14 dec 2019
The New York Times opinion section doesn’t play fair. That is not exactly a revelation but sometimes enough is enough and the newspaper’s anti-Palestinian bias needs to be reiterated.
A new executive order signed by President Donald Trump threatens the First Amendment rights of students. They could be punished merely for saying that Israel is a racist endeavor because it denies equal rights to all people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Trump’s embrace of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism means federal dollars could well be cut or pulled entirely over certain criticisms of Israel.
Students face the prospect, mind you, of being told it is anti-Semitic to advocate for equal rights for Palestinians or for advocating that Israel become a state for all citizens rather than an exclusivist Jewish state.
In the face of this emerging government attack on free speech, what does the newspaper of record do? It gives first word to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and courtesy of the administration’s nepotism a senior adviser to the president, providing space for an op-ed to defend the executive order.
Of course, Kushner is silent in the op-ed on his father-in-law’s own anti-Semitic speech from the prior weekend. That speech gave succor to the bigoted views of white nationalists with its suggestion of Jews as “brutal killers” driven by their wealth and indulged in misrepresentations of the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions. tweet
For Trump and Kushner, the only good Palestinian is a quiet Palestinian – or a dead one as their support for Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza has made clear, along with their decisions to cut off vital aid to Palestinian refugees.
Kushner is clear in expressing the administration’s view that opposing Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – amounts to anti-Semitism.
If that’s the case, Palestinians and their allies will be expected to shut up about how Israel’s state ideology has dispossessed them or how they’re living under the boot of a racist state with discriminatory laws.
That’s the new anti-Semitism identified by the Trump administration – while no one in the administration seems to have ideas on how to stop violent anti-Semitic attacks from Jersey City to Pittsburgh to Poway.
One thought: Stop employing racist language to divide Americans and stop praising racists as “very fine people.”
Will intimidation work or backfire?
The Trump-Kushner tandem think they can intimidate their way to quiescent students on US campuses.
I suspect, however, that they’ve seriously miscalculated and will get more pushback than ever with louder calls than ever for equal rights for Palestinians. Government coercion intended to curtail calls for equal rights may well lead to students being more, not less, vocal about the injustices faced by Palestinians.
Students being told they need to keep quiet about Palestinian rights seems like a surefire means to produce the opposite result.
But that’s not certain. University action to kick student activists off campus will be closely watched around the country and could suppress opposition.
If government intimidation wins the day, with administrators helping carry out a silencing campaign, there’s no telling what might be ordered next.
But the assault on free speech rights is plenty alarming without speculating on whether or not it will work.
And in that effort, it must be said that James Bennet, New York Times editorial page editor overseeing the opinion department, is helping lead the way with the Kushner piece.
Kushner has been given first shot at defining the issue, much as cable news outlets consistently provide Israeli spokespeople with first go at framing the narrative around Israeli military attacks on Gaza.
The Kushner op-ed, of course, follows Bennet’s hiring of Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, notorious anti-Palestinian writers.
Weiss, in particular, has pushed to the fore a crackdown on campus free speech, both from her days working against Palestinian academics at Columbia University and her more recent writing for The New York Times.
A freedom movement deserves better
But The New York Times wasn’t done. It also ran an editorial of its own on the subject (while running this better op-ed the next day).
The editorial rightly included mention of violent right-wing anti-Semites with their deadly attacks on American Jews and pointed to free speech concerns.
Yet it also found time to attack the BDS movement and misrepresent student actions at Emory University.
“Whatever its intent,” the editorial declared, “BDS has helped to create a hostile environment for Jewish students, most of whom support Israel. At Emory University, for example, students with mezuzot on their door posts were served with mock eviction notices.”
This is profoundly misleading, to the extent that a correction ought to be issued.
First, many readers will conclude from the framing that only Jewish students received the eviction notices. This is false as Emory officials have themselves admitted, some more candidly [pdf] than others.
Secondly, what were these eviction notices? They were educational material explaining what happens to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
That critical detail goes unnoted.
