Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi addresses the Labour Party Conference 2017

Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi helping to restore Labour's credibility as an ant-racist internationalist party after many recent betrayals of the Palestinian cause and its supporters since Jeremy Corbyn came under attack from Blairites and the Zionist movement upon becoming Labour leader.

Here's a transcript of the speech I've just nabbed from Tony Greenstein's blog:

Naomi: Thank you, thank you Chair. My name is Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi. Despite my grey hairs I am a virgin in terms of the Conference, first-time delegate, hooray. I'm from Chingford & Woodford Green, the newly marginal constituency, where we are going to unseat Iain Duncan Smith. [loud cheers and applause] Thank you, but don't take up too much of my three minutes. Come and help us bring about a sweet Portillo moment, when the time comes.

Now, I'm here today because although I care deeply about Brexit and the debate has been excellent in some respects, I want to welcome the insertion into the NPF Annual Report section on the Middle East of the key paragraph from our ground-breaking Manifesto which referred to Israel's occupation and settlement of Palestinian land [cheers and applause]. I am so pleased that this section has been put back in after being inexplicably omitted from the NPF Report. Let me tell you my perspective on this. I'm Jewish; I come from the tradition of anti-racist and anti-colonialist struggle, a Socialist Labour tradition of international solidarity with oppressed people. [applause] This is not some meaningless David Sparks slogan out of the pages of Private Eye. It's a fundamental feature of our traditions as a party committed to justice and equality.

Oppression and discrimination are rampant in today's world. So why Palestine? Well it's not only that this year marks 50 years of Israeli occupation and illegal settlement. It's not only that this year marks 10 years of the siege of Gaza with intermittent military onslaughts against its people. This year also marks 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, when a British foreign secretary promised the land of Palestine to the Jewish people, my people. The civil rights of the existing population, that's the Palestinians, were meant to be protected, but that turned out to be an empty promise. We Brits, all of us, have a responsibility for what occurred. Despite huge misgivings and even outright opposition from many Jews, our leaders, British leaders, facilitated founding a state which privileges Jews such as myself over non-Jews. [applause] Thank you. I've only got half a minute. Seventy years ago, 750,000 Palestinians were driven from their homes in what for them was a catastrophe, that they call the Nakba. More than 450 towns and villages were destroyed, the world's longest-running refugee population was created. We Brits need to take responsibility for the on-going Palestinian tragedy dating from Balfour's pledge.

So in this Policy Report we call for an end to Israel's blockade on Gaza, an end to occupation and settlements [loud cheering and applause -warned that her time is up she says: damn, I'm nearly there, nearly there, thanks - more applause - OK, I've got two more sentences and my time is up, so please indulge me] and endorsement of a Palestinian state. This is the very least that we should be doing. I say this as a Jew, as an anti-racist and as a dedicated member of this revived Socialist internationalist Labour Party. And Comrades, I'm not an anti-Semite, [cheering] and Conference, and Conference, this party does not have a problem with Jews. Thank you. [prolonged cheering, applause, standing ovation] [4:45' duration of speech]

The section of the Labour Party Conference 2017 that Naomi addressed was titled something like BREXIT and Internationalism.  Apparently Naomi waved a banner identifying her (and Ian Duncan-Smith's) Chingford & Woodford Green constituency and it caught the Chair's eye and she was called to speak almost by chance.

And what a speech!  She covered most of the main points.  She covered how a manifesto pledge on Palestine disappeared and reappeared. she mentioned the key anniversaries, Gaza blockade: 10 years, occupation: 50 years, Balfour: 100 years, Nakba: 70 years and, it shouldn't have needed saying but she made it clear that the Labour Party does not have a problem with Jews.  And it is just possible that her speech was the only one for Palestine that was main event and not fringe.

So what next?  I'm guessing Labour Zionist leader, Jeremy Newmark, will take the opportunity to reprise his disgraceful attempt to close down discussion of Israel/Palestine at the University and College. So let's just see if the so-called Jewish Labour Movement tries to prevent a situation where random activists can be called to speak for internationalism at the Internationalism section of the Labour Party Conference 2018.

This is a serious point. The Labour leadership has been pandering to the Zionist movement at every possible turn and in spite of that, Naomi managed to slip through the net for an open mic spot.  My guess is that the Zionists will try to close that loophole by the time of the next conference, but let's just see....

