Bob from Brockley on Ben Gidley and Jackie Walker: Charity for he but not for she

I had some correspondence with a chap called Ben Gidley on the weekend. It was regarding a post on the Bob from Brockley blog which is run by Ben Gidley under the pseudonym, Bob Gordon.

Ben Gidley is currently a Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck University.  The photo here is on his Birkbeck page:

He tweets in his own name as @BenGidley.  And here's the pic from that account which leaves me wondering if the above pic is actually him:

And here's the @BobfromBrockley twitter account and the pic that pretentiously adorns it:

Well I suppose there is something Orwellian about his output.

Oh and here's a picture of Jackie Walker which has appeared on many a zionist smear site including, of course, Bob from Brockley:

Bob/Ben had posted something about the Brockley Festival of Ideas which was going to be addressed by Jackie Walker.  I noticed the @BobfromBrockley twitter account tweeting and retweeting against Jackie Walker in the run up to the festival.  I won't replicate all that here.  I just want to post a comment here that won't pass moderation at the Bob from Brockley blog together with the correspondence between us.  Well actually I'll just post the correspondence as my first email to Ben Gidley at Birkbeck includes the disallowed comment:

Ben Gidley

I left the following comment on your Bob from Brockley blog a few days ago:

"Jackie Walker, the Labour left activist with local links who has stirred considerable controversy in the past year with a series of comments on social media and in public interpreted by many as antisemitic"?

You're too modest Bob.  You have been part of this racist inspired and often expressly racist smear campaign against Jackie Walker.
http://brockley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/free-advice-to-jeremy.html

You even took the opportunity of that post to smear the Jewish activists who support Jackie because she has been wronged as merely and somehow wrongly providing her with "cover".

True, you haven't used your own name to smear Jackie on Twitter. There is overlap between your eponymous and pseudonymous Twitter accounts but as far as I've seen you haven't used your real name, Ben Gidley, to smear Jackie Walker. As BfB you've run the worst possible interpretations of Jackie Walker's remarks, all of which you know to have been lifted out of context and all of which were perfectly reasonable when taken in context.

I notice in your post you're continuing the smearing of Ken Livingstone.  He didn't say anything about "Hitler being a Zionist", he said that Hitler was supporting Zionism in the 1930s.  You've had it pointed out to you on Twitter by Riz Mokal that Ken was actually right in what he was saying and you seemed to accept that.  I should have known you didn't and don't have the integrity to stick to what you know rather than promote the smear line complete with bogus quote.
https://twitter.com/RizMokal/status/726360699086245890

Of course that Boffy chap pointed the (deliberate) error in your earlier post on Ken's remarks http://brockley.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/lenni-brenner-says-kens-wrong.html

But once you're in smear mode there appears to be no stopping you even when you appear to take a pause.

But Ken has a higher profile and a bigger/wider platform than Jackie Walker and of course Ken is white and non-Jewish.

The character assassination of a Black Jewish activist without Ken's profile has been far easier to accomplish. It seems too that it has been far more important to the zionist movement to banish Jackie from mainstream politics than it has to even banish Ken.  But Jackie is being hounded at the grass roots level too.  She has been smeared by the Zionists of the so-called Alliance for Workers Liberty and now she is going to be further smeared by them running a blog post by you on their Clarion website which of course advertises itself, not as an AWL site, but as a Momentum/Labour left site.

And as the post above mentions you too have been actively hounding Jackie within her and your local community in Brockley.

So Bob, without bogus paraphrasing, what has Jackie Walker actually said that warrants the vilification she has attracted and to which you are a party?  And what detailed "free advice to" Jackie would you offer to end this local and national campaign against her?

I had assumed you were simply refusing to approve it but when I saw you inviting comments from Jackie Walker or others I thought the links in the comment might have landed it in your spam filter.  I left another comment without links simply drawing attention to the previous one but still no show. So now you have the comment at your blog and in this email I should be grateful if you would either approve the original, copy and paste the one in this email or reply to this email telling me I can repost the original.

