Hijacking Victimhood and Demonizing Dissent: 

The Post 2014 Gaza Bombing Anti-Semitism Moral Panic – a Short History

By Gavin Lewis

In the summer of 2014 Israel bombed Gaza.  Of the resulting dead, it was reported that 495 (Washington Post, Al Jazeera) rising to 551 (BBC, Huffington Post) were children.   The subsequent UN report that referred to the likelihood of war crimes was initially prolifically cited in the New York Times and elsewhere. “The report said “the scale of the devastation was unprecedented” in Gaza, tallying more than 6,000 airstrikes, 14,500 tank shells and 45,000 artillery shells unleashed between July 7 and Aug. 26…Of the death toll of 2,252 Palestinians, the report said 65 percent were civilians”.

In the aftermath of the bombing and the reporting on it, two things happened.  One was that the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) which campaigns “to end international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law,” increased recruitment, became further highly energised and motivated across the world.   Concerns about this democratic activism were openly articulated in the corporate media “Israeli ministers describe BDS as a “strategic threat” to the status quo, and even the US now warns that Israel faces international isolation” (Guardian).  The second thing that happened was in reaction, a discourse began to take shape in the corporate media suggesting supposedly that the world’s real victims were in fact Israel and its supporters, among affluent, western, middle-class, White ethnic Jewish groups.  Indicative of this, the ‘Anglo-Jewish’ Campaign Against Anti-Semitism (CAA) was founded during the final month of Israel’s 2014 bombardment of Gaza, claiming victim status, while simultaneously Israel continued to kill Gaza’s children and civilians.  It gained charitable incorporated status the following year in October 2015.  Apparently anti-Semitism was to be the ‘real’ prioritised problem, and it was claimed to be rife.  

In Britain the campaign strategy of this moral panic, in part focused on ‘soft targets’ among those critical of Israel – activists Black women-of-colour Malia Bouattia, Jackie Walker and Naz Shah MP had the label anti-semitism hurled at their names in numerous headlines with devastating personal results.  Walker lost her campaign positions and Shah – in order to save her parliamentary career – felt obliged to apologise for a previous mockery of Israel in which she had re-tweeted a Joke by the Jewish Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein about relocating Israel to the USA.  By the time of her farewell appearance as President of the National Union of Students Malia Bouattia was emotional about her McCarthyite ordeal and as lengthy video footage of her speech amply demonstrates reduced to tears.  The initial phase of the moral panic though, predominantly functioned to establish a media narrative in which anti-semitism in the broader social world was supposedly to be regarded as the dominant problem of our society.

In apparent support of this strategy Pro-Israel pressure groups began to bombard media organisations with supposed statistics of the ‘anti-semitism crisis.’   Few news outlets were willing to subject the claims to the scrutiny of Israel’s Jewish critics and writers.  Richard Kuper of ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians’ writing on the ‘Free Speech on Israel’ website argued “The total number of hate crimes (of all sorts) recorded by the police in 2014-5 was over 52,000. This moral panic is based on just 1%.” Jewish writer Jonathan Cook questioned the legitimacy of the source, and the categorisation of individual cases, “the figures showing a rise in attacks were compiled by the Community Security Trust, a Zionist organisation that has a record of dubious political activity… Although its report makes great play of more than 1,000 recorded “attacks”, very few of them – 84 to be precise – involved a physical assault. The great majority were classified as “harassment”, a broad category that could include remarks against Israel”

The figures for anti-semitism also include reports of Muslims disputing with Jews – a model that is largely adopted in the media too now. Yet previously, conflicts in the North of Ireland and on the UK mainland between Catholics and Protestants were by contrast, defined as ‘sectarian’.   

Within a year of the Gaza bombing, veteran actor and Jewish celebrity Pro-Israel advocate Maureen Lipman was wheeled out to give credence to these numbers.  Commenting in support of the notion of a supposed broad UK anti-semitism phenomenon and at the high point of the US ‘Black Lives Matter’ crisis, Lipman said “it’s crossed my mind that it’s time to have a look around for another place to live. I’ve thought about going to New York, I’ve thought about going to Israel.”  Again no news outlet was willing to draw attention to the obvious hypocrisy of Lipman advocating a move to New York, to somehow claim to the local parents of Eric Garner – killed in a police stranglehold – that she was the real victim.  For the short-term purposes of theatrically dramatising the moral panic, Lipman was willing to complain of the supposed racially insensitive lack of solidarity of her countrymen and women, while being willing to turn a blind eye to the US Black human rights crisis, the Apartheid suffering of Palestinians and racism inflicted on Black Jews in Israel.  Ms Lipman is still living and campaigning in the UK.

Nor has this anti-semitism moral panic made much sense in terms of Britain’s demographics.  Allowing for emigration to Israel and immigration from France, the White ethnic Jewish-British population fluctuates up to and above the 250,000 figure out of a population of just over 65.5 million therefore representing proportions around 0.4%+  – most of whom are indistinguishable from the rest of the white population and hard to target.  The various Black and Asian people in Britain are 10% of the population.  Those who self-define as ‘Mixed’ are 2% of the population making a total of 12%.  So you have ethnicities that iconographically are far more obvious targets of racism, and who in terms of availability are approximately 24-1 or even up to 29-1 the number of potential White Jewish victims.  And, who also suffer considerable structural racism that leaves them ghettoised in the lower class/income groups.  Yet continuously, ongoing media narratives of victimhood are overtly being inverted and distorted by the forces of class, economic and White Privilege, which – in a circular argument – the anti-semitism moral panic manipulatively demands that we ignore as ‘Jewish conspiracy smears’. 

Unsurprisingly, despite the febrile prioritisation of the anti-semitism moral panic in the corporate media it’s been hard to find reports of a genuine high profile criminal conviction or even prosecution.  Nor is it easy to find one reported death or injury or even verified proven assault.  Nor, unlike the scandal of apparent Windrush Caribbean-British expulsions, find incidents of one Jewish deportation.  Nor by contrast was there an equivalent Jewish phenomenon to that of disproportionate Black deaths at the hands of the police, such as Mark Duggan, Jermaine Baker, Roshan Charles and more.  Race riots provoked by Black deaths at arrest – such as the recent Roshan Charles death – are frequently buried by the a Pro-Israel corporate media along with more prolific manifestations of protest culture, such as anti-war demonstrations, health scandals, trade union activity and more, yet by comparison a protest of only just a number of hundred people protesting supposed anti-semitism in the Labour Party was splashed across the country.  The places of worship firebombed at Finsbury Park & Bishopbriggs were Muslim mosques.  The 82yr old murdered on his way home from worship was the Muslim Muhammad Saleem – his killer planted explosive devices at three further mosques.  A Sikh dentist Dr Sarandev Bhambra even suffered an attempted beheading at his local supermarket for being mistaken for a Muslim.  There has not been a Jewish equivalent of the case of 63yr-old Rastafarian Judah Adunbi who was tasered in the face by police apparently having made a traditional ‘Black people all look the same’ mistake at the point of arrest.  In contrast to the British Jewish experience even ‘sports celebrity’ did not stop the Black mentally ill former footballer Dalian Atkinson, dying at police hands.

The committed Pro-Israel zealot will attempt to dismiss this as ‘whataboutary’.  However, what it does demonstrate is that when it comes to racism you can cite ongoing social phenomena and even named victims.  By comparison when you examine media named instances of anti-semitism, you often find examples where a combination of the statements of victims themselves, police and/or judiciary, refute allegations made in media reports.

A story of an alleged anti-semitic attack on a synagogue in Stamford Hill, London was given great prominence across the corporate media.  

However…“Rabbi Maurice Davis said… ‘I’ve spoken to the patrol and looked at videos. It was depressing what happened but it definitely wasn’t anti-Semitic. There is no anti-Semitism or racism in this area.  ‘There was a party across the road, they are a nice family, I know them. They had a fight with a young man in the street who ran into the synagogue and took refuge in the toilet.  ‘He was Jewish but not a member of the synagogue. Some of the drunken partygoers tried to break in and attack him but they were beaten back with chairs. They smashed windows and threw all sorts of things.”* and 

“A spokesman for Scotland Yard said : ‘At this early stage, there is no suggestion that this was a far-right or extremist attack but rather the completely unacceptable actions of a drunken group.”*

(*These testimonies and police statements were excluded from Guardian reports)

Accounts of overturned and broken headstones at a Jewish cemetery were similarly splashed as an anti-semitic attack.  Yet buried at the bottom of reports… 

“Stephen Wilson, administrator of the North Manchester Jewish Cemetaries Trust, said he reported the vandalism to the police after being alerted by the cemetery’s ground staff. He said he was “dismayed” by the attacks but was not convinced the motive was antisemitism…our view is it’s just pure vandalism…It’s my guess—locals come over the wall, you always find drink cans (beer) over here, they’ve been in that frame of mind and they’ve done it for the sheer hell and fun of it”

The story of a ‘boy?’ (17yrs old) hospitalised in an incident at Bowker Vale Tram Stop, North Manchester, was widely headlined as an anti-semitic attack.  Reports first stated that full grown adults were responsible suggesting he was ‘set upon by a gang of men’.  This changed to ‘gang of three men’.  In later reports this became a ‘gang of three youths’. By the time it went to trial it was revealed to be two 17yr olds.  Actually it was the apparently injured party that had been in a numerically superior gang/group of four Jewish males – the accompanying three Jewish ‘men’ who were also in this confrontation were legally adults (two 18y olds and one 20yr old). 

