘Jews (including her ancestors) were the “chief financiers” of the slave trade.’ This is a gross distortion, ripped out of a private conversation by the Israel Advocacy Movement.  If you read my article in Open Democracy The lynching of Jackie Walker you will read that Jackie also said ‘I will never back anti-Semitism but neither am I a Zionist’.  She then went on to say, in a subtle and nuanced discussion, which the AWL’s crude polemic is incapable of understanding, that ‘many Jews, my ancestors too, were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade… so who are the victims and what does it mean .  We are victims and perpetrators, to some extent by choice.  And having been a victim does not give you a right to be a perpetrator.’  Chessum has deliberately missed out ‘many’ suggesting that Jackie had therefore implied that Jews as a collective were the chief financiers of the slave trade.    

Chessum and the AWL removed Jackie Walker on the back of false allegations that she had said that ‘Jews were responsible for the slave trade and an “African holocaust”.  To the Zionists, a Black-Jewish anti-Zionist is unacceptable.  Jackie has been in receipt of a torrent of abusive tweets, most of which question how, as a Black person, she could be Jewish.

The JLM is not a Jewish section of the Labour Party.  Jewish anti-Zionists like myself cannot join it.  It is the British wing of the racist Israeli Labour Party, whose leader Isaac Herzog recently declared that his nightmare was waking up to a Palestinian Prime Minister in Israel.  Who needs the Right when we have Isaac Herzog?  Herzog also recently declared that he wanted to dispel the false impression that the ILP were ‘Arab Lovers’ Herzog slammed for remark about ‘Arab lovers’  Imagine if someone had said their nightmare was waking up to a Jewish Prime Minister in this country?  Or talked of ‘Jew lovers’?  I remember being accused by the NF of being a ‘nigger lover’.  This is the real racism that is the currency of debate in Israel that the AWL and Chessum ignore. 

Chessum has comprehensively misquoted Jackie Walker.  We all make mistakes and the SC made a mistake in giving in to such pressure.  It is incumbent upon them to reinstate Jackie as Vice-Chair of Momentum with an apology offered for the stress and distress it has caused her.

As Dr Brian Klug, a Fellow of Oxford University observed, in a lecture (which the Zionists tried to cancel) at the Jewish Museum in Berlin on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, ‘a label can turn into a libel when it is pinned on the wrong lapel. Antisemitism has rightly been called a ‘monster’.  But false accusations of antisemitism are monstrous too.  For all these reasons and more, the word matters a great deal.’ 

Tony Greenstein 

The Death of a Legend - the Immortal Leonard Cohen

Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye!

It was with shock and sadness that I learnt late last night (or was it early morning?) of the death of one of my teenage musical heroes.  Whereas the death of David Bowie left me cold, Leonard Cohen’s departure feels as if a piece of my life has been taken from me.

Leonard Cohen was a terrible sexist and misogynist but he wrote songs, filled with a biblical symbolism, that few could.  He was the prophet of gloom and doom. But there is a beauty in sadness and no expressed this better than Leonard Cohen.

I particularly like Richard Silverstein’s appreciation below.

I disagree though with Richard about Cohen and Israel.  Unfortunately Leonard Cohen was a Zionist and during the 1973 ‘Yom Kippur’ war he flew to Israel to play for the troops and apparently met the then General Arik Sharon.  See Leonard Cohen positions on zionism/Israel.  Also my understanding of Lover, Lover, Lover from the New Skin album I would suggest that the lyrics in part are a reference to Israel.   Cohen is another example, along with Dylan, of the separation of artistic and musical genius, from the people who create that art and music.  Even the greatest artists have feet of clay.  Salvador Dalli, TS Elliot and Jack London were other examples.  People can create beautiful things on even the worst impulses!  But most of Leonard Cohen’s impulses and inspiration were derived from beauty.  His love songs are unsurpassed.   

See also Israelis call on musician Leonard Cohen to cancel concert

The final stanza of Lover Lover Lover

And may the spirit of this song,
may it rise up pure and free.
May it be a shield for you,
a shield against the enemy.

My favourite album has to be the Songs of Leonard Cohen followed by Songs from a Room .  Songs of Leonard Cohen is simply an unsurpassed masterpiece with my all-time favourite So Long Marianne followed closely by Suzanne and Hey That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.  Bird on the Wire in the follow up album is a wonderful expression, a spiritual ballad, of the desire for freedom.

Leonard Cohen Dies, But He Lives

November 11, 2016 By Richard Silverstein

It’s been a horrible week.  No question about it.  Today brings word that Leonard Cohen has died at age 82.  Words cannot express the feelings of gratitude I have for his life and his achievement.  From his first album in 1967 he accompanied me through my youth and into later days.  All the way through.

Leonard Cohen in performance

Cohen could only have arisen in the heart of the 1960s.  He was an esoteric poet whose haunting, elliptical lyrics captured a young generation.  His voice was unlike any heard up to that day, except for perhaps Dylan’s.  It was dark and deep, warm yet chilling.  It was not sweet or charming or melodious, or any of the qualities associated with pop singers.

He was a bard, a Homer for our generation.  He took poetry and brought it to the people.  But it wasn’t a poetry packaged for popular consumption.  You listened to Cohen on his terms.  You entered his world.  And what a world it was!  Populated with fierce, ineffable beauty, with heroes who could also be villains.  He spoke of love, but never denied its opposite.  Who spoke of good, but acknowledged the human propensity toward evil.