The response I got was from a Bob from Brockley email address under the name Bob Gordon and is a one hit master class in sheer hypocrisy:

I'm very happy to post your criticisms of my position and your claims that I'm part of a campaign  - and maybe try to answer them if I ever find time. What I am not happy to do is give you a platform to attempt to "out" me or whatever the right word is, as I have a number of good reasons for blogging pseudonymously, not least the number of threats I get as BfB from Britain First/EDL types and assorted fascists. I am trying to decide what to do, but haven't had the time to think it through. 

B

Here's my response:

I've noticed and commented on your sanctimoniousness many times. I had no idea how unselfconscious you were about it until just now.

Now you might want to consider the impact you and your cohorts have had on Jackie Walker's personal safety.

Your role was worse than others because you brought the smear campaign down to her and your local level.

I copied Jackie Walker into my email to Ben Gidley and she was broadly happy with it but, after he claimed security concerns, knowing how unpleasant it is to have your safety compromised, in her case, by such public vilification, especially when the campaign has been brought down to a local level, she wasn't thrilled about outing Bob from Brockley as Ben Gidley. Personally I have no such qualms because I simply don't believe anyone is threatening him and given his penchant for pseudonymous smears he deserves to be outed.

Ben Gidley used to be based at Goldsmiths where he was happy to boast about his blog. I know this because friends of mine have been on the staff there.  I already mentioned that on Bob from Brockley he uses the name Bob Gordon.  I remember years ago when I already knew that Bob was Ben someone emailed me to say that Bob from Brockley was actually a Robert Gordon of Goldsmiths. There is a Robert Gordon still at Goldsmiths.  My correspondent was wrong but if people are trying to harm or harass the Bob from Brockley blogger in any way then surely Robert Gordon would have drawn some heat by now.  I'm not aware that he has.

There's a lot more that could be written about Bob from Brockley and Ben Gidley and the former's smears and the latters' vulgarisations. I suppose I should note again that the zionist self-styled trotskyist group Alliance for Workers Liberty is planning on running one of Bob's smear jobs of Jackie Walker on their Clarion mag site which its editor Sacha Ismail claims is a Momentum/Labour left site.

But really I just want Ben Gidley to live and be well and stop being a dick.

Smearing anti-racists to protect Zionism

The above title was the heading for a letter by Free Speech on Israel's Les Levidow to the Camden New Journal. The letter appears in the print edition but not (yet) on line. Here it is:

As Vice-Chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM), Mike Katz has again asked the Labour Party to expel members for antisemitic views and for a rule change making this easier. Otherwise the Party will be seen as ‘not welcoming to Jews’ (Katz plea, CNJ, 29.09.2016).  Which Jews does he mean?  And how does the JLM define ‘antisemitic views’?   

The latter question was raised at the JLM’s training session on antisemitism during the Party’s September conference.  Running the session, Mike Katz eventually claimed that the standard definition of antisemitism is ‘the EUMC definition’, i.e. from the European Union Monitoring Committee.  Many Jewish participants there objected, for good reasons: The EUMC never adopted the ‘working definition’ which was temporarily on its website; its successor body has disavowed it.  Although the definition rightly begins with ‘hatred toward Jews’, it also encompasses any views ‘Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.’  

The latter criterion aims to protect some Jews’ emotional or political attachment to Israel, despite its basis in colonial-settler racism which continues today.  This is perversely equated with 'Jewish self-determination'.  The JLM is affiliated to the Israeli Labour Party, which early on urged employers to select ‘Jewish-only Labour’, has supported new Jewish settlements and today colludes with anti-Arab racism. 

In the Labour Party here, why do pro-Israel activists want to make expulsions easier?    Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership has mobilised and attracted new Labour Party members sympathetic to the campaign of Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) against Israel.   Many Jewish members are dissociating themselves from the Zionist project.  To counter these anti-racist forces, the JLM smears them as antisemites.  Many have been suspended from the Labour Party, with little recourse to the due process that was advocated by the Chakrabarti Commission.  In these ways, the JLM aims to protect the colonial-settler character of Israel. Both should be opposed as racist.  For more information, see our website.

