Corbyn’s Accuser Times ‘journalist’ Lord Finkelstein was a Board Member of the Racist Gatestone Institute - this is Jonathan Freedland's accomplice
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| Smeared by a racist |
The latest episode in the fake anti-Semitism
smear campaign began on April 30th when Times Associate Editor and
Tory peer Danny
Finkelstein wrote Corbyn’s
praise for deeply antisemitic book. The book in question was J.A.
Hobson’s classic Imperialism
– A Study.
Corbyn’s sin was one of omission. He had
failed to comment on some 10 anti-Semitic lines in a book of 400 pages.
Anti-Semitism was unfortunately not unknown a century ago.
What is good though is that for the first
time instead of apologising and promising to do better and then being
kicked in the teeth, Corbyn has stood up to his racist abusers. Prime
amongst these being Jonathan Freedland and the Board of Deputies, a Zionist
organisation which justified
the cold blooded murder of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza last year.
In his letter of 2nd May to Marie
van der Zyl, President of the BOD Corbyn spoke of the ‘mischievous representation to the foreword to my book’ and the ‘false accusation that I endorsed the
anti-Semitic content of this 1902 book.’
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| Jonathan Freedland never misses an opportunity to attack Corbyn on behalf of his Zionist friends - in this instance this establishment journalist poses as a radical |
Because Corbyn has stood up to these bullies we
can expect these liars to slink away because bullies are also cowards. But it is worth noting that if one of us had
accused our detractors of making false accusations, then according to the
Compliance Unit that would itself have been proof we were ‘anti-Semitic’
Just tweeting that the Israel lobby is
responsible for the fake anti-Semitism campaign is in itself enough to warrant
somebody being suspended.
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| This tweet is part of the evidence for a member of the Labour Party being suspended - merely referring to an article making an allegation that the Israeli lobby is behind the antisemitism smears, which is itself based on an undercover Al Jazeera programme, The Lobby, is sufficient in itself to prove antisemitism |
However Corbyn must go further. If ‘mischievous’ allegations are made about
him then the same is true for many of us and who is making these allegations if
not Israel’s lobbyists?
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| Hobson's book with a warm endorsement from The Guardian |
On the front cover of Hobson’s book was a
blurb from a Guardian Review: it said the book had ‘changed the course of social history.’ The Guardian seems to have
gone overboard on this book. A Guardian
Review described it in glowing terms:
‘Hobson's
Imperialism belongs to the small group of books in the years from 1900
to the outbreak of war that have definitely changed the contours of social thought.'
Michael
White, their former Political Editor, described
how:
‘someone thrust into my
hand a copy of JA Hobson’s influential classic, Imperialism (1902) whose 2011
edition contains Jeremy’s own perfectly decent introductory essay. Its analysis
will impress many. Others will shake their heads.
However to the Guardian’s peripatetic
former Comment Editor Finkelstein’s article was like a red rag to a bull.
Freedland has penned innumerable anti-Corbyn articles and he immediately penned
another which appeared the next day - Jeremy
Corbyn is either blind to antisemitism – or he just doesn’t care.
So pleased was Freedland with Finkelstein’s
‘scoop’ that he tweeted ‘credit to @Dannythefink for exposing this
deeply depressing episode, one to add to an already long list.’
And here you have a good example of how
Establishment journalists feed off each other’s prejudices. Finkelstein is a
Tory peer, Freedland is a ‘liberal’ journalist but when it comes to Zionism and
Israel, sorry ‘anti-Semitism’, you couldn’t put a piece of paper between them. They
operate within a consensus that has a very small gap between them. What they share
is more important than what divides them.
Freedland wrote that
In today’s Times, [it was the
previous day’s] the columnist Daniel Finkelstein has dug out a 2011 reissue of JA
Hobson’s 1902 work, Imperialism: A Study. The foreword was written by Jeremy
Corbyn in 2011.’
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| According to Freedland this mural contains Jewish bankers with 'hooked noses' - if so I can't find them! |
So
blatant is Freedland’s dishonesty that I penned an Open
Letter to Jonathan Freedland. I was particularly taken with the idea that
Finkelstein just happened to come across Corbyn’s 8 year old Review, that he
dug it up much like you might dig up a few weeds. No doubt Luciana
Berger also just happened to ‘dig up’
a mural dating back to 2012 last year!
One can only await with bated breath what will be on offer
next year. Judging by present trends it
will be at least a decade old by then!
