Rats And Lawyers. by Les May

QUESTION: What’s the difference between a rat dead in the road and a lawyer dead in the road? Answer: There are skid marks in front of the rat. Not a very nice joke, but a reminder that not every member of the legal profession always has the best interests of humanity at heart.

It appears that the largest supplier of textbooks to UK schools, the publisher Pearson, is halting further distribution of two books about the Israel/Palestine conflict published in 2020. The books concerned are not the original versions which were published in 2016 and 2017 and previously available to schools and others. The original text had been amended after a complaint from a group called UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI). The amendments were extensive amounting to more than 650 changes or more than three per page.

A description of the process by which these two books were altered is given in a statement issued by the British Board of Jewish Deputies last September. It reads a follows:

After initial constructive conversations with Pearson, the Board of Deputies worked together with UKLFI [UK Lawyers for Israel] to produce thorough comments on both textbooks, which Pearson have received and acted upon. After detailed and lengthy process over a number of months, the books have now been published for students to use in the 2020-1 academic year. Board of Deputies of British Jews President Marie van der Zyl said: "We applaud Pearson for their openness to constructive feedback and willingness to revise these textbooks. We are pleased with the final material which gives a balanced and accurate portrayal of the Middle East conflict. I would like to pay specific tribute and thanks to UKLFI for their hard work on this project and their collaborative effort with us to get these textbooks to where they needed to be.”

The decision of the publishers to pause further distribution of the altered version came in response to an eight-page report by Middle East specialists Professors John Chalcraft and James Dickins, which found hundreds of changes to the textbooks overwhelmingly favouring an Israeli narrative and removing or replacing passages that support Palestinian narratives.

Below is an extract which forms the last two paragraphs of that report.

The revisions have changed the presentation of the facts in ways which bolster pro-Israeli narratives, and make pro-Palestinian narratives less credible. Explanations of the events recorded have also been treated in a selective manner, with potentially pro- Palestinian interpretations removed, and pro-Israeli interpretations augmented. The revisions exhibit troubling double-standards at a very basic level: potentially unjust Israeli actions are dealt with in the language of perception and controversy, while potentially unjust Palestinian actions are dealt with in the language of fact and objective certainty. The revisions also offer distorted definitions of key terms, such as Jewish ‘settlers’, and mislead students about matters on which there is a wide consensus, such as international law. The revisions direct students towards activities and interpretations that favour and explore a pro-Israeli narrative.

In sum, we have found the process to have been biased and the outcome misleading. The outcome is two textbooks that distort the historical record, failing to offer students a balanced view of the conflict. These books, we conclude, are not fit for purpose. School children should not be supplied with propaganda under the guise of education.

What we have here is an organisation of lawyers advocating for a foreign country. We also have the Board of Deputies, which does not represent all the Jewish people in the UK, trying to determine what is taught in our schools. This is just as reprehensible as the actions of those Muslims who are trying to do the same at Batley Grammar School. It also gives further credibility to those who believe that the motivation of those attacking Jeremy Corbyn were motivated not by concerns about anti-semitism, but by a desire to remove someone who was an advocate for the Palestinians.

You can find the full text of the report from which two short extracts are given above at:

http://www.bricup.org.uk/documents/GCSE_textbooks.pdf

There is a more detailed discussion at:

https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/textbooks-altered-line-by-line-at-uk-lawyers-for-israels-behest/

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Pledges, Demands and Blackmail by Les May

I WAS recently chatting to an older lady who has actively supported Labour for the forty plus years I have known her. She tried to persuade me that the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn was a ‘right wing’ plot to remove someone who is widely considered to be on the ‘left’ of the Labour party, though as the economics journalist William Keagan pointed out some years ago the policies of Clement Atlee government in 1945 were more radical. I disagreed with her; so far as I am concerned the accusations of ‘anti-semitism’ which led to Corbyn’s downfall are a systematic attempt by a small number of Jewish people and organisations to ensure that Labour party policies are not critical of the actions of the state of Israel towards Palestinians.

Overt scepticism amongst Jewish people about Labour party policies towards Israel predate Corbyn’s election to the leadership in September 2015. In April 2015 the Jewish Chronicle (J.C.) published an article by Marcus Dysch when the Labour leader was Ed Miliband which said:

‘Around 73 per cent of Jews said the political parties’ attitudes to Israel were 'very' or 'quite important' in influencing how they would vote.

'The polling revealed that Mr Miliband’s approach to Israel and the Middle East is seen as toxic within the Jewish community. Just 10 per cent of people said he had the best approach, compared to 65 per cent who favoured Mr Cameron’s stance.

'The Labour party itself fared worse than its leader, with its Israel policy attracting only eight per cent of Jewish voters. The Tory approach was preferred by 61 per cent.’

I should however caution that the survey from which the above was derived questioned only 580 Jewish people and we do not know how this sample was obtained.

The day after, 8 April 2015, the website Forward carried an article Liam Hoare with the title ‘How Ed Miliband Lost Britain's Jewish Voters’.

