Jonathan Cook ➤ Crackdown by UK Labour leader on left-wing rival will subdue critics of Israel in his party ahead of Israel’s annexation move.

Middle East Eye – 29 June 2020

The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the UK shadow cabinet – on the grounds that she retweeted an article containing a supposedly “antisemitic” conspiracy theory – managed to kill three birds with one stone for new Labour leader Keir Starmer.

First, it offered a pretext to rid himself of the last of the Labour heavyweights associated with the party’s left and its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Long-Bailey was runner-up to Starmer in the leadership elections earlier in the year and he had little choice but to include her on his front bench.

Starmer will doubtless sigh with relief if the outpouring of threats on social media from left-wing members to quit over Long-Bailey’s sacking actually materialises.

Second, the move served as a signal from Starmer that he is a safe pair of hands for the party’s right, which worked so hard to destroy Corbyn from within, as a recently leaked internal review revealed in excruciating detail. Despite the report showing that the Labour right sabotaged the 2017 general election campaign to prevent Corbyn from becoming prime minister, Starmer appears to have buried its contents – as have the British media.

Continue reading @ Middle East Eye.

Keir Starmer’s ‘Antisemitism’ Sacking Is A Signal That Israel Is Safe In His Hands.

Jonathan Cook ➤ Crackdown by UK Labour leader on left-wing rival will subdue critics of Israel in his party ahead of Israel’s annexation move.

Middle East Eye – 29 June 2020

The sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the UK shadow cabinet – on the grounds that she retweeted an article containing a supposedly “antisemitic” conspiracy theory – managed to kill three birds with one stone for new Labour leader Keir Starmer.

First, it offered a pretext to rid himself of the last of the Labour heavyweights associated with the party’s left and its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Long-Bailey was runner-up to Starmer in the leadership elections earlier in the year and he had little choice but to include her on his front bench.

Starmer will doubtless sigh with relief if the outpouring of threats on social media from left-wing members to quit over Long-Bailey’s sacking actually materialises.

Second, the move served as a signal from Starmer that he is a safe pair of hands for the party’s right, which worked so hard to destroy Corbyn from within, as a recently leaked internal review revealed in excruciating detail. Despite the report showing that the Labour right sabotaged the 2017 general election campaign to prevent Corbyn from becoming prime minister, Starmer appears to have buried its contents – as have the British media.

Continue reading @ Middle East Eye.

8 comments:

  1. Joanthan Cook makes no attempt to elaborate on or qauntify what the "Israel lobby" is and how it is supposed to have confected the antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party. No dates, no documents, no personalities are cited to support the contention that the allegations made by Jewish Labnour MPs, the Jewish Labour Movement, Jewish Leadership Counci, British Board of Deputies were part of a centrally planmned plot to bring down Corbyn or to suppress criticism of Israeli government polcies.

    No, this fairy tale is simply taken as a given and Jonathan Cook deploys hereculoean mental gymnastics to make his dodgy dossier hold together. The title of this piece is the text book illustratiom of the Livingstone Formulation (a phrase coined by the sociologist David Hirsh to describe the rhetorical device used to discredit allegations of antisemitism as automatically motivated by bad faith intentions to prevent criticism of Israel and to undermine Corby's lesdership of the BLP. It is named after Ken Livingstone who makes this insinuation ad nauseam

    For Jonathan Cook may not be aware of or recognise that Lisa Nandy, Shadow Foreign Secretary and a stern critic of how Jeremy Corbyn handled the AS crisis but also Chair of Labour Friends of Palestine and the Middle East, has called for sanctions on settlement goods should annexation occcur; a stance that has the full backing of Keir Starmer. A list of prominent Jewish legal and other scholars, none of whom can be considered antizionsist in any way, have written an open letter. condemning the annexation.

    The Livingstone Formulation has its counterpart on the Brexit Right when attempts to call out the xenophobic nature of the Leave were dismissed by those who just wanted to reclaim UK sovereignty from Brussels and did not have any racist intent.

