The Destruction of the Bedrock Values of Western Civilisation

Many readers will already  have discovered this interview with Marvellous Melanie, but for those who haven't, it's a 50-minute must-hear  (no need to stay glued to the screen).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asQ8KFrZY84

Hear her tell, inter alia, why antisemitism and anti-Zionism made her leave The Guardian ...

Anti-Israel Shenanegans in (and out of) Steel City

Sheffield, Yorkshire.  Famous, once upon a time, for manufacturing cutlery.  Not so famous for being the home town of the BBC's appalling little Israel-bashing squirt Jon Donnison. 

Olivia Blake (pictured left, and below holding a Palestinian flag) is Labour councillor for the Walkley, Netherthorpe and Upperthorpe wards in Sheffield.

She's deputy leader of Sheffield Council and Labour's candidate for the parliamentary seat of Sheffield Hallam.

She's on record as saying “I fully support the work of Jeremy Corbyn ... to rid our party of antisemitism...."

(Yes, you read that correctly!)

But along with the rest of the Labour-dominated city council she evidently thinks that the council has a mandate over and beyond its obligation to keep roads free of potholes, to ensure rubbish is collected on time, and to collect rates.

For Sheffield Council has made a foray into the realm of foreign policy.  Not foreign policy in general, but foreign policy aimed at undermining the State of Israel. And aspiring MP Olivia thinks that's a really grand idea.

As outlined here (with a photo, different from the one above, showing Olivia raising the flag) Sheffield Council's recognition of "Palestine" as a sovereign state

came after Sheffield Labor Friends of Palestine gathered nearly 20,000 signatures on a petition calling on the city council to recognize Palestine.

Labor Friends of Palestine, who supported this move, said they will pass on this decision to the British Parliament to discuss it in September.

Palestine's ambassador to the United Kingdom, Hussam Zomlot, welcomed the move and praised the Sheffield Labor Friends of Palestine for their efforts to get their city to recognize Palestine and raise its flag.

He said this support is not only symbolic, but rather is a step toward British recognition of Palestine, which he said is long overdue and a duty for Britain which participated in the tragedy of the Palestinian people with the infamous Balfour Declaration of 1917 that promised a homeland for the Jews in Palestine totally disregarding its indigenous Palestinian population.

Julie Pearn, of the Sheffield Labor Friends of Palestine, played a big role in winning this recognition. “The time for recognition is long overdue. The state of Palestine is already recognized by 138 other nations," she said two weeks ago at a rally outside Sheffield Town Hall.

“We believe public recognition of the Palestine state by the council would be a powerful and influential statement of solidarity which we hope other councils will envy."

Council[l]or Olivia Blake, deputy leader, also said then that “Sheffield is just one city but we can make this symbolic gesture and hope to put pressure on government to do likewise.”

Meanwhile, further mischief is afoot, on the part of the British Trade Union Movement, with which Corbyn and the Corbynistas are of course hand-in-glove.

Inter alia:

A PSC Trade Union Conference: Developing Palestine as a core issue for UK trade union members to grow the international solidarity movement.

Supported by Unite the Union, UNISON, GMB, NEU, ASLEF, UCU, RMT, FBU, TSSA, CWU and TUC.

This conference will feature Palestinian and UK speakers, and provide the space to explore new avenues and provide tools for trade unionists to further our solidarity work for Palestine.

The collective rights of the Palestinian people are under unprecedented assault. The Palestinians need our solidarity now more than ever, and the trade union movement is a crucial part of building lasting solidarity with the Palestinian people. We need to take forward solidarity campaigns, including BDS, to pressure Israel into complying with international law and the universal principles of human rights.

Featured sessions include the situation of Palestinian workers under occupation, how to take BDS action, how we can make a stronger case for Palestinian rights, and the ways we can build on the existing solidarity work by Trade Unions in the UK.

This conference is designed for trade unionists who want to further their solidarity work, to make further progress for Palestine in their unions and beyond.

Join us to skill up, to learn from each other, to hear from inspiring speakers, to attend seminars and to build the power of Palestine solidarity across the UK trade union movement. [Emphasis added]

A Hunter in Search of a PSC Branch?

For a sliver of a country the size of Israel the principality of Wales has an inordinate amount of  anti-Israel activity: Palestine Solidarity Campaign branches in Abergavenny, Bangor, Cardiff, a branch in the name of the whole of Wales, launched, as we see here, in 2017:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6evoJUHFkg

And comparable groups, including one in Swansea that doesn't resile from sailing close to the wind that carries the stench of antisemitism:

Betty Hunter (pictured below in full battledress) is honorary president of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

Recently, the Cambrian News, a newspaper circulating in the heartland of Welsh-speaking Wales, announced that on 29 June Betty would be visiting the West Wales seaside and university town of Aberystwyth in the county of Ceredigion, in order to launch a new local branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign:

"The launch event will take place in Arad Goch in Bath Street from 1pm. To initiate the new group, Betty Hunter, honorary president of PSC, will talk about the plight of children who find themselves on the frontline of Israeli military actions in Palestine. The soundtrack to the event will be provided by Côr Gobaith, who will sing songs of hope for peace and justice in the region. The event will conclude with the inaugural AGM of the Ceredigion branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign."

