[demima]

@layman

Yes I’m right wing and yes I’m afraid of a socialist government.

Shock!

No the media is not the reason people don’t rate him. No one listens to the media anymore this isn’t the 1980s.

Riiiight - is that your opinion? Funny, how did you come to the conclusion that you came to? Not the media of course, right? When Ed Milliband ran in the general election, the propaganda about Ed being in Alex Salmonds pocket repeated in right wing rags didnt have any influence? You sure about that, champ?

What amazes me is that they think the uk electorate is suddenly going to go socialist after rejecting it for decades based on this charmless goon. You could have 3 million party members spitting and shouting at people on social media but that doesn’t mean shit if the other 60 million don’t buy it.

What amazes me is that you think the Labour manifesto was some sort of 'hard left' platform, which it isnt. The UK electorate isnt 60m, it's roughly 47m. Labour got 12,878,460 votes in 2017, so you're chatting shit. You complain about tribalism from others, yet will vote for a party who has ****** over the UK in the last 8 years, had a crap election manifesto, woeful performance in government and a woeful election campaign. Glass houses and stones and all that...

The whole movement is a sad lesson in preaching to the converted. There is no attemp at persuading or compromise.

9.6% swing to Labour in 2017. So not really preaching to to converted is it? 3.5m more votes that 2015, 4.2m than 2010, 3.3m more than 2005, 2.1m more than 2001. Are you like, simple?

Even if this gimp wins it will be a hung parliament that will achieve nothing more than spooking the markets. You cannot have a radical programme without serious public backing and a strong leadership.

Labour have neither.

Thanks for this convo. You're a very enlightening individual.

[skinster]

[redcarpet]

This guy is obviously anti Semitic and anyone who think otherwise is either antisemitic himself delusional or just dumb

Sooooo obviously that EVERY example cited doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

It's mostly right-wing tabloid hysteria with ZERO evidence. Like a motion never introduced in the Labour Conference.

Provide a specific example, go on. Assertion alone proves nothing, honey.

[skinster]

[redcarpet]

As I posted here in reply to this tweet, yes there IS an antisemitism scandal/problem in British politics. In the UK Independence Party. IF we indulge the claim at all.....well, the UK Labour Party is a distant last place in the British Political Spectrum where the 'problem'/'scandal' registers.

Not surprising because that's the UK Tories in exile. The self-styled Dad's Army of British Politics, as Peter Hitchens once joked.

[Zionist Nationalist]

Sooooo obviously that EVERY example cited doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

It's mostly right-wing tabloid hysteria with ZERO evidence. Like a motion never introduced in the Labour Conference.

Provide a specific example, go on. Assertion alone proves nothing, honey.

The fact that he called Hezbollah and Hamas "friends" is enough to understand who is this guy and what are his views

[skinster]

^ Resistance organizations defending themselves against Israeli brutality are...people too. In the world of zionists, everyone should lie down and die if Israel threatens them, occupies them, kills their people, etc..

New challenge to Israel’s effort to undermine Jeremy Corbyn
Human rights activists have lodged a freedom of information request under Israeli law seeking documents about the state’s ongoing disinformation campaign against UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Israeli lawyer Eitay Mack on Sunday sent a letter on behalf of 18 Israeli citizens to the ministries of foreign affairs and strategic affairs.

They include Palestine solidarity activists Kobi Snitz, Sahar Vardi and Ofer Neiman, as well as academic Neve Gordon.

Some of the signatories are supporters of of Boycott From Within, a group in present-day Israel which advocates boycott, divestment and sanctions – or BDS.

“In the past two years, it has been revealed that the two ministries carry out activities against critics of the State of Israel in the UK,” the letter to the ministries states.

The full letter is below.

It also cites Israeli media coverage of Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation The Lobby broadcast last year.

The film revealed that Israeli embassy spy Shai Masot was working with front organizations in Labour that smear critics of Israel as anti-Semitic.

Masot was also trying to engineer the creation of a fake grassroots youth organization within Labour that would espouse pro-Israel positions.

A thorn in Israel’s side
Corbyn is a “thorn in the side” of Israel’s government, Mack’s letter tells the two ministries.

While these ministries “have been highly successful in their relations with regimes that are responsible for mass murder” and “that are infected with anti-Semitism,” Israel’s government has a major problem with “a pro-Palestinian leader who supports human and civil rights,” the letter observes.