    But never let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy fable either by the far right (Soros, Rothschilds-Zionists, Jews behind the Great Replacement) or far left (Israel lobby, Rothschilds-Zionists, Mossad behind 9/11 and ISIS) to get in the way of a good old conspiracy fable about Jews/Zionism/Israel.

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  2. Barry "Jonathan Cook deploys hereculoean mental gymnastics to make his dodgy dossier hold together."

    And you don't to make your characterisation of RLB as subscribing to anti-Semitism?!!

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  3. Anthony

    OK, RLB did not behave in a gratuitously antisdemitic manner but she has since acknowledged that she did not pay sufficient attention to the problematic nature of the parts of the afrticle that got her into such hot water. Had she taken down the tweet and apologised as she was asked to do so she would still be on the Labour front bench.

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    1. to your credit you acknowledge that.

      The only problematic nature of the article is it was mildly wrong. Israel does export its brutality expertise abroad which is what I read into the article.

      And none of it amounts to a genuine attempt by Starmer to address anti-Semitism because the article has nothing to do with anti-Semitism. It is about him trying to silence the Left. Now, if he has a problem with the Left, fine, but he should at least address it for what it is instead of using the old smear of anti-Semite.

      Even in doing so he attenuates the gravitas that should be present when there are grounds for suspecting that anti-Semitism is raising its ugly head. When someone shouts Anti-Semite we should look around instantly to see where the threat comes from rather than instinctively ignore it because we have become habituated to believe that it is the usual suspects jockeying for power and privilege and smearing their opponents again for that purpose.

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  4. Anthony

    From "

    https://www.cityam.com/why-is-linking-israel-to-george-floyds-murder-an-antisemitic-conspiracy-theory/

    "The main evidential base for the allegation that Israel taught racist, violent police in America to kill black men is a 2016 Amnesty report (which you may have cited, I don't know) about US police training with the Israeli military and secret services to learn about counter-terrorism tactics. However no one is suggesting tnat the ofvficders wno killed Floyd thlought he was a terrorist.

    Amnesty have now clarified that not only does its report not show thatr neck kneeling was a technique taught in Israde;l but the Minnesota police cannot be said to have received such training at mall.

    The Israeli police too are clear that kneeling on someone's neck is not tasught or encouraged. Nor is it official policy.

    The origins of the exchange programmes betweeen thde US and Israel arsoe from fears of American unpreparedness in the wake of the 9/11 attacks."

    So as I have patiently tried to explain on many times, linking Israel falsely to all the evils of the world such as racist murdders of black people by American police as opposed to explitity conddemnking what Israel does in thde Occupied Territories andc Gaza Strip and within its own territory is an example of modern antisemitism as it echoes what was said through history about Jews causing wars and revolutions because of their supposed pecuniary interest in them; starting race wars, child killing and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery etc.

    It is precisely the framing of anti-Israel discourse within the political cultufre of the left that Corbyn came from that has benn the dynamic of Labour's AS problems It is part of the wider culture of the anti-imperilaist Left whereby regimes such as chose of Assad and Milosevic and Islamist extremists such as Hmmas and Hezbollah get a free pass because of their anti-Western rather than cdearth of progressive credentials.

    If one does not comprehdend that there have alawys been antisemitic, "socialism of fools" elements on the Left and if one believes that leftists canmnot be antiesemitc because the Left is fundamentally antiracist then no understanding of Labour antisemitism is possible.

    Keir Starmer does not have a problem with the "Left" as a whole; it is the intolerant and dogmatic culture of Corbynism/the far left of which AS is just one aspect and wnich often camaflauges itself by (dare i say it) "wokeness" that is the problem.

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    1. Barry - yet another Aunt Sally.

      Neither RLB Nor Maxine Peake are saying that Israeli Police are teaching US cops how to kill black men. She said the tactic of neck kneeling was learned buy US cops from Israeli cops at a seminar. The Israeli cops kneel on people's necks. Look at the photos from the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City in 2019.