Nearly simultaneous Islamophobia at Emory, meanwhile, passes without notice by The New York Times. Of course, that’s hardly surprising as Emory’s police somehow determined that the desecration of a Muslim ablution room was an “accident.”
The urine and feces, however, suggest otherwise.
An article on the subject by The Emory Wheel reads like a subtle report on a police cover-up. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of the Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Electronic Intifada that he was “skeptical” this was an “innocent mistake.”
A more thoughtful editorial from The Times would have covered events at Emory more fully and fairly and said far more about what the BDS movement is attempting to accomplish.
Such omissions are no surprise.
Just a day earlier, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman wrote an explanatory New York Times article on Trump’s executive order which described BDS as a “movement against Israel.” A different New York Times article published online Thursday evening referred to “the burgeoning anti-Israel movement on college campuses.”
Missing from both articles – the second article didn’t even reference BDS – were key facts. Namely, BDS is a nonviolent movement. It’s calling for equal rights for Palestinian citizens, an end to the Israeli occupation and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
A “movement against Israel” is more menacing, however, and so that’s what readers got.
Spin that emphasizes anti-Israel sentiment rather than calls for Palestinian freedom and equal rights is misleading and unfair. It keeps readers uneducated about a powerful social justice movement modeled on the effort to divest from apartheid South Africa.
This freedom movement deserves better, more honest coverage.
Where, it should be asked, are the Palestinian voices on the op-ed page who can raise profound concerns about government intimidation and the trampling of the First Amendment, while saying in their own words what the BDS movement advocates?
Or should would-be government censors always be given priority by the newspaper of record?
A new executive order signed by President Donald Trump threatens the First Amendment rights of students. They could be punished merely for saying that Israel is a racist endeavor because it denies equal rights to all people between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Trump’s embrace of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism means federal dollars could well be cut or pulled entirely over certain criticisms of Israel.
Students face the prospect, mind you, of being told it is anti-Semitic to advocate for equal rights for Palestinians or for advocating that Israel become a state for all citizens rather than an exclusivist Jewish state.
In the face of this emerging government attack on free speech, what does the newspaper of record do? It gives first word to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and courtesy of the administration’s nepotism a senior adviser to the president, providing space for an op-ed to defend the executive order.
Of course, Kushner is silent in the op-ed on his father-in-law’s own anti-Semitic speech from the prior weekend. That speech gave succor to the bigoted views of white nationalists with its suggestion of Jews as “brutal killers” driven by their wealth and indulged in misrepresentations of the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions. tweet
For Trump and Kushner, the only good Palestinian is a quiet Palestinian – or a dead one as their support for Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza has made clear, along with their decisions to cut off vital aid to Palestinian refugees.
Kushner is clear in expressing the administration’s view that opposing Zionism – Israel’s state ideology – amounts to anti-Semitism.
If that’s the case, Palestinians and their allies will be expected to shut up about how Israel’s state ideology has dispossessed them or how they’re living under the boot of a racist state with discriminatory laws.
That’s the new anti-Semitism identified by the Trump administration – while no one in the administration seems to have ideas on how to stop violent anti-Semitic attacks from Jersey City to Pittsburgh to Poway.
One thought: Stop employing racist language to divide Americans and stop praising racists as “very fine people.”
Will intimidation work or backfire?
The Trump-Kushner tandem think they can intimidate their way to quiescent students on US campuses.
I suspect, however, that they’ve seriously miscalculated and will get more pushback than ever with louder calls than ever for equal rights for Palestinians. Government coercion intended to curtail calls for equal rights may well lead to students being more, not less, vocal about the injustices faced by Palestinians.
Students being told they need to keep quiet about Palestinian rights seems like a surefire means to produce the opposite result.
But that’s not certain. University action to kick student activists off campus will be closely watched around the country and could suppress opposition.
If government intimidation wins the day, with administrators helping carry out a silencing campaign, there’s no telling what might be ordered next.
But the assault on free speech rights is plenty alarming without speculating on whether or not it will work.