Tony Greenstein on Hirsh on Hitler

Tony Greenstein left a comment on my previous post, Hirsh on Hitler, and went on to do a very informative post of his own which I reproduce here:

David Hirsh – the Fake & Ignorant 'Leftist'

Apparently the Nazis were anti-nationalist, left wing univeralists!

Apparently David Hirsh, vehement figurehead of Engage and fierce opponent of all boycotts of Israel, is a leftist!  Well for 'socialist Zionists' he might be but by most other peoples' definition he is a conservative imperialist.

Hirsh pontificating about things he knows nothing about

I first saw this article on Jewssansfrontiers  and I posted the comment beneath.  Although I haven’t posted for some time, I couldn’t resist the temptation to deal with the pretend academic Hirsh, who went down with Yale’s Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, which was deemed by the authorities to be more concerned with political advocacy than scholarship.   Even as ardent a Zionist as Prof. Deborah Lipstadt, of Daving Irving v Penguin fame, wrote in an article ‘How To Study Anti-Semitism’  that:

‘The university defended itself against charges of having succumbed to Muslim pressure by listing the Jewish studies courses taught at the school and stressing its extensive library holdings in the field. (Yale, admittedly, does have an excellent Jewish studies program, and its libraries have one of the best collections in Jewish studies world-wide.) …

There is, however, another side to this story. Apparently, there were people on the Yale campus who were associated with YIISA and who were eager to have it succeed. These friends of YIISA counseled the institute’s leadership that some of its efforts had migrated to the world of advocacy from that of scholarship. They warned YIISA that it was providing fodder to the critics’ claim that it was not a truly academic endeavor.

The anti-nationalist socialist surrounded by Israeli flags!

I have twice participated in YIISA’s activities. I gave a paper at one of its weekly seminar sessions on Holocaust denial and attended its conference last August. While serious scholars who work in this field gave the vast majority of the papers  - They were passionate and well argued. But they were not scholarly in nature.

Two lessons can be drawn from this imbroglio. First, there is a real need for serious academic institutions to facilitate and encourage the highest-level research on anti-Semitism….

Second, this struggle also demonstrates the necessity of differentiating between those who do advocacy and those who do scholarship. Both are critical — but entirely different — endeavors.

The horrors that Ford found so appealing

 But I digress.  In his talk Hirsh  argued that:

'The Nazis are usually thought of as right wing.  But in some ways, they were also similar to the left.  They were radical, they wanted profound change.  They didn’t like nationalism, they had a global programme for changing the whole world.  They were hostile to British and American imperialism and democracy.  They put their big political ambitions before the ‘pursuit of happiness’.  Hitler claimed to be the universalist and he said it was the Jews who wrecked society for everybody by following only their own selfish interests.

But by and large, the left opposed Hitler and his antisemitism….
When Israel was first established, it was supported by most people on the left.  They liked the socialist experiment of the kibbutzim and the Labour Party which ran Israel in its first decades.  They admired Israel as an anti-imperialist movement which defeated the British.  They supported Israel as the underdogs, the survivors of the Holocaust.

The Nazis were univeralists, who ‘were not so much right-wing as radical had a global programme for changing the whole world.  They were hostile to British and American imperialism and democracy’ Whilst conceding that ‘’by and large, the left opposed Hitler and his antisemitism.’

Some of this is just pig ignorant and shows how Hirsh is a master of the superficial and unacquaintted with the history of the Nazi Party.   Calling anti-Zionists 'anti-Semites' is the limit of his knowledge of racism.  As an example of Hitler's opposition to the British Empire one could quote from Mein Kampf:

Germany should not try to take advantage of turbulence in the British Empire, and link its destiny with racially inferior oppressed peoples.  An alliance with Russia against England and France was no substitute for an alliance with England.  An alliance with England and Italy would give Germany the initiative in Europe (Mein Kampf pp. 601-7)….