      The Israeli police claim that neck kneeling is not approved - and you believe them. Much like claims that their war crime army is the most moral army in the world.

      There is no dispute that the Israelis export their brutal police training. It is so well documented at this stage.

      It is wholly legitimate to criticise the Israeli export of brutality without facing the smear of anti-Semitism for making that criticism.

      It is rubbish to call such criticism an example of modern anti-Semitism. It is a smear designed to deflect criticism of Israel's contempt for human rights. It is a criticism of Israel and criticisms of Israel are not anti-Semitic, no more than criticisms of Pakistan are Islamophobic. The criticism has Sweet FA to do with Jews and everything to do with state brutality.
      The Left can be anti-Semitic, it can also be pro theocrat. But none of this supports your contention in the slightest that criticism of Israel exporting its brutal practices is anti-Semitism. It is all smoke and mirrors smearology.
      Starmer has a problem with the Left. He did not sack RLB because she was anti-Semitic but because she was a left critic of his efforts to make Labour respectable by jettisoning its social policies so that it could become electable: it's our turn now to have the mercs and perks.

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  5. Anthony

    Maxine Peake and Amnesty retracted their allegations that US cops learnt the knee restraint technique at Israeli seminars.

    This is the last comment I am making on this thread, I am getting tired of my views being consistently misrepresented on his forum in relation to antisemitism and the Labour Party. For the last time, I am going to state that criticism of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank (call it Occupartheid if you wish), and human rights abuses therein; the siege of Gaza and excessive military responses to Hamas rockets; legislation within Israel such as the Nation State Law and discriminatory practices within it towards the Arab minority plus the proposed annexation of parts of the West Bank are not even antizionist never mind antisemitic

    It is the demonisation of Israel or Zionism as some sort of essentialist and totalitarian evil through rhetorical devices like comparisons with the Nazis, the invention of the” Holocaust Industry” and conspiracy theories around the Israeli lobby that forms part of modern far left antisemitism. One figure has played a big role in popularising this outlook and that is Norman Finkelstein.

    I will make more comments on this subject until my next article on it as this game of rhetorical ping-pong is not serving any purpose. You are entitled to your opinion about Keir Starmer chasing the Mercs and Perks of office. But if Labour is not in office how can there any social transformation. The alternative to electability is what the Left does so frequently and proficiently – lose.

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  6. Barry - Maxine Peake and AI withdrawing their allegations that the US police did not pick up their brutal methods from Israel's brutal methods is fine. If it is factually incorrect, make it right. But that allegation was never anti-Semitic in the first place. Neither alleged that the Jews were teaching the US police the method. They said the Israelis were teaching them it. Only those who try to reduce the state of Israel to a Jewish issue present criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism. The critics are not tackling Israel because of any Jewish character but because of its brutality. Try as you and others might, you simply cannot get around that logic.
    If Israel uses Nazi methods its activity should be called by its names: no hiding place for war criminals. Israel used torture, war crimes, racism, crimes against humanity, land theft, carpet bombing of civilian populations centres. What is not Nazi-like about any of that?
    There is a Holocaust Industry or at least good reason for believing it. What can be anti-Semitic about stating it as a belief? It is not a charge that Jews are running a Holocaust industry but that the state of Israel is.

    What Israel does against Palestinians is unspeakably evil. I challenge you to dispute that. It is so evil that even you hope Keir Starmer will support calls for it to be prosecuted for war crimes.

    There is no one misrepresenting your views: they are put back to you with a logic that thus far you have been unable to overcome. It was you after all that led the charge of anti-Semitism against RLB when she was not in fact guilty of any such thing. You misrepresented her position rather than any misrepresenting yours.

    Labour in or out of office without Starmer will result in no social transformation anyway. The UK will always have a government, but for good governance it requires quality opposition.


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