As examples of Israel’s friendly relations with anti-Semitic governments, Mack cites Hungary, Poland and Ukraine.

Meanwhile, according to the letter, Corbyn has “thwarted attempts by the two ministries to silence any critique of the State of Israel and the Netanyahu government” by labeling such criticisms as anti-Semitism.

This is a reference to the current Israel lobby attack on Labour for refusing to adopt verbatim the controversial IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

Given this history, the activists demand public scrutiny of the Israeli government’s intervention in British politics, including all “information, documents and records as to correspondence by the two ministries with NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], groups, individuals and journalists in the UK, regarding the UK Labour Party and Mr. Corbyn.”

The letter names in particular four pro-Israel groups: the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Community Security Trust, Labour Friends of Israel and Conservative Friends of Israel.

Israel’s Labour front groups
Mack told The Electronic Intifada that the activists’ request is for documents relating to all groups in the UK.

He said that if the ministries failed to voluntarily disclose documents relating to the Jewish Labour Movement, he would send a an additional request naming that group specifically.

As The Electronic Intifada has reported, the group has close ties to Israel, and has been leading attacks against Corbyn.

Its director Ella Rose in 2016 privately admitted to working closely with Israeli embassy spy Shai Masot.

Masot was forced to leave the UK last year after Al Jazeera’s undercover investigation exposed him trying to “take down” a British minister deemed overly critical of Israel.

Since then, as revealed by The Electronic Intifada, it emerged that Masot had been working closely with the strategic affairs ministry.

The ministry is responsible for what Israel calls its “war” against BDS, Palestine’s boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli apartheid.

Dirty tricks, “black ops”
Veteran Israeli intelligence reporter Yossi Melman in 2016 revealed that the ministry is involved in dirty tricks and “black ops” against the global movement for Palestinian rights.

The two Israeli ministries have a history of stonewalling the persistent information requests filed by Mack on behalf of activists.

The strategic affairs ministry has also been working to change Israeli law so that its activities are totally classified.

But sometimes officials give away too much.

In June the defense ministry revealed that export licenses for rifles being used to arm a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia were issued “in full coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other government entities.”

The anti-Semitic Azov Battalion has posted photos and video of its troops brandishing the Tavor-style rifles licensed by Israel Weapon Industries.
https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/as ... emy-corbyn

[skinster]

The trust deficit tearing apart our societies
The latest “scandal” gripping Britain – or to be more accurate, British elites – is over the use of the term “Zionist” by the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the head of the opposition and possibly the country’s next prime minister.

Yet again, Corbyn has found himself ensnared in what a small group of Jewish leadership organisations, which claim improbably to represent Britain’s “Jewish community”, and a small group of corporate journalists, who improbably claim to represent British public opinion, like to call Labour’s “anti-semitism problem”.

I won’t get into the patently ridiculous notion that “Zionist” is a code word for “Jew”, at least not now. There are lots of existing articles explaining why that is nonsense.

I wish to deal with a different aspect of the long-running row over Labour’s so-called “anti-semitism crisis”. It exemplifies, I believe, a much more profound and wider crisis in our societies: over the issue of trust.

We now have two large camps, pitted against each other, who have starkly different conceptions of what their societies are and where they need to head. In a very real sense, these two camps no longer speak the same language. There has been a rupture, and they can find no common ground.

I am not here speaking about the elites who dominate our societies. They have their own agenda. They trade only in the language of money and power. I am speaking of us: the 99 per cent who live in their shadow.

First, let us outline the growing ideological and linguistic chasm opening up between these two camps: a mapping of the divisions that, given space constraints, will necessarily deal in generalisations.

The trusting camp
The first camp invests its trust, with minor reservations, in those who run our societies. The left and the right segments of this camp are divided primarily over the degree to which they believe that those at the bottom of society’s pile need a helping hand to get them further up the social ladder.

Otherwise, the first camp – let us call them the trusters – is united in its assumptions.

They admit that among our elected politicians there is the odd bad apple. And, of course, they understand that there are necessary debates about political and social values. But they are agreed that politicians rise chiefly through ability and talent, that they are accountable to their political constituencies, and that they are people who want what is best for society as a whole.

While the trusters concede that the media is owned by a handful of corporations driven by a concern for profit, they are nonetheless confident that the free market – the need to sell papers and audiences – guarantees that important news and a full spectrum of legitimate opinion are available to readers.