A poster proclaiming the event has appeared on radical Welsh sites and social media posts inimical to Israel's interests, but so far there is no mention of the existence of a Ceredigion branch on the PSC's main website, which purports to list all those in existence.

For years Hungarian-born Elizabeth Morley (of Jewish ancestry on her mother's side) was (is?) the high-profile secretary of the Aberystwyth PSC branch, and, a member of the Labour Party since Corbyn became leader, continues to write letters to the press and public figures and organise petitions denouncing Israel.

The Aberystwyth branch consisted (consists?) largely of a gaggle of old ladies and the occasional bloke buttonholing shoppers outside stores having the temerity to sell Israeli fruit and veggies.  (They, and no doubt others like them Britain-wide) successfully cajoled the Co-op into acceding to their demands that such products not be sold.) And setting up stalls in the town's main shopping strip on occasional Saturday mornings, complete with anti-Israel petitions to be signed, and of course that notorious set of four maps on display, while an energetic choir of female voices warbled anti-Israel "peace" songs.

Mrs Morley still tweets using the AberPSC handle:

Yet to judge by the lack of activity on its Twitter page the Aberystwyth PSC branch seems to have morphed during 2018 into "Aberystwyth Friends of Palestine" with her at the helm.

There has long been a student society of that name in town, the subject of this disturbing report back in 2013. Presumably it remains autonomous, and is not directly under the aegis of Mrs Morley's group.

Could it be that Betty Hunter called off her visit?  Could it be that Mrs Morley's group, whatever its name, has made a new PSC group in town unviable?  Time will tell.

The PSC claims that it is not antisemitic, but David Collier's findings here belie that claim.

I was assured some ten years ago by a (Jewish) leading figure in the PSC that PSC activists are instructed to avoid linking to online rag Redress since it carries overtly antisemitic articles.

Elizabeth Morley, though, has a long-standing penchant for linking to articles in Redress and continues to do so. 

See, for instance, these bits and pieces:

That second recent tweet opens up access to such distasteful rubbish as this, and that the author of the first is Jewish himself does not excuse it, not one little bit:

Furthermore:

No doubt the lady and her cohorts, as well as Betty Hunter and indeed all the PSCers, dedicated BDSers that they are, carry this card in their wallets:

And if not, why not?

"Extremist Hate Preachers, pro-Jihad Activists, and Avowed anti-Semites" Talk the Talk on British Campuses

On Holocaust Memorial Day, Facebook friends of Mick Napier, verbose chief of chieftain the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, share an obnoxious cartoon popular with the Israel-demonising crowd.

For his part, Napier (current Facebook profile avowing "Working to boycott and isolate the genocidal State of Israel") has used Holocaust Memorial Day to push his anti-Israel message in posts and a live broadcast to followers, including one invoking Raphael Lemkin's definition of Genocide.

A follower runs with the theme of Israelis as deliberate perpetrators of genocide, and another, reflecting what has become commonplace in the anti-Israel movement, especially since the rise of Corbyn, is not shy about making antisemitic tropes:

To which the chief's observation is hardly an outright condemnation:

Meanwhile, Tomas Rowan, described as "with UNRWA as a United Nations Refugee Affairs Officer in Gaza during the First Intifada" whose "novel of that period A Bar Mitzvah At Arafat’s will be published this summer", is advocating adoption of an "anti-Palestinianism" declaration analogous to definitions of antisemitism.

And the London-based Henry Jackson Society has published a very revealing, very disturbing analysis of extremist speakers on campuses in the UK during the academic year 2017-18.

Inter alia:

'Extremist hate preachers, pro-jihad activists, and avowed anti-Semites have “near-unfettered” access to students. It catalogues 435 events promoted to students held over the last three academic years featuring elements of extremism – 16% of which took place at just one university.  The nationwide league table identified events promoted by university groups that have included: extremist or extremist-linked speakers, those that fundraised for extremist organisations, or included extremist content.

In September 2015 at a speech in Birmingham, then Prime Minister David Cameron ordered universities to stop providing extremists with “the oxygen they need to flourish” by hosting extreme speakers.  He cited 70 events featuring extremist-linked speakers that had occurred on campuses the previous academic year.  In spite of his warning, the University Extreme Speakers League Table discloses that more than 100 such events have been targeted at students in each and every year since.  In the 2017-18 academic year, the number of publicly promoted events increased by 87%, with 200 such events. The report warns that the true figure could be much higher, given it lists only publicly promoted events. 