“At trial, Judge Prowse noted that throwaway anti-Semitic remarks had been made but found that Fuerst and his friends had not been attacked because they were Jewish: they were just ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

 Ian Rushton, deputy chief crown prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service for the North West, said, We considered very carefully what each of the victims reported the two attackers saying during the incident, and we have studied the available CCTV. None of the victims reported that racist or religiously abusive language was used by the offenders and there is no clear evidence from the statement or CCTV to prove to the court that they demonstrated or were motivated by racial or religious hostility.” 

All of this begs the question if the Corporate Media had stronger cases than this to support its anti-semitism moral panic, why didn’t it present them?

Sadly simply detailing the blatant contradictions in reportage doesn’t do justice to the dramatic shifts in editorial standards, the smears, censorship and denial of the right-of-reply that has occurred over this period.  Certain types of language are now taboo both in newspaper articles and on letters pages.  ‘The terms ‘Settler,’ ‘White Settler’ ‘Colonialism/Colonist’ are among these absented words.  The ‘Israeli Apartheid’ documented by amongst many others, Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, President Jimmy Carter, UN Officials John Dugard and Richard Falk plus just about every social and legal expert investigative team that South Africa has sent to the middle-east, cannot be referred to.  Even the word ‘Apartheid’ does not get to be used in the context of Israel.  Unless the event is being smeared, the annual protest ‘Israel Apartheid Week’ faces a news blackout.  In 2004 the British student Tom Hurndall died after having been shot by the IDF.  While working as a human rights activist, he’d been attempting to shepherd Palestinian children out of the line of Israeli automatic gunfire when this happened.  In a telling example of lack of domestic national allegiance, and in deference to the Israel lobby, both his death and the prestigious annual memorial human rights lecture, given in his name are similarly now absented from media reference.  Those smeared as anti-semites for a critical position to Israel and/or questioning the moral panic are often routinely denied the right of reply.  The leftwing Jewish Voices for Labour attempted to have a letter with 650 supporting signatories critiquing ‘the witch-hunt’ published in the Guardian but experienced censorship.  Examples of White ethnic Jewish racism that might undermine the dominant victim narrative are similarly censored.  For example in 2016 UK Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’s championed applying the Tebbit-test to ethnic minorities while claiming White Western Jews pass.  This is a historically racist rhetorical strategy which argues that you can tell Black groups are not really British by their fondness for foreign sports teams.   In the model Mirvis was invoking, supposedly supporting the West Indies cricket team invalidates your Britishness, but as he argues it is no problem to give your allegiance to an oppressive White colonial foreign country which operates in the racist Rhodesia/Apartheid-South-Africa White settler tradition.  The entire corporate media with the exception of the rightwing Telegraph and Jewish Chronicle (the latter apparently obliged to publish all his statements) buried all reference to this story.  The fact that from the era of global Black liberation culture, the White colonial ideology of Zionism was for 16yrs officially defined as a form of racism by the UN, is similarly unrepeatable.  The media now also operates two different standards for referring to ‘anti-semitism’ and ‘racism’.  ‘Anti-semitism’ can be fielded as an unsubstantiated allegation or smear and be reported without problem.   By contrast in the media, Black Britons are habitually denied the right to use the term ‘racism’ as accusation or declaration, unless the term has been supported by police and/or court, and even then usage might not fit ‘editorial priorities’.

As the first phase of the ‘Jews are the real victims’ corporate media narrative risked a credibility implosion, the second and real weight of the anti-semitism moral panic began to further fall on those active organisations and individuals who were or could potentially be critical of Israel, unsurprisingly Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party have been the most directly targeted.  Corbyn’s election to the leadership and the championing of grassroots activism has – after the historically brief period of neoliberal entryism – in large part restored the traditional identity of the Labour Party.  This identity includes the overlapping campaign positions of anti-racism, anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism.  Labour’s social base had historically fought fascism in Spain, embraced Ghandi, the Freedom for Africa Movement, various independence/anti-Apartheid struggles, also demanded Britain be kept out of the Vietnam War, idolised Che Guevara, Mandela and US dissidents from Paul Robeson to Muhammad Ali.  Obviously, such a returning sensibility is a perceived direct threat to the powerful pro-colonial Israel lobby and careerist lobby-money hungry neoliberals with overlapping interests.

Significantly the McCarthyite abuse directed at the Labour Party has been part of a broader often global and indiscriminate phenomenon.  Along with Corbyn and the Labour Party, French Socialist Leader, Jean Luc Melenchon and his party has also been smeared as anti-semitic.  Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Jimmy Carter has been similarly tainted. The extent of the smears has provoked the Huffington Post article “Why ‘Anti-Semitism’ is the Most abused Term in Canada” supported by the exposé “Is Anti-Semitism really rampant at McGill?” (University).  International arts honours and a substantial human rights pedigree, has not saved award winning filmmaker, Palestinian rights supporter Ken Loach, from being smeared for unsubstantiated alleged Holocaust denial –  behaving true to form, the Guardian refused to publish his rebuttal article.   After Amnesty International refused to publicly debate with those who supported the exploitation of the occupied territories, they similarly found themselves on the wrong end of Guardian spin blatantly inversely headlined to their detriment “UK Jewish group calls Amnesty ‘disgraceful’ over cancelled debate.” 

Nor does actually being Jewish spare you from this treatment.  Also smeared as anti-semites have been members of ‘Jewish Voices for Peace,’ the academic Norman Finkelstein, Journalist Max Blumenthal, ‘Jews for Justice for Palestinians,’ Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi of ‘Free Speech on Israel,’ ‘Jewish Voices for Labour,’ activist Tony Greenstein and many more –  no doubt to soon be joined by anti-establishment Jewish group Jewdas that hosted Corbyn for Passover celebrations.  This is becoming known as the ‘wrong-sort-of-Jew’ smear.

The similar scattergun smearing of prominent Black figures follows a familiar pattern but here overtly built on racist double-standards.  Corbyn now joins Nelson Mandela smeared as “an enabler of anti-Semitism” (Israel national news).  It is no strain on search engines to find another Black Noble Prize winner Desmond Tutu regularly similarly treated, plus Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Jackie Walker, Malia Bouattia, and campaigner Marc Wadsworth- the latter a Black activist in the historic Stephen Lawrence racist killing case.  Also, because of a shared sense of oppression/solidarity with the Palestinians the entire ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement has often been included in smears.  In disputes between privileged middle-class White ethnic Western Jews and Black figures, the media enforces a logic, where Black people can be anti-semites but – even when they support White colonialism – White ethnic Jews can never be racists.  This means the media largely buries the entire history of the racial oppression of Black Jews in Israel.  Consequently, despite having full citizenship, the vote and Passport rights, no media outlet is willing to raise the issue of the justifiable fears of Black Britons regarding their safety in Apartheid Israel’s non-tourist areas.  Upon this racist double-standards template, disputes between White ethnic Jews and Muslim people-of-colour – who are also semites – are similarly automatically written up as anti-semitic rather than as ‘sectarian’.  All of which, demonstrates the level of White privilege backing up current smears by those claiming to be victims.  