Both politicians and the media serve – if not always entirely successfully – as a constraint on corruption and the abuse of power by other powerful actors, such as the business community.

This camp believes too that western democracies are better, more civilised political systems than those in other parts of the world. Western societies do not want wars, they want peace and security for everyone. For that reason, they have been thrust – rather uncomfortably – into the role of global policeman. Western states have found themselves with little choice of late but to wage “good wars” to curb the genocidal instincts and hunger for power of dictators and madmen.

Russian conspiracies
Once upon a time – when the trusters’ worldview was rarely, if ever, challenged – their favoured response to anything difficult to reconcile with their core beliefs, from the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crash, was: “Cock-up, not conspiracy!”. Now that there are ever more issues threatening to undermine their most cherished verities, the camp’s response is – paradoxically – “Putin did it!” or “Fake news!”.

The current obsession with Russian conspiracies is in large part the result of the extraordinarily rapid rise of a second camp, no doubt fuelled by the unprecedented access western publics have gained through social media to information, good and bad alike. At no time in human history have so many people been able to step outside of a state-, clerical- or corporate-sanctioned framework of information dissemination and speak to each other directly and on a global stage.

This new camp – let us characterise them as the dissenters – is not easy to characterise in the old language of left-right politics either. Its chief characteristic is that it distrusts not only those who dominate our societies, but the social structures they operate within.

The dissenters regard such structures as neither immutable, divinely ordained ways for ordering and organising society, nor as the rational outcome of the political and moral evolution of western societies. Rather, they view these structures as the product of engineering by a tiny elite to hold on to its power.

These structures are no longer primarily national, but global. They are not immutable but as fabricated, as man-made and replaceable, as the structures that once made incontestable the rule of a landed aristocracy over feudal serfs. The current aristocracy, this camp argues, are globalised corporations that are so unaccountable that even the biggest nation-states can no longer contain or constrain them.

Illusions of pluralism
For the dissenters, politicians are not the cream of society. They have risen to the surface of a corrupted and corrupting system, and the overwhelming majority did so by enthusiastically adopting its rotten values. These politicians do not chiefly serve voters but the corporations who really dominate our societies.

For the dissenters, this fact was well illustrated in 2008 when the political class did not – and could not – punish the banks responsible for the near-collapse of western economies after decades of reckless speculation on which a financial elite had grown fat. Those banks, in the words of the politicians themselves, were “too big to fail” and so were bailed out with money from the very same publics who had been scammed by the banks in the first place. Rather than use the bank failures as an opportunity to drive through reform of the broken banking system, or nationalise parts of it, the politicians let the banking casino system continue, even intensify.

Likewise, the media – supposed watchdogs on power – are seen by the dissenters as the chief propagandists for the ruling elite. The media do not monitor the abuse of power, they actively create a social consensus for the continuation of the abuse – and if that fails, they seek to deflect attention from, or veil, the abuse.

This is inevitable, the dissenters argue, given that the media are embedded within the very same corporate structures that dominate our societies. They are, in fact, the corporations’ public relations arm. They allow only limited dissent at the margins of the media, and only as a way to create the impression of an illusory pluralism.

Manufactured enemies
These domestic structures are subservient to a still-bigger agenda: the accumulation of wealth by a global elite through the asset-stripping of the planet’s resources and the rationalisation of permanent war. That, this camp concludes, requires the manufacturing of “enemies” – such as Russia, Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Korea – to justify the expansion of a military-industrial machine.

These “enemies” are a real foe in the sense that, in their different ways, they refuse to submit to the neoliberalising reach of the western-based corporations. But more significantly, they are needed as an enemy, even should they want to make peace. These manufactured enemies, say the dissenters, justify the redirection of public money into the private coffers of the military and homeland security industries. And equally importantly, a ready set of bogeymen can be exploited to distract western publics from troubles at home.

The dissenters are accused by the trusters of being anti-western, anti-American and anti-Israel (or more mischievously anti-semitic) for their opposition to western “humanitarian interventions” abroad. The second camp, say the trusters, act as apologists for war criminals like Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Syria’s Bashar Assad, portraying these leaders as misunderstood good guys and blaming the west for the world’s ills.

The dissenters argue that they are none of these things: they are anti-imperialist. They do not excuse the crimes of Putin or Assad, they treat them as secondary and largely reactive to the vastly greater power projected by a western elite with global reach. They believe the western media’s obsession with crafting narratives about evil enemies – bad men and madmen – is designed to deflect attention from the structures of far greater violence the west deploys around the world, through a web of US military bases and Nato.