Over the last three academic years, SOAS is the university which has hosted the most events promoted to students which feature extremist groups or speakers.  The university has repeatedly disputed that it is in breach of its Prevent duties and has seen 70 events promoted by student groups that feature extremist groups or speakers – 43 of which took place in the last year alone.  In the 2017-18 academic year, over 20% of all events featuring elements of extremism took place under its auspices.  SOAS, hosted over four times as many events as its closest rivals; King’s College London, Birmingham, and Queen Mary University.

Among the extremist speakers identified by the Henry Jackson Society are:

35 events featuring speakers from the pro-Jihad lobby group CAGE.  CAGE speakers include: Moazzam Begg who has praised Al-Qaeda figures and encouraged Muslims to travel to Syria; Shaker Aamer considered an Osama Bin Laden affiliate by the US Government; and Asim Qureshi who has promoted violent jihad, called Jihadi John a “beautiful young man”, and refused to condemn female genital mutilation.

4 of the 6 extremist speakers David Cameron warned universities not to host in 2015 have continued to speak at student events collectively making appearances in 54 student events over the past three years.  They are Hamza Tzortzis, Uthman Lateef, Haitham al-Haddad and Alomgir Ali.

Other radical Islamists among the almost 100 speakers identified include: Yahya al-Raaby who has called Shia Muslims “devils” and “rafida”; Yusuf Chambers who has advocated death for homosexuals;and Muhammed Taqi Usmani who has claimed that Islam allows slavery under certain conditions.

140 events featuring representatives of organisations linked to Haitham al-Haddad.  Al-Haddad is one of Britain’s most notorious extremist hate preachers who has sanctioned forms of female genital mutilation, child marriage, death for apostates and adulterers, and said that men who beat their wives should not be questioned.

The rankings also include appearances by the far-right extremist Tommy Robinson and noted anti-Semites including Jackie Walker, the former Vice-Chair of Momentum.The report argues that universities’ protocols for upholding the Government’s prevent strategy are “not fit for purpose”.'

Warning of an “industrial-scale failure by universities to apply their Prevent duties”, the report’s author highlights the apparent disparities between universities’ obligations under the law and the reality on the ground.  Universities have an obligation under the ‘Prevent duty’ enacted by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (2015) to protect students from extremist speakers.  The rules were instituted by Theresa May during her tenure as Home Secretary. The Government’s guidance on the duty states:

“…when deciding whether or not to host a particular speaker, [universities] should consider carefully whether the views being expressed, or likely to be expressed, constitute extremist views that risk drawing people into terrorism or are shared by terrorist groups. In these circumstances the event should not be allowed to proceed except where [universities] are entirely convinced that such risk can be fully mitigated without cancellation of the event.” ....

(Emphasis added)

Read the entire article, with a list of the most affected campuses and accompanied by a video featuring the report's author Emma Fox, here.

D'ye Ken Why British Jews Distrust the Labour Party?

So the wily and egregious Ken Livingstone's in trouble (slap on the wrist stuff) with the Labour Party, and a number of usual suspects have hot-footed it to his aid.

It's not as if the antisemitic ex-Mayor of London and Greater London Council chief has been expelled from the party: he's been suspended for another year (on top of the year just passed), and can still attend branch meetings and vote in ballots.

Hence the tweet above from Luciana Berger MP.

To quote London academic David Hirsh here:

Last year

'Ken Livingstone has been suspended from Labour membership for two years, counted from last April, when he said on the radio that Hitler "was supporting Zionism - this was before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews"....Livingstone keeps on repeating that his Jewish friends agree with him; and there is indeed a small but noisy coterie of Jews ready to bear witness against the Jewish community and to whitewash their hero....

Livingstone is not a jolly, harmless old bloke who is basically on the right side and who supports the Palestinians; he has spent much of his life crafting antisemitic discourse for mass public consumption.  

Last year

There is a bigger problem of political antisemitism in the Labour Party than Livingstone; the leadership of the party itself is implicated in the kind of politics which cultivates it.

And now, Labour is not even able decisively to distance itself from Livingstone by expelling him.  No doubt, Livingstone will still be invited to do media work and he will still be treated as a respectable and experienced political leader; because even now, that is how he is seen by many.'

There's an online petition afoot, denying that Red Ken (as he used to be known) is an antisemite.

I don't very often repeat guest blogposts of mine on other websites, but I feel compelled to repeat one I wrote about a year ago for Elder of Ziyon.

Apologies if you've read it before.