Hoare tells us: ‘Having spent almost four years courting Jewish communal institutions, going so far as to declare in Jerusalem last April that “Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people,” Miliband destroyed his standing on Israel during last summer’s war with Hamas when he came out in strong opposition to Operation Protective Edge. ‘The British Jewish community is a middle class community and the Conservatives are the traditional home of the middle class...’

‘Having spent almost four years courting Jewish communal institutions, going so far as to declare in Jerusalem last April that “Israel is the homeland for the Jewish people,” Miliband destroyed his standing on Israel during last summer’s war with Hamas when he came out in strong opposition to Operation Protective Edge’ and .The nadir of Miliband’s relationship with the Jewish community then came in October when Labour backed recognition of Palestinian statehood during a symbolic vote in Parliament. Miliband thought it good politics, but the fact that attitudes toward Israel influence the vote of 73% of British Jews apparently wasn’t taken into account.’

I have no doubt that Ed Miliband’s critical stance was a response to the scale of the casualties inflicted by Operation Protective Edge.

Wikipedia says this: 'Between 2,125 and 2,310 Gazans were killed and between 10,626 and 10,895 were wounded (including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled). Gazan civilian casualty rates estimates range between 70% by the Gaza Health Ministry, 65% by United Nations Protection Cluster by OCHA (based in part Gaza Health Ministry reports), and 36% by Israeli officials, The UN estimated that more than 7,000 homes for 10,000 families were razed, together with an additional 89,000 homes damaged, of which roughly 10,000 were severely affected by the bombing.'

Now whilst I disagree with the seemingly uncritical support for Israel which seems to be offered by many Jewish people in Britain I believe they are entitled to hold such views and if they so wish vote accordingly at the ballot box. Although it would be quite untrue to say that the late Jim Dobbin courted Catholic voters, I doubt that his public stance against abortion did him any harm with them. Voting for an MP whose views you share is what parliamentary democracy is about.

But this is very different from the attempts being made by a small number of Jewish people to manipulate Labour into being a party which will never be critical of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians. And if you think my choice of the word ‘manipulate’ is too strong or ‘cue anti-semitic trope here’, then consider this.

In January of this year the Board of Deputies of British Jews published ‘Ten pledges to end the antisemitism crisis’ directed at the Labour party. Though I think that all the ‘pledges’, which are in reality demands, are attempts to circumscribe the freedom of action of the Labour party and the freedom of expression of its members, I will highlight two of these which I think are particularly pernicious.

Number Seven reads: ‘Deliver an anti-racism education programme that has the buy-in of the Jewish community. The Jewish Labour Movement should be engaged by the Party to lead on training about antisemitism.’

Number eight reads: ‘Engagement with the Jewish community to be made via its main representative groups Labour must engage with the Jewish community via its main representative groups, and not through fringe organisations and individuals.'

The first thing to note here is that these two are inter-related. Both seek to define the ‘Jewish Community’ by excluding many Jews – evidently the wrong sort. We are left to assume that the right sort include those who run the Board of Deputies, which does not speak for the 70% British Jews who are either secular or Charedi, and those who control the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). Organisations like the Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) and individuals who do not align themselves with the Board of Deputies, are to be ignored. Just to make the meaning of this ‘pledge’ absolutely clear the Jewish Chronicle of 12 January described JVL as a ‘fringe’ organisation.

I understand that the Jewish Labour Movement refused to campaign for a majority of Labour MPs at the 2019 general election and that it does not require its members to be either Jewish or in the Labour Party!

I find it difficult not to believe that both the so called pledges, which are in fact a thinly disguised attempt at blackmailing the Labour leadership, and the constant attacks on Corbyn using accusations of anti-semitism, are anything other than attempts to shift Labour policies to a position favourable to a foreign power, in this case the state of Israel. This is not new; I am old enough to remember and have known people who wanted to shift Labour to a line more favourable to the foreign policies of the USSR. They were recognised for what they were and called ‘fellow travellers’.

Let’s recognise the problem for what it is and not make the lazy mistake of turning Corbyn’s suspension into yet another left/right battle. The blackmail seems to be working.

The many articles on the website of the Jewish Voice for Labour are well worth reading. Attitudes to Labour are more diverse amongst Jewish people than you may have been led to believe. Remember the Board of Deputies does not speak for all British Jews.

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A Nasty Smell from the Pork Barrel by Les May

ONE might have hoped that now that the anti-semitism witch hunt has begun to subside in the Labour party we might see a period of relative calm punctuated only by the ‘left wing’ and ‘right wing’ knocking eight bells out of each other and in between these bouts there might have been a focus on the things that Labour needs to put right in this country. Things like the gross inequalities in income and wealth, which are linked to both differences in total life expectancy and length of life without disability, and the lack of social housing forcing people into the hands of a new ‘rentier class’ of private landlords.

Seemingly not, judging by a tweet from Rochdale Labour Group which seems eager to sow the seeds of yet another witch hunt, this time in the name of ‘Islamophobia’.