Inmates of Auschwitz

It is remarkable how, up to two decades later, Hitler’s views had changed very little since the publication of Mein Kampf.  He was to retain this opinion of Britain until he realised that it would not grant him the free hand in Eastern Europe which he craved, and even then, he repeatedly stressed his ambition to come to terms with Britain.  During the Second World War, the last pre-war British ambassador to Berlin, Sir Neville Henderson, wrote that Hitler “combined … admiration for the British race with envy of their achievements and hatred of their opposition to Germany’s excessive aspirations” [Failure of a Mission, Sir Neville Henderson, p.266]

Hitler repeatedly remarked to Albert Speer that the English were “our brothers.  Why fight our brothers?” [Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth, Gitta Sereny, p.218]

The idea that the Nazis were universalist is laughable.  Hitler consistently talked of the German Volk (people) and saw everything from that absurd perspective.  Jews and the mentally handicapped were not of course part of his racial comradeship.  He was not so much a supporter of German nationalism, as per the Equality, Fraternity and Liberty of the French revolution, as a nationalist.  These sentiments were codified in the 1935 Nuremburg laws.  In this he was one with the Zionists who also derided the 'assimilationists' and the idea that you could be a German Jew as opposed to a Jew residing in Germany, witness the obsession with a Jewish demographic majority in Israel.  There were no ideas or principles that the Nazis had that could be applied world-wide and nor did they make any such claim.  Unless of course world conquest is a form of universalism!

Ford too was a socialist

As for being ‘left-wing’.  Only particularly stupid conservatives makes this claim.  He was funded by the Iron and Coal barons such as Thyssen and Emil Kordof and the other leaders of German heavy industry in particular.  He was  put in power by the German military, led by President Hindenberg.  One of his first acts was the abolition of the unions and its replacement by the German Labour Front led by Robert Ley.  Its purpose was not to organise workers and strikes (which were made illegal) as to spy on workers and ensure they did not form new unions.  A strange form of socialism. The fact that people like Henry Ford supported Hitler, until a Jewish and trade union boycott forced him to distance himself from the Nazis, should tell Hirsh something.  Then again he probably didn't know of the use Ford made of his newspapers such as The Dearborn Independent from 1921-27.  

The American Jewish Historical Society described the ideas in the paper as "anti-immigrant, anti-labor, anti-liquor, and anti-Semitic.  In Henry Ford, Adolph Hitler's Inspiration For Treatment Of Jews - How Henry Ford Helped To Create Auschwitz that Hitler talked of how "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" - Adolph Hitler, 1931.   Hitler even had a picture of Ford on his wall.  Perhaps Hirsh considers Ford too as left-wing?

On 30 July 1938, Ford celebrated his 75th birthday by receiving the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the most important honor that Germany might offer a non-citizen.   He received the award -- a golden Maltese cross embraced by four swastikas -- in his office, joined by the German consuls from Cleveland and Detroit. 

A longtime admirer of Ford's, Adolf Hitler sent a personal note of gratitude to be delivered at the ceremony. Signed on July 7, the parchment scroll warmly thanked Ford for his "humanitarian ideals" and his devotion, along with the German Chancellor, to "the cause of peace." No doubt Ford too was a universalist!

Hitler was also an imperialist, not something normally associated with socialism.  The 'socialist' part of his ‘national socialism’ was a sop to the plebeian element in the Nazi Party, around the SA stormtroopers, who believed that the Jews were the embodiment of capitalism and once they were got rid of then they would take control of industry, the ‘second revolution’.  The Night of the Long Knives settled that particular dream when Ernst Rohm and the unofficial leader of the Nazis ‘left-wing’ Gregor Strasser and hundreds more were murdered at the behest of the Army and the capitalists in June 1934.  Hitler believed in elites, not just racial, but within the Aryan nation, with capitalists and the leaders of industry and finance being at the top of the racial ladder. 

Left wing?  Not unless your definition of socialism includes Israel and the Kibbutz.  But then Hirsh does see the Kibbutzim as socialist rather than as stockade and watch tower settlements, the outposts of the future Israeli state.  A socialism that excluded the Arabs from membership, in other words ones of racial exclusivity is Hirsh's idea of socialism!

David Hirsh was the leader of the Engage group of Zionists who in 2005 decided to oppose the Boycott of Israeli universities.  Engage was later found to be partly funded by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, who are anything but leftists – fake or otherwise.  No doubt the Israeli state contributed to the financing of Engage.

Hirsh is someone who gives lectures about subjects he knows nothing about.  He is a junk academic dealing in cliches and trivia.  Anyone acquainted with Mein Kampf would know of Hitler's oft-expressed comments that he was an admirer of the British Empire and explained how one must never align oneself with those whose countries were under colonial domination.  It was simply that he wanted to replicate it in Eastern Europe.  For example he gave no support to the General Strike and Arab rebellion in Palestine from 1936-9. 