Les Levidow, Free Speech on Israel, www.freespeechonisrael.org.uk

UPDATE: The letter is now on line at the Camden New Journal online

JC denies access to Jackie Walker article

I'm getting an Access Denied message on this Jewish Chronicle post but thankfully it is still accessible through Google cache. Google cache doesn't last long so here is the article in full:

Pressure grows on Labour as Momentum expected 

to 'remove' Jackie Walker

By Marcus Dysch, September 30, 2016

Jackie Walker, vice-chair of the Momentum group, on Channel 4 News (Photo: Channel 4)

Jackie Walker, vice-chair of the hard-left Momentum activist group, is expected to be removed from her position on Monday following comments she made about Holocaust Memorial Day.

The move is expected to be confirmed at a meeting of the committee of the pro-Jeremy Corbyn group after a Momentum spokesman told the Guardian that senior members were seeking to remove Ms Walker.

It is not known whether she will be suspended by the group, or by the Labour Party, of which she is a member.

In Monday’s Jewish Labour Movement training session on tackling antisemitism, which took place at the party conference in Liverpool, Ms Walker criticised Holocaust Memorial Day, claiming it should remember genocides other than the Shoah.

She was told that the annual memorial did recognise other episodes of mass murder, but Ms Walker, the vice-chair of the hard-left Momentum group, went on to claim she had not seen a definition of Jew-hate which she could “work with”.

Ms Walker – an ally of Jeremy Corbyn – was suspended and investigated by the party earlier this year for claiming Jews were responsible for the slave trade and an “African holocaust”.

The renewed calls for her to be expelled from Momentum came as Ms Walker defended herself on Channel 4 News.

In an interview with Cathy Newman, Ms Walker said she was not antisemitic, but admitted to being anti-Zionist.

She added: "Whoever leaked this story from a training event had malicious intent in their mind."

The claims of antisemitism were politically motivated, Ms Walker suggested, adding that “prominent” Jewish groups agreed with her.

There were also reports that Jon Lansman, the Jewish founder of Momentum and a friend of Ms Walker, had “reached the end of his tether” and wanted her to be thrown out of the group.

Further pressure came from the TSSA trade union. Manuel Cortes, its general secretary, said: "I am deeply saddened that a fellow member of our Labour and trade union family holds such antisemitic views.

"I am asking Jackie that in the interests of unity she resigns at once from our party and also as vice-chair of Momentum.

“If she doesn't, both the Labour Party and Momentum need to act to get rid of her at once. Furthermore, TSSA will reconsider our union's support for Momentum if she is still in post by this time next week."

Tony Greenstein, a Jewish anti-Zionist activist who was himself suspended from Labour earlier this year, wrote to the party’s National Executive Committee members on Thursday night telling them the JLM session had been “a publicity stunt”.

He wrote: “Jackie's points re the Holocaust not being a solely Jewish preserve and the fact that the definition of antisemitism is contested, are not in any way antisemitic.

“This artificial and concocted hysteria has nothing to do with antisemitism and everything to do with the Zionist movement’s attempt to construct a hegemonic narrative concerning the Nazi Holocaust.”

John Mann, the Labour MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, said: "Enough is enough. Though she claims impunity for many reasons, Jackie Walker’s behaviour is discriminatory, provocative, offensive and by any standard unacceptable in a modern political party.

"Not only has she caused offense personally, she has inspired waves of antisemitic and racist backlash including Holocaust denial.

"Not only must she be expelled from the Labour Party immediately but all those abusing others in supporting her must go too.

"Temporary suspensions are not good enough, these people must be given permanent bans and no platform to express their antisemitism anywhere in the Labour Party, if we are to be serious about opposing anti-Jewish hatred.”

 The last time I noticed the JC denying access to an article was when it wrote in praise of some pig food product in its travel section and a reader complained. I wonder what's not so kosher about the above article.

UPDATE: 9/10/2016 The article has now been restored to the JC website complete with at least one libel.

A "little bit of a conspiracy": a bit of an antisemitic trope or a bit of an understatement?

Let's have a look, shall we?

I wouldn't have noticed this but for The Community Security Trust's Dave Rich agreeing with what looked like an allegation from Linda Grant that Jeremy Corbyn is himself antisemitic.

@lindasgrant if Milne was a mensch he would have replied "no, I've known him for years he's a decent guy we just disagree." But he didn't.