And in that effort, it must be said that James Bennet, New York Times editorial page editor overseeing the opinion department, is helping lead the way with the Kushner piece.
Kushner has been given first shot at defining the issue, much as cable news outlets consistently provide Israeli spokespeople with first go at framing the narrative around Israeli military attacks on Gaza.
The Kushner op-ed, of course, follows Bennet’s hiring of Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss, notorious anti-Palestinian writers.
Weiss, in particular, has pushed to the fore a crackdown on campus free speech, both from her days working against Palestinian academics at Columbia University and her more recent writing for The New York Times.
A freedom movement deserves better
But The New York Times wasn’t done. It also ran an editorial of its own on the subject (while running this better op-ed the next day).
The editorial rightly included mention of violent right-wing anti-Semites with their deadly attacks on American Jews and pointed to free speech concerns.
Yet it also found time to attack the BDS movement and misrepresent student actions at Emory University.
“Whatever its intent,” the editorial declared, “BDS has helped to create a hostile environment for Jewish students, most of whom support Israel. At Emory University, for example, students with mezuzot on their door posts were served with mock eviction notices.”
This is profoundly misleading, to the extent that a correction ought to be issued.
First, many readers will conclude from the framing that only Jewish students received the eviction notices. This is false as Emory officials have themselves admitted, some more candidly [pdf] than others.
Secondly, what were these eviction notices? They were educational material explaining what happens to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.
That critical detail goes unnoted.
Nearly simultaneous Islamophobia at Emory, meanwhile, passes without notice by The New York Times. Of course, that’s hardly surprising as Emory’s police somehow determined that the desecration of a Muslim ablution room was an “accident.”
The urine and feces, however, suggest otherwise.
An article on the subject by The Emory Wheel reads like a subtle report on a police cover-up. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, executive director of the Georgia Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told The Electronic Intifada that he was “skeptical” this was an “innocent mistake.”
A more thoughtful editorial from The Times would have covered events at Emory more fully and fairly and said far more about what the BDS movement is attempting to accomplish.
Such omissions are no surprise.
Just a day earlier, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman wrote an explanatory New York Times article on Trump’s executive order which described BDS as a “movement against Israel.” A different New York Times article published online Thursday evening referred to “the burgeoning anti-Israel movement on college campuses.”
Missing from both articles – the second article didn’t even reference BDS – were key facts. Namely, BDS is a nonviolent movement. It’s calling for equal rights for Palestinian citizens, an end to the Israeli occupation and the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
A “movement against Israel” is more menacing, however, and so that’s what readers got.
Spin that emphasizes anti-Israel sentiment rather than calls for Palestinian freedom and equal rights is misleading and unfair. It keeps readers uneducated about a powerful social justice movement modeled on the effort to divest from apartheid South Africa.
This freedom movement deserves better, more honest coverage.
Where, it should be asked, are the Palestinian voices on the op-ed page who can raise profound concerns about government intimidation and the trampling of the First Amendment, while saying in their own words what the BDS movement advocates?
Or should would-be government censors always be given priority by the newspaper of record?
13 dec 2019
The Labour Party suffered a devastating defeat on Thursday.
Jeremy Corbyn immediately announced he would not lead the party into another election.
With this defeat, the UK – and the world – have lost perhaps the best opportunity in a generation to send a resounding message through the ballot box against neoliberal austerity and endless war.
But Labour’s worst performance since 1983 carries an important lesson for the grassroots left-wing campaign in the United States to elect Bernie Sanders as president: You must defeat false anti-Semitism smears at all costs. tweet
Do not indulge, entertain or appease them.
The main issue that dominated the UK’s election campaign was the European Union.
Brexit-supporting working class seats in the North punished Labour for endorsing a second referendum. The party was blamed for blocking the result of the 2016 vote, which endorsed leaving the EU.
But aside from Brexit, the only other issue that dominated was “Labour anti-Semitism.”
As I have reported for more than four years, Corbyn’s new Labour Party has been subjected to an unprecedented smear campaign.