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| Andrei Brevik, the Norwegian fascist who killed over 70 young socialists, is quite clear that anti-Zionist and anti-racist Jews are the enemy of both him and the Zionists |
We can assume that the ‘digging up’ was done by others,
whether they are at the Israeli Embassy or MI5 is irrelevant. But given that
Freedland at least pretends to be a democrat, I wrote that
[if
what was happening to Corbyn] happened to any other politician then we would have
no one in public life and you know it. You are an integral part of a concerted
attempt by powerful forces in the British State to discredit a radical
politician. Of course the Right would like to attack Corbyn for his economic
proposals or his opposition to austerity but that wouldn’t play well. Hence the
‘anti-Semitism’ card which you use.
Freedland
quickly passed over Hobson having been a political correspondent for the
Manchester Guardian! It’s quite a tradition that Freedland has to live down. Ted, the son of C.P.
Scott, the Guardian’s most revered editor, even married Hobson’s daughter,
Mabel!
Corbyn’s
crime was that he hadn’t mentioned that Hobson was anti-Semitic. It is as if a
mention of T S Elliot’s anti-Semitism is compulsory before you can discuss his
poetry. And not only Elliot, but Virginia Woolf, Jack London, Dickens,
Shakespeare and Orwell too. Although anti-Semitism has all but disappeared
today, other than as a stick to beat the Left, it had an inglorious tradition
amongst the British ruling class. People like Freedland and Finkelstein.
What
is also true is that people like Hobson tended to abandon such views when the
reality of the society they lived in changed. Even T S Eliot seems to have
become a reformed character.
On
the 7th June 2003 Zionist solicitor Anthony Julius wrote
that
‘Eliot
was not a typical anti-semite. He was instead an extraordinary anti-semite. He
did not reflect the anti-semitism of his times, he contributed to it, even
enlarged it.’
Six
months before Professor Ronald Schuchard of Emory University ‘in a ground-breaking essay’ in the
January 2003 issue of "Modernism/ Modernity", refuted
the charge of Eliot's anti-Semitism, backing his claims with a cache of new documents.
As
Paul Kelemen showed in The British Left
and Zionism – History of a Divorce (MUP 2012) anti-Semitism was far more
deeply entrenched in the right-wing leadership of the Labour Party in years gone by. Sydney
Webb, founder of the Fabians and later Colonial Secretary Lord Passfield, wrote
that ‘French,
German, Russian socialism is Jew-ridden. We, thank heaven, are free.’ And why? ‘There’s no money in it.’
During
the war years Attlee, Morrison and Bevin supported Churchill and Eden in their
implacable hostility to the entry of Jewish refugees. They even worried when
they learnt that Jews might be extruded by Germany’s allies rather than
exterminated. But Freedland and Finkelstein have no complaints because the
Zionist movement, led by President of the Board of Deputies Selig Brodetsky was
also opposed to the entry of Jewish refugees. Their argument being that Jewish
refugees should go to Palestine if they were to go anywhere.
It
was left to Professor Donald Sassoon, in a letter
to the Guardian, to explain that Hobson’s book has been
taught for years in universities without anyone feeling the need to highlight
the 10 anti-Semitic lines.
Sassoon also
makes the point that ‘Far less marginal are Hobson’s comments
about the “lower races” (ie black Africans) and what to do with them’ but anti-Black
concern is of no interest to Freedland or Finkelstein. Only anti-Semitism
concerns them.
Freedland also failed to mention that Gordon
Brown also failed to mention Hobson’s anti-Semitism when wrote that
‘in
Britain, this idea of liberty as empowerment is not a new idea, J A Hobson
asked, "is a man free who has not equal opportunity with his fellows of
such access to all material and moral means of personal development and work as
shall contribute to his own welfare and that of his society?"
Tony Blair
also described
Hobson as “probably the most famous
Liberal convert to what was then literally ‘new Labour’.” in a pamphlet for
the Fabians.
Daniel Finkelstein – Board
Member of White Supremacist Gatestone Institute
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| According to Powerbase Finkelstein was a founder member of the board of Gatestone |
Finkelstein
is or was
a member of the Board of Governors, as of October 2015 of the Gatestone Institute. What is the Gatestone Institute? Well according to Wikipedia
the Gatestone Institute is a
right-wing anti-Muslim think tank with a
focus on Islam and the Middle East. The organization has attracted attention
for publishing false articles and being a source of viral falsehoods.