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) June 1, 2016

A quick scan of Dave Rich's Twitter account yielded this little gem:

“There is a little bit of a conspiracy going on”. Jackie Walker certainly knows her antisemitic tropes, doesn't she? https://t.co/DPcQW1FStG

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) June 2, 2016

 A "little bit of a conspiracy going on" now has the official stamp of disapproval from the provisional wing of the Zionist movement in the UK.

So what was Jackie Walker thinking of when she invoked this "antisemitic trope"?  Let's have a look at The Jewish Chronicle.  I mean, I hesitate to allege a conspiracy but whenever lots of people in lots of media are saying the same wrong thing about someone falsely accused of antisemitism, the JC is usually in there somewhere.  And their headline:

Jacqueline Walker claims her suspension from Labour was part of a conspiracy

Now immediately we ought to smell a rat because Dave Rich put his quote in quotes.  That is, it was an exact quote.  Where he messed up is he made out "a little bit of a conspiracy" is an "antisemitic trope".  The antisemitic trope about conspiracies is usual the worldwide Jewish conspiracy theory.  That's the idea that all of the world's Jews are party to the same conspiracy to the benefit of all Jews and to the detriment of everyone else.  Not so much a little bit of a conspiracy but a literally impossibly huge conspiracy.

Now the JC was a bit smarter than Dave Rich (who isn't?).  They've made out that Jackie Walker could have been suggesting that the smear campaign against Corbynistas and Palestine solidarity supporters is part of a much bigger conspiracy.  That seems to be what they are attempting with their headline.  But they didn't just run with a headline.  They ran the story and like Dave Rich they seem to have run real quotes that contradict the headline:

Ms Walker, who was readmitted to the party after being suspended over allegations of making antisemitic comments, said: “There is a little bit of a conspiracy going on”. 

Speaking at a meeting in Brighton last night, she told a 50-strong audience that she had been abroad when she was informed of her suspension last month. 

She said: “Look at the date of the Jewish Chronicle when that came out. I was actually in Turkey.“My letter suspending me was actually dated 4 May. The Jewish Chronicle published the story about me on 4 May. 

“Now, you have to put two and two together. What you will know is that somebody in the [Labour] compliance unit, or around there, is leaking information out to the media.

Conspiracy? Well ok, but just a small one, like Jackie Walker said.

Now let's have a look at the case of Tony Greenstein and his suspension from the Labour Party.  Tony was told that he was being suspended because of certain things that he had said but he wasn't told what those things were.  Curiously, The Times and The Telegraph were told what those things were and they said that Tony had said that the Jews had supported the Nazis' antisemitic Nuremberg Laws.  Tony of course had said nothing of the kind and for fear of libel action by Tony (who knows his legal stuff) both The Times and The Telegraph ran retractions.

So the false allegations against Tony Greenstein were leaked to and published by The Times and The Telegraph and before the allegations were put to Tony.  Whoever the leaker was must have known that the details were going to be published.  Conspiracy?  Ok, make it a double!  Cheers, or L'chaim as we rootless cosmopolitans like to say.

So whilst Zionists can make an "antisemitic trope" out of just about anything, the suggestion that the smear campaign against various Israel critics looks like it is indeed a bit of a conspiracy.  I know size isn't important but "little bit" appears to be a little bit of an understatement.

Jews, the slave trade and Jackie Walker

Aha, I now have the letter that was being responded to in my previous post:

SLAVERY SAVIOUR

The matter of Jewish participation in slavery seems to be occupying many an antisemite at the moment.

The fact remains that the loan that made the abolition of slavery in the British Dominions possible was the last of the great financial transactions of Nathan Mayer Rothschild.

The slave owners had managed to ignore the 1807 Emancipation Bill to abolish slavery in the British Empire until Nathan raised the necessary loan of £15 million required to compensate them.

It would seem that the Jews paid [sic] a large part in the abolishing of this evil trade.