I include copies of recent eloquent tweets by Wales-based academic Dr James Vaughan, whom I mention in the following:

Regarding the current crisis in the British Labour Party regarding the pestilential antisemitism lurking in certain cliques on the party’s Left, British journalist Nick Cohen has observed with his customary insight  

“Challenging prejudices on the left wing is going to be all the more difficult because, incredibly, the British left in the second decade of the 21st century is led by men steeped in the worst traditions of the 20th.

 When historians had to explain last week that if Montgomery had not defeated Rommel at El Alamein in Egypt then the German armies would have killed every Jew they could find in Palestine, they were dealing with the conspiracy theory that Hitler was a Zionist, developed by a half-educated American Trotskyist called Lenni Brenner in the 1980s.

When Jeremy Corbyn defended the Islamist likes of Raed Salah, who say that Jews dine on the blood of Christian children, he was continuing a tradition of communist accommodation with antisemitism that goes back to Stalin’s purges of Soviet Jews in the late 1940s.

 It is astonishing that you have to, but you must learn the worst of leftwing history now. For Labour is not just led by dirty men but by dirty old men, with roots in the contaminated soil of Marxist totalitarianism. If it is to change, its leaders will either have to change their minds or be thrown out of office.”

The torrid abuse on social media (Twitter and Facebook) directed at anti-Corbyn Labour MP John Mann (pictured left, in an abusive Twitter post by an antisemite last year), a blunt honest Yorkshireman who exemplifies what is fair and honourable in the Labour tradition, has been a bulldoggish champion of Jews and foe of antisemitism  and who has had the grit and integrity to tell fellow Labour MP Ken Livingstone just what is odious about the latter’s outburst regarding Hitler and Zionism, illustrates the antisemitic ratbaggery which infests many of the party’s present rank and file.

From a current pro-Ken petition!

That rank and file has of course been swelled by far leftists of the Israel-hating breed who joined the party in 2015 in order to elect Corbyn as its leader.

For, of course, Corbyn’s anti-Israel activism goes back a long way, not least in lending his name to a defence group for the London-based Palestinians Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, post-graduates who, angry at what they foresaw as a peace deal, used their scientific training to make car bombs that exploded outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington and outside a Jewish charity in Finchley (The Times, 12 December 1996) – and also his championship of Mordechai Vanunu, the convicted Israeli nuclear secrets traitor who is on record as declaring that Judaism is a “backward religion” and that “efforts should be redoubled to create a Palestinian state rather than a Jewish one.  There shouldn’t be a Jewish state.” (The Times, 20 April 2004).

The Labour Party’s infiltration by far left elements hostile to Israel began in the 1970s.  (I was working at the London School of Economics and remember the era well, including how pro-Israel material left on notice boards would be torn down virtually as soon as posted.)

At that juncture the Labour Party, with a few exceptions (notably MPs Christopher Mayhew – who in a BBC interview referred to Jewish MPs as “the Israeli army below the gangway” and

who in 1970 told the Institute of Race Relations “I would like the Institute to consider the proposition that Mrs Golda Meir is most unlikely to have ancestors who once lived in Palestine, and far less likely to have such ancestors than Yasser Arafat” – David Watkins and Andrew Faulds) was still very much pro-Israel.

Anybody with a serious interest in the topic of Labour’s relations with Israel and the pernicious influence of Mayhew and the gang should read the article “’Mayhew’s Outcasts’: anti-Zionism and the Arab lobby in Harold Wilson's Labour” by Dr James Vaughan, a lecturer at what is generally considered  the foremost International Relations Department in Britain, the long-established one at Aberystwyth University:

In order to illuminate what I write below, let me quote an extract from Dr Vaughan’s article (with footnote references omitted):

'An early sign that LMEC [Labour Middle East Council, founded after the Six Day War to counter “Zionist” influence in the party] and CAABU [the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding] were developing contacts with more radical pro-Palestinian groups can be seen in their members’ association with the Free Palestine newspaper in the 1970s.  Free Palestine had begun life as a ‘violent and crudely written’ newsletter in 1968 and indirect links to CAABU were established when Claud Morris agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969.

That business relationship proved to be short-lived but the newspaper continued to cultivate links with British MPs and activists.  Its editor, Louis Eaks, brought his own connections to the Young Liberal ‘Red Guard’ faction, and Free Palestine received political support and journalistic contributions from LMEC regulars like Mayhew, Watkins and Faulds.  Morris later claimed not to have been aware of Free Palestine’s links to Arafat and the PLO when he agreed to publish the newspaper in 1969.

Those connections, however, are not especially difficult to uncover.  A February 1975 editorial stated that Free Palestine’s line was ‘determined by the political and strategy decisions of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Al Fatah’ whilst asserting that ‘this newspaper is not funded by either of these organisations.’  In 1981, inviting Andrew Faulds to join the editorial committee, Eaks claimed that Free Palestine was ‘independent of any specific Palestinian organisation’ although he noted that the newspaper was ‘committed to the Fatah/PLO line.’