Gatestone was
founded in 2012 by Nina Rosenwald, who serves as its president. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United
Nations John R. Bolton, now national security advisor, was
its chairman from 2013 to March 2018. Its current chairman is Amir
Taheri. Its authors include Nonie
Darwish, Alan Dershowitz, Raymond
Ibrahim, Denis MacEoin, Daniel
Pipes, Raheel Raza, Khaled
Abu Toameh, and Geert Wilders.
Finkelstein
is recorded in the House of Lords Register as having spoken and been paid at a
number of its events. The engagements are listed below. It is clear that he is
a regular speaker for the GI.
Speaking
engagement, 27 October 2016, Gatestone Institute
Daniel
Finkelstein is a member of what is, according to the
article White supremacists at the
heart of Whitehall a racist organisation
with strong international links and ties with other anti-Muslim Groups.
One key figure is neo-con Douglas Murray, Associate
Director of the cold-war Henry
Jackson Society. According to Nafeez Ahmed ‘
Behind the
facade of concern about terrorism is a network of extremist neoconservative
ideologues, hell-bent on promoting discrimination and violence against Muslims
and political activists who criticise Israeli and Western government policies
Another
prominent figure in the HJS is Baroness Cox, a former Deputy Speaker of the
House of Lords. She is a virulent Islamaphobe and all round bigot. According to
Ahmed in 2007, she told
the Jerusalem Summit – an anti-Palestinian network of which she has been
co-president since 2005, that “Britain
has been deeply infiltrated” by Islamist extremists, who have converted the
country into “a base for training and
teaching militant Islam”.
“They
are using our institutions to recruit young people, and preventing any critical
analysis of Islam,” she added. “Britain’s cultural and spiritual heritage
are under threat.”
Later that year, Cox told the Jerusalem Post she was concerned about “the disturbing alliance between the Islamists and the Left in the UK,”
On the presidium of the Jerusalem Summit alongside Cox was another well-known
anti-Muslim hate-monger Daniel Pipes.
According to former British
ambassador Craig Murray, Cox is “a
prominent supporter of organisations which actively and openly promote the
ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Gaza.’
According
to James Bloodworth
in Labour should cut its ties with the illiberal
Henry Jackson Society Murray wrote that the problem was skin colour not
religion or colour:
"We long
ago reached the point where the only thing white Britons can do is to remain
silent about the change in their country. Ignored for a generation, they are
expected to get on, silently but happily, with abolishing themselves, accepting
the knocks and respecting the loss of their country. 'Get over it. It's nothing
new. You're terrible. You're nothing'."
Bloodworth wrote that in 2013 11
Labour MPs were members of the HJS. He wrote to all 11 with his concerns about
the HJS but none replied. Gisela Stuart is no longer an MP. Solomon Hughes in
the Morning
Star this March wrote describing how right-wing MP and friend of Tom
Watson, John Spellar, is a member and how both Yvette Cooper and Shadow
Defence Minister Nia Griffiths had co-operated with HSJ over a conference they
held in Oxford. Margaret Beckett was also a member as I understand was Chris
Bryant.
In 2009 Murray described Robert Spencer, the leader of a group calling itself "Stop
the Islamization of America (SIOA)", as a "very brilliant scholar and writer". He is so brilliant
that along with Pamela Geller he got himself banned from entering Britain. He
is responsible for Jihad Watch which is allied to David
Horowitz’s Freedom Centre and Frontpagemag.com
which as I write is busily peddling Israel’s line that it is under attack from
Hamas. Nothing about Israeli military
strikes and bombing are allowed to come between it and the truth.
Bloodworth described how Marko
Attila Hoare, a former senior member of the Henry Jackson Society was driven
out of the organisation in 2012 because of his opposition to Murray's
anti-Muslim and anti-immigration views.
"It
rapidly became clear that Murray had not tamed his politics, and that actually
they were becoming the politics of the whole organisation,"
In an otherwise appalling
apologia for Finkelstein on the Barrister’s Blog, Matthew describes how, in
a 2006
speech to the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference Murray demanded that “conditions
for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”:
“All immigration into Europe from
Muslim countries must stop. In the case of a further genocide such as that in
the Balkans, sanctuary would be given on a strictly temporary basis. This should
also be enacted retrospectively. Those who are currently in Europe having fled
tyrannies should be persuaded back to the countries which they fled from once
the tyrannies that were the cause of their flight have been removed. And of
course it should go without saying that Muslims in Europe who for any reason
take part in, plot, assist or condone violence against the West (not just the
country they happen to have found sanctuary in, but any country in the West or
Western troops) must be forcibly deported back to their place of origin.”