Doreen Berger

Vice-President, Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain,

Middlesex

Now this was a contribution to the Jackie Walker controversy where, at is wildest extreme, she was accused of saying that Jews were responsible for the slave trade.  I suppose the Community Security Trust's Dave Rich struck up a happy medium between what Walker said and what her most dishonest of detractors said she said.  Here he is on Twitter after she was readmitted to the Labour Party:

Add 'Jews were chief financiers of slave trade' to things it's OK for @UKLabour members to say about Jews https://t.co/JEpsWKmuOl

— Dave Rich (@daverich1) May 28, 2016

Now here's the response to the letter above again:

SLAVE TRADE: JEWS NOT ENTIRELY INNOCENT

The part played by some prominent Jews with regard to the history of slavery is perhaps less savoury than Doreen Berger suggests (Letters, May 27).  The 1807 Act abolished the slave trade within the British Empire, but slave ownership remained legal.  The 1833 Act abolished slavery itself, awarding generous compensation to the slave owners, including a proportionate number of Jews.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild struck a "profitable" deal to fund the compensation.

According to Eli Faber, recently identified by Geoffrey Alderman as "a distinguished expert in American-Jewish history", Jews had once been prominent in Brazil's sugar industry, where, as creditors, they "dominated the slave trade". Faber also cites Salo Baron's advice to face up to "historically unpleasant truths".

Some Jews subscribed to abolition societies, others profited from slavery, in one form or another.

Roy Wolfe,

Reading, Berkshire

And here's what a friend wrote to me about this storm in a teacup:

Have checked what Jackie Walker actually said and it was "many Jews were chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade".  It would have been correct if she had said "at some specific times and in some specific places, many Jews were chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade"....so it was an exaggeration and distortion of a kernel of truth....but of course she was writing a Facebook post, not a scholarly article.

To which I replied that if she had simply inserted "among" before "chief financiers" it would have been entirely uncontroversial but still the zios are looking for blood so they would have made something of it.  I could also have said that it was neither a distortion nor a mere kernel of truth.  But what it definitely wasn't was an untruth or a claim or even a hint that Jews, still less the Jews were responsible for the slave trade.

And of course my friend only looked at what Jackie Walker said in isolation. I gather that she was in conversation with someone who unable to argue that Jews are a case for national self-determination because, er, Jews are not a case for national self-determination, decided to play the Jews as eternal victims card and Jackie Walker was pointing out that with all we now know, the Jewish victim card isn't the trump it used to be.

Jews and the Slave Trade: JC Letter

There was a letter in the Jewish Chronicle today which unfortunately doesn't publish its letters on line.  Here it is:

SLAVE TRADE: JEWS NOT ENTIRELY INNOCENT

The part played by some prominent Jews with regard to the history of slavery is perhaps less savoury than Doreen Berger suggests (Letters, May 27).  The 1807 Act abolished the slave trade within the British Empire, but slave ownership remained legal.  The 1833 Act abolished slavery itself, awarding generous compensation to the slave owners, including a proportionate number of Jews.

Nathan Mayer Rothschild struck a "profitable" deal to fund the compensation.

According to Eli Faber, recently identified by Geoffrey Alderman as "a distinguished expert in American-Jewish history", Jews had once been prominent in Brazil's sugar industry, where, as creditors, they "dominated the slave trade". Faber also cites Salo Baron's advice to face up to "historically unpleasant truths".

Some Jews subscribed to abolition societies, others profited from slavery, in one form or another.

Roy Wolfe,

Reading, Berkshire

I'm assuming that the headline was supplied not by the letter's author but by the JC itself.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the letter that Roy Wolfe is responding to but I have read of Jewish involvement in the slave trade many times.

This whole issue of course has blown up around some stuff that Momentum's Jackie Walker is supposed to have said about Jewish involvement in the slave trade and subsequent attempts to have her expelled from the Labour Party and to rubbish what she said.

Well it's starting to look like what she said wasn't so rubbish after all and just as happened with Ken Livingstone's suspension over Hitler's well documented support for Zionism in the 1930s, people are examining the historical record which in the case of the slave trade doesn't quite tally with Zionist claims of eternal, perennial and universal Jewish suffering.  Which of course isn't to say that all Jews were involved in the slave trade or that the slave trade consisted only or mostly of Jews. But there were aspects of the slave trade in terms of destination which were dominated or indeed monopolised by Jews and financed by the them.