The definition they propose to accept runs as follows; ‘Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type or racism that targets Muslimness or perceived Muslimness’. Quite how anyone got from a religious belief, which is open to anyone to adopt, or not, as they so wish, to being a form of ‘racism’ is anyone’s guess. But then again logic does not seem to be a strong point for those who like to dabble in identity politics.

Nor are we offered a working definition of ‘Muslimness’, which seems like a convenient oversight. Is it for example adherence to fasting between dawn and sunset during Ramadan so that believers can experience what it is like to be someone who is so poor that they have to go without food? Or is it cutting someone’s throat because they have been perceived as causing offence? Is it risking your life in a Red Crescent team trying to rescue someone from a collapsed building? Or is it detonating a bomb in a crowded building? As with every other religious faith some of its adherents are good and some are evil. Or as the line from the film ‘The Dynamite Man from Glory jail’ runs, ‘God uses some people, and some people use God’.

This definition has no legal status and to the extent that it can be seen as an attack on our freedom of expression, including the freedom to offend, it is unlikely that any court would offer support to any council, public body or company attempting to using it as a criterion for determining someone’s suitability for continued employment.

Rochdale Labour Group’s decision to announce this looks rather like an exercise in what our American friends call ‘Pork Barrel Politics’, intended to secure the loyalty at the ballot box of a particular group of voters. I look forward to Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews and Pagans lining up to demand similar protection from criticism. And don’t forget the Vegan who wants his dietary choices classed as stemming from a religious belief!

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Will They Never Learn?

by Les May

SPEAKING at the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) hustings last Thursday Lisa Nandy is reported as describing anti-semitism as ‘a particular sort of racism’ and went on to say, ‘It’s a sort of racism that punches up not down, that argues that Jewish people are privileged and powerful, and because there are people on the left who believe that their job is to challenge privilege and power, therefore wrongly and disgracefully they argue that Jewish people are a legitimate target for racism’.

I doubt that Nandy can provide a single instance of what she claims. Is she saying that Labour supporter should not challenge privilege and power when it is exercised by people who happen to be Jewish?

She went on to say that if she became leader she would try to go further than accepting the IHRA definition of anti-Jewish hatred. This is some of what the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) has to say about that definition;

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which is increasingly being adopted or considered by western governments, is worded in such a way as to be easily adopted or considered by western governments to intentionally equate legitimate criticisms of Israel and advocacy for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, as a means to suppress the former.

This conflation undermines both the Palestinian struggle for freedom, justice and equality and the global struggle against antisemitism. It also serves to shield Israel from being held accountable to universal standards of human rights and international law.

You can find the full text at the link below.

https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/first-ever-40-jewish-groups-worldwide-oppose-equating-antisemitism-with-criticism-of-israel/#english

In fairness to Nandy it seems that, just as she did, Rebecca Long-Bailey and Emily Thornberry also declared themselves to be Zionists, and Keir Starmer’s comments could be so construed. What is clear is that they meant that they believe that the state of Israel has a right to exist and I don’t think many Labour supporters would disagree. But whether Nandy’s pledge to go further than the IHRA definition of anti-Jewish hatred was altogether wise remains to be seen.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/15/we-must-define-antisemitism-to-fight-it-effectively

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/07/debunking-myth-that-anti-zionism-is-antisemitic

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Pastor NIEMOLLER for OUR TIME

“First they came for the Communists
 And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews

And I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then the Jews came for the Palestinians

And I didn’t speak out, afraid of being labelled “Anti-Semite””.

 

Christopher Draper, 2019

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The Open Society and its Enemies

by Les May

I DID not see all of the BBC2 film Conspiracy Files: The Billionaire Global Mastermind shown at 9pm on Sunday evening.   I came in at the point where a phalanx of white men were shown in a torchlight process chanting what I thought was ‘You’ll never replace the white race’, but which the director, Mike Rudin, says was ‘Jews will not replace us’.

The ‘Global Mastermind’ of the title is George Soros.  His ‘crime’ has been to donate very large sums of money to fund thousands of education, health, human rights and democracy projects through the Open Society Foundations.   For his pains he has had Donald Trump retweet a video that claimed to show cash being handed out to people in Honduras to ‘storm the US border’, with a suggestion that the cash might have come from him, Soros. 

 

When Trump was asked whether Soros was funding the migrant caravan, he replied: ‘I wouldn't be surprised.  A lot of people say yes’.

Rudin claims that the Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has accused Soros of being at the heart of a Jewish conspiracy to ‘divide’ and ‘shatter’ Turkey and other nations.

Viktor Orban Prime Minister of Hungary is quoted as saying ‘We are fighting an enemy that is different from us.  Not open but hiding.  Not straightforward but crafty.  Not honest but unprincipled.  Not national but international.   Does not believe in working but speculates with money.  Does not have its own homeland but feels it owns the whole world’.  In just 8 weeks in 1944 about 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. 
 
