Labour has some great new rules for anti-Semitism investigations. What a shame they’re being abused
(Incidentally, this is the only definition of anti-Semitism anybody needs.)
For This Writer, Jon Lansman has more credibility when it comes to anti-Semitism than most of the bureaucrats running the Labour Party’s administrative system.
Mr Lansman, a gentleman of Jewish heritage, defended me when the anti-Semitism accusations against me were brought up – shamefully under ‘Any Other Business’ – at a meeting of Labour’s NEC.
He is not, therefore, a man who is easily-led into making knee-jerk reactions to unsubstantiated, wild claims.
When he wrote the following in The Guardian –
Conflating legitimate criticism of Israel with antisemitism is dangerous and undermines the fight against antisemitism. Clear and detailed guidelines are essential to ensure that antisemitism isn’t tolerated, while protecting free speech on Israel’s conduct within a respectful and civil environment. This is what Labour’s code of conduct provides. We should be celebrating and replicating it.
– I believed him.
What a shame the Labour Party is already abusing the guidelines in its new code of conduct for investigating accusations of anti-Semitism.
This is why I need your help to fight these malicious, libellous, false claims. Please visit my JustGiving page to help.
For example, paragraph 12 of the new code of conduct states: “Article 1(2) of the 1948 UN Charter refers to “respect for the principle of equal rights and self determination of peoples”. The Party is clear that the Jewish people have the same right to self-determination as any other people. To deny that right is to treat the Jewish people unequally and is therefore a form of antisemitism. That does not, of course, preclude considered debate and discourse about the nature or content of the right of peoples to self determination.”
That seems fairly self-explanatory – but it is perverted to an unacceptable degree on Labour’s charge sheet claiming that I have committed anti-Semitic behaviour.
It quotes me as having stated: “JLM [the Jewish Labour Movement] is not a movement that represents Jews; it represents Jewish Zionists.” “The Jewish Labour Movement does not represent Jews who are not Zionists. It persecutes them.”
Then it says: “To state that the Labour Party’s official Jewish affiliate does not represent Jews denies Jews the right to self-define. This conduct is abhorrent, antisemitic and falls way below the standards expected of party members. This is clearly prejudicial and/or grossly detrimental to the party.” And this would be true, if the Jewish Labour Movement could be demonstrated to be representative of Jews, regardless of their views about Zionism. It cannot.
As I stated in the article quoted on the charge sheet: “Look at the organisation’s own website. It states:
““The Jewish Labour Movement is also affiliated to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Zionist Federation of the UK, and organise within the World Zionist Organisation… Our objects: To maintain and promote Labour or Socialist Zionism as the movement for self-determination of the Jewish people within the state of Israel.”
““Zionist”… “Zionist”… “Zionism”… “within the state of Israel”.
“It seems clear that “Jewish Labour Movement” is a misnomer. It should be “Zionist Labour Movement”.”
What about Jews who aren’t Zionists, as the JLM defines them?
How do you think the members of Jewdas – attacked as the “wrong kind of Jew” after Jeremy Corbyn attended an event organised by the group – would describe the JLM?
Here’s how. Responding to attacks on Mr Corbyn for attending the event in late March, the Jewdas website stated: “What has happened over the last week is anything but an attempt to address antisemitism. It is the work of cynical manipulations by people whose express loyalty is to the Conservative Party and the right wing of the Labour Party. It is a malicious ploy to remove the leader of the Opposition and put a stop to the possibility of a socialist government. The Board of Deputies, the (disgraced for corruption) Jewish Leadership Council and the (unelected, undemocratic) Jewish Labour Movement are playing a dangerous game with people’s lives.”
So these Jews consider the JLM to be unelected, undemocratic, and playing a dangerous game with people’s lives. Representative of Jews in general? No.
But I am under attack for making this point. Please visit my JustGiving site, if you haven’t already, and donate to my bid to take the liars to court.
What about Jewish Voice for Labour, which admits full membership only to Labour Party members who identify as Jewish – unlike the JLM, which allows full membership to non-Jews, and also to non-members of the Labour Party? This organisation has campaigned against what it sees as false accusations of anti-Semitism against notable figures like Ken Livingstone, Jackie Walker, and Marc Wadsworth (as has This Writer), and also campaigns against the persecution of Palestinian people by the state of Israel.