The rest of Hirsch's points such as universalism have been dealt with above and of course Hirsh compared the left and the Nazis whilst denying that the Nazis were right wing.  That I suppose is why on May 2nd he abolished all unions and sent socialists and trade unionists to Dachau.  That is why the Nazi party was given massive support by the capitalists, especially the Iron and Steel barons of the Ruhr.  And oh yes, the old Prussian army generals who put him in power did so because Hitler was such an ardent socialist!!

What Hirsh does is betray his own ignorance of the development and politics of the Nazi party and also the function that anti-Semitism played within it.

That is not to say that Hitler wasn't contemptuous of the conservative parties (DNVP, DVP, Centre Party).  They were gentle folk who would never win over the workers, whom they despised.  They were unable to work amongst the masses and they even purported to believe in democraacy.  In that he was right.  The Nazis organised their plebeian followers and the lumpen proletariat whereas the Conservatives confined their work to the middle classes and rich.  What the industrialists and army feared came to pass.  In exchange for attacking the left, outlawing the KPD (Communists), abolishing the unions they made a deal with the devil.  They surrendered political power to the Nazis and Thyssen ended up in a concentration camp and the army leaders of the attempted putsch were hanged with piano wire.  It was an experience the bourgeoisie are not keen to repeat.

One can only suggest that Hirsh go back to school!

Tony Greenstein

Got to admire Tony. I suppose anyone can find the time to do a good bit of debunking but who has the patience?

I should mention that out of 33 comments to Hirsh's post not one criticised the compliment he paid to the nazi regime.

David Ward defended from antisemitism charge

I didn't see this letter from Tony Greenstein to The Guardian (6th Feb 2013).

Aida Edemariam writes that Lib Dem MP David Ward "still seems unable to comprehend why he has caused offence" ('The solid ground I stand on is that I am not a racist', G2, 6 February). David Ward's offence is accusing "the Jews" of inflicting atrocities on Palestinians, within a few years of their own liberation from the death camps.

This is much ado about nothing. Ward's error in referring to "the Jews" rather than "Jewish people" is entirely understandable. The sole purpose of the synthetic outrage Ward's remarks have generated is designed to stifle criticism of Israel and suppress free speech. Israel's occupation is carried out in the name of a state which calls itself Jewish and claims, according to the 2004 Jerusalem Program of the World Zionist Organisation, to represent "the Jewish people" as a whole. Ward's critics cannot have their cake and eat it. They cannot claim Israel represents not merely its own Jewish citizens but Jews worldwide and at the same time accuse people who associate "the Jews" with Israel's atrocities of antisemitism. The Board of Deputies of British Jews has repeatedly proclaimed the support of British Jews for Israel's attacks on the Palestinians and Lebanese. It has even organised demonstrations in support of those attacks. Perhaps the board is also antisemitic? Certainly they can't complain when people take them at their word.

Ward is accused of antisemitism for making comparisons between the Nazi period and what is happening to the Palestinians. Of course Israel has not set up death camps for Arabs. But when Gerald Kaufman spoke in the Commons about his grandmother who had been killed in her bed by a Nazi soldier, he stated that "my grandmother did not die in order to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza". Is Gerald Kaufman also antisemitic?
Tony Greenstein
Brighton, East Sussex

 These bogus allegations of antisemitism are coming in thick and fast these days so you might not know the story that Tony was referring to.  If that's the case then the link is in his letter above but here it is again. Also, here's the letter on Tony Greenstein's blog.

Letters: From Guernica to Gaza

An interesting crop of letters in today's Guardian some good, some bad.  Here are some good ones:

The two large and very similar photos of women, one a grieving Palestinian, the other an Israeli in shock (Report, 17 October), trade in a grotesque deception: that Israel and Gaza are suffering in equal measure. If it is no surprise that Netanyahu seeks re-election by pulverising Gaza and claims that Israel is the victim of Palestinian aggression, it is however reprehensible for the Guardian to plug the shop-worn fable of equivalence. The fourth most powerful (and US-backed) army in the world is once again bludgeoning one of the most oppressed, impoverished and overcrowded places on the planet. No matter that Israel struck first or that Hamas fired rockets, this absurd horror has been going on for years. There is no equivalence between occupied and occupier, prisoner and jailer. What we are watching again is the shooting of fish in a barrel.
Bruce McLeod
Skipton, North Yorkshire

As Jewish supporters of Palestinian rights, we have once again watched in horror as Israel escalates its lethal bombardment of the civilian population of Gaza. Numerous people, including children, are being killed or wounded. Israeli casualties came only after Israel, having started the slaughter by killing a 13-year-old boy in Gaza on 8 November, shattered a truce by assassinating the military leader who had negotiated it. So who is the terrorist and who wants peace?

Israel's political-military leaders cynically escalate the conflict, trying to justify their blockade of Gaza and acting tough in the runup to government elections. Having turned Gaza into an open-air prison, they again punish the Palestinians for electing leaders who attempt to resist the illegal occupation.

Too many of our media collude with the official Israeli version: that the attacks are "targeted" retaliation for rockets launched from Gaza. Despite hand-wringing by some western governments, they encourage Israeli belligerence by labelling Hamas a terrorist organisation, supporting the Gaza siege and denying Palestinian rights, both within and outside Israel. We support the peaceful campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) designed to help achieve those rights.
Miriam Margolyes
Alexei Sayle
Mike Marqusee
Seymour Alexander 
Jo Bird
Haim Bresheeth
Elizabeth Carola
Ruth Conlock
Mike Cushman
Nancy Elan
Susan Elan
Pia G Feig
Deborah Fink
Sonya Fraser
Claire Glasman
Tony Greenstein
Ruth Hall
Abe Hayeem
Rosamine Hayeem
Selma James
Michael Kalmanovitz
Berry Kreel
Leah Levane
Rachel Lever
Les Levidow
Moshe Machover
Martine Miel
Simon Natas 
Diana Neslen
Juliet Peston
Renate Prince
Frances Rifkin
Larry Sanders
Vanessa Stilwell
Sam Weinstein
Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi

Devra Wiseman

Jonathan Freedland really should take off his blinkers (A battle that solves nothing, 16 November). The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is not just about who started firing the most recent lot of missiles. It's about a decades-long refusal by the Israelis to acknowledge the background – their occupation, annexation and frequent destruction of Palestinian olive groves, homes and wells; their refusal to be bound by international law over their settlements; the "Berlin Wall" they have erected through farms; the checkpoints that prevent critically ill people from getting to hospital – that has provoked Hamas intransigence and bitterness. If Jonathan Freedland – let alone the Israelis – cannot take this on board, can there be any hope for reconciliation?
Fr Julian Dunn
Great Haseley, Oxfordshire

And finally, for the good ones:

As a Jew who escaped the Holocaust in a Kindertransport 74 years ago and who voluntarily joined the British army to help fight the evil of Nazism, I utterly condemn the disproportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks. I am dismayed that both the British and American governments have given Israel carte blanche for these acts of barbarity in Gaza. Has the world learned nothing sinceGuernica?
Emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent 
London

Typically, in the interests of balance, there are some appalling ones too including one from a "Professor Marc Saperstein" of Cambridge, who Tony Greenstein claims is a fake of some sort. Don't tell me there's a hasbarista shortage.

Aunty Beeb, Jimmy Savile and The State of Israel, how are they related?

Well the answer is that the BBC (aka aunty Beeb) covers up for both Jimmy Savile and the racist war criminals of The State of Israel but Tony Greenstein put it far better than me in a recent letter he had published in The Independent:

There is an irony about the BBC and Jimmy Savile. When you apply for a grant from BBC’s Children in Need you have to supply reams of child protection policies, yet Savile was able to roam and abuse at the very heart of the BBC. Every charity has to have an enhanced Criminal Record Bureau check for any volunteer working with a child. Did Stoke Mandeville do this and if not, why not? Will anyone be prosecuted for this?

The stench of Establishment hypocrisy is overpowering. David Cameron pledges that it must never happen again. We know that similar abuses of power will almost certainly recur, with the same promises that it will never happen again.

Missing are concrete proposals which challenge the citadels of power that allowed Savile to roam free. Five police forces were made aware of complaints against Savile and did nothing. That is systemic failure.

The BBC should be publicly accountable rather than a plaything of the great and good. When the BBC tried to assert its independence over the Iraq war, it was squashed by Blair and Lord Hutton. During the reign of Mark Thompson, it became a faithful lapdog to those in power. In 2006, Thompson personally vetoed a Disasters Emergency Committee appeal for Gaza as the BBC’s coverage became overtly pro-Israeli.

If Cameron is serious, then he will ensure that his Government’s proposals for charging those prepared to blow the whistle will be dropped and the whistleblowing legislation strengthened.

Tony Greenstein

Brighton

The letter also appears as a pic on Tony's blog but he was too modest to provide the link which left me with a bit of searching to do on the garish indie site.