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| Abbi Wilkinson, who has come in for criticism from Finkelstein's elite barrister friends, nails the simple truth about Finkelstein - an upper class racist |
Abbi
Wilkinson’s article Danny Finkelstein And The
Bigots
refers to Murray’s statement that ‘There
are certain things in Britain about which it is impossible to speak frankly.
The birth rate of the Muslim population is a prime subject”. In either of those cases, had he used “Jews” and “Jewish”,
he’d have been denounced for anti-Semitism.
Finkelstein however
disagreed.
As far as he was concerned, Douglas Murray was both ‘stimulating and worthwhile and often right.’ Nor did he agree with
the ‘characterisation of Gatestone’
which he found both ‘stimulating and
worthwhile and often right’ indeed ‘Gatestone acts as an excellent
platform …”.
Finkelstein’s
admiration for Murray in 2015 should be seen in the light of the decision of
the Tory Party leadership to cut its links with Murray. Paul Goodman,
a former MP and editor of Conservative Home wrote on October 17 2011 Why
the Conservative frontbench broke off relations with Douglas Murray – and what
happened afterwards.
In 2006
Murray made a speech in the Dutch Parliament "What are we to do
about Islam?" His answers were what most normal people would describe as
racist. To Finkelstein they were ‘stimulating’
and ‘worthwhile’. Murray
declared:
"Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made
harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition...
all immigration into Europe from Muslim countries must stop"
Muslims who
"take part in, plot,
assist or condone [my
italic] violence against the west must be
forcibly deported to their place of origin".
So someone
whose parents or even grandparents came from Bangladesh, who supports
Palestinian resistance against Israel, which Murray sees as ‘part of the West’ should be deported
‘back’ to a country they have never seen. Or someone who supports resistance to
French troops in Africa should be deported. One wonders what part of this
Finkelstein finds stimulating?
Goodman
therefore went to see Murray to ask him
to disown his remarks. He refused and
therefore relations with the Tory Party were broken off. Later Murray claimed to have recanted ‘years earlier’ but this was clearly
untrue.
Murray is listed as a
Distinguished Senior Fellow of the GI whose Board he sat on until late October
2014. John Bolton, now Trump’s National Security Advisor, chaired the GI from 2013 to 2018. Gatestone’s
board also included Baroness Cox. The GI proudly lists all of Murray’s writings.
They make interesting reading.
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| Finkelstein claims not to support Wilder's views but he defends Murray whose views are similar and he was part of the Gatestone Institute which did share Wilder's views |
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| Wilders in court in The Netherlands on charges of racial discrimination |
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| Geert Wilders - Gatestone's favourite fascist |
In his article on Gatestone’s site
The
Guilty Verdict Dutch Politicians Wanted So Much Murray rails at a Dutch
court for having convicted Geert Wilders of inciting discrimination and
fostering hatred of Moroccans. Apparently all poor Geert did was to ask a crowd
of his supporters whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans and they
responded ‘fewer’. In fact the
transcript is damning. EuroNews describes
how Ronald
van Vliet a parliamentary member of his far-right
Freedom Party resigned in protest against the speech.
During the
meeting Wilders encouraged supporters to chant racist slogans against Moroccans
before he addressed them:
“So I ask
you what do you want in this city more or less Moroccans?”
The crowd
chants, “less. less.”
Wilders
continues: “We will fix it.”
The crowd laughs.
Finkelstein
changes his story & lies through his teeth
Ahmed described how Finkelstein was ‘promoting far-right
politics, and in the name of freedom itself.’
When his membership of GI’s Board was raised Finkelstein
lied, lied and lied again. When three years ago, Nafeez Ahmed asserted “you
are on the board of [Gatestone]”, he replied
“I
naturally don't (and didn't) say that I didn't know who it was or what it
publishes or who it hosts. Of course I do. Being on the Board doesn't mean I agree with every article or every
speaker, nor does it imply that I don’t”
He went on
I don't accept your characterisation of Gatestone. I find Douglas Murray stimulating and
worthwhile and often right, without always agreeing. I think Gatestone acts
as an excellent platform …(my emphasis)
Yet on 1st August 2018
Finkelstein tweeted
‘I
do not serve on the board and have never had any role of any kind running
Gatestone or supervising it in any way. They listed me on the board, until I
told them to stop. I have spoken to them as have many distinguished guests.’
Realising that that might not
sound all that convincing Finkelstein clarified 7 minutes later in response to
a query from kadhim:
‘To clarify, are you saying that you never served on the
board and that they listed you as such (for two years) in error?
To which Finkelstein replied
‘Essentially.