Yes, of course, in a mass movement of half a million people, there will inevitably be a few with reactionary views.
But the idea that Corbyn’s Labour Party had any unique problem with anti-Semitism was always a deliberate smear campaign. There is simply no evidence for this.
It was a lie manufactured to smash the left and the Palestine solidarity movement.
Smeared from the start
When it became clear in 2015 that a veteran Palestine solidarity activist would lead Britain’s main opposition party, the campaign began to falsely paint the movement that swept Corbyn into the leadership as anti-Semitic. tweet
People are not stupid and usually know when they are being lied to. But propaganda sustained for long enough works. In this election, the lie began to cut through to the electorate.
Several Labour activists told me anti-Semitism came up on the doorstep and in conversations as reasons people could not vote Labour.
These views were held in a shallow, but wide fashion. When challenged, they crumbled.
But the problem was they were so rarely challenged as mainstream media repeated the claims about the party’s anti-Semitism as a given, with no need for evidence.
Indeed, Labour activists were even punished for challenging the smears.
A national poll commissioned by the Jewish News – a consistently anti-Palestinian publication – found that 55 percent of those surveyed earlier this year agreed with the claim that Corbyn’s “failure to tackle anti-Semitism within his own party shows he is unfit to be Prime Minister.”
The poll found that half of British adults agreed that Labour “has a serious anti-Semitism problem,” up from just a third less than a year earlier.
Four and a half years of relentless smearing of Jeremy Corbyn took its toll.
Right-wing propaganda
This woeful situation came about because the British establishment, the Labour right and the pro-Israel lobby teamed up to fight a war to the death against Corbyn and what he represents.
Labour’s long-dominant and intransigent right-wing always refused to accept the democratic result of the 2015 leadership election, launching a failed coup against Corbyn in 2016.
But the right continued to sabotage the party, even as many anti-Corbyn lawmakers quit Labour.
Britain’s permanent security-intelligence apparatus was also involved.
Former and current military and intelligence sources constantly leaked and fabricated claims against Corbyn portraying him as a “security threat” and “extremist.”
In the days before the election a group of “former” British spies even peddled a far-right conspiracy theory against Corbyn, dubbed “Hijacked Labour.”
It was published by The Sun, Britain’s most read newspaper and a cheerleader for the Conservative Party.
Both the article and the website were later deleted but, as so often, the damage was done.
The spooks relied on neo-Nazi sources and anti-Semitic ideas about “Cultural Marxism” – the same poisonous idea that animated Norway mass shooter Anders Breivik to massacre dozens of members of the youth wing of that country’s Labor Party in 2011.
Yet the military intelligence-linked site still smeared Corbyn and the left-wing Labour leadership with “anti-Semitism,” which, it claimed, was “inevitable because they are Marxists.”
The smears worked
Meanwhile, Israel and its lobby groups inside and outside the Labour Party continued to attack Corbyn.
Even on polling day, Shurat HaDin, an acknowledged front-group for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, tweeted at high-profile Labour supporters accusing them of encouraging a “a vote for terror.” tweet
Earlier in the week Yair Lapid, co-leader of Israel’s main opposition party openly stated he was going to “interfere” in the UK’s election.
He then asserted that “Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.”
This came after years of open and covert interference to abort the threat of Corbyn reaching 10 Downing Street.
The lie was always the same – presented without evidence – that the massive popular movement that elected Corbyn to the leadership was infested by anti-Semites.
But propaganda – as powerful and widespread as it was – is not the main reason the anti-Semitism smears worked.
Corbyn’s mistake
The same poll for the Jewish News also found that 52 percent of Labour voters agreed that “Jeremy Corbyn is the target of a concerted smear campaign by his political opponents to try to discredit him over anti-Semitism.”
The smears worked because instead of pushing back, Corbyn and his advisers capitulated to them.
This was a fatal mistake.
Instead of challenging lies as lies, Corbyn kept robotically condemning anti-Semitism, even when there was no real anti-Semitism to condemn. He hoped that would be enough to make the issue go away.