Andrew Faulds?

A closer look at the newspaper’s parent company, Petra Publishing, however, reveals that among the firm’s directors was Khaled al Hassan (Abu Said), a founding member of Fatah and one of Arafat’s closest advisers. Another director was Saleh Khalili, who was also a member of Free Palestine’s editorial committee.  Khalili has been identified by Alex Mitchell as a London-based agent of Abu Jihad, head of the PLO’s military operations. 

According to Mitchell, Khalili’s job as the PLO’s ‘man-at-large in London’ brought him into collaborative liaison with Gerry Healey’s Workers Revolutionary Party (WRP), whose publications were subsidised by Libya’s Colonel Gadhaffi, and, through the WRP, to the Lambeth Council leader, Ted Knight, who sat alongside Ken Livingstone on the editorial board of the Labour Herald newspaper.  Mitchell has even claimed that Knight met with Arafat, Abu Jihad and Khalili in Tunis and succeeded in soliciting a £15,000 donation to the Labour Herald from the PLO.

Whatever the truth of that, it is certainly clear that much of the Labour Herald’s content was, in its anti-Zionism, scarcely distinguishable from that of Free Palestine.  Free Palestine was also connected to the Palestine Action group, founded by Ghada Karmi in June 1972.  It was Eaks who first informed Andrew Faulds of plans to establish ‘an anti-Apartheid type of organisation’ to lobby on behalf of the Palestinians ‘within the Labour, Communist and Liberal parties’ in April 1972 and the new group’s political platform included support for:

1. The restitution of all the rights of the Palestinians, especially the right to return to their homes.

2. The creation of a unitary, secular, democratic Palestine in which all citizens have equal rights irrespective of race or creed.

3. The struggle of the Palestinians for the liberation of their homeland.

LMEC considered the desirability of cooperation with Palestine Action at a meeting of its Executive Committee in October.  Evidently, there were doubts about the wisdom of a formal association and, noting that ‘an approach had been made to LMEC to support the newly formed Palestine Action group’, it was ruled that ‘no official support should be given to this movement.’ However, whilst LMEC resolved to keep its distance from Palestine Action, there were no such restrictions upon individual members.  Indeed, Andrew Faulds, a member of LMEC’s Executive Committee since January 1973,became far more than a passive supporter of Palestine Action.

In December 1973, Karmi wrote to Faulds to confirm that ‘you have been elected President of Palestine Action at our AGM’; an honorary position that Faulds happily accepted. Faulds played a key role in a major breakthrough for Palestine Action at the BBC.  It came in the form of a television programme, ‘The Right to Return’, broadcast on 26 November 1976 as part of BBC 2’s ‘Open Door’ series. Faulds presented the programme, overseeing guest appearances from David Watkins and the anti-apartheid campaigner and Young Liberal chairman, Peter Hain.

A few days after the broadcast, Karmi reported that no less a PLO luminary than Abu Lutof (Farouk Kaddoumi) had praised the programme as ‘the best film he had ever seen on the Palestine issue’ and CAABU’s John Reddaway also congratulated Faulds for making ‘a notable contribution towards the exposition and defence of Palestinian rights.’”

You wouldn’t know it from his Wikipedia entry, but former British Labour MP and Cabinet minister Peter Hain (once touted as a future prime minister and now ensconced in the House of Lords) was the Peter Hain mentioned above, an anti-Israel activist of intemperate views.  See my post here

As I note there,  the Jewish Chronicle (5 September 1975) reported:

“Calls for the destruction of Israel as a state and for British Government recognition of the Palestine Liberation Organisation were made by more than 1500 pro-Arab supporters who marched from Speakers’ corner to Downing Street on Sunday while the Jewish rally was in progress.” 

Flanked by some 500 police officers, marchers included Communists, Marxists, Young Socialists, Young Liberals, as well as hundreds of Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis and other Arabs. Hain called on “radicals on the left-wing in Britain” to fight for the Palestinian cause.

(As will be seen in that blogpost of mine linked to above, Hain a few years ago attempted to put the “one state solution” – entailing the eradication of the sovereign state of Israel – back on the political agenda, but his views were disowned by the then party leadership.)

On 16 September 1978 The Times reported “growing concern” that the ANL had been infiltrated by, and was increasingly beholden to, the Trotskyite Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), which of course is so notoriously represented in anti-Israel protests today.

The 16,000-strong Federation of Conservative Students had accordingly dissociated itself from the ANL, and Dr Jacob Gewirtz (d. 1996), head of the Research Department of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, ‘says he is convinced that the league was the brain-child of the SWP and that party has “other fish to fry”’.

