My Administrative Suspension from the Labour Party

OK, here's the letter suspending me from the Labour Party. I don't know why it's so difficult to publish a pdf but you need to click on the top right corner of the doc below and then you'll see the whole thing:


 

My suspension from, reinstatement to and departure from The Labour Party

I got a letter shortly after beginning a secondment as an ambulance driver in a team devoted to transport for Covid19 patients. It was from the Labour Party notifying me of my suspension on account (long story short) of antisemitism. It was dated 30 April 2020 though the 1st April would have been more appropriate. Anyway, here is the letter.


  I can't remember when the first false allegations of antisemitism began but I do remember my dismay when Corbyn took the sick jokes seriously enough to appoint Shami Chakrabarti to do a report about it. That act of appeasement sent Zionists into a feed frenzy just as Corbyn had been warned by mostly Jewish activists. As had been predicted the appeasement made matters worse which led to more appeasement which made worse matters worse still. I thought about leaving the party back then but I must have been persuaded to remain until the General Election 2017 when Corbyn and Labour did, to my mind, surprisingly well. This placated the opportunists who saw him as an electoral liability but it sent the Rightist enemy even more apoplectic. Realising they could not win reality based arguments, they intensified the smear campaign. And Corbyn made more and more concessions.

I can't remember the order the concessions came in off the top of my head. Knowing as Corbyn did and does that Jewish Labour Movement is racist to its core, he gave it an anti-racism award. The award was in the name of the late anti-racist activist, Del Singh. Poor Del Singh's family was outraged and I believe the award having been so tarnished (by Corbyn don't forget) no longer exists. Several years after Corbyn had shared a platform with anti-Zionist Jewish Holocaust survivor, Hajo Meyer, Corbyn was accused of sharing a platform with an antisemite, Hajo Meyer. Guess what?! Corbyn apologised of course.

An aside here. Many thought that Corbyn was appeasing the supporters of racist war criminals because he was too nice. He wasn't too nice. He was downright nasty and to his friends too. He wasn't too nice, he was too Labour. Then there was mural gate. A garish arguably but by no means unambiguously antisemitic mural. Even David Toube of Harry's Place, no slouch when it comes to false allegations of antisemitism, didn't think the image antisemitic when he saw it in real life though he changed his mind when he heard the artist's explanation of it. Corbyn didn't even say he like it. He just asked why it was being removed. He might not even have seen it. And guess what? Yup, Corbyn apologised again. And again. And again.

At some point, the Labour Party adopted the IHRA working definition of antisemitism. Corbyn resisted for a little while but there were some bogus assurances that a definition which deliberately set out to ban criticism of Israel would not be used to ban criticism of Israel. Guess what? It was and is used only to ban criticism of Israel.

Why all this? Oh yes, why after all this did I remain in Labour. I was mesmerised by the near miss of
2017 so I stayed. I even went to my first ever Labour conference in September last year. I was optimistic I even thought the ludicrous fudge over Brexit/Remain was clever.

Even at his last Labour conference Corbyn managed a couple of last unprincipled concessions to the Zionist movement. Before he got the chance to fail to mention the Palestinians in his speech it was drawn to his attention that a poster had appeared at the conference hall entrance showing BiBi flying a fighter jet firing missiles, one marked "Antisemitism" and the other "Defamation". So what did Corbyn do about this defence of, er, Corbyn. He denounced it as antisemitic of course. Nice Mr Corbyn.

Anyway, after all the people Corbyn kept appeasing got the result of his appeasement, ie, Labour lost the election miserably in 2019, I couldn't even be bothered to leave. The £4 a month didn't bother me too much but I began arguing against people remaining in the party. I got a job as an ambulance driver a little into the new year and I was quite excited about that and I ignored politics for a while, save for tweeting. But then as soon as I had tweeted that I am working on a project for Covid19 patients I got the letter you see above.

I told friends about in spite of its insistence on keeping the news to myself. I said I wanted to leave and that I didn't think I was being honest in remaining in such an openly racist party but I was persuaded by other Jewish comrades to stay especially given the antisemitic and racist implications of the witchhunt. Our Jewish identity itself was under attack and we had to defend against that. I reluctantly agreed to compose the following letter:

Dear Comrades

This is my reply to your email of 30 April 2020 and the Draft Charge and Questions.

In my response I will be calling into question both your integrity and your competence.

First, I must say that I am disgusted that whoever it is besmirching my character appears to have been stalking me online for some years going back at least to 2007. That being the case, they must know that my suspension has come at a time when I have been engaged in a project as an ambulance driver taking Covid19 patients to and from hospital. In my work I am more exposed than most people to a potentially deadly virus and it is known that stress makes people more vulnerable to sickness of many kinds, especially viruses, than during normal times. You are aware that your actions are intrinsically stressful because you have lately been including details of the Samaritans in case you drive people to suicide. In doing this you are confirming rumours that people are indeed taking their own lives because of the hurt you are doing to them. Whoever's bidding you are doing in this is deliberately seeking to appear ruthless and they are succeeding at that. They may even cause antisemitism by their/your actions. And of course by following instructions instead of telling the complainant to consider what they are doing and to back off during this time, you are culpable for your own actions.

In my case, the false allegations against me, including your own rehashing of apparently genuine quotes to make them appear like generalisations against my fellow "Jewish people" rather than comments about a state, some people and certain named organisations which they obviously were, you aren't causing me hurt except I do find it sad that you have resorted to such dishonesty. I also worry that you can't seem to distinguish between various social media (see my take on question 2. I now realise why your reordering of my comments looks so strange with a tweet from c 2020, two blog comments from 2007 and then three tweets from c 2020). Also you might be acting on a distortion of the McPherson Principle which is supposed to arise out of offensive incidents not invented ones and it doesn’t allow for a bogus definition of any form of racism, especially one which is internally contradictory and racist in its own right.

Now to the questions.

Question 1.

I actually have three Facebook accounts but I never use any of them for posting, just messaging of a personal nature. So there are no political comments by me on Facebook. I think pretending to believe the comments come from Facebook is my accusers excuse for the eccentric reordering of the tweets and comments, with the 13 year old ones being blog comments coming 2nd and 3rd while a far more recent one comes first thought it is a tweet. Other tweets come 4th 5th and 6th. Weird...until you realise just how dishonest the whole exercise is.

Question 2.