Putin has power, but it is immeasurably less than the combined might of the profit-seeking, war-waging western military industries. Faced with this power equation, according to the dissenters, Putin acts defensively or reactively on the global stage, using what limited strength Russia has to uphold its essential strategic interests. One cannot reasonably judge Russia’s crimes without first admitting the west’s greater crimes, our crimes.

While the whole US political class obsess over “Russian interference” in US elections, the dissenters note, the American public is encouraged to ignore the much greater US interference not only in Russian elections, but in many other spheres Russia considers to be vital strategic interests. That includes the locating of US military bases and missile sites on Russia’s borders.

Different languages
Two camps, two entirely different languages and narratives.

These camps may be divided, but it would seriously misguided to imagine they are equal.

One has the full power and weight of those corporate structures behind it. The politicians speak its language, as do the media. Its ideas and its voice dominate everywhere that is considered official, objective, balanced, neutral, respectable, legitimate.

The other camp, the dissenters, has one small space to make its presence felt – social media. That is a space rapidly shrinking, as the politicians, media and the corporations that own social media (as they do everything else) start to realise they have let the genie out of the bottle. This camp is derided as conspiratorial, dangerous, fake news.

This is the current battlefield. It is a battle the trusters look like they are winning when actually they have already lost.

That is not necessarily because the dissenters are winning the argument. It is because physical realities are catching up with the trusters, smashing their illusions, even as they cling to them like a life-raft.

The two most significant disrupters of the trusters’ narrative are climate breakdown and economic meltdown. The planet has finite resources, which means endless growth and wealth accumulation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Much as in a Ponzi scheme, there comes a point when the hollow centre is exposed and the system comes crashing down. We have had intimations enough that we are nearing that point.

It hardly needs repeating, except to climate deniers, that we have had even more indications that the Earth’s climate is already turning against humankind.

Out of the darkness
Our political language is rupturing because we are now completely divided. There is no middle ground, no social compact, no consensus. The dissenters understand that the current system is broken and that we need radical change, while the trusters hold desperately to the hope that the system will continue to be workable with modifications and minor reforms.

It is on to this battlefield that Corbyn has stumbled, little prepared for the heavy historic burden he shoulders.

We are arriving at a moment called a paradigm shift. That is when the cracks in a system become so obvious they can no longer be credibly denied. Those vested in the old system scream and shout, they buy themselves a little time with increasingly repressive measures, but the house is moments away from falling. The critical questions are who gets hurt when the structure tumbles, and who decides how it will be rebuilt.

The new paradigm is coming anyway. If we don’t choose it ourselves, the planet will for us. It could be an improvement, it could be a deterioration, it could be extinction, depending on how prepared we are for it and how violently those invested in the old system resist the loss of their power. If enough of us understand the need for discarding the broken system, the greater the hope that we can build something better from the ruins.

We are now at the point where the corporate elite can see the cracks are widening but they remain in denial. They are entering the tantrum phase, screaming and shouting at their enemies, and readying to implement ever-more repressive measures to maintain their power.

They have rightly identified social media as the key concern. This is where we – the 99 per cent – have begun waking each other up. This is where we are sharing and learning, emerging out of the darkness clumsily and shaken. We are making mistakes, but learning. We are heading up blind alleys, but learning. We are making poor choices, but learning. We are making unhelpful alliances, but learning.

No one, least of all the corporate elite, knows precisely where this process might lead, what capacities we have for political, social and spiritual growth.

And what the elite don’t own or control, they fear.

Putting the genie back
The elite have two weapons they can use to try to force the second camp, the dissenters, back into the bottle. They can vilify it, driving it back into the margins of public life, where it was until the advent of social media; or they can lock down the new channels of mass communication their insatiable drive to monetise everything briefly opened up.

Both strategies have risks, which is why they are being pursued tentatively for the time being. But the second option is by far the riskier of the two. Shutting down social media too obviously could generate blowback, awakening more of the trusters to the illusions the dissenters have been trying to alert them to.

Corbyn’s significance – and danger – is that he brings much of the language and concerns of the second camp into the mainstream. He offers a fast-track for the dissenters to reach the first camp, the trusters, and accelerate the awakening process. That, in turn, would improve the chances of the paradigm shift being organic and transitional rather than disruptive and violent.

That is why he has become a lightning rod for the wider machinations of the ruling elite. They want him destroyed, like blowing up a bridge to stop an advancing army.

It is a sign both of their desperation and their weakness that they have had to resort to the nuclear option, smearing him as an anti-semite. Other, lesser smears were tried first: that he was not presidential enough to lead Britain; that he was anti-establishment; that he was unpatriotic; that he might be a traitor. None worked. If anything, they made him more popular.

And so a much more incendiary charge was primed, however at odds it was with Corbyn’s decades spent as an anti-racism activist.

The corporate elite weaponised anti-semitism not because they care about the safety of Jews, or because they really believe that Corbyn is an anti-semite. They chose it because it is the most destructive weapon – short of sex-crime smears and assassination – they have in their armoury.

The truth is the ruling elite are exploiting British Jews and fuelling their fears as part of a much larger power game in which all of us – the 99 per cent – are expendable. They will keep stoking this campaign to stigmatise Corbyn, even if a political backlash actually does lead to an increase in real, rather than phoney, anti-semitism.

The corporate elites have no plan to go quietly. Unless we can build our ranks quickly and make our case confidently, their antics will ensure the paradigm shift is violent rather than healing. An earthquake, not a storm.
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2018 ... t-deficit/

[layman]

^

As if global warming and an unsustainable economic model proves any of the rest of this crap. Typical internet blue pill red pill stuff.

[demima]

layman, I've yet to hear anything from you that challenges anything posted by others. Is your go to reaction to a post by someone on the left to dismiss it immediately? #gammon

[skinster]

Layman never proves anything, shares anything insightful or interesting, all he does is post his boring opinion pretty much every single time he posts.

On a related note, there's been some release of the undercover documentary that proved Israeli embassy people were out to get Corbyn and other pro-Palestine politicians in the UK (that's where all the antisemitism smears came from). The American version of the same documentary was released and exposed that sad fucker who runs Canary Mission FINALLY, that awful organization that targeted pro-Palestine activists in the US. No wonder they've been pressuring Qatar for so long to not release the film. It'll all come out soon and it's delicious because zionist tears always are. Details in this article:

Also:

[0]=68.ARCw9YNK8ZE5hunWnH-TwIdRpn93m1wzVQxn0LR2qXy45UfLOlhQb-NbIA2X_eTDxKJqAtkIOeFJzJgkuKkUz38U8ZIu9Ci0xXieNmDdMV_31Vl18FjKxDToHV71ey5-9GMRJEI&__tn__=H-R

[skinster]

Anti-Semitism Charges Against Jeremy Corbyn are Diversion from Israeli Occupation of Palestine
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has dedicated his entire life to fighting racism and injustice — he is not a racist and therefore clearly he is not anti-Semitic. He has not once denied the Holocaust and therefore he is not a Holocaust-denier. It seems, however, that none of this matters to those who would bring him down.

LIVERPOOL, UNITED KINGDOM — The U.K. Labour Party conference is more than three weeks away and Jeremy Corbyn, true to himself and his principles, has risen above the mud-slinging and continues to fight for the principles to which he has dedicated his entire life. He focuses on issues like social justice; caring for the many rather than the few, the millions not the millionaires; and, as Corbyn himself said in his speech at last year’s convention, “end[ing] the oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Zionist groups within the Labour Party, which include LFI (Labour Friends of Israel) and the JLM (the Zionist ‘Jewish Labour Movement’), skillfully utilize the pro-Zionist media. They are trying — and failing — to paint Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite. However, the problem is not anti-Semitism but Corbyn’s stance on Palestine. These Zionist groups want to get rid of Corbyn because of his principled stance on Palestine, Israeli colonialism and occupation of Palestine, and they use anti-Semitism labels because they think it will work.

The 1972 Munich-attacks issue
The desperation of those seeking to oust Corbyn can be seen by the latest accusation against him: attending a memorial for terrorists.

It was given impetus by a remark by the Israeli prime minister, in what is a shocking intervention by Israel in British politics. Benjamin Netanyahu made remarks about the Labour leader, saying that he deserves “unequivocal condemnation.” In what can only be described as an escalation of the already heavy-handed intervention of Zionist groups to end Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Netanyahu said that Corbyn’s participation in a ceremony at a cemetery in Tunis in 2014 is deserving of condemnation, because — according to Netanyahu — terrorists are buried there.

Corbyn did not remain silent. True to himself once again, he struck back, reminding Netanyahu that what is deserving of condemnation is Israeli forces’ killing of hundreds of protesters in Gaza and the passing of the new, racist Israel Nation State Law.

Netanyahu — along with what may well be the loudest Zionist mouthpiece in Britain, The Daily Mail — claims that Corbyn was present at a ceremony and even laid a wreath on the graves of terrorists connected with the 1972 attack on the Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympic games.

The truth of the matter is that the event in which Corbyn participated had nothing to do with the Munich attack. In 2014 Jeremy Corbyn attended a service at a cemetery in Tunis commemorating the victims of the 1985 Israeli airstrike on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) offices in Tunis. This Israeli attack was a breach of international law, violated the sovereignty of another country, and received worldwide condemnation, including by the United States.

Furthermore, none of the eight men who participated in the Munich attack are buried in Tunis. The four men who are buried there — and whose tombstones are shown in The Daily Mail photo — are Salah Khalaf, who was Yasser Arafat’s deputy; his aide, Fakhri al-Omari; Hayel Abdel-Hamid, who was the PLO chief of security; and Atef Bseiso. Bseiso was assassinated in Paris in 1992 — 20 years after the Munich Olympics. He was heavily involved in talks with the CIA in an attempt to advance relations between the U.S. and the PLO. Israel claimed that all four were involved in the attack in Munich and had all of them assassinated either directly or by the proxy terror group, Abu-Nidal. There was never a shred of proof, not to mention a trial, to substantiate Israel’s allegations against these men.

Blatant intervention
The big question is why does the Israeli prime minister feel he needs to engage in such blatant intervention and and make such blatantly false accusations just as Britain’s largest political party is about to convene? Netanyahu and his henchmen must realize that U.K. Labour, having gained over half a million members since Jeremy Corbyn’s ascent as leader, is poised to win in the next elections, so that, if Israel fails to oust him, Jeremy Corbyn will end up in 10 Downing Street.

One of the ridiculous charges laid against Corbyn is the following: He was criticized for attending a passover Seder with a particular group of Jewish people who “dismissed concerns about anti-Semitism in the party.” So it is not good enough that he went to a Seder and that he opted to do so among people who live in his own constituency; he had to do so with Jewish people who think a particular way.

Corbyn was also criticized for participating in an event with the late Hajo Meyer, a Jewish holocaust survivor himself. This was in 2010, when Corbyn hosted a Holocaust Memorial Day event in London with Meyer as the main speaker. Hajo Meyer was, like many holocaust survivors, a fervent advocate for Palestinian rights and a severe critic of Israel — hence the criticism.

Anti-Semitism
Another sticking point is the self-appointed International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which apparently adopted a new and, in their own words, “non-legally binding” working definition of anti-Semitism. Initially Labour’s national executive committee refused to accept this definition, but there are signs that a compromise might be on the horizon. This definition of anti-Semitism is one that entire Jewish communities do not accept because it seeks to silence criticism of Israel and conflates Zionism with Judaism. The anti-Semitism definition includes several clauses that have nothing to do with racism or anti-Semitism and have everything to do with protecting Israel from criticism. For example:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination; e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.

War of attrition
Another example, in which I was personally involved, has to do with a comment that I made at a fringe event during the 2017 Labour conference and that turned into a major news item. During a panel on free speech, I said that free speech means we should be able to discuss every issue, including Palestine and the Holocaust. The Daily Mail published this as though it was a scandalous thing to say and accused Labour and even Corbyn himself for allowing it to happen.

Every other newspaper in Britain followed suit and then papers in Palestine and even the Israeli papers picked it up as well. I added in my remarks that, while free speech should not be criminalized, we do not need to give a platform to proponents of any racist ideology, and that includes Zionists who regularly demand to be present and give their perspective at events and lectures.

My presence during the conference and my comments did not warrant such attention. However, this is a war of attrition in which Labour Friends of Israel, the so-called ‘Jewish Labour Movement, and the British Daily Mail are leading the charge and will jump at every opportunity to get attention. Once again, the problem was not denial of the Holocaust or anti-Semitism — because there was no expression of either one — but the fear of a discussion on Palestine and Zionism.

By trying to silence the discussion regarding Zionism and its legitimacy, Israel abuses the memory of the millions who died in the Holocaust, particularly the Jewish victims. There are entire communities of Jewish Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors who are quite ready to discuss and debate any issue, including the Holocaust, and who view the Zionists’ stance as absurd. These same Jewish communities also reject Zionism and support the Palestinian call for BDS, or Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. It is time that these voices be heard.

Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has dedicated his entire life to fighting racism and injustice — he is not a racist and therefore clearly he is not anti-Semitic. He has not once denied the Holocaust and therefore he is not a Holocaust-denier. However, none of this matters. As was stated clearly in The Daily Mail, “The Board of Deputies of British Jews warned Mr. Corbyn to ‘come out of hiding’ and said the anti-Semitism crisis would not go away.” In other words, there is nothing he can say or do to “clear” himself. They are determined to oust him and they think the anti-Semitic card will do the trick.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/anti-semi ... yn/248433/

[colliric]

They use the anti-Semitism card to bait and switch criticism of Israel all the time. I got sick of it around about the time they called a Hebrew-Aramaic Language film with the Jew as the main hero an anti-semitic film....

You know which one I'm talking about right?

The most successful Jewish Language film of all time....

The one that pulled in $660 million dollars over a $30 million dollar budget.
Lol.

[Zionist Nationalist]

I dont really care whatever Corbyn is truly anti Semitic or not. I just dont like this guy for obvious reasons.

What can we do beside blame him for anti semitism? we have to find ways to discredit him he is dangerous although unlikely to ever get elected.

[danholo]

This anti-Corbyn witch hunt is a bit absurd. It would be useful to give actual counter arguments. Not that I'm for Corbyn but I'll never stand for defamation.

[skinster]

What can we do beside blame him for anti semitism? we have to find ways to discredit him...

[anarchist23]

‘With the Netanyahu government ramping up the racism, our struggle for survival is more precarious than ever.’ Palestinian Arab MPs in the Knesset commend Jeremy Corbyn for his ‘longstanding solidarity with all oppressed peoples around the world’
Letters
Sun 2 Sep 2018 15.32 BST
As members of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, representing our fellow Palestinian Arab citizens of the state of Israel and Jewish supporters of peace and democracy, we are writing to express our solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour party in the United Kingdom. Palestinian Arabs constitute about a fifth of Israel’s citizenry. As such, we have a deep understanding of the vulnerability that many minority communities feel, in the UK and around the world. We respect the vigilance with which minority groups monitor the actions and statements of their local leaders, to ensure that their rights are not infringed upon, and to defend their members from unwarranted attacks on the basis of their group identity.
Palestinian citizens of Israel have yet to experience a single day of equality, de jure or de facto – to say nothing of the millions of Palestinians under military occupation in the West Bank, under siege in the Gaza Strip, and the 6 million in exile abroad, prevented from returning to their homeland simply because they are not Jews. As part of the Palestinian people, this has been our lived experience of the Zionist movement since day one.
In the Knesset, in the streets, and on the world stage, we Palestinian parliamentarians have always argued that it is not possible for any ethno-state, Jewish or otherwise, to also be a state that guarantees equality to all its citizens; for the state of Israel to be both Jewish and democratic. Now Benjamin Netanyahu has proved that we were right all along, by passing the constitutional nation-state law, which explicitly raises the rights of Jewish people to paramount status, downgrades the Arabic language and eclipses any mention of equal rights, regardless of race or religion.
Emboldened by the rise of far-right forces in the US and other parts of the world, the Netanyahu government has made it abundantly clear that Palestinians will never have a state of their own, and that they will never be allowed equality inside Israel. Emboldened by Netanyahu’s ultra-nationalism, Israeli racists are stepping up their violent vigilante attacks on Palestinian people, putting the spirit of the nation-state law into practice.
Incredibly, instead of taking that government to task for its unadulterated racism, the British political class ignores the Palestinian historical plight, and attacks and abuses the British and European leader who vocally supports the Palestinian cause of peace and equality. With the Netanyahu government ramping up the racism, our struggle for survival is more precarious than ever. But while we focus locally, defending what’s left of our ever-diminishing rights, we feel that we must speak out now and register our repugnance at these recent attempts to complete our erasure, by forbidding within the UK Labour party any mention by name of the forces allayed against the Palestinian cause.
As long as efforts to curb anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK are focused on combating the disparagement of Jews merely for their membership in a minority group, they have our full support. But when some try to force the Labour party into using as its litmus test a definition of antisemitism that goes far beyond anti-Jewish animus to include anti-Zionism, we must raise our voices and decry these efforts.
We commend Jeremy Corbyn for his decades of public service to the British people, and for his longstanding solidarity with all oppressed peoples around the world, including his unflinching support for the Palestinian people. We stand in solidarity with Jeremy Corbyn and we recognise him as a principled leftist leader who aspires for peace and justice and is opposed to all forms of racism, whether directed at Jews, Palestinians, or any other group.
Ahmad Tibi MP Deputy speaker of parliament, Joint List/Arab Movement for Change
Masud Ganaim MP Joint List/United Arab List
Yousef Jabareen MP Joint List/Democratic Front for Peace and Equality
Jamal Zahalka MP Joint List/National Democratic Assembly
On behalf of all 13 members of the Knesset who are part of the Joint List