Before reflecting on how the volume of the smears against Labour and some of the most volatile – and in some cases racist – incidents were generated, it’s worth addressing the specific accusation which had sufficient underlying foundation to really justify a response from the Labour Party.  In March 2018 Corbyn’s name and the term ‘anti-semitism ‘was heavily splashed in news outlet headlines.  It was revealed that Corbyn replied on Facebook to a complaint from an anti-capitalist artist who was having his street mural erased with the words “Why? You are in good company. Rockerfeller destroyed Diego Viera’s mural because it includes a picture of Lenin” (Corbyn’s spelling).  However, the representation of the ‘oppressive bankers’ in the cited mural, quite definitely fell into tradition of anti-semitic tropes of the Fagin/Der Stürmer illustrations type.  Corbyn offered and explanatory apology “I sincerely regret that I did not look more closely at the image I was commenting on, the contents of which are deeply disturbing and antisemitic,” “The defence of free speech cannot be used as a justification for the promotion of antisemitism in any form. That is a view I’ve always held.”  This apology was echoed in an official statement from the Labour Party,   “Jeremy was responding to concerns about the removal of public art on the grounds of freedom of speech,” “However, the mural was offensive, used antisemitic imagery, which has no place in our society, and it is right that it was removed.”  The artist, Mear One (Kalen Ockerman) originally claimed to be portraying actual historical figures “Rothschilds, Rockefellers, Morgans, the ruling class elite few” by the time the story had gone nuclear he was including “Aleister Crowley, Carnegie & Warburg”(presumably by including a infamous anti-semite like Crowley he was hoping to demonstrate that his criticism of elites goes across the board).  Mear One is not a Labour Party member or even a UK citizen.  Whether Mear One is anti-semitic or has poor judgement is difficult to ascertain and has little to do with the Labour Party.  Yet this incident – based simply upon a potential Facebook ‘misunderstanding’ by Corbyn – is supposedly the ‘best?’ accusation in the so-called ‘anti-semitism crisis,’ the moral panic has been able to level against the Labour Party.  Significantly this particular accusation falls into the overall pattern of anti-semitism smears made since 2016 against Labour that usually begin peaking every early spring.  This, positioning and presumption of Corbyn’s consequently weakened position, allows time for potential leadership challenges to then materialise later in the year.  Naz Shah’s past historic tweets repeatedly revisited in April 2016, were followed by Owen Smith challenging for the leadership only a year after the last leadership election.  In 2017-cycle Labour anti-semitism moral panic stories, were put into play as part of a supposed General Election ‘crisis-in-leadership’ panic that was then never borne out by the results.  In the 2018-cycle, this mural controversy was strategically splashed in the media in the months before the local elections despite the fact that as a story, it was 6 years old dating back to 2012.  If this apparently ‘saved-up for-a rainy-day’ piece of controversy had done its work and significantly damaged Labour at the local elections, would we have had another leadership challenge?  Perhaps the simultaneous media marketing of a proposed breakaway new £50mil funded neoliberal Party might have instead materialised?  

Much of the anti-semitism smears hurled at the Labour Party amount to little more unsubstantiated gossip about emails and social media postings by people who apparently object to Israeli colonial oppression and those who support it.  Significantly a lot of this material refers to Zionism rather than British Jews.   Also being reported as ‘abuse’ are the social media postings of those, the public are asked to believe are Labour Party members – this despite the fact that even many of those championing the moral panic admit the postings are anonymous.  In comparison, it is just as easy to find anonymous postings by people claiming to support Israel that use racist language to refer to Arabs and Muslims and, in a traditional ‘civilising the savage’ discourse, allege ethnic primitivism of those Israel has killed and displaced.  But once again reporting equivalency, seems deliberately, not an option the press has chosen.  

The actual individual incidents of supposed anti-semisim attributed to the Labour Party are similarly not particularly strong but that doesn’t stop them being repeated as an orthodoxy.  Ken Livingstone has been a traditional leftist Labour politician, one who was part of a vanguard generation who adopted inclusive LGBTQ, ethnic minority rights, rainbow coalition activism.  He had also a history of speaking out for the Palestinians which he understandably claimed made him a target.  Livingstone was subjected to a sustained campaign of media smears over comments he made about the history of Zionism in the Nazi era which he supported with historical sources, as did those who supported him.  As in the pattern of the many strategic media conflations mobilised  in the ‘abuse’ postings, Livingstone’s comments had not been about European Jews per se but about White colonial ideology of Zionism which given its history – for some time defined as a form racism by the UN – can justifiably be scrutinised.  Previously Livingstone was similarly smeared for anti-semitism during the era when overt media anti-gay bigotry was a norm, and following a long period when British tabloids routinely referring to gay men as perverts and paedophiles.  In this incident, he objected to the apparent homophobia of an uninvited Evening Standard journalist stalking a gay political event, who Livingstone condemned as acting “just like a concentration camp guard.” The reporter however invoked his Jewish identity as some sort of ‘get-out-of-jail-card’ for homophobia.  In subsequent media reports the issue of the alleged homophobia of the reporter was absented in headlines in favour of ‘Livingstone likens Jewish reporter to Nazi guard’.  Obviously gay men had also been persecuted by the Nazis but like Black people in other cited examples they end up in the disempowered disposable side of cynical media binaries.  In the current moral panic, based primarily on these two incidents and despite his pro-minorities pedigree Livingstone is listed as having a trajectory of anti-semitism.  Livingstone was subsequently controversially suspended – not for anti-semitism or even inaccurate statements about Zionism but – for the ambiguous ‘bringing the Party into disrepute’ charge.

The various abuses of Jewish Black-British former Labour activist and Momentum Vice-Chair Jackie Walker deserves – in particular given its 1984-ish revisionist qualities on the issue of slavery – substantial reconsideration as a case study.  Repeated attacks on Walker’s referencing of slavery as a Holocaust, peaked at a Labour Party Conference fringe anti-semitism training day event.  Walker was shouted down by members of the rightwing Pro-Israel ‘Jewish Labour Movement’ when asking “I came in here … and I was looking for information and I still haven’t heard a definition of anti-Semitism that I can work with … [shouting from audience] and in terms of Holocaust day, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust day was open to all people who experienced Holocaust … [shouting from audience] in practice, it’s not actually circulated and advertised as such.” The point Walker’s comment was raising, is that Holocaust Memorial Day takes as its over-centralising historical start date Nazi crimes, goes on to include Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, and departs from this timeline only to use the Armenian tragedy as means to discuss the origins of the term genocide.  What this means is that the Black/Indigenous victims of previous horrors of the era of White colonial Imperialism including its slavery, colonial African and Asian-sub-continent exterminations, to which Israel is justifiably negatively compared, are deliberately marginalised   Scandalously, amongst these exclusions are the long accepted colossal “sixty million and more” victims of the transatlantic slave trade cited by Toni Morrison and Paul Robeson and the 100 million listed as killed in the conquest of the Americas by David Stannard in ‘American Holocaust’ – 1992.  Also contrary to Pastor Martin Niemöller’s long established sentiment or litany of Nazi victims – ‘first they came for the socialists, then they came for the trade unionists’ – this construction of the Holocaust narrative has been followed by a practice of demanding that Jewish victims be specifically hierarchically privileged in remembrance which tends to fit the moral panics overall ‘real victims are in fact Israel and its supporters’ theme.  

The resulting smears of Walker rested on three practices.  Firstly there was a form of Black Holocaust denial that argued, that demands that Black Holocausts be equated with the European Holocaust and that Black deaths given equality with White ethnic deaths, was offensive to Jewish people.  This in particular was the sub-text of the infamous 29^th September 2016 interview with Jackie Walker by Ch4 News’s Cathy Newman, which followed a previous – multiple reported – accusation of possible racist Islamaphobia smears by the news presenter.  Given the understandable multi-cultural grassroots anger this tactic provoked among many news consumers, this narrative ‘equivalency for Black Holocausts offensive to Jews’ was after initially fuelling months of sensationalist headlines, largely dropped but not before it had begun to habitualise the smear of anti-semitism to Walker’s name.  Secondly despite Walker’s comments accurately being about slavery and the White colonial tradition being excluded from Holocaust Memorial Day, media accounts still repeatedly misleadingly damned her as supposedly “wrongly suggested Holocaust Memorial Day did not commemorate other genocides”. This of course is to selectively quote Holocaust Day and manipulatively prune, shape Walker’s analysis thereby entirely altering her position.  The other Holocausts listed after the primacy of Nazi European victims are, ‘Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur’.  These are all ‘establishment safe’ examples where people-of-colour and/or indigenous ethnic populations victimise each other (or follow a sort of civil war model).  Slavery and the entire White Western Imperialist tradition – of which Israel is a part – are absented from inclusion.  Ironically, the specifics of Walker’s arguments had been substantiated by her reference to “Jews (my ancestors too) were…financiers of the sugar and slave trade”  and “the African holocaust” so it is quite obvious what sort of omissions to Holocaust Day she is citing.  However, the third routine practice of smearing Walker, is now also that she has given ‘offence’ in referencing the very historical specificities that belie the second ‘wrongly suggested…,’ rhetorical tactic. 

Many news outlets actually refer to Walker’s ‘sugar and slave trade…African holocaust’ statements as a type of slur, offensive anti-semitic accusation or dubious ‘claim’ – thereby taking us further into the revisionist 1984-ish aspect of the moral panic.  Walker had supported her comments with reference to the numerous synagogues in the Caribbean.  Obviously too, the iconography of the leftover Jewish slave owning class in the Caribbean, has made it into Black popular culture and been exported globally.  This iconography exists in everything from early Desmond Decker music singles to mirror cracked reflections in Rastafarian ‘promised land’, ‘exile’ and ‘Zion’ tropes.  Apparently in order to reinforce the moral panic, we’re now forced into a bizarre alternative universe where we’re supposed to believe that the politicised Reggae of Bob Marley, the numerous other artists comprising his peer group, and the historical forces that produced them, never existed.  For those that find the evidence of recent historical popular culture insufficient, Jewish histories such as Rabbi Dr Marc Lee Raphael’s 1983 book Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History states on the issue of slavery, “in all the American colonies, whether French (Martinique), British, or Dutch, Jewish merchants frequently dominated.”  Similarly, to publicise his book The Jewish Slave, Rabbi Lody van de Kamp gave an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in which he pointed that even in the Dutch slave colonies alone “Jews controlled about 17 percent of the Caribbean trade.” There are also quite specific histories of localised practices that relate to Jewish participation in the slave economies of the Caribbean and Latin America (including as a by-product of the sugar/slave trade, a popular ‘Jewish History of Rum’).  Dr Ralph G Bennett described the situation in Brazil “Christian businessmen were jealous of the success of the Jews, particularly in the lucrative slave trade, and more than once petitioned the government to limit Jewish trading practice. The government refused to take action: the business generated by the Jews was too important to the economy of the colony to be hindered in any way.” In her column for the Jamaica Gleaner newspaper, University of the West Indies’ Professor Carolyn Cooper writes, “Jewish people played an undeniable role in plantation slavery in Jamaica” But the most damning aspect of this part of the attack against Walker, was that some of the news outlets that smeared her reference to Jewish participation in the slavery – to paraphrase – as supposedly ‘the vilest of anti-semitic smears’, also covered stories of Jewish correspondents tracking their genealogical roots in the old slave economies.  See – ‘Jewish Barbados  Tracking Down The Tribe in the Caribbean’ (Huffington Post) and ‘Seeking ghosts in Barbados’ (Jewish Chronicle). In the Jewish Chronicle article Harriet Green wrote “There’s a dark side to this…it is estimated 387,000 Africans were shipped to the island against their will. To be perfectly clear: the wealth of the island (and perhaps my forebears) was a direct result of appalling suffering. Obviously there is a big difference between the tolerance offered to White ethnic Harriet Green, by the Jewish Chronicle, and Walker’s experience.  Walker has been a high profile critic of Israel and has justifiably challenged the right of Israel supporters to a centralising exclusive use of the term ‘Holocaust’ and sadly – in terms of racist media cultural capital – as a Black Mixed-race Jewish woman has been treated as a soft strategic target.  As consequence of the smears, Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party first in May 2016 and again since October 2016 when she was also sacked from her position as Vice-Chair of Momentum.  She was not the only Black Labour activist to be smeared in the moral panic or to be strategically/cowardly abandoned as a ‘necessary casualty’ of it, by the conflicted Labour high command.

Labour has a number of leftover Blairites in its Parliamentary wing, plus a number of individuals who – contrary to the Party’s anti-colonial history – have apparently joined and reached prominent positions primarily to single issue champion Israel.  Consequently complicity with the right wing press in this moral panic has been a regularly stated problem for Labour.  This has been identified by Unite Union Leader Len McClusky, as part of regular attempts to bring down Corbyn.  The Jewish activist Naomi Wimborne-Idriss from ‘Free Speech on Israel’ and ‘Jewish Voices for Labour’ specifically critiqued the opposing Pro-Israel forces in the Party stating the adversarial Jewish Labour Movement would have “a bit more credibility” if it “didn’t spend so much of its time running to the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph with stories”.  Marc Wadsworth found himself apparently the only Black minority Labour member at the presentation of the ‘Shami Chakrabarti Inquiry into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the Labour Party’.  He was in the process of raising the issue of this lack of representation, when he spotted Labour MP Ruth Smeeth exchanging paperwork with a reporter from the Daily Telegraph, which has never been a Labour supporting paper.  Footage available on news sites shows him pointing this out and similar to others who’ve noted this dynamic, has him use the phrase “you can see who’s working hand in hand” but clarity is difficult because the sound is usually either poor on news sites or has apparently been faded in-and-out to favour Smeeth’s performative editorialising “how dare you” outrage.  Smeeth was quoted as accusing Wadsworth of “vile conspiracy theories about Jewish people.” Actually, former UK ambassador and current events blogger Craig Murray has cited the following as Wadworth’s enquiry statement “I saw that the Telegraph handed a copy of a press release to Ruth Smeeth MP so you can see who is working hand in hand. If you look around this room, how many African Caribbean and Asian people are there? We need to get our house in order.”

In the context of Labour member Wadsworth’s apparent Black ethnic isolation at the venue, it bears repeating that for every Ruth Smeeth in the room and those supporting her, there should have been at least twenty-four Marc Wadsworths.  Also the Telegraph Newspaper is managed by Telegraph Group Limited owned by the Barclay brothers who are the children of Scottish Catholic parents.  The previous owner was Conrad Black who converted from Protestantism to Catholicism.  So even if Wadsworth had known Smeeth to be Jewish – which he categorically denies – it can hardly be conceived that he’d made a Jewish conspiracy accusation.  Just why Smeeth was working with a newspaper that has an historically entrenched policy of favouring the Labour Party’s Conservative enemies is not a question she has yet answered, nor has the rest of the corporate media chose to put it to her.  Marc Wadwsorth was though, suspended from the Labour Party, not for anti-semitism but like others for ‘disrepute’ or conduct “prejudicial … or in any way grossly detrimental to the party”.

The level of media racial partisanship that helped bring this about was quite blatant.  In an alternate world of equitable media coverage the interpretation or spin, of events that occurred at the Chakrabarti ‘anti-semitism/racism’ report launch and after, could just as easily gone the other way.  Smeeth could have been rightly condemned for projecting despicable characteristics onto the supposed open text of Wadsworth’s Black ethnic identity.  In such a fairer universe there might have been equivalently negative media editorialising of Smeeth when she attended the Wordsworth disciplinary hearing flanked by an elite, all White group of politicians.  When Smeeth’s White professional political colleagues spun it, (t)hat it was necessary to accompany her through a protest is an appalling state of affairs”, it could have equally been commented that perhaps the ‘dangerous Black ethnic’ trope was being invoked.  Wadsworth’s supporters included Herman Ouseley, the Black Peer and former Chair of ‘The Commission of Racial Equality’, Professor Paul Gilroy author of many works including the ‘Black Atlantic’ (1993), Dr Iqbal Scram, Peter Herbert (Society of Black Lawyers) the Black Feminist former Lambeth Council Leader Linda Bellos, Jackie Walker, and the Black-British Guardian writer Gary Younge.

By contrast, the actual media representational strategies included  describing Smeeth as leaving the Chakrabarti report launch, “in tears” and referring to Wadsworth as just “a man handing out leaflets linked to Momentum, an activist group that supports Mr Corbyn” – see the Independent and this referencing of was replicated elsewhere – see the Guardian.  In reality Wadsworth had been a human rights activist on the Stephen Lawrence racist murder case.  Before they adopted the practice of implying he was just some extremist nobody who’d walked in off the street with possible anti-semitic tendencies, the Independent had previously interviewed him at least three times in the context of his campaigning duties. Before he was ‘un-historied’ in certain Guardian ‘Pro-Smeeth’ articles Wadsworth’s Anti-Racist Alliance/Stephen Lawrence activism was referenced in a number of Guardian stories.  Wadsworth had even published articles with the Guardian on numerous occasions. He is also mentioned in old BBC coverage of the Lawrence case and features in their 2018 three part retrospective “Stephen: The Murder That Changed A Nation”  All of which in overt McCarthyite tactics has been absented from media coverage where it might negatively impact on Smeeth’s credibility.  

Also absented from media coverage along with Wadsworth’s anti-racist credentials, was details of Smeeth’s background and structural allegiances, which might have thrown doubt upon her behaviour.  The Electronic Intifada writer Asa Winstanley has done his best to rectify this apparent censorship.  According to Winstanley, “Smeeth was part of a Labour Friends of Israel delegation to Israel”.   Smeeth has been a Director of “BICOM, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre. There she was reportedly charged with strengthening the group’s relations with the “Foreign Office, party leaders, think-tanks and academia.”  Smeeth has received financial donations from members of the BICOM board, who for reasons of their own, chose to do so in their guise as directors of other companies. She is part of the Community Security Trust,’ who Jonathan Cook et al critiqued for producing ‘Zionist’ partisan abuse figures – Winstanley suggests the CST has links to Israel’s Mossad spy agency.  Smeeth was at the forefront of the ‘abusive’ postings/email/tweets moral panic – which raises the question, given for example, the huge number of so called ‘abusive’ communications, she claims to have received, how could she have possibly substantiated them?  Significantly, Marc Wadsworth has joined her claims of “25,000 incidents of ‘abuse’ since the Chakrabarti report launch”  

 

This scrutiny free ride, given to Israel supporters doesn’t stop with Smeeth.  One name comes up repeatedly in anti-semitism smears that of Jeremy Newmark of the rightwing Pro-Israel ‘Jewish Labour Movement’.  In an overwhelming number of the Post-2014-Gaza bombing smears Newmark features as a sort of rent-a-quote or rent-an-allegation participant – he was for example, prominent in the attacks on Naz Shah and Ken Livingstone.  In 2013 Newmark gave evidence in the Fraser v UCU (University College Union) case in which the issue of anti-semitism was raised.  Judge Anthony Snelson said Mr Newmark’s evidence had been “false, preposterous, extraordinarily arrogant and disturbing”.  In detail…“We regret to say that we have rejected as untrue the evidence of (Ms Ashworth) and Mr Newmark concerning the incident at the 2008 Congress… Evidence given to us about booing, jeering and harassing of Jewish speakers at Congress debates was also false, as truthful witnesses on the Claimant’s side accepted. One painfully ill-judged example of playing to the gallery was Mr Newmark’s preposterous claim, in answer to the suggestion in cross- examination that he had attempted to push his way into the 2008 meeting, that a ‘pushy Jew’ stereotype was being applied to him. Concluding “The opinions of witnesses were not, of course, our concern …One exception was a remark of Mr Newmark in the context of the academic boycott controversy in 2007 that the union was ‘no longer a fit arena for free speech,’ a comment which we found not only extraordinarily arrogant but also disturbing.” Labour’s in-house Tribune magazine expressed surprise that despite this public judicial condemnation of Newmark’s integrity, he was allowed to speak against Livingstone at his Labour complaint hearing.  In February 2018 the Jewish Chronicle – which had given Newmark nothing but years of favourable coverage – ran an article headlined “Revealed: JLC audit reports Jeremy Newmark deceived it out of thousands of pounds” (JLC – Jewish Leadership council).  The article stated “he deceived the organisation out of tens of thousands of pounds and misled charities about the cost of projects he worked on.”  This coverage was largely buried by the rest of the corporate media and despite the question marks about Newmark’s honesty there was no revisiting of the anti-semitism smears with which he had been involved. 

Another figure who has largely escaped mainstream media scrutiny has been Ella Rose also of the Pro-Israel Jewish Labour Movement.  Rose was caught on camera stating that other Labour Party members should ‘die in a hole’ and that she violently ‘could take’ Jackie Walker.  This behaviour was never treated in the same way as Walker’s similarly covertly filmed statements on slavery as ‘Holocaust’ that gained her negative publicity and a ‘disrepute’ suspension. More significantly Rose became a director of the Jewish Labour Movement after having worked as at the Israeli Embassy as “public affairs officer between September 2015 and August 2016…Press reports in July announcing Rose’s appointment did not disclose the Israeli embassy link, mentioning only her previous position as president of the Union of Jewish Students”  (Rose’s fast-tracking in the Labour Party has therefore aroused suspicions of entryism).  Footage of Rose became available because she featured in the four part Al Jazeera undercover documentary ‘The Lobby’. This revealed that the Israeli Embassy in the UK was funding and training activists to subvert the domestic British political process, in particular where it was critical of Israeli Apartheid.  The embassy also had a hit-list of UK politicians who it wanted to break or discredit.  Astonishingly the Al Jazeera revelations have largely been buried by the UK media and allowed no impact on the anti-semitism moral panic or critical revisiting of it.  However even the corporate media had to admit that as a result of the exposé Israeli Embassy official Shai Masot had been forced to leave the country. As part of the Al Jazeera undercover reporting Rose was caught on film admitting “We work with Shai, we know him very well”. Which raises the question, wouldn’t this be treated as a scandal if the Russian Embassy was using British surrogates to interfere in domestic politics? 

It’s worth noting that the anti-semitism moral panic has taken place without any of the national newspapers having signed up to IMPRESS the organisation set up by Royal Charter for Press regulation as demanded by the Leveson Enquiry.  The FT, the Guardian and Independent have opted out and not even signed up to the ‘suspect’ industry self-regulatory body IPSO.  Significantly the practices of the neoliberal former progressive Press have been among the worst culprits in the moral panic – and sadly there is only space to scratch the surface of those here.  As far as can be ascertained, the Independent doesn’t respond to complaints of racist reporting double-standards. It has handed over most of its anti-semitism coverage to Benjamin Kentish whose output has been prolific.  He has also regularly used the variants of ‘coup d’etat’ type language including ‘ousting,’ to smear grassroots members who’ve voted out neoliberals who have a history of being hospitable to powerful ‘Big Money’ financial lobbying.  Kentish also occasionally writes for http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com .  Outside of the Jewish Chronicle no one has been as prolific in writing articles about supposed anti-semitism as the Guardian writer/editor-of-opinion Jonathan Freedland (who also occasionally writes for Israel’s Haaretz).  Few search engines seem to be able to contain the volume of it.  Like Kentish’s work few of his cited examples feature legal conviction, even unsuccessful prosecution but rather the occasional ‘Labour dispute’ judgement.  Also, in contrast to his substantial published material evoking apparent anti-semitism, Freedland’s single figure pieces only occasionally touching on Windrush and Black deaths issues, are undeniably disproportionately small and an inversion of genuine social experience and demographic reality.  As editor of opinion perhaps some of the more blatant headline manipulations and denials of the right of reply can be also attributed to him?  In terms of rhetorical tactics there appears little to which he won’t stoop.  He was responsible for the Ken Loach Holocaust denial smear.  Norman Finkelstein, similarly to Loach, made the following complaint.  (W)hen my book, The Holocaust Industry, came out in 2000, Freedland wrote that I was ‘closer to the people who created the Holocaust than to those who suffered in it’… he didn’t find it inappropriate to suggest that I resembled the Nazis who gassed my family. Nor does the Cultural Appropriation of racist victimisation seem beyond Freedland.  There is an age old expression of condescending White exemption for racism against Black people – so old that it has actually changed labelling along with the generations.  It used to be ‘I’m not racist some of my best friends are coloured,’ changed to ‘not racist some of my best friends are Negro’.  Evolved over time to ‘not racist some of my best friends are Black’ and now finally in the US ‘best friends are African-American’.  Freedland took this expression and made it appear for new younger readers to have been uniquely a Jewish experience and phrase. This highly racially offensive tactic of Cultural Appropriation was something he had in common with Jeremy Newmark who took the ancient ‘Uppity N*gg*r’ slur and changed it for the purposes of the current moral panic into ‘Pushy Jew’  (despite bizarrely, in reality ‘the timid Jew’ being a historical racist stereotype).  Newmark was also alleged to have referred to Jackie Walker as a ‘Court Jew’ – an appropriation of Malcolm X’s ‘House Negro/House Slave’ label (a cruelly ironic piece of appropriation given Malcolm’s anti-semitism smearing in parts of the Pro-Israel media).  

Given the strong smell of co-ordinated soundbites and Public Relations strategies to the moral panic it’s worth briefly reflecting on the current economic logic of the neoliberal media.  With few exceptions, there is no financial support in our era for genuine investigative Hard News.  This begs the question just who is funding the trawling into years of social media postings by supposedly thousands of Labour supporters? In place of genuine sourced researched Hard News, much of the material in the corporate media is furnished to journalists in the form of Press Releases from sites of vested interest, written in the news outlets house-style, to which reporters are simply invited to lazily sign their names, or it is provided by partisan on-message bloggers assimilated into newsites.  So how much of this moral panic can be written off as just blatant political advertising copy?  Falling sales has meant the Independent lost its hardcopy some time ago.  The Independent – having no sales revenue – is therefore totally in thrall to the whims of its advertisers and financial donors. Each year Guardian sales fall against even the previous year’s low levels.   Every story on the Guardian webpages now features a request for a financial donation.  Is it possible therefore to rule out Israeli financial interventions in our media, given that Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu similarly gatecrashed the summit of the Economic Community of West African States with oversees funding offers of $1bn provisional as he put it on “your support in rejecting anti-Israel bias at the United Nations and in bodies such as the general assembly, UNESCO and the Human Rights Council”. At the time of writing – after the 21 May 2018 body count – Israel has killed a further 112 unarmed Palestinians (13 of whom were children) and injured 13,190.  If not for the anti-semitism moral panic, is it not possible someone on the Left or as policy at the Labour Party, would have called for an official boycott?   

Whatever the extent of Israel’s intervention in our media, the economic reality is that the anti-semitism moral panic is indicative of a British Press that in its service to institutional power and ‘Big Money’ has largely lost its relationship with the general public.  The two newspapers with the highest national sales are only achieving numbers of 1,5 ml  and 1,3ml – out of a population of 65.4mil of which 50ml+ are adults – and these customer demographics are aging and arguably simply less engaged with internet news sources.  Over the last two decades we’ve had a media that has homogenously become anti-worker, uncritically championed a return to 19^th C Racist-Imperialism as foreign policy.  It has done the public relations for politicians with complicity in torture.  And now apparently seems willing to do the McCarthyite donkey work for a foreign Apartheid regime.  To all extents and purposes, the UK Public Sphere no longer exists.

Afterword – Slavery etc

It’s worth clarifying that there would be no point mentioning or extrapolating on Jackie Walker’s argument about Jewish entrepreneurs and the slave trade if it was to simply feed a prejudice about innate negative Jewish characteristics – that would be anti-semitism.  However the issue of absented Black Holocausts and the White colonial tradition is important.  Nor should Black people ever be in a position where they are denied the right to articulate the specifics of their history of racial oppression.  There is also the issue of how allegations of anti-semitism are being used to block off the Left and grassroots movements from their traditional positions of social-solidarity with the weak and from making criticisms of power.  Historically, a traditional part of Leftist-type analysis has been critiques of exploitation based upon class, economic, mercantile, gender, colonial, and White racial based privilege.  It’s now being suggested that certain individuals or large groups of people, when found to be active in these exploitative elites are to be allowed to avoid the usual censure, by invoking religious fundamentalist notions of identity.  In recent years we’ve had a situation where you can critique slavery but not when it includes Jewish participation; you can critique White colonialism but not when it includes Israel; you can critique Apartheid but also not when it includes Israel; you can critique the influence of ‘Big Money’ on government but not when it includes Goldman Sachs; you can critique homophobia but not when a Jewish reporter is involved – a list to which racist Cultural Appropriation will no doubt soon be added. Obviously, at a time when genuine Jewish anti-racists are being smeared as anti-semites, this McCarthyism deserves to be fought.  

¹ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/the-un-says-7-in-10-palestinians-killed-in-gaza-were-civilians-israel-disagrees/2014/08/29/44edc598-2faa-11e4-9b98-848790384093_story.html?utm_term=.716d77245594 

² https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/09/where-accountability-gaza-children-20149973438619725.html 

³ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-33223365 

⁴ https://www.huffingtonpost.com/marjorie-cohn/one-year-after-gaza-massa_b_7765448.html 

⁵ https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-report.html Ibid Huffington Post citation.

⁶ https://bdsmovement.net/  

⁷ https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-u-s-students-ramp-up-bds-after-gaza-war-1.5259741 & https://www.timesofisrael.com/apartheid-week-really-does-threaten-israel-some-experts-warn/ &  https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/gaza-attack-pushed-us-electrical-workers-union-back-israel-boycott 

⁸ https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/28/gaza-crisis-boycotts-israel-impunity-apartheid 

⁹ Sarah K. Cardaun, (19 Jun 2015). Countering Contemporary Antisemitism in Britain: Government and Civil Society Responses between Universalism and Particularism. Brill Publishers. p. 152.

& see also https://electronicintifada.net/content/campaign-against-antisemitism-campaign-against-palestinians/19916 

¹0 Obviously the notion of relocating an Apartheid White Settler Society (Israel) to a larger former segregationist White Settler Society (USA) is steeped in irony for people-of-colour.  Finkelstein’s original webpage joke is  http://normanfinkelstein.com/2014/08/04/solution-for-israel-palestine-conflict%E2%80%8F/ Shah’s reference to it – see – https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-antisemitism-row-naz-shah-israel-map-norman-finkelstein-obscene-a7012461.html  

¹1  See Speech closing remarks… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZGKWJGLUc 

¹2 http://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/tag/ruth-smeeth/  

¹3 https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2015-02-09/guardian-editors-hypocrisy-on-anti-semitism/  

¹4 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/28/maureen-lipman-rise-antisemitic-attacks-leave-uk 

¹5 “There were 269,568 enumerated Jewish responses in total to the religion question in 2011”  http://www.jpr.org.uk/documents/Thinning_and_Thickening.Final1.pdf 

¹6 The 2011 census figure for British Jews 0.5% numbering 269,568 (this combines the figure from the England & Wales census with the latter published figures of Scotland).  It seems the percentage figure may have slightly fallen.  The UK population is now currently 65.64mil.  On these figures British Jews would be 0.41067641681901285 of the UK population.

¹7 http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160107125617/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_330610.pdf 

¹8 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-party-antisemitism-jeremy-corbyn-protest-parliament-square-israel-palestine-jewish-a8274996.html & https://news.sky.com/story/hundreds-of-anti-semitism-protesters-gather-to-tell-jeremy-corbyn-enough-is-enough-11305208 

¹9 http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/mar/22/police-investigate-london-synagogue-break-in

²0 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3006382/Drunken-mob-20-thugs-shouted-kill-Jews-stormed-synagogue-north-London-smashing-windows-attacking-worshippers-inside.html 

²1 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jewish-cemetery-vandalised-yobs-sickening-8007711 

²2 The Bury Times is one of the few Newspapers whose websites have not deleted/amended this original description. http://www.burytimes.co.uk/news/13709583.Teenager_suffers_brain_injuries_in_anti_Semitic_tram_stop_attack/

²3 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/200541

²4 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/anti-semitic-attack-nhs-saved-10013768

²5 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/pictured-bowker-vale-station-attack-10197925

²6 http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/pictured-bowker-vale-station-attack-10197925 & Initial responses to the incident by family and friends were also deleted by the Jewish Chronicle but are still available on the website of news outlet haaretz.  “‘This was not an anti-Semitic attack’, a family friend of Fuerst’s was reported as saying. ‘They might have said something about him being Jewish—but it all started because of drugs. He smokes a lot of weed.’ Fuerst’s father, Rabbi Michael Fuerst, told the JC in an exclusive interview that he would not be surprised if the attack on Saturday night came after a disagreement over cannabis. ‘He is on the fringes of society and that is what kids on the fringe do’, Rabbi Fuerst said. ‘He was not involved in hard drugs—he’s not any different to any other middle classes’.” http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/news/1.675134 

²7 http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/media/guardian-denies-space-to-650-labour-party-members-challenging-hostile-media-coverage/ 

²8 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/12189152/Minorities-must-pass-the-Norman-Tebbit-test-Chief-Rabbi.html & https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/mirvis-pass-tebbit-test-1.61394

²9 Some revisionist histories try and suggest that UN resolution 3379 which declared that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” can be attributed to the former Soviet Union.  But that of course is to attempt to rob Black and Arab nations of agency.  As Mondoweiss points out “The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.” http://mondoweiss.net/2015/11/resolution-declared-zionism/  See also – http://www.ameu.org/Resources-(1)/Why-DID-the-United-Nations-Resolve-that-Zionism-Is.aspx 

³0 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/french-left-hits-back-anti-semitism-slurs

³1 See “he has displayed anti-Semitism during much of his presidential and post presidential career” &  “Carters anti-Jewish bigotry”. http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/jimmy-carter-accuses-trump-and-gop-of-racism-ignores-his-own-bigotry/2016/06/08/  “Jewish-Americans will listen through gritted teeth, recalling their strong suspicion that Carter was an anti-Semite.” https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/jimmy-carter-barack-obama-and-the-jews-121367

³2 https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/yves-engler/anti-semitism-overused-in-canada_b_9704280.html 

³3 https://canadatalksisraelpalestine.ca/2017/11/09/is-anti-semitism-rampant-at-mcgill-two-views-and-a-caution-about-the-words-we-use/  

³4  “Ken Loach – an artist so sensitive he is capable of making the film I, Daniel Blake – ends up lending a spurious legitimacy to Holocaust denial.” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/labour-denial-antisemitism-party-dark-place Loach’s rebuttal had to be resituated to the Jewish Voice for Labour site –  link here

http://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/antisemitism/ken-loach-responds-jonathan-freedland/  

³5 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/22/uk-jewish-group-calls-amnesty-disgraceful-over-cancelled-debate 

³6 https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-adl-slams-pro-bds-jewish-group-s-anti-semitic-new-campaign-1.5432354 

³7 https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Outrage-over-German-institutes-hosting-of-pro-HamasHezbollah-speaker-478591 & Many Jewish people claim that you are anti-Semitic… https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/headtohead/2015/03/transcript-norman-finkelstein-150331112143453.html 

³8 https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ppm5p9/journalist-max-blumenthal-on-the-perils-of-critiquing-the-state-of-israel-456 & http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/19836 

³9‘They’re Part of the Problem’ http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/academic-resigns-from-jews-for-justice-for-palestinians-theyre-part-of-the-problem/  

⁴0 http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/action-urged-jewish-activist-says-jlm-runs-the-daily-mail-telegraph/  

⁴1 https://beastrabban.wordpress.com/2018/03/09/secretary-of-jewish-voices-for-labour-libelled-as-anti-semite/  & https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/03/08/jewish-man-suspended-from-membership-of-labour-party-for-anti-semitism/  

⁴2 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/labour-expels-jewish-anti-zionist-tony-greenstein & https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/blog/jvl-statement-tony-greenstein-case/  

⁴3 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5575579/They-raised-beetroot-air-shouted-f-capitalism.html & https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/941269/Jewdas-Jeremy-Corbyn-anti-semitism-Labour-party-prayer-the-queen & http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-5572497/Jeremy-Corbyn-faces-backlash-Jewdas-event.html 

⁴4 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/14199

⁴5 https://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/africa/2011/01/2984.html

⁴6 “Muhammad Ali’s forgotten legacy of anti-Semitism” http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/213354 

⁴7 https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/facing-up-to-black-anti-semitism/ &  https://www.jta.org/1968/02/26/archive/adl-denounces-anti-semitic-memorial-in-harlem-school-for-malcolm-x 

⁴8 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/labour-apparatchiks-smear-black-activist-anti-semitism-witch-hunt

⁴9 Here Marc Wadsworth gives an interview about his contributions to the campaign strategy on the racist killing of Stephen Lawrence.   https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/how-the-press-ignored-the-lawrence-story-then-used-it-to-change-britain-6284645.html

⁵0https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/23/black-lives-matters-hypocritical-anti-semitism/ &  https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/why-did-black-american-activists-start-caring-about-palestine/496088/ &  https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/alan-dershowitz-intersectionality-is-a-code-word-for-anti-semitism & https://www.timesofisrael.com/black-lives-matter-platform-author-defends-israel-genocide-claim/  & https://www.timesofisrael.com/black-lives-matter-platform-author-defends-israel-genocide-claim/   

⁵1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43523445 & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitic-mural-mear-one-luciana-berger-east-end-a8271111.html & https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-criticised-by-labour-mp-for-appearing-to-defend-anti-semitic-painting_uk_5ab5280ee4b054d118e27934 & https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/03/23/labour-mps-demand-answers-jeremy-corbyn-support-antisemitic/  

⁵2 https://skwawkbox.org/2018/03/24/the-point-nobody-seems-to-be-making-re-corbyns-mearone-facebook-comment/comment-page-1/ & https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-criticised-after-backing-artist-behind-antisemitic-mural  

⁵3 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-criticised-after-backing-artist-behind-antisemitic-mural 

⁵4 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/mar/23/corbyn-criticised-after-backing-artist-behind-antisemitic-mural 

⁵5 https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mere-one-mural-east-london-politics-antisemitism-392209 

⁵6 http://barthsnotes.com/2018/03/26/a-note-on-mear-one-and-jeremy-corbyn/  

⁵7 This Feb 2017 Daily Telegraph article suggests that any anti-semitic attack in the country might in some way have been inspired by the Labour Party – See – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/01/anti-semitism-labour-party-helped-fuel-record-number-attacks/ 

⁵8‘Election 2017: Corbyn ‘failing to grasp anti-Semitism’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40119103 

⁵9https://electronicintifada.net/content/jeremy-corbyn-must-stop-pandering-labours-israel-lobby/23731 & http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-19844681/kalen-ockerman-mural-to-be-removed-from-brick-lane & http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/politics/jewish-protest-in-parliament-square-over-jeremy-corbyn-s-2012-support-for-brick-lane-anti-semitic-mural-artist-1-5452014 & http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43523445 

⁶0 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/07/new-political-party-break-mould-westminster-uk-brexit & https://www.ft.com/video/1d2a5a59-89b4-4b78-8e87-01ec552e24ee & https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/centrist-party_uk_5ace11e8e4b06a6aac8de29d & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-mps-centrist-political-party-john-mcdonnell-break-the-mould-westminster-jonathan-ashworth-a8295031.html 

⁶1 “We don’t actually know who is behind the antisemitic abuse on social media groups associated with the Labour party. We must unmask them” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/20/anonymity-social-media-labour-antisemitic-abuse 

⁶2 “Mr Livingstone has accused the Board of Deputies of British Jews of making the original complaint to try to silence his views on the Middle East and the need for “a viable Palestinian state” alongside Israel.” See ‘Livingstone not anti-semitic Judge tells hearing over mayors diatribe’ See – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2006/oct/05/localgovernment.london 

⁶3 “A year ago Livingstone, responding to a question from Vanessa Feltz on BBC Radio London, said: “Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism.” There is nothing whatsoever antisemitic about this. Francis Nicosia, the Raul Hilberg professor of Holocaust studies at Vermont University, wrote in his book Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany (p79) that: “Throughout the 1930s, as part of the regime’s determination to force Jews to leave Germany, there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews.” See link – supporting letter to Guardian. 

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/12/we-reject-the-call-for-labour-to-expel-ken-livingstone 

⁶4 “The Mayor’s office said the Standard had provoked Mr Livingstone by attending an event on Tuesday (to mark the 20th anniversary of the former minister Chris Smith coming out as gay) which it would not normally attend. “The Mayor took the Standard’s relatively unusual actions in this regard to be harassment of a predominantly lesbian and gay event,” it said.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/livingstone-likens-jewish-reporter-to-nazi-guard-10516.html & “Today the mayor defended his remarks, made on Tuesday night after a party marking the 20-year anniversary since Chris Smith became the first MP to come out as gay.  His office accused the Standard of “harassment of a predominantly lesbian and gay event”. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/feb/10/pressandpublishing.politicsandthemedia 

⁶5 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/livingstone-likens-jewish-reporter-to-nazi-guard-10516.html 

⁶6https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4797218,00.html & https://news.sky.com/story/livingstone-suspended-over-hitler-comments-10260829 & http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3563761/How-left-winger-Ken-Livingstone-called-Jewish-journalist-Nazi-war-criminal-told-property-developers-try-luck-Iran-hugged-sheikh-backed-suicide-bombings-Israeli-children.html 

⁶7 Walker is supported here by a number of leftwing Jews who also criticise the rightwing JLM. http://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/jewish-labour-activists-defence-jackie-walker/

⁶8 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/momentum-antisemitism-jackie-walker-labour-calls-resign-holocaust-memorial-day-a7335576.html 

⁶9 http://www.hmd.org.uk/genocides/holocaust 

⁷0 For example to take just a single African country 10 million were killed in the Belgian Congo (Congo Free State) according to Adam Hothschild in his book ‘King Leopold’s Ghost’ (1998).  Deaths of “10 million people over 10 years” in India as a result of the British putting down the uprisings of the late 1850s were cited by Amaresh Misra – ‘War of Civilisations: India AD 1857 ‘ (2007).  Taking a larger time frame Shashi Tharoor cites around “35 million” deaths in India from British rule in his book ‘An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India’ (2016).  

⁷1 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/08/fiction.tonimorrison 

⁷2 “You are responsible, and your forebears, for 60 million to 100 million black people dying in the slave ships and on the plantations”. Testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (12 June 1956), quoted in Paul Robeson Speaks

⁷3 ‘Apology offered to Corbyn amid controversy over Holocaust comment: The Labour leader was criticised by campaigners for not mentioning Jews in his memorial message’.  https://www.shropshirestar.com/news/uk-news/2018/01/26/apology-offered-to-corbyn-amid-controversy-over-holocaust-comments/  & https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/social-media-storm-breaks-over-corbyn-s-jew-free-holocaust-memorial-day-statement-1.457496 

⁷4 The accusations of Black Holocaust denial followed a previous racism-type accusation levelled at Newman that she was apparently ‘willing to incite racial hatred of Muslims’ with a ‘fake news’ story of being thrown out of a Muslim school.  CCTV footage revealed Newman had in reality gone to the wrong school address and had politely been offered directions by staff there. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-31443076 & https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/05/cathy-newman-mosque_n_6620026.html & https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/feb/06/channel-4-cathy-newman-apologises-mosque 

⁷5 https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/momentums-jackie-walker-accused-of-ant-semitic-remarks-told-to-leave-labour-by-union-leader_uk_57ed5d08e4b0e315f282e6b4 The Jewish Chronicle also wrote “wrongly criticising Holocaust Memorial Day for allegedly ignoring other genocides.” https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/ken-loach-says-jackie-walker-should-have-significant-role-in-labour-1.444431 

⁷6 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/anti-semitism-row-momentum-organiser-jackie-walker-readmitted-to-labour-party-following-racism-a7053966.html 

⁷7 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/26/corbyn-urged-to-show-leadership-in-tackling-antisemitism-within-labour-wes-streeting-labour

⁷8 claiming Jewish people were “financiers of the sugar and slave trade” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-43539774  & “claiming that Jews were “chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade” https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Labour-readmits-activist-suspended-for-blaming-slave-trade-on-Jews-455352

⁷9 “which is of course why there were so many early synagogues in the Caribbean.” https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/anti-semitism-row-momentum-organiser-jackie-walker-readmitted-to-labour-party-following-racism-a7053966.html

⁸0 Desmond Decker’s ‘The Israelites’ uses the term as a metaphor for bondage and servitude.  Mark Philips (GCSE Music) notes the fusion of Jamaican Dance Hall music with the Rastafarian religion (Jewish influenced). https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BDFb82vmI8AC&pg=PT106&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false 

⁸1 Jews and Judaism in the United States: A Documentary History (New York: Behrman House, 1983), 14, 23-25. cited on http://www.rense.com/general69/invo.htm 