However you wrap this up it is anti-semitism; in the first case aimed at Soros because he is Jewish and in the second reviving the sort of thing Adolf Hitler said about Jewish people.

As a committed socialist I see the treatment meted out to Jewish people ‘the canary in the coal mine’.  If they attack them, then they will attack socialists, trade unionists and old fashioned liberals.  This is why I found this film so disturbing.

You can find what is substantially a transcript of the film at;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49584157

You can find clips at;

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0008c6g

You can see the whole film at midnight on BBC2 on Thursday 12 September.

What I find truly staggering is that with this going on in the USA, Hungary and in other places in Europe, British Jewish organisations are focusing their attention on attacking the Labour party, and Jeremy Corbyn in particular, as being anti-semitic.   I don’t believe it and I don’t know anyone who supports Labour who does.  And saying so does not make me a Jew hater.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Society_and_Its_Enemies

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Declaration of Human Rights:

Are we in violation?
Everyone has Right to Free Speech!

by John Wilkins

MANY of us in this country believe passionately in freedom of expression within the law.  Is this the situation today?  I would argue no.

If we truly had such a freedom why is it often difficult getting your views listened to and getting them published even more so. 
 
In the case of the local media there is a diminishing ability to express your views particularly if they are challenging to those in power in our Town Halls.  Letters columns in my local papers are almost non-existent and the local on-line paper is becoming more cautious in its reporting.  Many feel that its reliance on advertising revenue from our local council could be a reason.

However it is also on the national stage that there is an in-balance in reporting important issues, largely because the print media is 80% dominated by papers with what appears a right wing bias. Many fear the BBC treads cautiously at times so has to not upset the powers in Westminster.

You may disagree with me but I will give one example which concerns the vendetta, not too strong an expression in my view, against Jeremy Corbyn.  On the phone to a friend he mentioned a newspaper he had just seen which contained no less than 13 articles detrimental to Corbyn, plus 3 attacking the Labour Party.  I write not as a member of Labour nor any other but I would like to see more balanced reporting, surely there are more issues to be discussed than attacks on one politician, like him or loath him?

A friend has tried to create a newspaper with more left wing views to counter some of the bias in our press and that includes holding our local Labour run Council to account as well as the Conservative Government.  Sadly his criticism of the local Labour leader of Council incurred the wrath of a the then chair of his CLP.  This escalated into criticism of a front page of my friends newspaper which was construed as anti-Semitic and the flames were fanned by right wing blogger,  Guido Fawkes.  As a result fury from the Board of Deputies gave ammunition for Labour to suspend him.  This was overturned on appeal but other contributors were targetted for abuse on social media, including a MEP, some were threats of violence and warnings that MOSSAD knew who they were.
Fast forward several months and a meeting was organised to discuss creating more media outlets expressing left wing views.  Here is where the UN declaration of Human Rights would appear to have been violated by sections of the Jewish community.

Article 19. 'Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.'

Article 20. (1) 'Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.'
Over a dozen venues were approached and all bowed down to pressure not to allow the meeting on their premises.  The meeting did happen despite this this opposition.  The venue was kept secret until the last minute but a bogus venue was picketed by protesters.  One lone photographer from the Jewish Chronicle did appear but as the turn out was low and the meeting late starting he was fobbed off by being told that the meeting was probably not going to take place.
It did, albeit with a small audience, but including many who had travelled from as far as Devon, London and N. Wales.  Some had no particular political allegiance. Indeed a friend of mine persuaded his politically disinterested wife to attend and she is now a passionate supporter of Jeremy Corbyn!
Whatever your political views I hope you share with me the concerns I have raised and the report published only last year by Reporters without Borders, which campaigns for journalistic freedom.  They placed the UK 40 th. out of 180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index. Some of the countries ranked above us include 'Uruguay, Samoa and Chile for restrictions on reporters seeking to hold power to account'. (The Guardian Wed. 25 April 2018)
As we approach the 200 year anniversary of Peterloo, which captured the imagination of the national press and led indirectly to creation of the then Manchester Guardian a few decades later I wonder if we have come as far as we should in terms of freedom of expression.
Listen to the words expressed about freedom of expression centuries ago:
"The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech."  Voltaire.

“I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It”.

(Attributed to Voltaire, but whilst he expressed such sentiments it was first published by English writer/ historian, Evelyn Beatrice Hall without quotation marks in her book about Voltaire and is now claimed to be her words.)
People in the UK have the right to free speech including Boris Johnson, Tommy Robinson, Nigel Farage as well as those on the Labour left even if they are sometimes careless in their choice of words.  One exception is that if those words can be construed as incitement to violence.  One thing I have noted is the violent rhetoric of the far left and the far right and the pro Israel lobby.  Even the calm, reasoned words of outgoing leader of the Lib Dems, Vince Cable were lambasted cruelly by the far left for daring to claim Manchester could be doing more to eradicate rough sleeping in Manchester.  Yet one Labour councillor's solution had been to arrest and fine those he termed aggressive beggars!
Please, those of you who believe in democracy and freedom of expression speak out when those values are threatened, but do so in a calm reasoned manner.
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'We’ve Lost the Keys'

by Les May

I joined Rochdale Young Socialists in August 1960.  A month later, I was outside the Scarborough Conference demonstrating my support for a motion proposing unilateral nuclear disarmament.  Famously Hugh Gaitskell who was leader of the Labour Party at the time said;

‘We may lose the vote today, and the result may deal this party a grave blow. It may not be possible to prevent this, but there are some of us, I think many of us, who will not accept that this blow need be mortal: who will not believe that such an end is inevitable.  There are some of us, Mr Chairman, who will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love.  We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to bring back sanity and honesty and dignity, so that our party -- with its great past -- may retain its glory and its greatness.’