And JLM members hate it. Responding to Harrow East Labour Party’s decision to affiliate to JVL, JLM chair Ivor Caplin told the Jewish Chronicle it was a “stupid decision” to affiliate with an “obsessive group that is often far too generous to antisemites and Holocaust revisionists”. But at least members of JVL are all Jewish, which is more than can be said for the JLM.
So let’s go back to that claim on my charge sheet about it being “abhorrent, anti-Semitic” and “denying Jews the right to self-define” of me to say that the JLM does not represent Jews [and let’s also remind ourselves that I never actually stated that the JLM didn’t represent Jews; I just made it clear that JLM doesn’t represent all Labour-supporting Jews]. How’s that claim looking?
Ropey.
And the claim that I am denying Jews the right to self-define?
Bogus. It is the JLM that denies Jews the right to self-define – by siding with those who describe other Labour-supporting Jewish organisations as the “wrong kind of Jews”.
I don’t know who wrote the charge against me, but they have taken the terms of Labour’s code of conduct and turned them inside out – using them for a purpose opposite to that for which it was written.
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JLM have no place in the Labour party as far as I am concerned,since Zionism should not be an acceptable ideology to left wing democrats.
…or to any other decent human being who cares about the truth and justice.
Zionism is a criminal cult.
I fully agree. But I don’t understand -in the light of so much cruelty in the world, not half so bad as that taking in place in Palestine, how it seems so much more bravely said than too many of us dare to express.
As a dedicated non-Jewish student – and sometime teacher – for nearly 40 years of the inspiring Way of Kabbalah (now fast becoming accepted as a science rather than a religion – which it never was) I have hope that those who are still seeking to find profound and helpful meaning in the Jewish tradition will soon come across it. I highly recommend the many welcoming and books of Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi (Gateway Books, Bath).
I too was impressed by Jon Lansman’s attempt to sort Labour’s so- called ,’ antisemitic’ problem.
However, I fear too much is expected of the Zionists who are creating it. Over a period of years
I occasionally attended open university ‘debates’ set up – by the LIberal Party as it happens –
to create better political relations between those I naturally believed to be Jews; and non Jews.
They were always a dead loss.
It soon became obvious that one side had absolutely no intention – or knowledge of how – to listen;
how to discuss. indeed it seemed they had been bred to be so incapable.
Disgracefully – but like many others – I simply took these people as Jews; just Jews. And I didn’t like them at all.
They could only shout others down (always very loudly; I’d even say hysterically). In many ways their efforts paid off.
As a result, many thousands of people are still caught up in the same illusion. It is the basis of antisemitism.
Meantime, our efforts were very wearing and people stopped trying.
Amazingly, it was only years later I discovered I’d been trying to debate with Zionists – that their intention
was specifically to claim power and not to hear a word that was spoken by anybody else.
It was only then that I discovered there were (seemingly invisible) non-ZIonist Jews who were having the very same
problem – gentle people ,who turned out to be very nice.
The Jewish Voice of Labour is so refreshing – and yet, still so seldom heard – presumably for the very same reason.
THIS is where the problem lies; and where it should be tackled.
Perhaps, if Zionists wish to prove themselves to be good politicians in a host country, they should set up their very
own party – with whose members they could have a different kind of discussion. could draw up a truthful manifesto –
and present it in their own name to the electorate at large.
The problem, by design, is that separating criticism of the US sponsored expansion project in the M.E. is very difficult since a great deal of jewish identity and history in the region has been invented, exploited and used to assimilate worldwide jewry by the colonial Eastern European imposters in Palastine and the murderous supremacist cult called Zionism that control them.
The anti-semitic slur tactic works like a charm every time, which is why it is so widely and eagerly employed.
So here you are now and the topic has been forcibly and successfully changed from legitimate criticism of a criminal supremacist cult and it’s behaviour in others lands.
Now it is all about you personally and whether the sickening accusations being levelled are valid, requiring you to expend time and energy defending yourself against a deliberate campaign of intimidation which as always is designed to induce a fear of speaking out and promote silence on the subject of the colonial invention in the M.E.
This is the standard M.O.