How Momentum caved in to the Jackie Walker witch-hunt | Tony Greenstein

Last Updated: October 12, 2016By
Jon Lansman, director of Momentum.

Jon Lansman, director of Momentum.

What is happening about Jackie Walker’s suspension from the Labour Party?

Here is a woman whose privacy was invaded by pro-Zionist hackers who quoted part of a complicated conversation out of context to create a false impression that she believed Jews financed the slave trade.

This was then used to claim that she had taken the idea from an anti-Semitic text written by Nation of Israel minister Louis Farrakhan, when it in fact came from her own researches into her family history.

So that’s invasion of privacy and malicious falsehood.

She was subjected to racist abuse by people who pose as campaigners against racism (albeit that very specific kind of racism that relates to the Jewish people). The same people claim the Nazi holocaust exclusively for Jews, thereby discriminating against all the other groups who faced genocide at the same time including, most famously, the Roma, the sick and disabled.

So that’s racism and holocaust denial. Also denial of free speech based on factual evidence, which is a sign of totalitarian thinking.

And yet it is Jackie Walker who has been suspended from the Labour Party and sacked as vice-chair of Momentum’s steering committee.

Isn’t it about time we had a proper investigation into these events, rather than a witch-hunt?

Let’s have an investigation into Ms Walker’s accusers, leading to legal action under the Defamation Act 1952 and the Public Order Act 1986.

Why are we letting people break the law in order to harm the reputation of an innocent woman?

Jackie [Walker], you might recall, was suspended as a result of a private discussion on Facebook with an Israeli Zionist friend about her mixed Jewish-black inheritance, including Jewish financiers of the slave trade.

It was a complex, personal conversation, which the Israel Advocacy Movement, having hacked into her page, used to suggest that Jackie believed that the main financiers of the slave trade were Jewish. The IAM is an Israeli-sponsored propaganda group. Jackie was, like anti-apartheid campaigners before her, the victim of a state-sponsored sting.

When Jackie was reinstated, she was subjected to a continuous form of race-baiting from the Jewish Labour Movement and other Zionist groups.

The campaign began to take on a life of its own after John McDonnell spoke on the same platform, despite pressure from the Zionists, at the Labour Representation Committee fringe meeting in Brighton at the TUC Conference on May 12. Two days later the chair of the pro-Zionist Jewish Labour Movement, Jeremy Newmark, called on McDonnell to “explain his defence of Walker, which is inconsistent with his call for zero tolerance [of anti-Semitism]. This raises serious questions.”

Jackie Walker was among those who attended a spurious ‘training event’ on anti-Semitism, which was run by the JLM. At this event Jackie made the unremarkable observation that there is no standard definition of anti-Semitism, despite the untruthful assertion of the JLM that the “international definition” is the European Union Monitoring Committee’s ‘working definition on anti-Semitism’, which conflates criticism of Israel, and comparison between Israel and the Nazis, with anti-Semitism.

Jackie had also made the unremarkable claim that Holocaust Memorial Day excluded or relegated to the margins other holocausts. For this Jackie was branded ‘anti-Semitic’… Labour’s witch-hunters were provided with a ready-made excuse for suspending Jackie Walker for a second time.

Then, at a three-hour meeting on October 3 at the headquarters of the TSSA union, Jackie was removed as vice-chair of Momentum despite the overwhelming support she has received from the rank and file of that organisation.

In a statement issued afterwards it was confirmed that Jackie Walker remains a member of the Momentum steering committee. The statement was full of weasel words, accepting that nothing Jackie had said “taken individually” was anti-Semitic (with perhaps the implication that, taken as a whole, her comments might be interpreted that way). But her comments were nonetheless “ill-informed, ill-judged and offensive”.

These are, of course, wholly subjective comments – and could be used rather aptly to describe Momentum’s own statement.

What Jackie said about Holocaust Memorial Day not including all other holocausts, in particular those affecting Africans, is simply true… To Zionism the holocaust was a Jewish-only affair, from which the gypsies and disabled are excluded. The late Elie Wiesel said that to compare the sufferings of others with Jews was a “betrayal of Jewish history”. And Lucy Dawidowicz, a well known holocaust historian and rightwing Zionist, held that “subsuming Jewish losses under a universal or ecumenical classification is to effectively justify anti-Semitism”. The truth may be uncomfortable, but it is not anti-Semitic.