Labour was deeply divided over the issue, but it is generally accepted that Gaitskell, ‘lost the vote and won the argument’.  When he was challenged for the leadership by Harold Wilson, who presented himself as a ‘unity not civil war’ candidate and who shared Gaitskell’s scepticism about unilateralism, Gaitskell got two thirds of the vote, which at that time was confined to Labour MPs.

Sixty years later the arguments remain the same.   Is it Labour MPs who should determine policy and select the leader, or is it the wider membership of the Labour party?   Speaking today on BB2’s Politics Live programme Angela Smith, one of the ‘Not So Magnificent Seven’ who resigned from the party today, rather gave the game away when she said ‘We’ve lost the keys’.  Like it or not, after 2015 we have seen a power shift within the Labour party, away from MPs and to the members.

Unsurprisingly Labour members like it that way and are ready to be critical of their MP when they feel he or she is being less than supportive of Corbyn’s leadership and/or party policy.   They may have a point.  There are some constituencies which are ‘solid Labour’, but in most it takes a lot of effort by local Labour members to ‘get the vote out’.

Another of the MPs who left Labour, Luciana Berger, has successfully managed to conflate two quite separate issues; criticism of Corbyn and anti-semitism. Until they were withdrawn her local party was set to debate two motions;

'The UK is in crisis because of the appalling austerity policies of a government that serves the interests of the rich.  We need a Labour government under the socialist leadership of our twice-elected leader Jeremy Corbyn. Instead of fighting for a Labour government our MP is continually using the media to criticise the man we all want to be Prime Minister.

'The Tories are deeply divided, but millions are still suffering from their austerity policies.  We desperately need a socialist Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn.  Our MP is continually criticising our leader when she should be working for a general election and opposing the Tories.'

Not by any stretch of the imagination can either of these be described as ‘anti-semitic’.  Nor do they seem to me to justify Chuka Umunna’s comment quoted in the Jewish Chronicle, ‘How about demanding her CLP treats her with the respect she deserves?’  Clearly Chuka still has not yet got used to the idea that Labour MPs are no longer in the driving seat.

That’s not to say that Berger has not been subjected to antisemitic abuse, she has.  But the evidence points to the fact that it is coming from people who have nothing to do with the Labour party.  This is what Wikipedia has to say:

‘In January 2013, it was reported that a Merseyside music promoter, Philip Hayes, had been convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence and fined £120 after an "antisemitic tirade" against Berger at the Liverpool Music Awards.

'In October 2014, Garron Helm, a member of the small neo-Nazi National Action youth group was imprisoned for four weeks after he sent an antisemitic tweet to Berger in August 2014, serving two weeks before being released.  Following the conviction, it was reported that similar messages to her were being posted on Twitter.  According to Berger in December 2014, "[a]t the height of the abuse, the police said I was the subject of 2,500 hate messages in the space of three days" using the same hashtag.

'During the 2015 general election, UK Independence Party parliamentary candidate for West Lancashire Jack Sen was suspended from the party after sending an allegedly antisemitic tweet to Berger.
Joshua Bonehill-Paine , a supporter of Helm, was convicted of racially-aggravated harassment of Berger in December 2016 and sentenced to two years.

'In February 2017, John Nimmo was sentenced to 27 months in prison after pleading guilty to nine charges, including the sending of death threats and antisemitic messages to Berger.’

What Wikipedia also tells us it that in March 2018 Berger used Twitter to ask Jeremy Corbyn why he had queried the removal by a local council of an allegedly anti-semitic mural in 2012.   Using Twitter to do this rather than speaking to him directly or writing to him, suggests to me deliberate intent to cause trouble for Corbyn. 

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Jabob Rees-Mogg defends anarchist protesters

by Brian Bamford

JACOB Reese-Mogg sprang to the defence of the Class War anarchists around the ancient activist Ian Bone, who were busy querying the wages and working conditions of Reese-Mogg's kid's Nanny.  

Others súch as the Archbishop of Canterbury, strongly criticised the stunt tweeting:

'This is appalling. There are plenty of ways you can tell MPs you disagree with them. But targeting their children is shameful and disgraceful. We are – and must be – better than this. We'll be praying for @Jacob_Rees_Mogg’s family at @lambethpalace chapel this evening.'