In a letter published in The Times on 25 September 1978, concerned reader George Mandel stated:  

“The leaders of the ANL could dispel our doubts if they were to state publicly whether or not they believe that Zionism is fundamentally racist.  If the answer is no, many Jews will be reassured.  If it is yes, they should explain (not only to us but also to their own supporters) why they are inviting unrepentant racialists to join them.”

Disclosed a Jewish resident of Hove, Sussex, J. [Jack] Garnel, in a letter in The Times (27 October 1978):

Hain the Pain

‘I am able to quote a reply to part of Mr. Mandel’s question.  It was given to me by Peter Hain, who describes himself as the Press Officer of the Anti-Nazi League.  In November 1977, I wrote to Hain protesting about an anti-Zionist article of his published in Free Palestine ...'  In his reply, dated November 11 [1977], Hain declared: “I believe Zionism to be a racist creed”. I agree with the decision of the Jewish Board of Deputies not to affiliate to the ANL.  As a supporter of the right of Israel to exist, I am like most Jews classified as a Zionist.  In combatting neo-Nazism, I have no desire to rub shoulders with anti-Zionists who support the PLO, which has been rightly described by Begin as a “Nazi organisation” and whose covenant is regarded by Israeli Jews as an Arabic Mein Kampf.’

On 1 November The Times carried a response from Peter Hain and the Jewish actress Miriam Karlin (whose name was misprinted as Karling at the foot of the letter), describing themselves as “Steering Committee, Anti-Nazi League”.  Their letter began:

“The Anti-Nazi League has been subjected to a number of specious criticisms in your columns recently.  First, J. Garnel … attacks the League because some of its members are opposed to Zionism.  But many others involved in all levels of the league are pro-Zionist.  Indeed, the signatories to this letter disagree on this matter.” 

(That will certainly come as a surprise to those who remember the late Miriam Karlin as a leftist Israel basher and member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians; I suppose the alleged contrast between her and Hain suggests just how extreme Hain’s position was and seemingly still is.)

The letter continued:

“The only criterion for membership of the Anti-Nazi League is opposition to the Nazi activities and racist ideas of the National Front.  We have no policy as an organisation on other political issues and our neutrality on the question of Zionism has been accepted by the Jewish Chronicle, which endorsed the League in an editorial last week…”

That assertion elicited a clarification (The Times, 3 November 1978) from the Jewish Chronicle’s acting editor, David Nathan:

‘In a leader last week the Jewish Chronicle suggested that there might be opportunities for the Board of Deputies to “loosely cooperate with the ANL in those areas of anti-racialist endeavour where the Board can satisfy itself that there is no political gain to the Socialist Workers’ Party or other anti-Zionist forces …. That is very far from blanket endorsement of the ANL.’   

Also worth reading, by anyone interested, is the joint letter from Hain and ANL Organising Secretary Paul Holborow in The Times of 21 September 1978, and the joint letter in the same issue from Neil Harvey and Ian Harvey of Birmingham.

In response to the former letter, Graham Smith, Research Department, National Association for Freedom, observed that in the Socialist Worker of 27 May 1978 Holborow had appealed for funds for that paper in the following terms:

“The [ANL] has won support from people coming into politics for the first time.  We must ensure that many of these people are won to the Socialist movement… We need to have Socialist Worker leading the way in this important job …. Any regular donation to the SWP will not only help to get rid of the Nazi rats, but to begin to get rid of the capitalist sewer that encourages them to breed.’

To quote Dr Vaughan again

‘The cry of ‘Israeli apartheid’ soon became a staple feature of British anti-Zionism.  Writing in Free Palestine under the headline “Palestine must win”, Peter Hain likened Harold Wilson’s views on Israel to “statements rationalising and condoning racialism by right-wingers returning from South Africa”.  The radicalism of Hain’s position at this time can be gauged from his rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 242 and his assertion that “the case for the replacement of Israel by a democratic, secular state of Palestine must be put uncompromisingly” …. The tactic of equating Zionism with Nazism was another distasteful feature of the emerging language of anti-Zionist activism…. 

 Such imagery was not itself new … but there was something more calculated about the use of Nazi imagery as a means of delegitimising Zionism in the 1970s.  Mayhew certainly flirted with the analogy, writing in 1971 that “Germans who massacre Jews are tried and executed. Jews who massacre Arabs are elected to political leadership” …. Free Palestine pioneered visual representations of the Zionism-Nazism analogy.  The front page of its April 1975 issue was adorned with the image of a Palestinian prisoner reaching out from a prison cell window, the bars of which formed the shape of a swastika. Ken Livingstone’s Labour Herald newspaper adopted the “Zionism equals Nazism” trope with equal enthusiasm in the 1980s; perhaps the most notorious example being the 1982 cartoon which, under the caption “The Final Solution”, depicted Israel’s Prime Minister, Menachem Begin in SS uniform, standing atop a mound of bloodied corpses, making a Nazi salute.’