Telling the truth, however, according to Lansman’s weasel words, is “ill-judged and offensive”. If Lansman and the six who voted with him possessed anything resembling an intellect, they would appreciate that the right to offend and be ‘offensive’ is the very essence of free speech. Those who curtail their language for the sake of not ‘giving offence’ are being dishonest.

As for Jackie’s comment that there is no standard definition of anti-Semitism, that is simply a matter of fact.

Perhaps the most outrageous aspect of the fitting up of Jackie Walker – because in reality when she went to the JLM’s training event at Labour Party conference she was walking into a honey trap – is that the whole affair was secretly filmed and the video footage was immediately handed to the media. What kind of ‘training event’ is it that passes film of an event to the media in order that they can attack the participants for what they have said?

The very fact that the JLM had been allowed to run a ‘training event’ on anti-Semitism when it is a racist organisation itself, which makes a speciality of accusing anti-Zionists of ‘anti-Semitism’, is outrageous.

This whole episode smacks of treachery. For months now Zionist organisations have been out to get Jackie. She has been subjected to unbelievable amounts of racist abuse on Twitter and elsewhere. I have previously described what was happening to her as a form of political lynching. Some Zionists have openly proclaimed that because she is black Jackie could not be Jewish.

Source: Caving in to the witch-hunt – Weekly Worker

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7 Comments

  1. Elspeth Parris October 12, 2016 at 11:01 am - Reply

    Having heard Lansman (chair of Momentum) speak on this, and be challenged by members, I can point out that she was not suspended for ‘anti-semitism’ but because it seemed better, since we would prefer the subject to disappear from the news for a while, that she take a back seat for a time where she would be less vulnerable to media-targetting. Accusations of anti-semitism in Momentum was of course nonsense with both Chair and (at that point, vice-chair) being Jewish. But the media were attacking. A strategic retreat I’d call it.

    • Mike Sivier October 12, 2016 at 11:14 am - Reply

      That is not what Momentum’s statement said. Let’s face it, Momentum capitulated to the Zionist lobby.

  2. Roland October 12, 2016 at 11:03 am - Reply

    Jackie Walker is one of the best a true fighter and she should be re enstated with an apolagy and the Zionists should be botted out ASAP

  3. Sven Wraight October 12, 2016 at 11:15 am - Reply

    I’ve just read Jon Lansman’s Wikipedia entry and I’m none the wiser. Why would he cave in? Stupidity probably isn’t the reason with his educational background. He has at least 1 right-wing leaning (he’s for mandatory reselection), but is this enough to betray Jackie Walker?
    He’s white and from an elite background and she’s black, but that doesn’t mean racism is his motivation, but it doesn’t prove he’s not racist.
    Has he been lent on or bought off? Is he just the figurehead and someone else is pulling his strings?
    Can anyone shed some light on why he’s wrong because that would appear to be the solution to correcting this travesty?

  4. mohandeer October 12, 2016 at 7:23 pm - Reply

    Why is it that certain extremists are allowed preferential treatment to the exclusion and detriment of other minorities. Why do these extremists cry wolf every time they want to receive this special status? What do they believe they have done that generates such expectation of this preferential status?
    Why does Britain always capitulate to the demands of this protected minority and allow them to hijack discussion on minority issues – again, to the detriment of others?

  5. Buffalo Gough October 13, 2016 at 11:41 am - Reply

    You state ‘most famously, the Roma, the sick and disabled’ is a group that was persecuted by the Nazis as well missing from your list, homosexuality was also on the list, but again isn’t listed – I was just wondering why? Otherwise I really value your postings comrade. Come the glorious day.

    • Mike Sivier October 13, 2016 at 12:13 pm - Reply

      You’re right, they were. There was no intention to snub any group; I mentioned the Roma and the disabled because they had been raised in the debate previously and were therefore easy to highlight.

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