Yet Mr Rees-Mogg* told LBC: 'I wouldn't get too excited about it.'
He added: 'It was a few anarchists who turned up and it wasn't very well organised.  It wasn't terribly serious.
'We are a free country. They weren't violent.  They aren't admirers of mine. I am in public life and not everybody is going to like me.  That is a reality of public life.
'I'd have preferred it if it hadn't happened but I don't want to get it out of perspective.  I think much worse things happen to many other people.'

What is ironic about this noble defence of the right to protest and free speech by the Tory MP Mr. Reese-Mogg, is that the Left has been much less tolerant.  For example in 2012 at the London Anarchist Bookfair, a number of members of the then Anarchist Federation led bizarrely by the former Oldham teacher, Sally Hyman, raided the Northern Anarchist Network bookstall and stole some books *, a month later a man with Jewish ancestors was accused of being an anti-semite and pushed out of another anarchist bookfair in Manchester, and more recently at last year's London Anarchist bookfair a woman famous for her part in a campaign against  McDonald's burger chain was attacked by a so called tribe of transsexuals for defending free speech, since then the bookfair organisers have cancelled future bookfairs.
*  Jacob Rees-Mogg is the son of William Rees-Mogg, who edited the London Times in the 1960s, when the anarchists were very active and influential in the peace movement.  In his editorials at that time he had many thoughtful things to say about the anarchists.

**   www.fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com/2012/10/salad-cream-days.html

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Circumcision - Not just the Jews!

by Brian Bamford

WHEN, in the 1970s I worked at Arrow Mill in Rochdale as a bobbin weigh-man and unofficial representative of the workforce, my Pakistann workmates once suggested that I should convert to Islam.  In the next breath, I was told that naturally if I did, I would have to get myself circumcised.

I was recently reminded of this when I read recently an account by Malcolm Muggeridge of how he and Anthony Powell had been laughing about an incident in a novel by Arthur Koestler in which the hero, in seducing one of the female characters, through being circumcised, reveals that he is a Jew.

It seems that George Orwell was very put out by their amusement, and he said it's not true, that in this country only Jews are circumcised, but it is true that, generally speaking, the upper classes are and the lower classes aren't. 

Orwell cited his own problems when he was at Eton, where in the changing-room he was ashamed of being uncircumcised, and had apparently kept himself covered.  Muggeridge described this as 'vintage Orwell'.

I don't suppose it occurred to Orwell, as it did to me and my Pakistani workmates in the 1970s, to get himself circumcised in order to pass himself off as upper class.  He, Orwell, had been disapproving when Muggeridge told him 'how in Travancore I use to wear an Indian dhoyi made of kadi, the homespun cloth which was the uniform of the (Indian) nationalist, and live on Indian food which I ate with my fingers, and travel third-class on railways, and suffer the tortures of the damned by making myself sit cross-legged on the ground.'

Of course, this would now be categorised as cultural appropriation by those obsessed with political correctness.

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The Two Faces of Jonathan Sacks

by Les May

THE first of these passages is taken from the 2015 book ‘Lessons in Leadership’ by Jonathan Sacks.

‘It is not enough to be righteous if that means turning our backs on a society that is guilty of wrongdoing.  We must take a stand.  We must protest.  We must register dissent even if the probability of changing minds is small.  This is because the moral life is the life we share with others.’

In 2016 he wrote:

‘Anti-Semitism is a virus that survives by mutating.  In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion.  In the 19th and 20th centuries they were hated because of their race.  Today they are hated because of their nation state, Israel.  Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism.’

http://rabbisacks.org/anti-zionism-is-the-new-anti-semitism-rabbi-sacks-writes-for-newsweek/

Demonstration by British Jews

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Lies, Damn Lies and Irony

by Les May

IT seems that nowadays we are all thought to be too stupid to understand a definition and have to be provided with an example.  Not wishing to buck the trend I give you an example.

It appeared on the Facebook page of the Jewish Studies professor Jerry Haber.  After he examined the proper context of what Corbyn had said by going back to the text of the speech by Manuel Hassassian, the Palestinian Authority representative to the UK, which Corbyn was referencing and which led to the ludicrous outburst from Jonathan Sacks.

— Did you hear that Jeremy Corbyn, in a speech in 2013, said that British Jews weren’t really British even if they were born there?

— Really?  He said that?

— Well, he intimated that British Jews couldn’t grasp English irony and didn’t understand history.”

— Really?  He was referring to Jews?

— Well, he didn’t SAY Jews, but he said that about UK Zionists, which is a leftwing code term for British Jews.

— Hang on, he made a reference to UK Zionists as a group?

— Well, not exactly.  Actually, he was referring to some pro-Israel members of the audience who came up and started arguing with the Palestinian ambassador who had presented the history of Palestine and used irony when he said, 'You know I’m reaching the conclusion that the Jews are the children of God, the only children of God and the Promised Land is being paid by God!  I have started to believe this because nobody is stopping Israel building its messianic dream of Eretz Israel to the point I believe that maybe God is on their side. Maybe God is partial on this issue.' which apparently some of the Zionists thought he meant without irony (We do not have a transcript of what they said).  And Corbyn referred to ‘the Zionists in the audience’.