The time to condemn anti-Semitism is when real and lethal anti-Semitism is happening – overwhelmingly from the right.
But condemning “anti-Semitism” in the face of a fabricated smear campaign to defend Israel and smash the left was a recipe for disaster.
Corbyn effectively accepted the lie that Labour had a “problem” with anti-Semitism and opened himself to more attacks that he wasn’t doing “enough” to combat it.
As the anti-Semitism witch hunt escalated, many good socialists were pushed out of the party for doing nothing wrong.
Corbyn was unable or unwilling to prevent it, while Labour centrists hoped that throwing just one more comrade under the bus would finally put the accusations to rest.
These retreats set a long pattern. tweet
Well-known British figures were targets of the witch hunt: They included former London mayor Ken Livingstone, socialist lawmaker Chris Williamson and anti-racist and left-wing campaigners Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Tony Greenstein.
Many of those suspended, expelled or investigated are Jewish anti-Zionists.
They were falsely accused, demonized and then forced out – with Corbyn’s acquiescence.
But the Israel lobby and the the intransigent Labour right were never appeased because the “anti-Semitism crisis” was never about real anti-Semitism.
It was about removing Corbyn and ending the left-wing ascendancy whose platform included support for Palestinian rights as part of a foreign policy with justice and solidarity as central values.
The damage goes far beyond Labour, with the emergence of open threats to ban Palestine solidarity and crack down on left-wing publications.
John Mann, a former right-wing Labour MP who now works for Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, plans to investigate The Canary and other independent publications for supposed anti-Semitism. In other words, the witch hunt is far from over. tweet
Lesson for America
The “Labour anti-Semitism crisis” strategy is already being rolled out across the Atlantic against anyone who challenges support for Israel or US imperialism.
One of the most high-profile targets of false accusations of anti-Semitism has been Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
The lies about Omar – gleefully amplified by Donald Trump – were meant to protect Israel and smash the left.
Instead of fighting back, Democratic Party leaders have chosen appeasement: apologizing for anti-Semitism where it doesn’t exist.
That’s the strategy that helped sink Corbyn.
Now Bernie Sanders and the party’s left are being targeted too – and the attacks will escalate if he wins in Iowa in February. tweet tweet
It does not matter that Sanders is Jewish. It does not even matter that Sanders has pronounced himself “100 percent pro-Israel.”
A smear that goes unchallenged can eventually gain traction.
Democratic Party and Israel lobby mega-donor Haim Saban made clear in July, when the primary field was much wider: “We love all 23 candidates … minus one. I profoundly dislike Bernie Sanders.” tweet
The Israel lobby and the Democratic Party right will use the anti-Semitism smear against Sanders and the left because it has been proven effective in the UK.
It cannot be a good sign that Neera Tanden, a key Hillary Clinton adviser, helped spread the smears against Corbyn: tweet
Sadly, some on the British left indulged the smear campaign.
Jon Lansman, supposedly a key Corbyn ally and leader of the left-wing Momentum movement, at one stage in 2016 wanted Corbyn out, and claimed baselessly that Corbyn’s Labour had a major problem with anti-Semitism.
American friends and comrades: Do not make the same mistake as Corbyn and Lansman. Do not apologize for anti-Semitism where there is none.
Forcefully reject the lie that the left that supports equality and freedom for Palestinians and opposes US imperialism is anti-Semitic.
Do not buckle, do not bend. Reject the smears. Denounce the smearers.
It’s the right thing to do in principle and it’s the only way to win.
Jeremy Corbyn immediately announced he would not lead the party into another election.
With this defeat, the UK – and the world – have lost perhaps the best opportunity in a generation to send a resounding message through the ballot box against neoliberal austerity and endless war.
But Labour’s worst performance since 1983 carries an important lesson for the grassroots left-wing campaign in the United States to elect Bernie Sanders as president: You must defeat false anti-Semitism smears at all costs. tweet
Do not indulge, entertain or appease them.
The main issue that dominated the UK’s election campaign was the European Union.
Brexit-supporting working class seats in the North punished Labour for endorsing a second referendum. The party was blamed for blocking the result of the 2016 vote, which endorsed leaving the EU.
But aside from Brexit, the only other issue that dominated was “Labour anti-Semitism.”
As I have reported for more than four years, Corbyn’s new Labour Party has been subjected to an unprecedented smear campaign.
Yes, of course, in a mass movement of half a million people, there will inevitably be a few with reactionary views.
But the idea that Corbyn’s Labour Party had any unique problem with anti-Semitism was always a deliberate smear campaign. There is simply no evidence for this.
It was a lie manufactured to smash the left and the Palestine solidarity movement.
Smeared from the start
When it became clear in 2015 that a veteran Palestine solidarity activist would lead Britain’s main opposition party, the campaign began to falsely paint the movement that swept Corbyn into the leadership as anti-Semitic. tweet
People are not stupid and usually know when they are being lied to. But propaganda sustained for long enough works. In this election, the lie began to cut through to the electorate.
Several Labour activists told me anti-Semitism came up on the doorstep and in conversations as reasons people could not vote Labour.
These views were held in a shallow, but wide fashion. When challenged, they crumbled.
But the problem was they were so rarely challenged as mainstream media repeated the claims about the party’s anti-Semitism as a given, with no need for evidence.
Indeed, Labour activists were even punished for challenging the smears.
A national poll commissioned by the Jewish News – a consistently anti-Palestinian publication – found that 55 percent of those surveyed earlier this year agreed with the claim that Corbyn’s “failure to tackle anti-Semitism within his own party shows he is unfit to be Prime Minister.”
The poll found that half of British adults agreed that Labour “has a serious anti-Semitism problem,” up from just a third less than a year earlier.
Four and a half years of relentless smearing of Jeremy Corbyn took its toll.
Right-wing propaganda
This woeful situation came about because the British establishment, the Labour right and the pro-Israel lobby teamed up to fight a war to the death against Corbyn and what he represents.
Labour’s long-dominant and intransigent right-wing always refused to accept the democratic result of the 2015 leadership election, launching a failed coup against Corbyn in 2016.
But the right continued to sabotage the party, even as many anti-Corbyn lawmakers quit Labour.
Britain’s permanent security-intelligence apparatus was also involved.
Former and current military and intelligence sources constantly leaked and fabricated claims against Corbyn portraying him as a “security threat” and “extremist.”
In the days before the election a group of “former” British spies even peddled a far-right conspiracy theory against Corbyn, dubbed “Hijacked Labour.”
It was published by The Sun, Britain’s most read newspaper and a cheerleader for the Conservative Party.
Both the article and the website were later deleted but, as so often, the damage was done.
The spooks relied on neo-Nazi sources and anti-Semitic ideas about “Cultural Marxism” – the same poisonous idea that animated Norway mass shooter Anders Breivik to massacre dozens of members of the youth wing of that country’s Labor Party in 2011.
Yet the military intelligence-linked site still smeared Corbyn and the left-wing Labour leadership with “anti-Semitism,” which, it claimed, was “inevitable because they are Marxists.”
The smears worked
Meanwhile, Israel and its lobby groups inside and outside the Labour Party continued to attack Corbyn.
Even on polling day, Shurat HaDin, an acknowledged front-group for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, tweeted at high-profile Labour supporters accusing them of encouraging a “a vote for terror.” tweet
Earlier in the week Yair Lapid, co-leader of Israel’s main opposition party openly stated he was going to “interfere” in the UK’s election.
He then asserted that “Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite.”
This came after years of open and covert interference to abort the threat of Corbyn reaching 10 Downing Street.
The lie was always the same – presented without evidence – that the massive popular movement that elected Corbyn to the leadership was infested by anti-Semites.
But propaganda – as powerful and widespread as it was – is not the main reason the anti-Semitism smears worked.
Corbyn’s mistake
The same poll for the Jewish News also found that 52 percent of Labour voters agreed that “Jeremy Corbyn is the target of a concerted smear campaign by his political opponents to try to discredit him over anti-Semitism.”
The smears worked because instead of pushing back, Corbyn and his advisers capitulated to them.
This was a fatal mistake.
Instead of challenging lies as lies, Corbyn kept robotically condemning anti-Semitism, even when there was no real anti-Semitism to condemn. He hoped that would be enough to make the issue go away.
The time to condemn anti-Semitism is when real and lethal anti-Semitism is happening – overwhelmingly from the right.
But condemning “anti-Semitism” in the face of a fabricated smear campaign to defend Israel and smash the left was a recipe for disaster.
Corbyn effectively accepted the lie that Labour had a “problem” with anti-Semitism and opened himself to more attacks that he wasn’t doing “enough” to combat it.
As the anti-Semitism witch hunt escalated, many good socialists were pushed out of the party for doing nothing wrong.
Corbyn was unable or unwilling to prevent it, while Labour centrists hoped that throwing just one more comrade under the bus would finally put the accusations to rest.
These retreats set a long pattern. tweet
Well-known British figures were targets of the witch hunt: They included former London mayor Ken Livingstone, socialist lawmaker Chris Williamson and anti-racist and left-wing campaigners Jackie Walker, Marc Wadsworth and Tony Greenstein.
Many of those suspended, expelled or investigated are Jewish anti-Zionists.
They were falsely accused, demonized and then forced out – with Corbyn’s acquiescence.
But the Israel lobby and the the intransigent Labour right were never appeased because the “anti-Semitism crisis” was never about real anti-Semitism.
It was about removing Corbyn and ending the left-wing ascendancy whose platform included support for Palestinian rights as part of a foreign policy with justice and solidarity as central values.
The damage goes far beyond Labour, with the emergence of open threats to ban Palestine solidarity and crack down on left-wing publications.
John Mann, a former right-wing Labour MP who now works for Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, plans to investigate The Canary and other independent publications for supposed anti-Semitism. In other words, the witch hunt is far from over. tweet
Lesson for America
The “Labour anti-Semitism crisis” strategy is already being rolled out across the Atlantic against anyone who challenges support for Israel or US imperialism.
One of the most high-profile targets of false accusations of anti-Semitism has been Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
The lies about Omar – gleefully amplified by Donald Trump – were meant to protect Israel and smash the left.
Instead of fighting back, Democratic Party leaders have chosen appeasement: apologizing for anti-Semitism where it doesn’t exist.
That’s the strategy that helped sink Corbyn.
Now Bernie Sanders and the party’s left are being targeted too – and the attacks will escalate if he wins in Iowa in February. tweet tweet
It does not matter that Sanders is Jewish. It does not even matter that Sanders has pronounced himself “100 percent pro-Israel.”
A smear that goes unchallenged can eventually gain traction.
Democratic Party and Israel lobby mega-donor Haim Saban made clear in July, when the primary field was much wider: “We love all 23 candidates … minus one. I profoundly dislike Bernie Sanders.” tweet
The Israel lobby and the Democratic Party right will use the anti-Semitism smear against Sanders and the left because it has been proven effective in the UK.
It cannot be a good sign that Neera Tanden, a key Hillary Clinton adviser, helped spread the smears against Corbyn: tweet
Sadly, some on the British left indulged the smear campaign.
Jon Lansman, supposedly a key Corbyn ally and leader of the left-wing Momentum movement, at one stage in 2016 wanted Corbyn out, and claimed baselessly that Corbyn’s Labour had a major problem with anti-Semitism.
American friends and comrades: Do not make the same mistake as Corbyn and Lansman. Do not apologize for anti-Semitism where there is none.
Forcefully reject the lie that the left that supports equality and freedom for Palestinians and opposes US imperialism is anti-Semitic.
Do not buckle, do not bend. Reject the smears. Denounce the smearers.
It’s the right thing to do in principle and it’s the only way to win.