I realise that sounds like a weasel word so let me unpack it. They listed me on
a board and I didn’t actually know at first. The board never met or was asked
to meet or had any role and rather lazily, once I do know, just left it.’
As clear as mud. Four minutes
later
‘More
recently, I thought, mmm, being listed on a board is different to making a
speech or two and I don’t want to be responsible for everything they do with no
actual control so I’d better not continue lazily ignoring this. So I asked to
be taken off. That, I’m afraid is the
And knowing he was being caught
in a trap of his own making tweeted ‘‘unheroic truth’
But 8 hours later, realising that
nothing he said had made sense Finkelstein tweeted
Yes
I’m sorry I was on it and I apologise for the error. Worst of all it gives the legitimate
impression that I support ideas that I think are completely wrong and rightly
thought offensive
But was it an error? For at least two years
Finkelstein sat on the board of an openly racist and Islamophobic organisation,
spoke at their meetings, defended people like Douglas Murray who the Tory front
bench had dissociated themselves from and then expects us to believe that this
worldly wise man, who goes around on the lecture circuit explaining the
political climate to people was unaware of who he was mixing with? And worse can then call anti-Semitic a man
who has fought racism his whole life. As
Private Eye used to say ‘pass the sick bucket Alice’.
The reality is that Finkelstein
sat on the Board of an organisation which consciously promoted the
writings of Geert Wilders, an open fascist whose racism is such that even
members of his own misnamed Freedom Party have resigned.
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| Gatestone Institute defend Geert Wilder's racist views |
According
to the Center for American Progress
in Washington DC, Nina Rosenwald and the foundations controlled by her and her
family are part of “a small, tightly
networked group of misinformation experts” that “peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam.”
This is the organisation Finkelstein has such close connections with and who
Jonathan Freedland, in his battle against ‘anti-Semitism’ considers a trusted
ally.
The
GI has repeatedly endorsed the myth of “Muslim no-go-zones” in Europe that
caused David Cameron to describe a Fox News pundit echoing the same views as an
“idiot.”
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| Freedland's email to me as the antisemitism smear campaign began |
There is also a good article in the Morning
Star The Times launches yet
another desperate smear against Corbyn
I have one more question to Freedland,
Finkelstein and all the other obsessives who are willing to chase down
anti-Semitic opinions expressed over a century ago. You describe yourselves as Zionists. When are you going to distance yourself from
the anti-Semitic opinions of Zionism’s founders. Unlike Hobson’s views they are still relevant today because Israel is in a de facto alliance with white
supremacists the world over, from Trump to Orban.
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| Freedland doesn't care what company he keeps when attacking Corbyn |
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| Theodor Herzl, founder of the Zionist movement, railing against 'the terrible power of our purse' |
I am referring for example to Theodor Herzl,
the founder of Political Zionism, who wrote about the Jews in the pamphlet
which started off the movement, The
Jewish State:
When we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat,
the subordinate officers of all revolutionary parties; and at the same time,
when we rise, there rises also our terrible power of the purse.
Or Jacob Klatzkin, join editor of
the Zionist paper die Welt, who wrote
that the Jews were
‘a people disfigured in both body and soul –
in a word, of a horror… some sort of outlandish creature… in any case, not a
pure national type... some sort of oddity among the peoples going by the name
of Jew.
Or how about Israel’s first Justice
Minister, Pinhas Rosenbluth who described Palestine as ‘an institute for the fumigation of Jewish vermin’
There are many more such quotes I can
dig up if necessary. Zionism began with a rejection of the Jewish diaspora. It's called 'negation of the diaspora.' Zionism literally hated the Jewish presence outside Palestine. Many Zionists considered themselves proud anti-Semites. For example Arthur Ruppin, one of the most
important Zionist figures in the last century, after whom streets and boulevards
are named in Israel and the Father of Land Settlement:
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| We can rely on Aaronovitch, a former communist who went to the neo-liberal right, to defend Finkelstein |
When
a friend of Ruppin called him an anti-Semite he retorted ‘I have already established here [in his diary] that I despise the
cancers of Judaism more than does the worst anti-Semite.’ Ruppin associated
Judaism with capitalism and his writings reflected his belief in the identity
between anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism. [Joachim Doron, Classic Zionism, parallels and influences’
(1883-1914), Studies in Zionism 8, Autumn 1983]
Compared
to Ruppin and Herzl, John Hobson was a very mild anti-Semite. Perhaps we could see some explanations from
Jonathan Freedland as to why he has said nothing about the origins of Zionism
up till now?
Tony
Greenstein