— So, you mean to say he did not refer to British Zionists as a whole, but he was saying that the Palestinian ambassador, who is Armenian Palestinian, had a greater grasp of English irony, than these Brits who had lived in England all their lives?

— Yes, that’s about it.

— So, in effect, he accused pro-Israeli members of the audience, whom he referred to as ‘Zionists’, which they are, and who argued with the Palestinian ambassador, with being humourless and misunderstanding history, compared with the Palestinian ambassador.

— Yep.

— Well, that makes the man clearly an anti-Semite, doesn’t it?

And what does HIS interpretation make Jonathan Sacks?

Read the full story at:

  https://freespeechonisrael.org.uk/sacks-vs-corbyn/

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/writingfromtheedge/2018/07/the-jewish-war-against-corbyn-risks-bringing-real-antisemitism-to-britain/

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Calling Out Jonathan Sacks

by Les May

IT seems that once again Jonathan Sacks has chosen to attack JeremyCorbyn who he accused of contributing to Jews questioning whether Britain was still a safe place to raise children.  Which raises the question ‘If they do leave Britain where will they go which is a safer place?’
An 85 page report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research with the title ‘Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel’ by L. Daniel Staetsky says on page 5:

‘… it is worth stressing a fact that runs the risk of being understated in a problem-centred report: levels of antisemitism in Great Britain are among the lowest in the world.’

and on page 64-65:

‘Looking at the political spectrum of British society, the most antisemitic group consists of those who identify as very right-wing. In this group about 14% hold hard-core antisemitic attitudes and 52% hold at least one attitude, compared again to 3.6% and 30% in the general population.  The very left-wing, and, in fact, all political groups located on the left, are no more antisemitic than the general population. This finding may come as a surprise to those who maintain that in today’s political reality, the left is the more serious, or at least, an equally serious source of antisemitism, than the right. Indeed, Jewish victims of antisemitic violence or harassment identify Muslims and the far-left as the chief perpetrators. This perception is not limited to victims of antisemitism. Three academic studies on the topic of left-wing antisemitism have been published over the past two years, 35 clearly indicating that the perception that the left has an issue with antisemitism is quite prevalent in the minds of Jews and scholars of political sociology and history. Is this view misguided or rooted in error? Not quite. It is simply insufficiently precise.

The left tends to see itself, and is commonly regarded, as an anti-racist and egalitarian political group, both in terms of its political goals and its modus operandi. This image tends to impact on people’s expectations of the left or, at the very least, draws attention to how well (or otherwise) it performs in relation to its own proclaimed values. We found that the left (including the far-left) is no less antisemitic than the general population. This is not a trivial finding, as it runs counter to the left’s self-proclaimed ethos. When the expectation is to find less antisemitism than elsewhere, the finding of ‘just the same’ level of antisemitism as elsewhere is likely to be noticed by politically attuned individuals. Simultaneously embarrassing the left and being used as a weapon by it critics, this dissonance becomes the centre of attention and gets accentuated.’ (my emphasis)

So what do you have to do to be classed as having an antisemitic attitude? Not very much it seems. Here is an example of what it takes on pages 63 and 64:

‘However, what Jews are exposed to far more frequently are people who hold, and from time to time may express, views that make Jews feel uncomfortable or offended. A person expressing such a view (e.g. ‘Jews think that they are better than other people’) may hold this view in isolation and may indeed hold a weak version of it, but when it is casually voiced in front of a Jewish individual, it can cause considerable upset and concern.’ (my emphasis)

Taken at its face value this means that one section of the population is demanding the right never to be offended and the right to tell us what we should think about them. This is a demand for exceptionalism.

At the risk of boring the reader by repetition ‘freedom of speech is having the right to tell people what they do not want to hear’. And that means having the right to say things which other people choose to find offensive or feel uncomfortable about. This right is protected by Article 10 of the European Convention. I’m not going to let the likes of Jonathan Sacks take it from me and I hope that Labour party members and supporters think likewise.

Labour needs to stop feeling embarrassed by having the epithet ‘antisemitic’ thrown at it and let people know that what Sacks and his ilk are trying to do is tell us what we should think.

You can find the report from which the above extracts are drawn at:

https://cst.org.uk/public/data/file/7/4/JPR.2017.Antisemitism%20in%20contemporary%20Great%20Britain.pdf

It is hardly surprising that our media are full of stories about antisemitism. In 2015 and 2016 alone, at least six surveys of attitudes towards Jews were carried out by polling firms in the UK (including YouGov, Populus, and ICM Unlimited) working on behalf of different academic and advocacy organisations and news outlets. With commendable honesty the report says ‘the polling of antisemitic attitudes is a burgeoning enterprise’.

What makes this report different is that it is difficult to fault the methodology or the presentation of the results. I urge you to download and read it.