It looks to me that 4 of the 6 comments, items 1, 4, 5 and 6, are from Twitter though I do not have links to the tweets in question and therefore I cannot find them. The other 2 appear to be from a blog commenting system which no longer exists. You will note that they are from 2007. So, I am sorry I cannot confirm or deny having written and shared them. It would help if your Informant or complainant could provide links.

I must point out that it is noticeable whilst Items 2 and 3 are from 2007 they have nothing to do with each other. One is about some Jews and is the only one about any members of my own Jewish community in a discussion with Jews from the same community and from across the political spectrum and the other is about the interference in the journalism in a newspaper owned by a renowned Christian Zionist, Rupert Murdoch, who many people believe to be antisemitic so definitely not Jewish. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter

The way you have ordered the items is itself dishonest. You have taken 4 tweets probably from the past year which at a glance or in detail are completely innocent in any context and 2 from 13years ago but you have tucked one of the four tweets before the one comment which needs some unpacking and explanation. The other comment (as distinct from tweet) is again completely innocent by any interpretation but it is on the same subject as the tweets ie, The State of Israel, the media or this or that organisation. It stands out therefore that my accusers are conflating Jews with the State of Israel, the media and Jewish organisations, a conflation which goes to the heart of the antisemitic worldwide Jewish conspiracy theory.

Question 3.

I can try to interpret them but at present I cannot even confirm they were by me. In all honestly they resemble things I might have said. So let me try item by item:

Item 1. This is self explanatory. It is saying that a group founded by businessman Gerald Ronson, Community Security Trust (CST), together with its security work also does Israel advocacy.

Alan Rusbridger, former editor of The Guardian newspaper reported in a documentary on Israel lobbying and advocacy that the founder of the CST, Gerald Ronson, visited him in his office to complain about a 2 part article in The Guardian describing Israel as an apartheid state. Now clearly this had nothing to do with security for Jews in the UK. It was purely an exercise in Israel advocacy. Https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/pro-israel-lobby-in-britain-full-text/

There is no denying that CST works on Israel advocacy and lobbying as part of its brief and, clearly, that is what was meant in the tweet. In any case there is nothing antisemitic in criticising a group of activists whatever their activity.

Item 2. This looks like part of a wider discussion which appears to have taken place 13 years ago. I suspect the time on the comment is American time. It looks to me like a poorly expressed notion (if I am right about the time it was late at night) that supporters of The State of Israel cannot use standard means of defending its actions and have therefore cultivated (hence the word "culture") a dishonest means of argumentation in favour of Israel to undermine its critics and even its victims. There was no generalisation about "Jewish people" (draft charge number 2) . Instead the words are ‘many, maybe most, Jews’ and are in the context of a discussion with my fellow Jews If I was to express that now I would talk about the propensity of the establishment generally to self deceive. I certainly wouldn't ever denigrate Jewish people as a whole because a) I am Jewish myself and fear and abhor antisemitism and b) generalisations about whole ethnicities or faith groups are racist. I also wouldn’t discuss the specifics of Jewish identity issues on a public forum because I am frightened by the vilification of Jews who dissent from establishment narratives of which my administrative suspension is but one of many examples. Remember this was 2007.

Item 3. This is clearly a response to someone posting anonymously and it simply states the demonstrable fact that the print media is overwhelmingly pro-Israel. This http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/27c/345.html is the the link to Sam Kiley's article in which he complains of Rupert Murdoch's proprietal interference into editorial and journalistic matters at his newspapers. Ironically among Jews, Murdoch is famous for being both a Christian Zionist and he’s believed to be antisemitic. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/19/rupert-murdoch-jews-twitter None of the media referenced in the comment are or were owned by Jews nor is it suggested or implied by me that they are. At this point I can only assume that my accusers are themselves antisemitic and might even be having a joke at my and the party’s expense. To conflate Murdoch with Jews is beneath contempt. I must say that you do not do enough background checking of these things.

Item 4. This again is self-explanatory. The Board of Deputies has been openly supportive of the Conservative Party. Various antisemitic utterances and behaviours by leading Tories have been conveniently ignored from Jacob Rees Mogg accusing the Jewish speaker, John Bercow, of being Illuminati to Theresa May unveiling a statue of the known Hitler admirer, Lady Astor. It has also ignored Boris Johnson's antisemitic portrayals of Jews in his novel, 72 Virgins. The Conservative Party is in power so it is fair to say that all those who undermined the Labour Party "helped antisemites into power in the UK". And it is the case that Zionist history is replete with episodes of collaboration with antisemitism. There is a very good article by SOAS Professor , Gilbert Achcar" about the "complementarity between the anti-Semitic desire to get rid of the Jews and the Zionist project of sending all Jews to Palestine" Https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/zionism-anti-semitism-and-balfour-declaration/

Item 5. Again this is self-explanatory. It is claiming that most of the specific well publicised allegations of antisemitism against Labour members have been false. This is the case with the allegations themselves and the direction they have taken. For example the allegations against Jeremy Corbyn included claims that he was antisemitc by Margaret Hodge. She must have known he saved a Jewish cemetery from being sold off by Islington Council. She was the leader of the Council at the time. She must have known that he condemned Paul Flynn for saying a Jew should never be UK ambassador to Israel. She must have known about his support for Haredi Jews over autopsies and the swift release of bodies for burial. She must have known of Corbyn's condemnation of Tam Dalyell for accusing Tony Blair of being in thrall to a "Jewish cabal". Jeremy Corbyn was also a great help to Yemeni Jews seeking to settle in the UK.

The references to JLM and LFI address the fact that in my experience, the policies of these groups support the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians and do not simply support The State of Israel's "right to exist" but its right to exist as a state specially for the world's Jews rather than a state for all of its people. This is my opinion as a Jew of two groups whose membership is not solely or even largely Jewish. Again criticism of these groups is not antisemitic.

Item 6. Again this is self-explanatory and addresses the oft buried issue of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis. Ironically the best authors on this subject are based in Israel, many are supporters of Zionism, but in the interests of proper history, this episode has been included in the syllabus in Israeli schools. In the tweet the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is stated to be 6 million. I understand that there were fully 11 million people murdered in the Holocaust but the tweet in item 6 is only referring to the Jewish element. There is nothing in that tweet to even hint at a denial or a revision of the scope and intentionality of the Holocaust. Any alternative suggestion is simply a lie.

Question 4.

There is nothing in my conduct that could be construed as being in breach of Rule 2.1.8., even if the quotes are taken out of context. Only by dishonestly inserting the words "Jewish people" as if I am negatively generalising about my own Jewish people can any of my own words or those genuinely or in good faith attributed to me be construed as being in breach of the rule.