Leonard Cohen was not a popularizer.  He didn’t pander to popular taste.  He didn’t get down on your level.  You came to him.  Sometimes his songs and concerts were like being a member  of a secret cult or society.  That could offer rich rewards if you were willing to spend the time to listen and absorb his allusive and ethereal poems.  But that was Cohen’s Achilles Heel as well.  You could not delve into Cohen like he was a pop musician.  You had to work for your pleasure.  And what pleasures there were.

While Cohen could be a demanding otherworldly aesthete, he never denied the harsh, gritty world around him.  Unlike Dylan, one could never call Cohen a writer with a political consciousness or a deep commitment to social justice.  But a song like Democracy is Coming to the USA should be a rallying cry for those already commencing to unseat Donald Trump in four years.

Another crucial element of Cohen’s oeuvre is his Jewish consciousness.  The songs are shot through with Jewish heart including references to Biblical stories and liturgical prayers.  Everyone knows songs like Hallelujah, which not only draws its name from the Book of Psalms, but includes references to David’s first glance at Bathsheba bathing on the roof, which leads him to send her husband, Uriah to the frontlines of battle where he is conveniently killed.  Whereupon David takes her as one of his wives.  This is a mortal sin which the Bible tells us prevented God from offering David the honor of building the First Temple in Jerusalem.  An honor bestowed on David’s son and successor, Solomon.

The song also weaves another Biblical story into the lyrics as David morphs into Samson in this stanza:

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

It’s a bold poetic stroke to meld the stories.  Cohen likes the Samson story so much he appropriates it as if David and Samson are almost the same character.  They are two powerful men of overweening pride who were each brought low by their love for a woman.  In David’s case, his own lust brought about the death of another man.  In Samson’s case, despite his betrayal he was able to exact revenge on his tormentors.  Both men came to tragic ends due to their hubris.

This is a rendering of the song into Yiddish by a performer who offers a translation that is freely adapted from the original into a beautiful, fluid Yiddish.

There are a number of lesser known songs which are freighted with Jewish references.  They include Who by Fire, whose lyrics are a beautiful adaptation of the High Holiday prayer, U’netaneh Tokef.  Compare the original prayer with Cohen’s later adaptation to see what a graceful and elegant job he’s done of rendering it into the modern era:

And who by fire, who by water
Who in the sunshine, who in the night time
Who by high ordeal, who by common trial
Who in your merry merry month of May
Who by very slow decay
And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt
And who by avalanche, who by powder
Who for his greed, who for his hunger
And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident
Who in solitude, who in this mirror
Who by his lady’s command, who by his own hand
Who in mortal chains, who in power
And who shall I say is calling?
And who shall I say is calling?

This is the original prayer:

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed
And on Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall die and how many shall be born
Who shall live and who shall die
Who at the measure of days and who before
Who by fire and who by water
Who by the sword and who by wild beasts
Who by hunger and who by thirst
Who by earthquake and who by plague
Who by strangling and who by stoning
Who shall have rest and who shall go wandering
Who will be tranquil and who shall be harassed
Who shall be at ease and who shall be afflicted
Who shall become poor and who shall become rich
Who shall be brought low and who shall be raised high.

Another lesser known song is the Song for Isaac (an early 1966 performance), Cohen’s retelling of the story of the Akedah, the sacrifice of Issac.  The lyrics end with a dramatic and compelling attack on human warfare.  If only we’d learned the lesson he tried to teach back in 1968 when he wrote this:

And if you call me brother now,
forgive me if I inquire,
“Just according to whose plan?”
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
man of peace or man of war,
the peacock spreads his fan.

If you are too young to know about Leonard Cohen, you have a great joy in store.  Go watch videos of him singing the songs and some of the great covers like Jeff Buckley’s soaring cover of Hallelujah. Then watch the Pentatonix’s equally entrancing cover of the same song.

Curiously, Israel never played any role in his music.  He never wrote a song, as far as I know, that referred to Israel.  That may reflect his sense of ambivalence about what Israel meant to the Jewish people and the Diaspora.  Cohen was clearly and decidedly a Diaspora Jew.  He was perhaps a spiritual Jew, but never a traditional one.

Many off us know that on his last world tour Cohen played Israel.  After controversy erupted, he tried to add a concert in Palestine in an awkward attempt to “balance” the Tel Aviv gig.  He believed that he could somehow forge a compromise if he played to both communities.  But it was a hopelessly out of touch response to a profoundly complex political conflict.  While his poetry could navigate such human complexities, his grasp of the politics of the conflict was not equally nuanced.

He was also a Buddhist.  I can remember as a UCLA graduate student conceiving of the idea of inviting Cohen to perform a concert for an all-day celebration of Jewish culture hosted by the campus Hillel.  When I finally reached his agent, he liked the idea but said Cohen couldn’t perform because he was spending a half-year at a monastery in Greece.

Cohen was a Jew who would cause consternation among today’s Zionists and communal leaders seeking monomaniacal clarity around questions of Jewish identity and definitions of who and what is a Jew.  Cohen’s identity was fluid.  He could be David one day and latter-day Sybarite another.

There are only a few singer-songwriters whose legacies will long outlive their lives.  Leonard Cohen is one of them.  We must cherish what he brought to us.  Keep alive his legacy.

Compare the gifts he offered with those of Donald Trump (he’s the other reason this has been an awful week).  The latter will be with us for four years before we consign him to the dustbin of history. He will mean nothing in the long run except as a punchline or an exemplar of the worst we have to offer ourselves and the world.

But Cohen will stand the test of time.  His words, his beliefs, his life will last.