⁸2 http://www.jta.org/2013/12/26/news-opinion/world/dutch-rabbi-confronts-jews-with-ancestors-complicity-in-slavery 

⁸3 https://forward.com/food/380053/the-secret-jewish-history-of-rum/

⁸4 http://sefarad.org/lm/010/bresil.html 

⁸5 http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120708/cleisure/cleisure3.html 

⁸6 Barbados has a slightly unusual history of slavery.  For a period ending 1706 Jews were restricted to one slave per individual.  So for a short period they were limited to indirect mercantile profiting from the slave economy.  However, slavery lasted another 128 years after the restrictions were lifted, finally being abolished in 1834. “Many expelled Jews headed for Barbados. But while under Dutch rule they were allowed to own slaves and sugar plantations, under English law a Jew could only own one slave each. A major sugar plantation required hundreds of slaves to operate, and so the Jews who arrived in Barbados made money the old-fashioned way: as merchants and traders.  Years later, in 1706, the restriction against Jews owning hundreds of slaves was lifted, and some Jews did end up owning their own sugar plantations. https://forward.com/food/380053/the-secret-jewish-history-of-rum/ 

⁸7(Story originally ran in 2009 then updated in 2011) https://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-stein-wellner/jewish-barbados-tracking_b_174758.html 

⁸8 https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/family/seeking-ghosts-in-barbados-1.447443 

⁸9 (This was 2017 so within a year of the highpoint of the smears on Walker) https://www.thejc.com/lifestyle/family/seeking-ghosts-in-barbados-1.447443

⁹0 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-36236332 

⁹1 (H)er statements, have led the steering committee to view her behaviour as irresponsible and lose confidence in her…Having read reports of what Jackie Walker is alleged to have said, listened to the leaked video, and heard Jackie’s version of events, the committee does not regard any of the comments she appears to have made, taken individually, to be anti-Semitic.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37547873 

⁹2 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41405625 

⁹3 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-41405625

⁹4 See footage here https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-antisemitism-jeremy-corbyn-ruth-smeeth-jewish-mp-accused-of-colluding-with-media-a7111061.html  

⁹5Quote is featured here plus this site features arguably the loudest version of Wadsworth’s speech. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-antisemitism-jeremy-corbyn-ruth-smeeth-jewish-mp-accused-of-colluding-with-media-a7111061.html 

⁹6See  Craig Murray here  https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/06/sanity-shami-chakrabarti-ruth-smeeth-affair/

⁹7 “Labour Party’s rule 2.1.8” see link – https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/apr/27/labour-activist-marc-wadsworth-expelled-from-party-over-antisemitism-row &  https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-marc-wadsworth-expelled-heckler-jewish-mp-antisemitism-report-ruth-smeeth-jeremy-corbyn-a8325261.html 

⁹8 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5655205/Labour-MPs-escort-Jewish-MP-Ruth-Smeeth-Westminster-antisemitism-hearing.html

⁹9 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/31/labour-must-reinstate-anti-racist-activist-marc-wadsworth 

¹00 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-antisemitism-jeremy-corbyn-ruth-smeeth-jewish-mp-accused-of-colluding-with-media-a7111061.html 

¹01 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/01/police-investigate-antisemitic-homophobic-online-rant-targeting-mp-ruth-smeeth 

¹02 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/the-life-and-legacy-of-stephen-lawrence-6286671.html & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/how-the-press-ignored-the-lawrence-story-then-used-it-to-change-britain-6284645.html & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/trotskyists-blamed-for-race-protest-violence-militant-labour-accused-of-exploiting-revulsion-over-2321963.html   

¹03 https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/jul/31/metropolitan-police-police &  https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/feb/22/lawrence.ukcrime 

¹04 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/jun/23/london.boris & https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marcwadsworth 

¹05 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/stephen_lawrence/282378.stm 

¹06 “one of the leading campaigners for the Lawrence family” https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/wadsworth%E2%80%99s-expulsion-and-contemptible-treachery-labour-right & https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b0br42 & “As viewers of BBC 1’s documentary on Stephen Lawrence will have seen this week, Marc was an integral part of the campaign to uncover the truth about who killed Stephen and to hold the Metropolitan Police to account.” https://medium.com/@TonyGreenstein/marc-wadsworth-victim-of-a-racist-witch-hunt-framed-by-the-jewish-labour-movement-ruth-smeeth-bd3a38478ccc  

¹07 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-labour-mp-ruth-smeeth-was-funded-israel-lobby 

¹08 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/former-israel-lobby-spin-doctor-aims-seat-uk-parliament 

¹09 For example Trevor Chinn sits on BICOM Executive committee but donated as former director of Kwit-Fit chain of motor garages.  BICOM’s founder Poju Zabludowicz donated under the guise of Tamares Real Estates. https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-labour-mp-ruth-smeeth-was-funded-israel-lobby 

¹10 See Footnotes #11 & #12.

¹11 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-labour-mp-ruth-smeeth-was-funded-israel-lobby     

¹12 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/uk-labour-mp-ruth-smeeth-was-funded-israel-lobby 

¹13 http://www.tribunemagazine.org/2017/04/row-continues-over-livingstone/  also to found on Free Speech on Israel.  http://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/preposterous-liar-jeremy-newmark-re-educates-naz-shah-mp/  

¹14 https://5pillarsuk.com/2017/12/22/my-voice-has-been-silenced-ive-lost-faith-in-mainstream-activism/  

¹15 https://5pillarsuk.com/2017/12/22/my-voice-has-been-silenced-ive-lost-faith-in-mainstream-activism/  

¹16 “Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement (formerly Paole Zion), who spoke against Livingstone at the hearing, despite having been condemned by judges in an industrial tribunal case brought against the University and College Union for giving “false, preposterous, extraordinarily arrogant and disturbing” evidence”. http://www.tribunemagazine.org/2017/04/row-continues-over-livingstone/  

¹17 https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/revealed-how-jeremy-newmark-deceived-the-jewish-leadership-council-out-of-thousands-of-pounds-1.458214 

¹18 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-labour-movement-director-investigated-violent-threat 

¹19 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/die-hole-israel-lobbyist-tells-critics  

¹20 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/new-jewish-labour-movement-director-was-israeli-embassy-officer 

¹21 https://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/thelobby/  

¹22 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/israel-embassy-scandal-shai-masot-resigns-threat-take-down-mps-labour-nus-critical-pro-palestinian-a7524446.html & https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/08/israeli-diplomat-shai-masot-plotted-against-mps-set-up-political-groups-labour 

¹23 https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/jewish-labour-movement-worked-israeli-embassy-spy 

¹24 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Benjamin+Kentish%22+independent+anti-semitism&ei=qf7_WrrDKo7KwQK94bDwAQ&start=10&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=592 

¹25 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/momentum-director-labour-discipline-committee-christine-shawcroft-ann-black-nec-elections-left-wing-a8162071.html  & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/momentum-candidate-newham-sir-robin-wales-rokhsana-fiaz-local-elections-longest-mayor-a8260246.html  & https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-labour-stitch-up-nec-youth-rep-momentum-rule-change-a8087886.html & and here at the Huffington Post too https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/christine-shawcroft-replaces-ann-black-as-chair-of-labours-nec-disputes-panel_uk_5a5dfb3be4b04f3c55a5e19c  

¹26 http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/writers/benjamin-kentish/  

¹27 For example https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-a-journalist-who-knew-what-made-israel-tick-1.5390928  &  https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/britain-s-labour-party-adopts-diluted-definition-of-anti-semitism-1.6247611 

¹28 https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=jonathan+Freeland+anti-semitism+site:www.theguardian.com&lr=&as_qdr=all&ei=3AYAW9vxG6nQgAbTrrWIBg&start=0&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=592 

¹29 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/27/labour-denial-antisemitism-party-dark-place 

¹30 https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda 

¹31 “Some of my best friends are Jewish” https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/16/us-no-longer-haven-jews-under-donald-trump-steve-bannon-antisemitism 

¹32 https://5pillarsuk.com/2017/12/22/my-voice-has-been-silenced-ive-lost-faith-in-mainstream-activism/   

¹33 “Walker told Al Jazeera that at one point during the Labour Party conference, the chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, Jeremy Newmark, allegedly called her a ‘court Jew’.“ – Something he subsequently denied. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/01/israel-lobby-anti-semitism-battle-uk-labour-party-170113073206692.html 

¹34 https://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/06/netanyahu-seeks-african-support-return-1bn-investment-170605045614550.html 

¹35 http://mondoweiss.net/2018/05/military-palestinians-protests/ &

 https://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=780127 &https://www.palestinehome.org/news-and-views/2018/5/31/israeli-military-shot-over-500-palestinians-in-the-head-during-gaza-protests  

¹36 http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/national-newspaper-print-abcs-daily-star-overtakes-daily-telegraph-for-first-time-in-over-a-year/  

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