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ ... nd-justice

[albionfagan]

Funny that Labour's support has actually increased during this whole farce, the British electorate can't be so easily manipulated like they used to be.

[anarchist23]

When Russia interferes in American politics there is a shock and horror. But when Israel interferes in U.K. politics there is hardly a murmur as no one wants to be called anti Semitic.



Senior Electoral Reform Society official backs claim that Mossad is behind anti-Corbyn campaign

A senior director of an influential thinktank has defended a Labour councillor accused of antisemitism and backed her claim Mossad is involved in a campaign to prevent Jeremy Corbyn becoming prime minister.

Willie Sullivan – who works at the Electoral Reform Society which aims to change the way voting takes place at elections in the UK - made his controversial remarks after coming to the defence of Scottish Labour councillor Mary Lockhart after she suggested there was a “Mossad assisted campaign to prevent the election of a Labour Government.”

Writing on Facebook, Mr Sullivan, who is listed on the official ERS website as Senior Director ERS Scotland and Campaigns said: "What! You seriously don't believe that the state of Israel and its security services are willing to intervene to prevent a pro-Palestine P.M.

“That is... Somewhat like the idea that Russian state or the British state security services do not make strategic security interventions in other countries.”

On Monday a spokesperson for the ERS confirmed to the JC they were now investigating Mr Sullivan's comments.

"We are an equal opportunities employer and take any allegations of this nature seriously,” the spokesperson added.

Mr Sullivan was responding after another Labour Party member Michael McMahon criticised Ms Lockhart's Mossad remarks.

After someone said Israel was not responsible for the antisemitic actions of party members, Mr Sullivan said: "Both can be true. There can be people who are racist and antisemitic in the Labour party. And Israel state security services will be interested in whether the UK has a pro-Palestine PM.

“And most people who know anything about this would be surprised if they did not consider tactical interventions to increase the likelihood of outcomes in the interest of Israel. That is their job."

He said to deny this was "either deeply niave or is itself a political position/tactic.”

He later added: "What seems clear is that there are some antisemitic nasties in the Labour Party.

"There are also some people in the Labour Party who would rather destroy it than see Corbyn as PM. They see their career paths cut off by him and they have many other reasons for hating him some of which are to do with his position on Palestine."

Ms Lockhart made her Mossad remarks in response to three Jewish newspapers, including the JC, taking the unprecedented step of publishing the same front page condemning antisemitism within Labour.

Ms Lockhart, who is a Fife councillor, wrote: “If the purpose is to generate opposition to antisemitism, it has backfired spectacularly.

“If it is to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader, it is unlikely to succeed, and is a shameless piece of cynical opportunism.

“And if it is a Mossad [the Israeli secret service] assisted campaign to prevent the election of a Labour Government pledged to recognise Palestine as a State, it is unacceptable interference in the democracy of Britain.”

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/seni ... n-1.467778

[Political Interest]

Britain's involvement in the Middle East has been disastrous both for itself and the peoples of the region. However Corbyn is making the mistake of taking a side in this conflict and that is not a good idea. Of course Israeli excesses must be condemned but it is also dangerous for the English to start getting involved on the other side as well. The UK should stay out of Middle East conflicts. The English know absolutely nothing about this part of the world and do not understand the mentality of the people there. Left wing or right wing agitation in favour of either side perpetuates the notion of global Britain at a time when the English should be doing all in their power to reduce the global presence of their country. British involvement in the Middle East, even if it is a of a leftist character has a colonial aspect to it. They should stay out of it and let events take their course.

Corbyn and his comrades are the types of people who believe that the UK is populated by straight white imperialist men and that supporting anti-imperialist struggles in the global south is some way of making amends for this. Corbyn wants more mass immigration. People like him will replicate the situation of Palestine in Europe.