Having said that, whilst I am not very scholarly I heard a great deal about rule changes in recent years. Please note that two of the comments attributed to me are from 2007. These allegations against me are bad enough without lifting comments out of their original context and from 13 years ago and applying later rules retrospectively. I need to write an aside here to the effect that your bad faith is plain for all to see and you really should desist from this. I have already mentioned how you seem to be building up to an absurd “pattern of behaviour” case and I believe that this is why you have taken one comment from 2007 which could be taken out of context by my use of the word “deceit” rather then the expression “intellectual dishonesty” and you have juxtaposed it with a perfectly innocuous comment about how a Christian Zionist (alleged to be antisemitic) runs his newspapers! You then appear to jump forward to 2020 as if to say I have behaved provocatively towards the Jewish people for a whole 13 years because you can liken not the first comment (item 2) to a comment in 2020 but the second innocuous one about Murdoch to a 2020 tweet again about non-Jewish proprietors of national media.

Question 5.

The comments you have attributed to me all appear to have been made in good faith and are perfectly polite, representing what I believe from years of learning and thinking about Jewish identity and Zionism.

Question 6.

If it was me using words like "culture of deceit" even though taking the comment out of the context of a discussion which it appears to be and importing words in charge 3, that do not appear in the original quote, I would not say "culture of deceit", I would say "cultivated tendency to intellectual dishonesty" and for many years now I have chosen my words very carefully so that unscrupulous people cannot quote me out of context only avoiding the charge of barefaced lying by judicious use of quotation marks. I also wouldn’t discuss internal Jewish business on what could turn out to be a wider public forum.

Question 7.

There is only one comment out of all of the examples that I would not personally post for reasons I have already explained. It is the comment in Item 2. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of the other comments and the comment in item 2 is only wrong taken out of context. I do not nor would I negatively generalise about the "Jewish people" and contest strongly the false allegation that I would. Indeed, I believe I have been targeted because I am one of the Jewish people. It's one of the cruel ironies of our time that the same people that describe The State of Israel as "the only democracy in the Middle East" want to ensure that there is only one Jewish community viewpoint in the UK in spite of our political, cultural and ethnic diversity.

Question 8.

I need links to the comments you attribute to me in order to fully understand the context in which they were made. Context is all. You have provided none.

Question 9.

I was born and raised Jewish in the tradition known as mainstream orthodoxy under the auspices of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth. This has left me with a profound sense of my Jewish identity and, without wishing to sound sectarian, and, as I wrote, an abhorrence, of antisemitism. I also, again without wishing to sound sectarian, have a very powerful belief that as a Jew I have a moral responsibility to express my revulsion at the abuse of Palestinian rights. I am not saying that Jews who ignore or even cause the plight of the Palestinians are somehow less Jewish than I am but I would never submit to the idea that I am somehow less Jewish than my upbringing has made me because of my support for the Palestinian cause.

Draft Charge

I have just revisited your Draft Charge page and I am utterly disgusted with you. I thought your timing was bad enough but to level such outrageous lies at a Jew is downright racist and if you cannot see this, you need some training. I am saying you are racist. It isn’t simply that the allegations are false but they are so demonstrably false and so deliberately set out to be offensive to Jews you have deliberately set out offend me as a Jew.

1. This applies far more to you than to me. I am anti-racist and internationalist. I have no hostility towards or prejudice against anyone on account of any group identity heritage.

2. I do not use antisemitic actions or stereotypes nor do I harbour any antisemitic sentiments.

3. I do not claim that “Jewish people” have anything negative in common. That is a manipulative insertion of words when the reference in item 2 is clearly to some people’s resort to intellectual dishonesty when defending The State of Israel

4, 5. None of the comments or tweets mention international connections of any kind unless you count the non-Jewish Conrad Black’s ownership of the Jerusalem Post and The Daily Telegraph. The references in item 3 are entirely to media that are not owned by Jews. Clearly it is my accusers who subscribe to an antisemitic stereotype. The references are all to pro-Israel stances chosen freely by the media in question.

6, 7, 8. These are the pack of lies that have caused me the most anger and distress and I cannot believe you have simply clumsily run with someone else’s demonstrably false allegations without actually checking to see how far from the words used in the items (for argument’s sake, my own words) depart from the description in the Draft Charge. The lies are so despicable they aren’t even laughable like the others. The others do reveal my accusers’ propensity for antisemitic stereotypes when none of the media I have mentioned have any Jewish proprietors.

Item 1 involved the fact that the idea of a colony in Palestine specially for Jews was proposed by antisemitic colonialists several years before the Jewish Zionist movement was established. For some. eg. Napolean, the motive was colonial for others, Churchill, GK Chesterton, the motive was antisemitic. “Jews to Palestine” was an antisemitic slogan before it became a Zionist one and when GK Chesterton was challenged on his attitude to Jews he said, “You see, I am not an anti-Semite, I am a Zionist.” https://t.co/IZwORsvROV?amp=1

After the founding of the World Zionist Organisation many antisemites would explain away their racism against Jews as Gentile or Christian Zionism. Christian Zionism is even more ominous for Jews, its position being that all Jews should settle in the Holy Land and there convert to Christianity or be annihilated if they refuse. That hasn’t stopped Israel’s current Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, addressing events of groups like America’s Moral Majority. https://t.co/08reXzusly?amp=1 The close association of Zionist movement founder, Theodor Herzl and Tsarist Russia’s pogromist-in-chief, Count von Plehve is well documented https://t.co/OhRVadqV1C?amp=1 The collaboration between Zionism and nazism began very soon after the nazis came to power and it too is well documented and is actually taught to Israeli secondary school students. Israeli Zionists tend to take much more seriously the idea that Jews belong in Israel, nowhere else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transfer_Agreement The most notorious of Zionist dealings with the nazis was the Transfer or Ha’avara Agreement but there were other examples even after WWII and even the Holocaust had begun. Zionist paramilitaries led by founders of the largest party within the Likud offered Hitler and Mussolini an alliance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group) and Hannah Arendt, in her famous book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, refers to the collaboration that had Zionist leaders in Hungary calling on Jews to assemble at designated places where the waiting SS would take them to Auschwitz for extermination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rezs%C5%91_Kasztner . Curiously the Ha’avara agreement was supported by the then mainstream Labour Zionists but rejected out of hand by the harder right wing group we now know as Likud.