In The Times (31 May 1984) regular columnist Bernard Levin drew attention to a campaign against Freemasons instituted by the Labour-majority Council of the London borough of Brent – “which was marked down by Mr Ken Livingstone for his prospective parliamentary pocket-borough, [and] has long been in the forefront of extremist local government politics…. In March, the previously subterranean campaign against Masons broke surface [in the borough]….”

To people who denied the analogy between the persecution of Jews and the persecution of Freemasons on the grounds that “a Jew cannot help being a Jew but a Mason does not have to be a Mason”, Levin pointed out scathingly that in a free society a person is entitled to belong to whatever group he wishes until such time long as an associated wrongdoing is involved, and added:

“Secret membership...”  Thus do the kissing cousins of anti-semitism jusfify the new bigotry and discrimination … But I know a good many people who, though Jewish, go under an assumed non-Jewish name and do not admit their origin.  Are they, too, unfit to serve on, or under, the Brent Council?  And if I pass their names to a gossip columnist of The Guardian, will he, as he did with Masons, print a daily Jew-list, exposing them as doubly sinister, first because they are Jews and second because they conceal the fact?’

Levin went on: “anti-Semitism in Britain became socially and politically unacceptable when the world learnt just what it could lead to.  But the bacillus was not altogether eradicated, and it has now found another potential group victim.  And a group, so far from being safer than an individual, is more vulnerable, because it has no individual human identity, and can thus more easily be portrayed as truly diabolical.”

The Times of 7 March 1985 carried an article entitled “Why Labour is Losing its Jews” which is eerily pertinent to the present situation.  I assume the author, Peter Bradley, described there as a member of the executive committee of Poale Zion, is none other than the Peter Bradley who from 1997 until 2005 sat as a Labour MP.

Mr Bradley began by observing that whereas in the immediate post-war years perhaps 75 per cent of Anglo-Jewry supported the Labour Party, the figure was now around 40 per cent.

Acknowledging that “many complex factors” underlay this downward trend, he held that one of them was “the fear that certain extreme forms of anti-Zionism are tainted with anti-semitism”.

After citing Shadow Defence Spokesman Denzil Davies’s contention at the 1984 Labour Party conference in Blackpool that an “antisemitic strand” was running through some parts of the party, Bradley gave two more recent examples of antisemitism.

One was the outburst of Sheffield Labour councillor George Moores, chairman of the South Yorkshire Police Authority, who said of Home Secretary Leon Brittan:

“I don’t know how to describe him.  But if I did, I’d be accused of being a racist.  There are too many of his ilk in Parliament.  It’s worth looking into, that, even though there are quite a few of them who are Labour.”

 Bradley remarked: 

“In past decades such crudities might have served as isolated, proverbial exceptions to the rule of Labour tolerance, humanity, and, indeed, philo-semitism.  But the apparent establishment of anti-Zionism as a cornerstone of Labour-left ideology has contributed to a significant change of atmosphere within the Labour movement which many otherwise tough-skinned Jewish socialists are finding altogether inimical.”

Of Ken Livingstone, then leader of the Greater London Council, he wrote:

'In an interview with the Israeli trade union paper Davar, he seemed to go out of his way to cause offence to Anglo-Jewry.  With what has been described as an “ignorance matched only by his own insensitivity”, he [Livingstone] alleged that the Board of Deputies of British Jews is “dominated by reactionaries and neo-fascists”.  He [Livingstone] went on: “Progressive Jews support me; only Jews who hold extreme right-wing views oppose me” ….

 What really stung Jewish members of the Labour Party was Livingstone’s claim that Jews had traditionally supported Labour “not necessarily because they were socialists, but because the Conservative party was anti-semitic.”  Nothing could have been calculated to offer greater insult to Labour’s Jewish activists …

The implication is clear: only that small number of Jews who subscribe to Livingstone’s kind of anti-Zionism can properly call themselves “progressive”; to be acceptable Jews must repudiate the cause that is central to Jewish secular life, Zionism, and must subscribe to a socialist triumphalism which asserts that Zionists are racists because they subscribe to a national liberation movement (while Palestinians who support their own are not); which identifies Israel’s leaders with the Nazi architects of the Final Solution … The list of campaign groups, sects and caucuses in which Zionists, and by extension Jews, are no longer welcome is a very long one.

 Is it really surprising, many Jews are asking, that the Jewish attachment to the labour movement is becoming tenuous?  For in almost all sections of the “progressive” Left, Jews claim they are being made to feel they are welcome only if they are at least non-Zionist, and preferable sufficiently anti-Zionist to be paraded as token Jews who dispel all suspicion of anti-semitism …’  (Emphasis added]

 Update (hat tip: Jonathan Hoffman):

 Tom Watson, the deputy Labour leader, has released an extraordinary statement about the party’s decision not to expel Ken Livingstone. He says it is “incomprehensible”. Here it is in full.