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Whose Afraid of Jonathan Sacks?

by Les May

CARVED into the wall at Broadcasting House are the words of George Orwell, ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they so not want to hear’, which makes the juxtaposition of articles in the most recent copy of the Radio Times all the more interesting.

The ‘Pick of the week’ on Radio 4 is ‘Morality in the 21^st Century’ presented by ex-Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.  We are told that his aim is to ‘provoke thought and discussion never to proselytise or preach’ and that ‘Morality is what lifts us above the pursuit of self interest and self esteem’.  And in case you are wondering, yes that’s the same Jonathan Sacks who are few days ago was denouncing Jeremy Corbyn as an antisemite and a racist because he did not like what Corbyn had said.  Or more correctly he did not like his interpretation of what Corbyn had said.  This in turn became his justification for his absurd comparison of Corbyn words with Enoch Powell’s speech.

The other article is by the BBC’s world affairs editor John Simpson.  In it he comments ‘People have allowed themselves to be persuaded that there’s something wrong with being given open and unbiased information from BBC journalists’.  I think that Simpson is over egging the pudding a bit here because all media outlets select what is ‘news’, who they are going to quote or interview, and how much space or air time they are to be given, so reports are never going to be quite so unbiased as he suggests.  But that does not mean it is not worth making the effort.  He goes on to say ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think any subject is too important to keep our minds closed to it’.  I agree and the fact that someone might be ‘offended’ by some subjects cuts no ice with me.  You are never going to change anyone’s mind unless you can talk to them.

Simon Kelner, who writes ‘think pieces’ for the ‘i’ newspaper, i.e. he’s a columnist not a journalist in the mould of Simpson, wrote last week that Sack’s used his Instagram account to tell the world that he was ‘a religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and a respected moral voice’.   Clearly Sack’s is not a man over endowed with modesty or self doubt.  Kelner says that he is ‘definably, a Zionist’, which suggests to me that he, Kelner, has not actually spent much time trying to figure out what a Zionist is.  Seeking enlightenment I found that the explanation on Wikipedia runs to some 11,000 words which is 28 A4 pages.   Here is the link, I’ll let you figure it out for yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zionism

In a remarkable bit of inventiveness Kelner writes, ‘Not all Jews are Zionists, but (mostly) all Zionists are Jews, and I, as a liberal-minded British Jew (rather than a Zionist) am offended by Mr Corbyn’s pronouncements’. The flaw in this bit of twisted logic is that one chooses to be a Zionist, you are born a Jew.   To my mind that means that you can criticise a Jew for being a Zionist, but not for being a Jew.   (I would add that I feel uncomfortable using Kelner’s form of wording because in my own speech I prefer to say someone is ‘a Jewish person’ rather than ‘a Jew’, and ‘Jewish people’ rather than ‘the Jews’).

As for Kelner’s complaint that he is ‘offended’ by what Corbyn said, all I can say is ‘So what’?   Since when did Kelner, or indeed anyone else, have a right never to be offended?  No one seems to be too concerned about not offending me in matters just as close to my heart as Sack’s and Kelner’s hobby horse.

(Andrea Dworkin was once quoted in the The Observer as saying ‘All men are Nazis’.  After it was published there was no rush to defend men or censure Dworkin, so I am unlikely to feel I have to avoid making comparisons between some of Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians and the behaviour of the Nazis.)

One of the curious things about the claims that Corbyn is presiding over a Labour party riddled with antisemitism is that I have not yet met anyone who has actually witnessed it.  And it’s not just my Labour friends who say this.  A friend who never misses an opportunity to denigrate Labour has made exactly the same point on more than one occasion.   Nor is antisemitic crime running riot in this country. About 15,000 prosecutions for ‘hate crime’ are launched annually.  Annual prosecutions for anti-semitism have yet to top two dozen. In spite of Margaret Hodge’s silly musings no one is being threatened by a new Holocaust.

So I think we can reasonably ask who is behind the repeated complaints against Corbyn.  On the photographic evidence published in the newspapers there seem to be two culprits, the Jewish Chronicle and the Campaign Against Antisemitism.   We also know from the films on the Al Jazeera TV channel which were shown in 2017 that the state of Israel has been interfering in UK politics and has tried to destabilise the Labour party.

Why? That’s easy. Corbyn is unashamedly on the side of the Palestinians.  It is to discredit any charges he makes against the state of Israel by claiming that he is an anti-Semite.  It's to turn Jewish people into victims, and by implication, Israel into a nation of victims.   It's no longer Israel that needs to leave the Occupied Territories; it's Corbyn and the rest of us who need to free ourselves of antisemitism.

I’m sure Corbyn has plenty of advisers and does not need my advice, but I’m going to give it all the same.  Fight these people on the basis of freedom of speech. Put them on the defensive for a change.  Remind people what Orwell said.   Remind them that the first thing the Nazis did was to suppress dissent, so remind people about how many British lives were lost in defence of that liberty. 

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