Regarding the English Defence League, co-operation between Zionists and fascists on the streets counter-demonstrating against Palestine solidarity marches and demonstrations and breaking up meetings has a long history. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20171121-pro-israeli-mob-with-ties-to-edl-causes-mayhem-at-balfour-event/ In 2008 one member of the Board of Deputies of British Jews described the BNP’s website as the “most Zionist on the web”. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2008/apr/10/thefarright.race#

Nothing in item 1 comes anywhere near your false allegations. There is no denial of the scope, mechanisms or intentionality of the Holocaust, nothing to accuse anyone of exaggerating the Holocaust and nothing using Holocaust “metaphors and comparisons”. The allegation is simply a lie without even a kernel of truth.

Item 4 goes to show that your chutzpah, in making these false allegations against me, knows no bounds. It is an approving retweet of the leader of the Jewish Socialist Group pointing out that the Board of Deputies did everything it could to ensure Labour would not win an election “knowing the alternative was Johnson, whose chief advisor employs a eugenicist aide; Braverman, who uses a/s tropes, gets a top job, and a Tory MP speaks alongside Euro far right” Or put another way, the Board of Deputies “helped antisemites into power in the UK”. You have already seen examples of Zionists doing similar things at different times and places.

It is hard to see why you have item 4 listed in the most despicable of your false allegations against me. It might be that any talk of Zionist collaboration or aid to antisemitism calls to my accusers’ minds, the most appalling of examples of that collaboration but that tweet does not mention the Holocaust or the nazis at all.

Item 6 fully exposes the sheer dishonesty of my accusers. There is a clear affirmation of the fact that 6 million of my fellow Jews were murdered by the nazis in the Holocaust. How anyone can even try to derive from that any hint of Holocaust denial or revisionism is impossible to understand.

None of the items 1, 4 or 6 in any way amounts to anything that could be described as Holocaust denial or revisionism. You and your informant/complainants are simply and despicably lying.

Conclusion

You have suspended me as part of the general sweep against Jews and other anti-racists and supporters of the Palestinian cause. You have one comment purportedly by me in 2007 which you could distort by preceding words which could have been mine with words which turn a claim about some people into a generalisation about Jewish people. You then, unfathomably at first, set out 5 other examples which taken separately or together are perfectly innocuous. The reason one of them is from 2007 is to try to link the other comment from 2007 to tweets from 2020. In this way you are seeking to establish one of your stupid “pattern of behaviour” raps in the absence of actual evidence of what you are accusing me of.

All in all I have clearly established that nothing I have said in any forum could be construed in its correct context as antisemitic. It is your conduct towards me which constitutes racist abuse and some of my accusers’ assumptions about, for example, media ownership go to show that it is my accusers who promote antisemitic tropes about Jewish media control. The comments in the items 1 to 6 where they mention the media at all all establish that there are no Jewish owners of mass media in the UK and even the Israeli newspaper in item 1 was owned by a Catholic. Likewise where the Holocaust is mentioned at all, the figure of 6 million Jews deliberately murdered by the nazis is affirmed,, neither minimised nor denied. So I reject the charges in total.

Yours sincerely

So, I carried on business, work and twitter, as usual for a few weeks and waited for their reply. Of course there were still more betrayals of principle by the Corbynista left. Between my suspension and response and the Party finally exonerating me of their bogus charges there was the leak of a document which showed beyond any doubt that there was a real conspiracy at the heart of the Party to stop it winning the General Election of 2017. But a few days ago I got an email from the Party telling me that I have been cleared of all their charges.

I now felt free to leave but let me just get my home address off the letter lifting my suspension and come back tomorrow with another post....

Betrayed by Bureaucrats? That Leaked Labour Report and the Disappearing Daily Mirror Article

I did a post yesterday night about how an article in The Daily Mirror about the "leaked Labour report", had been disappeared from its website. I found it on the Wayback Machine and copied and pasted it to my own post without much comment but I am mystified as to its content and why it has been pulled. Most newspapers only do that in extreme circumstances like they've been threatened in some way by the state or by lawyers.

Let's see that article again:

Labour ask police to investigate claims staff worked for Tory election victory 

EXCLUSIVE: Sir Keir Starmer ordered the probe after being elected the new leader of the Labour party - and police have started to look in to death threats made against staff

Labour chiefs have called in police as part of an inquiry into claims party HQ staff worked secretly for a Tory election victory. 

A probe was ordered by new Labour leader Keir Starmer and approved by an emergency meeting of the National Executive Committee last week. 

Death threats and abuse against staff involved have been reported and police called as the wide-ranging probe gets under way.  

A full-scale operation has been mounted to shut down distribution of a leaked report alleging that senior campaign managers were part of a clandestine group trying to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM.  

A report has been filed with the Information Commissioner’s Office while an internal investigation is looking at a “serious” data breach via WhatsApp messages and email. 

Party officials have also contacted social media companies to take down any copies of the report still online and local parties told not to share it. 

Crucially, the NEC decided to prioritise the claims made in the report over the circumstances of how it was leaked. 

An NEC member confirmed it was decided to refer the matter to the police, who will be updated on the party’s findings. The inquiry has been fast-tracked to conclude in mid-July. 

There is speculation it may be headed by Lord Larry Whitty, who was party general secretary under Neil Kinnock.

So, the headline tells us that the police have been called to "investigate claims staff worked for Tory election victory". Ok, so already there is ambiguity. Are police investigating the staff for some breach of electoral law or are they investigating those who claim that McNicol, Sam Matthews, et al (the Mirror report doesn't name them) worked for a Tory election victory?

The Mirror then says that "Sir Keir Starmer ordered the probe" [my emphasis] but it hasn't said what the probe probing. It then says that the police are looking into death threats made against the staff. So what started as the possibility of police investigating allegations of serious, possibly illegal, misconduct by a bunch of Blairite bureaucrats quickly becomes an attempt to garner sympathy for the people the police might truly be investigating.

The Mirror was clearly working on the assumption that anyone who follows these things, Labour members and many voters would know about the "leaked Labour report". The report might well be findable on the net but if you can't find it, Craig Murray's report on the report is as good as any except he falls for the false allegations of antisemitism against Ken Livingstone. Sorry, don't let me digress.

Anyway, so the Mirror has said police are on the case of matters in connection with the now famous, in spite of the media and a certain Zionist lawyer trying to bury it, "leaked Labour report" but it doesn't say what the police are investigating apart from death threats and abuse.

Now the evidence of skulduggery and possibly illegality on the part of McNicol and his cohort is evidenced in the report. I mean it's possible that whoever wrote the report simply fabricated the content of emails and WhatsApp messages but a) it's not likely and b) layers have threatened proceedings over Data Protection and breach of privacy. I reckon that suggests that the alleged content of the emails and WhatsApps must be true or else how could it be a breach of privacy or data protection protocols?

And then the Mirror piece gets back to the stuff of the headline. Apparently police have been called to look into the work the skulduggerers were doing to secure a Tory election victory. I don't know if that is illegal or how illegal it was to do what they did. The Mirror kind of says that it's the Labour leadership that has called in the police for this but then seems to be saying that Starmer is more interested in the leaking of the report.

Labour chiefs have called in police as part of an inquiry into claims party HQ staff worked secretly for a Tory election victory. 

A probe was ordered by new Labour leader Keir Starmer and approved by an emergency meeting of the National Executive Committee last week. 

Death threats and abuse against staff involved have been reported and police called as the wide-ranging probe gets under way.  

See? it's all a bit garbled but whereas the "leaked Labour report" purports to show evidence of what it is alleging, where is the evidence of death threats against the people named in the report? The only evidence I heard of a death threat against anyone named in the report was against Sam Matthews and that threat was made by Sam Matthews himself and he admitted, well claimed as much in the now notorious BBC Panorama programme by John Ware supposedly on Labour antisemitism.

The article then speaks of the extraordinary effort going into barring the report from public view and reports of data protection breaches before making this interesting observation:

Crucially, the NEC decided to prioritise the claims made in the report over the circumstances of how it was leaked. 

Now that would be a crumb of comfort if it were true. The claims made in the report are absolutly damning and have already led to the welcome departure of Lord McNicol from the Labour front bench while Sam Matthews seems to have dug in and Zionist and Blairite lawyers together with leading Goyishe Zionist, John Ware, making all sorts of legal threats over I'm not sure what.

After all that, I have no answers and for the immediate term I only have one question, why did the Daily Mirror disappear the article?

Labour ask police to investigate claims staff worked for Tory election victory

That headline replaces my original headline for this post which was something about The Daily Mirror having disappeared an article from its website about the leaked Labour report and the fact that Labour chiefs have called in the police about it. By the time I had got to the end of the post, the article had disappeared from the Wayback machine though they might have some genuine technical problems. Anyway, I've changed the headline on my post to match the original headline from the Mirror piece. Now read on....

I don't know why this article has been disappeared, airbrushed if you will, from The Daily Mirror's website but thankfully the Wayback Machine and I am posting here in full. To be honest I have only read the headline so far, oh, and a Reddit discussion which slags the headline. So let's have a butchers.

Labour ask police to investigate claims staff worked for Tory election victory 

EXCLUSIVE: Sir Keir Starmer ordered the probe after being elected the new leader of the Labour party - and police have started to look in to death threats made against staff

Labour chiefs have called in police as part of an inquiry into claims party HQ staff worked secretly for a Tory election victory. 

A probe was ordered by new Labour leader Keir Starmer and approved by an emergency meeting of the National Executive Committee last week. 

Death threats and abuse against staff involved have been reported and police called as the wide-ranging probe gets under way.  

A full-scale operation has been mounted to shut down distribution of a leaked report alleging that senior campaign managers were part of a clandestine group trying to stop Jeremy Corbyn becoming PM.  

A report has been filed with the Information Commissioner’s Office while an internal investigation is looking at a “serious” data breach via WhatsApp messages and email. 

Party officials have also contacted social media companies to take down any copies of the report still online and local parties told not to share it. 

Crucially, the NEC decided to prioritise the claims made in the report over the circumstances of how it was leaked. 

An NEC member confirmed it was decided to refer the matter to the police, who will be updated on the party’s findings. The inquiry has been fast-tracked to conclude in mid-July. 

There is speculation it may be headed by Lord Larry Whitty, who was party general secretary under Neil Kinnock.

I can't see what's problematic enough for the article to be pulled. It doesn't name any names.

Oh wait. I sent the Wayback link to a friend and she couldn't open it. I said to just click it which I just tried to do and, what do you know? It's disappeared from Wayback. I'll need a masters in Kremlinology to get to the bottom of this one.  This JSF page might be the last surviving record of an unremarkable article except it seems to be trying to make martyrs of the biggest traitors against democracy and the Labour movement the UK has ever known.

UPDATE: 10:57 27/04/2020. I got an email from Wayback Machine early this morning because I had tagged them in two tweets complaining at the disappearance of the Mirror article from their website and they assured me that it was only a technical glitch and that they had fixed it which they have. So apologies to them and you, dear reader (if you exist), for any aspersions cast.  It's business as usual at the Wayback Machine.  BTW, the Mirror article was saved at Wayback three times before it disappeared from the Mirror website.

Chutzpah! If you want to know about racism why not ask racists, they should know

Read this and weep or laugh out loud. I suppose that's an option.  This is from a newsletter from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, aka the Tory Party at Shul.

Redbridge councillors reach out to Board of Deputies over antisemitism

Board of Deputies Vice President Amanda Bowman met Redbridge councillors, including Council Leader Jas Athwal, to discuss antisemitism. Elected representatives from Redbridge reached out to the Board of Deputies after allegations of antisemitic conduct in a Labour Party ward meeting emerged. Amanda said: “It was great to see both Labour and Conservative councillors reach out to the Board of Deputies to learn about antisemitism. That is just the sort of leadership political parties need if they want to rid themselves of racism.” Jas Athwal said: “It was wonderful to meet with Amanda Bowman and Daniel Elton from the Board of Deputies to get a fuller understanding of the challenges facing the Jewish community and our society as a whole. It was an important reminder that the Jewish community’s fight is our fight and that we must all play our part in driving out antisemitism in all its forms.’

The trouble is that one of the challenges facing the Jewish community, as in people who are Jewish, is that people masquerading as the Jewish community make false antisemitism allegations against Leftists whilst giving Rightists like Johnson, Rees Mogg & Co. a free pass.

Ilford South Labour Party Branch passes resolution condemning Board of Deputies ludicrous #10Pledges demand

This is the resolution passed by a Labour Branch on 13 January 2020 and condemned as antisemitic by a chap called Alex Holmes: https://twitter.com/alexcholmes/status/1216850330161438720?s=19

Tonight was the worst Labour party meeting I have ever attended. A member accused me and others of being 'agents of a foreign power' as they proposed a motion attacking the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Me and a Jewish member spoke against the motion, but the motion passed.

— Alex Holmes (@alexcholmes) January 13, 2020

I urge readers to follow the thread:

Now see the resolution itself:

This branch condemns the Board of Deputies attempts at interference in the Labour party leadership election by demanding that candidates sign 10 pledges one of which suggests outsourcing the Labour party’s disciplinary processes to a third party 

Their demands reflect the views of only one section of the British Jewish community , but they seek to proscribe the views of other Jewish groups who don’t agree with them, labelling them as fringe groups to be ignored and discounted.   

The Board has been consistent in its support for the Conservative party, fulsomely welcoming the election of Boris Johnson, whose writings and actions expose a racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic mindset ,  yet they make no criticism of this or or the fact that the Tory party members aren’t bound by the IHRA definition    

This branch particularly notes that the pledges breach free speech and human rights, and do not include all forms of racism. They do not represent the diversity that exists in our branch or the country as a whole. 

Accordingly we call upon candidates to reject this interference and review any decisions to sign the pledges and urge any candidates that have not thus far signed to reject their demands. '

Deborah Maccoby on Dave Rich's Book, The Left's Jewish Problem - Jeremy Corbyn, Israel and Anti-Semitism

I just spent forever trying to find Deborah Maccoby's withering review of Dave Rich's dumbarsed book, The Left's Jewish Problem. So here it is where at least I can find it. Apols for awkward (ie lack of) formatting.

Deborah H. Maccoby

3.0 out of 5 starsSophisticated but Dishonest

22 August 2017

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

The stated aim of “The Left’s Jewish Problem” is to inquire into the reasons for the breakdown of the relationship between the British Jewish community and the British Left, especially the Labour Party. The unstated aim is to discredit Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Party. The book (which incorporates some parts of the author’s 2011 doctoral dissertation) was evidently timed to appear as a kind of companion piece to the Home Affairs Select Committee’s Report on Anti-Semitism.

Dave Rich, Jewish community leader and Deputy Director of Communications for the Community Security Trust (CST), admits that “there are socio-economic reasons for the long-term drift of Jewish voters from Labour to the Conservatives” – ie most British Jews have moved from the impoverished working class into the affluent middle class. But he insists: “these reasons alone do not explain the scale of the change nor its recent acceleration”.

His explanation for the “recent acceleration” and “scale of the change” is that, in the short term, the Labour Party has been taken over by far-left activists whose mind-set – “a sickness at the heart of left-wing British politics…..silently spreading, growing ever more malignant” (according to the cover blurb) - has given rise to the current crises over allegations of anti-Semitism; while, in the longer term, the diseased outlook of these activists is the product of trends which the author traces back to the anti-imperialist, anti-colonial New Left movement of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

Another unstated aim of the book is to let Israel off the hook by, for instance, claiming that this malignant influence of the New Left over the wider left “played a decisive role in flipping left-wing opinion from being overwhelmingly pro-Israel to its current pro-Palestinian consensus”. But isn’t the British Left’s disillusionment with Israel the result of its policies, barely mentioned by the author?

Adopting a sophisticated approach, Rich does not allege that the British Left is anti-Semitic in the conventional sense. In the Introduction he writes: “Anti-Semitism does play a role in this story, but for the most part it does not involve people who are consciously anti-Semitic.” And in the Conclusion he claims: “There is a much-studied phenomenon of ‘anti-Semitism without Jews’…..the British left today gives the impression of being a slightly different phenomenon: a place where there is anti-Semitism without anti-Semites.” The author offers as an example of this puzzling form of anti-Semitism the “No Platform” policy adopted by the National Union of Students (NUS) in the 1970s and 1980s. This policy, which involved refusing to allow speakers or groups judged to be racist or fascist to speak or operate on campus, led a few individual student unions – acting against the instructions of the NUS -- to ban (by refusing to fund and recognise) university Jewish Societies which promoted Israel. Chapter 4: “When Anti-Racists Ban Jews” – is devoted to the issue.

Rich argues that, though there was no intention of anti-Semitism, the “No Platform” policy led to anti-Semitic actions. But the real problem was surely the policy itself, rather than anti-Semitism (even of the unintentional kind). The invokers of the “No Platform” policy erred on two counts: they reduced Zionism (which includes racist aspects but is far more than that) to racism; and they sought to curb freedom of speech on the grounds that they had decided what is and what isn’t racist.

Rich also exploits the issue and uses guilt-by-association to try to smear Corbyn. We are told that throughout the 1980s Corbyn sponsored and supported an anti-Zionist group called the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine (LMCP): “When Sunderland Polytechnic’s Students’ Union banned its Jewish Society in 1985, the LMCP supported the Students’ Union. An unsigned article in its newsletter declared that while “it was a tactical mistake on the part of Sunderland Polytechnic Students’ Union to ban an overtly Zionist Jewish Society….we totally reject the assertion that Sunderland Poly’s action was in any way anti-Semitic.’” (Emphasis in original) Rich writes that, though “Corbyn did not comment directly on events in Sunderland”, the same newsletter that printed the unsigned article also carried a “message from Corbyn encouraging people to join the organisation”. But (a) Corbyn himself did not comment on the subject; (b) the article admits that it was a tactical mistake to ban the Jewish Society and only denies the charge of anti-Semitism – ie, contrary to Rich’s claim, the LMCP did not “support” the Students’ Union.

Rich describes Corbyn as “a typical product of the 1960s New Left”, implying throughout the book that he has not changed his views since the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Thus in Chapter 3, Rich claims that “Corbyn is ambiguous on the subject of Israel’s future existence”, citing as evidence an August 2015 Electronic Intifada interview “in which, when asked whether a one-state solution was inevitable, he suggested that it was a more likely option than a two state solution: ‘I think it’s up to the people of the region to decide what kind of long-term solution there would be. At the moment, all that’s on offer is the possibility of a two-state solution, [but] it’s difficult to see how it would operate with the degree of settlements that are there.’” Corbyn is not suggesting here that a one state solution is “a more likely option”. On the contrary, he says clearly that at the present time the only possible solution “on offer” is two states. To point out the problems created by the presence of over half a million settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and to envisage that many years hence there might be a different outcome, is not to suggest that a one state solution “is a more likely option”.

Rich omits all the recent occasions on which Corbyn has made his support for a two state settlement crystal-clear. For instance, after a February 2016 meeting between Corbyn and the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), Jonathan Arkush, the BoD’s President, said: “We had a positive and constructive meeting and were pleased that Mr Corbyn gave a very solid commitment to the right of Israel to live within secure and recognized boundaries as part of a two state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict”.

Much is made in Chapter 5 -“The New Alliance: Islamists and the Left” - of a March 2009 speech in which Corbyn said: “Tomorrow evening it will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking. I’ve also invited friends from Hamas to come and speak as well….the idea that an organisation that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organisation by the British government is really a big, big historical mistake.” (Rich also uses this quotation as the first of two epigraphs to the book’s Introduction; the second is a quotation from a 2015 Jewish Chronicle editorial attacking Corbyn).  This is the only one of Rich’s accusations against Corbyn that carries some credibility. These comments obviously leave out Hamas’s repressiveness towards its own people and its adoption of violent means to try to overthrow the Occupation. But is Rich justified in concluding this chapter with the claim that the Labour Party “has a new leadership that views Zionism as a hostile, discriminatory ideology and Hamas as a progressive movement”?

We have already seen that Corbyn supports a two-state solution and therefore accepts the existence of Israel. And in the passage cited above he does not describe Hamas as left-wing or progressive; nor has he ever done so. Rich ignores Corbyn’s other comments on Hamas, such as this in the same Electronic Intifada interview: “There has to be talks, there has to be negotiations with all the Palestinian forces, as well as with all the Israeli forces….That means talking to Hamas, it means talking to Hizballah – does it mean that you agree with what they say on social issues, on the death penalty? No it doesn’t, and you can make that clear to them in the discussion.”

Corbyn’s March 2009 speech was intended as a corrective to the labelling of Hamas as a terrorist organisation. Like all correctives, his comments were one-sided. He presented the main (and generally ignored) arguments against the proscription of Hamas: its role as a democratically-elected government and national resistance movement against an unjust Occupation, its peace overtures and its social welfare programmes. The speech was made just after Operation Cast Lead – ie just after a massive onslaught of Israeli state terrorism that had incomparably more devastating effects than Hamas rockets. Ehud Barak, Israel’s then Defence Minister - and Defence Minister during Cast Lead - was given a welcome speech and wined and dined by the then British Prime Minister and Labour leader, Gordon Brown, at a reception during the September 2009 Labour Party Conference.

When an arrest warrant for war crimes was issued in London in December 2009 by Westminster Magistrates’ Court against Tzipi Livni, who had been Israeli Foreign Minister at the time of Cast Lead, Gordon Brown rang her to assure her that she would always be welcome in Britain. The British government later made changes to the “universal jurisdiction” law, so that an arrest warrant invoking this law now requires the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Some of the big London protest marches against Operation Cast Lead ended in clashes between demonstrators and police, resulting in police injuries (Rich mentions “over 50 policemen injured” but omits to add that all except one - who was knocked unconscious - suffered minor injuries) and the smashing of windows of Starbucks coffee shops. Many of the very young and mostly Muslim men involved received excessively severe sentences – prison terms of up to two and a half years. To quote Ghazal Tipu in Open Democracy: “The judge in the case said he intended to send out a message to deter others. No doubt the message many will hear is that Muslims are to be punished more severely than others when they step out of line. Smash a Starbucks window and the state will come down on you like a tonne of bricks; smash a poor and desperate people with bombs and bullets and government barely murmurs”.

Rich castigates Corbyn for telling a meeting: “’The events that happened at the end of the demonstration were an expression of anger about what was happening in Gaza by a lot of very young people….the sentences they have suffered as a result of it are absolutely appalling’”.

Rich describes Operation Cast Lead merely as “a three-week conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in January 2009”. He omits the statistics of civilian deaths in Gaza: 1,200, including over 350 children. To have included the figures would have put under too glaring a light his accusation that Corbyn, Seumas Milne, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War, who all supported the defendants, appeared to have failed “to consider that they have a responsibility to channel young Muslims away from illegal protests. Nor did they acknowledge, publicly at least, the impact that the violent demonstrations may have had on the mood of London’s Jews.”

This is probably the lowest point to which the book sinks. But a close contender is the guilt-by-association accusation in Chapter 6 – “Antisemitism, the Holocaust and the Left” - that, during a May Day rally speech by Corbyn - in which he condemned all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism – among those listening to him were “marchers carrying banners with images of Joseph Stalin”. Rich complains: “Anyone who truly stands against anti-Semitism….ought to recognise that Stalin was an anti-Semite, but if Corbyn was aware of this contradiction when he made his May Day speech, he didn’t show it.”

Is Corbyn supposed to be responsible for all the banners exhibited at the huge rallies at which he speaks? Rich also attacks Corbyn’s May Day speech for its “narrow understanding of anti-Semitism as a far-right phenomenon – part of a broader xenophobic politics that is against diversity and stigmatises refugees and minorities” – a view of anti-Semitism that, Rich writes, is “common across the left”. This is reminiscent of the Home Affairs Committee’s criticism of Corbyn for not understanding the “distinct nature” and “uniqueness” of antisemitism, which “unlike other forms of racism….often paints the victim as a malign and controlling force” (Report, paras 113 and 117). Yet, confusingly, Rich often attacks the left for excluding anti-Semitism from other forms of racism – for instance, he complains about “the separation of anti-Semitism from anti-racist politics that has occurred since the 1960s”. Presumably, Rich is accusing the left of a kind of split personality syndrome; but he never perceives the contradiction and so never tries to resolve it.

At the end of Chapter 6, just before the concluding chapter, Rich fires off a parting and climactic guilt-by-association shot against Corbyn. He quotes from a letter by a “veteran Communist”, Moira Gray, which was published in the Morning Star on July 27, 2002: “’Israel, and all that Israel has done and is doing, is an affront to all those millions who fought and died fighting fascism before, during and after the war against fascism….an Italian partisan, fighting the German invaders in Italy, survived a year in Dachau. A few years ago, he committed suicide. He left a note saying that the good Jews were all killed in the concentration camps.’” Rich comments: “The sentiments behind the letter are nauseating. The fact that it was deemed fit to publish is chilling”. He denounces in particular the last line: “Linger for a moment on that line: published in Britain’s leading communist newspaper; the newspaper for which Jeremy Corbyn wrote a column for several years before becoming leader of the Labour Party.” Even if the sentiments behind the letter were as “nauseating” as Rich claims them to be, why should Corbyn be associated with it and blamed for writing a column for the “Morning Star”? Don’t all reputable publications print letters with which the editors and columnists don’t agree? Moreover, a search of the Morning Star on-line archives reveals that Moira Gray’s letter was part of a correspondence; it was written in response to a “pro-Israel” letter which was also printed by the Morning Star.

According to Rich, Moira Gray’s letter represents the climax of his case against the British left: “The attitudes and the political logic that lead to it are no longer surprising. It is an extreme example of a way of thinking about Jews, Israel and Zionism that is all too common across the left. These attitudes, this way of thinking, are the reasons for the left’s Jewish problem”. So let’s follow his instructions and linger for a moment, not just on the last line he quotes, but on the letter as a whole. It is confused, badly-expressed and inaccurate. By “an Italian partisan”, Moira Gray probably means Primo Levi, who survived a year in Auschwitz, not Dachau. He did not leave a note before his suicide in 1987; the line cited seems to be a distorted recollection of his famous words in “The Drowned and the Saved”: “the saved of the Lager were not the best….the best all died”. It is absurd to see such an incoherent letter as in some way representative of the British Left, even in an extreme form. Nonetheless, viewed in context, are the sentiments behind the letter, under all its incoherence, really as “nauseating” as Rich claims?

The debate began with a letter of June 3, 2002, in which John Branson, recalling a visit to Auschwitz in 1951, compared “the nazi policy of punishing a whole people” with the current brutal suppression of the Second Intifada (including Operation Defensive Shield, in March-April 2002), in which Ariel Sharon had “set about destroying the whole Palestinian people in the name of an anti-terrorist war. I hope that the millions of good people around the world will act in time to stop this madman”. On June 29, the Morning Star published a “pro-Israel” letter in reply by Toby Levitas, blaming the situation on the Palestinians and beginning: “John Branson’s letter is an affront to the millions who were murdered by the nazis”. Moira Gray’s whole third paragraph is: “How dare Toby Levitas talk about affront to the nazi victims (M Star, June 29)? Israel, and all that Israel has done and is doing, is an affront to all those millions who fought and died fighting fascism before, during and after the war against fascism. It is an affront to the 28 million Soviet people killed in battle, in concentration camps and defending their country from the invaders and to our country's part in the struggle.” In effect, the meaning is: “the millions who fought and died in the battle against fascism gave their lives in a struggle which liberated European Jews, the paradigmatic victims of fascism. The atrocities committed by the Jewish State are an affront to the memory of these millions of anti-fascist fighters.”

I do not find this sentiment “nauseating”; nor should Rich, since it follows on directly from his own “political logic”. He argues repeatedly in Chapter Six that “the Holocaust provided the moral justification for the creation of Israel”. Many will disagree with this premise, but, if we accept it, surely it follows directly that Israel has a moral duty not to defame the memory not only of the millions of victims of the Holocaust, but of the millions who fought and died in the struggle against fascism. Of course Moira Gray should not have identified Israel’s immoral actions with “Jews” in general. But on May 6, 2002, the British Jewish communal organisations had manipulated the Jewish community into attending an Israel Solidarity Rally in Trafalgar Square. The rally -- billed as “non-political”, but including Netanyahu as one of the platform speakers -- was funded by the United Jewish Israel Appeal, with “cross-communal involvement”. The event was very well-organised, with coachloads brought to London from all over the country. 30,000 British Jews, a tenth of the entire British Jewish community, attended. Most of those present probably did not support Ariel Sharon and Operation Defensive Shield (even if they did not speak out against them), but succumbed to deception and tribal pressure. But the community leaders deliberately created the false public impression that the whole British Jewish community endorsed Israel’s atrocities. In such circumstances, is a community leader like Rich justified in reacting with complete shock and condemnation to a misquotation, written two months later by a veteran Communist (who lost two brothers fighting fascism in Spain, while “another brother was torpedoed at sea four years later”, as she writes in her letter), incoherent with outrage: “the good Jews were all killed in the concentration camps”? Moreover, Rich himself encourages the conflation between Israel and Jews, implying, for instance, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitic because Jewish identity is so much bound up with Israel that anti-Zionism attacks the roots of Jewish selfhood: “the idea that Israel shouldn’t exist or that Zionism – the political movement that created Israel – was a racist, colonial endeavour rather than a legitimate expression of Jewish nationhood, cuts to the heart of British Jews’ sense of who they are.”

Amid all Rich’s misrepresentations and guilt-by-association smears, there are some valid criticisms of the tactics of the Palestinian solidarity movement (though I disagree with his implication that these are anti-Semitic). The author cites useful comments made (during a 2010 interview that Rich conducted with him) by the Labour MP Richard Burden, an anti-Zionist in his New Left student days in the 1970s, but now a supporter of the two state solution: “analysing the conflict through a theoretic analysis of Zionism, or trying to undermine Israel by alleging Nazi/Zionist collaboration, are blind alleys that do nothing practical for the Palestinians.”

The book includes constructive criticisms of the Palestinian solidarity movement’s ambiguities on the subject of one or two states and about the troubling recent tendency to see Israel as only a “settler-colonial” state and to deny that Israeli Jews have national rights. Rich pertinently criticises the Palestinian solidarity movement’s support for “one secular democratic state” in the 1960s-‘80s. His history of the New Left during this period is on the whole interesting and readable; most of the extracts from his academic thesis have been well-digested (an exception is an over-long excursus in Chapter 2 about the Young Liberals during the 1960s-‘70s). However, he never acknowledges that the Palestinian solidarity movement has moved on since the 1960s-‘80s, even though at present – as any prospects of an end to the Occupation and the attainment of a two state solution seem remote – it has shown a tendency to regress; according to Rich, it has simply stayed the same. The book ends with a proposal of dialogue and reconciliation: “It is not contradictory to accept that Zionism was a genuine Jewish movement for freedom and a response to European anti-Semitism while also critiquing the process by which Israel was created and seeking to redress wrongs suffered by Palestinians….it’s not too late to bring this relationship back to health.”

The aspects of early Zionism mentioned at the beginning of this passage could surely be accepted by the Left. Rich omits any mention of the Nakba till here, four sentences before the end of the book – but it shows how much attitudes have changed in the Jewish community that he mentions it at all.

A large percentage of the British Jewish community, as the author points out, supports a two state solution and opposes expansion of West Bank settlements. The British Left certainly needs to reach out towards the Jewish community (and Corbyn’s meeting with the Board of Deputies shows that he is doing just that). But dialogue is a two-way process. Jewish community leaders like Rich also need to reach out to the British Left, above all by dropping the dishonest and unsubstantiated accusations and guilt-by-association smears that not only drown out the positive aspects of this book but have also, to a large extent, created the current rift between the Jewish community and the left – particularly the Labour Party - that Rich disingenuously claims to be investigating.