'I find it incomprehensible that our elected lay members on the disciplinary panel found Ken Livingstone guilty of such serious charges, and then concluded that he can remain a member of the Labour party.

When I read the words of chief rabbi Mirvis, who says that ‘the Labour party has failed... the Jewish community, it has failed its members and it has failed all those who believe in zero tolerance of anti-semitism’, I can’t disagree with him. I wish I could, but I can’t. I am ashamed that we have allowed Mr Livingstone to cause such distress.

It isn’t just Jewish people who feel disgusted and offended by what Mr Livingstone said and by the way he has conducted himself over this matter, and it isn’t just Jewish Labour members who feel ashamed of any indulgence of his views anywhere in the Labour party. This shames us all, and I’m deeply saddened by it.

Mr Livingstone’s unrepentant media appearances in recent days have continued to discredit the party I love. His current behaviour is still bringing the Labour party into disrepute. It is hard not to conclude that his use of inflammatory language to dismiss the fully justified outrage of the Jewish community and others will incite further distortions of the Holocaust in our public discourse.

My party is not living up to its commitment to have a zero tolerance approach to anti-semitism. I will continue the fight to ensure that it does, and I will press my colleagues to do so too.'

Balfour, Beasts and Bartolotti

They've been gearing up for quite a time now, the Israel haters behind the Balfour Project (it has been claimed, rightly or wrongly, that the person who registered the domain name was a certain soon-to-be-ex-vicar).

Here's a photograph of two members of the Scottish Parliament, posing gleefully outside Holyrood with  anti-Balfour propaganda.  Both are in favour of a unilaterally recognised state of  Palestine.

On the left of the picture as we face it stands Sandra White MSP, of the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP).

Got into a beastly spot of bother a while back did short and and perhaps not so sweet Sandra, co-convenor of the cross-party group on Palestine at Holyrood. 

She retweeted an antisemitic cartoon showing a porcine beastie with wee porcine beasties representing Israel, Isis, Al Qaeda and so on suckling at its teats and the word "Rothschild" written across its belly.

This caused outrage in many quarters, including calls for her prosecution, but with the SNP's backing Sandra weathered the storm.  The retweet had been made "accidentally".  Apparently.

Standing on the right of the above photo is Benenden-educated Labour MSP Claudia Beamish, who's prone to call the Arabs the indigenous people of Israel.  Her Jewish great-grandma knew better.

Claudia's father, you see, was one of the Big Beasts of the Israel-hating movement, and a Tory backbencher at that.  He was  none other than Colonel Sir Tufton Beamish (l917-89), made a life peer as Lord Chelwood in 1974.  Outspokenly hostile to Israel's creation, he was a member of CAABU's general council (I blogged about that particular nest of vipers here) and later formed a pro-Arab pressure group within the Tory Party.

Sir Tufton was halachically a Jew, though he seems to have concealed the fact. His mother was the sister of Sir Ernest Simon and his maternal grandmother was an active shul member in Manchester and a Zionist, no less!

At least he didn't call himself an as-a-Jew!

Now that the centennial year of the Balfour Declaration has arrived a number of anti-Balfour initiatives besides the Balfour Project are in existence.

We read here that former Lib Dem (now independent) life peer Jenny Tonge, former Lib Dem MP David Ward, and Labour life peer Lord Ahmed

'are fronting the Balfour Apology Campaign, led by the London-based Palestinian Return Centre, which is seeking an official apology from the British government for issuing the Declaration “which has caused so much damage”....'

We all know what would happen to Israel if the Return Centre had its wicked way.  And all members of that trio have form when it comes to Jews and Israel: all, as that article reminds us, have made antisemitic remarks. It adds:

'Simon Johnson, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, said it was “a ridiculous argument” and “a futile and hate-filled campaign”.

He added: “What they are doing is asking for an apology for issuing a non-binding statement of commitment that was the first step towards the establishment of a Jewish homeland. That is as close to denying the right of Israel to exist as I can think of, and should be called out as anti-Semitic.”'

And here's someone who should be called out as antisemitic, Pippa Bartolotti, formerly leader of the Welsh Greens and now, to quote her official Facebook page, their "deputy spokesperson".

 She has displayed her antisemitic credentials before, as I have shown, with references to the "Roth[s]childs".  (Google Daphne Anson Pippa Bartolotti for my previous posts on this lady).

Pippa Bartolotti has given her ten pence worth on the Balfour Declaration.

Here she is on 2 March this year:

 A conspiracy theorist gets into the act:

And who hastened to "Like" that 9/11 Israel did it conspiracy theory? Step forward the lady herself: