Nog
steeds ongelofelijk dat de Labour top liever de verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië verloor
dan Corbyn deze te laten winnen. De smeercampagne van een aantal Labourleden tegen Corbyn en
zijn zogenaamde antisemitisme, kostte hem vorig jaar de Britse verkiezingen, een campagne gesteund door het Britse leger, de pro-Israëlische lobby en de reguliere (massa-) media, inclusief de zogenaamde onafhankelijke BBC……
De
nieuwe voorzitter van Labour, Keir Starmer, heeft van meet af aan
alle pogingen om Corbyn alsnog te rehabiliteren gesaboteerd en heeft
rapporten laten verdwijnen die e.e.a. aantoonden……. De zogenaamde
klokkenluiders, prominente Labour politici die de partij zouden
hebben verlaten vanwege het antisemitische gehalte, wordt nog steeds
de hand boven het hoofd gehouden, ook al konden zij totaal geen
bewijs geven voor Corbyns antisemitisme, anders dan kritiek van
Corbyn op de bloedige terreur van Israël tegen de Palestijnen als antisemitisch af te doen……..
Alsof
het antisemitisch is als je een land aanklaagt voor het vervolgen van
een minderheid, zoals de Joden werden vervolgd door
nazi-Duitsland….. Corbyn was juist een anti-fascist en heeft
meermaals de holocaust als een beestachtige massamoord
neergezet……(hij was zelfs bevriend met Hajo Meijer, een Joodse concentratiekamp overlevende, die jarenlang bestuurslid was van Een Ander Joods Geluid……)
De psychopathische neoliberale opperschoft Keir Starmer
De holocaust is geen excuus voor de slachtoffers om andere volkeren
te vervolgen, hen hun land af te nemen en middels bruut geweld en massamoord te
verjagen, gevolgd door het afknijpen van het Palestijnse volk door Israël met: -moord op vooral ongewapende Palestijnse burgers en hun kinderen, -het
onleefbaar maken van hun overgebleven woongebieden door het creëren van een groot watertekort en een zelfde tekort aan elektriciteit, -deze gebieden
onbereikbaar maken voor boeren en -de continue vernedering van deze
mensen bij de Israëlische blokkades op de West Bank…… Om over de vreselijke situatie in de openluchtgevangenis Gazastrook nog maar te zwijgen….. Oh en dan vergeet ik nog het vernietigen van ontwikkelingsprojecten voor de Palestijnen door Israël, projecten bekostigd door de EU en haar lidstaten (zoals Nederland..)…..
Lees het
volgende artikel dat ik overnam van Information Clearing House,
waarin uitgebreid wordt aangetoond dat Corbyn en leden van zijn team
op een schunnige manier zijn gedemoniseerd, zonder enige
bewijsvoering…. Het ging veel te goed met Corbyn en men wilde koste
wat kost voorkomen dat Labour een meer sociaal karakter zou
krijgen….. Het is nu zelfs zover dat Starmer, de opvolger van Corbyn, echte antisemieten in
zijn team heeft aangesteld…… Fascisten als Rachel Reeves die Nancy
Astor prees in een Twitterbericht, Astor was een bewonderaar van
Hitler en daarmee een bekende antisemitische fascist, Reeves weigerde botweg de ‘tweet’ te
verwijderen…… Ongelofelijk dat de reguliere westerse media (ook in Nederland) die zo op de antisemitische trom roffelden als het over Corbyn ging, er in dit overduidelijke geval van antisemitisme totaal het zwijgen toe doen……
UK
Labour party teeters on brink of civil war over antisemitism
New
leader Keir Starmer spurns two chances to clear Jeremy Corbyn’s
name, preferring instead to pay damages to former staffBy
Jonathan Cook
July 31, 2020
“Information
Clearing House”
– Jeremy Corbyn, the former left-wing leader of Britain’s Labour
party, is once again making headlines over an “antisemitism
problem” he supposedly oversaw during his five years at the head of
the party.
This time, however,
the assault on his reputation is being led not by the usual suspects
– pro-Israel lobbyists and a billionaire-owned media – but by
Keir Starmer, the man who succeeded him.
Since becoming Labour
leader in April, Starmer has helped to bolster the evidence-free
narrative of a party plagued by antisemitism under Corbyn. That has
included Starmer’s refusal to exploit two major opportunities to
challenge that narrative.
Had those chances been
grasped, Labour might have been able to demonstrate that Corbyn was
the victim of an underhand campaign to prevent him from reaching
power.
Starmer, had he chosen
to, could have shown that Corbyn’s long history as an anti-racism
campaigner was twisted to discredit him. His decades of vocal support
for Palestinian rights were publicly recast as a supposed irrational
hatred of Israel based on an antipathy to Jews.
But instead Starmer
chose to sacrifice his predecessor rather than risk being tarred with
the same brush.
As a result, Labour
now appears to be on the brink of open war. Competing rumors suggest
Corbyn may be preparing to battle former staff through the courts,
while Starmer may exile his predecessor from the party.
Rocketing
membership
Corbyn’s troubles
were inevitable the moment the mass membership elected him Labour
leader in 2015 in defiance of the party bureaucracy and most Labour
MPs. Corbyn was determined to revive the party as a vehicle for
democratic socialism and end Britain’s role meddling overseas as a
junior partner to the global hegemon of the United States.
That required breaking
with Labour’s capture decades earlier, under Tony Blair, as a party
of neoliberal orthodoxy at home and neoconservative orthodoxy
abroad.
Until Corbyn arrived
on the scene, Labour had become effectively a second party of capital
alongside Britain’s ruling Conservative party, replicating the
situation in the US with the Democratic and Republican parties.
His attempts to push
the party back towards democratic socialism attracted hundreds of
thousands of new members, quickly making Labour the largest party in
Europe. But it also ensured a wide-ranging alliance of establishment
interests was arrayed against him, including
the British military, the corporate media, and the pro-Israel
lobby.
Politicized
investigation
Unlike Corbyn, Starmer
has not previously shown any inclination to take on the might of the
establishment. In fact, he had previously proven himself its willing
servant.
As head of Britain’s
prosecution service in 2013, for example, his department issued
thinly
veiled threats to Sweden to continue its legal pursuit of
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who had sought political asylum in
London’s Ecuadorean embassy, even as Swedish interest in the case
waned.
With his background in
realpolitik, Starmer appears to have grasped quickly the danger of
being seen to share any common ground with Corbyn – not only should
he pursue significant elements of his predecessor’s program, but by
challenging the carefully crafted establishment narrative around
Corbyn.
For this reason, he
has refused to seize either of the two chances presented to him to
demonstrate that Labour had no more of an antisemitism problem than
the relatively
marginal one that exists more generally in British society.
That failure is likely
to prove all the more significant given that in a matter of weeks
Labour is expected to face the findings of an investigation
by the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission.
The highly
politicized watchdog body, which took on the probe into Labour
while refusing
to investigate plentiful evidence of an Islamophobia problem in
the Conservative party, is expected to shore up the
Corbyn-antisemitism narrative.
Labour has said
it will readily accept the Commission’s findings, whatever they
are. The watchdog body is likely to echo the prevailing narrative
that Corbyn attracted left-wingers to the party who were
ideologically tainted with antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism.
As a result, or so the argument goes, Jew hatred flourished on his
watch.
Starmer has already
declared “zero
tolerance” of antisemitism, but he has appeared willing – in
line with pro-Israel lobbyists in his party – to conflate
Jew hatred with trenchant criticism of Israel.
The barely veiled
intention is to drive Corbynite members out of Labour – either
actively through suspensions or passively as their growing
disillusionment leads to a mass exodus.
By distancing himself
from his predecessor, Starmer knows no dirt will stick to him even as
the Equality Commission drags Corbyn’s name through the mud.
Sabotaged
from within
Starmer rejected the
first chance to salvage the reputations of Corbyn and the wider
Labour membership days after he became leader.
In mid-April, an
850-page internal party report was leaked, stuffed with the text of
lengthy email exchanges and WhatsApp chats by senior party staff.
They showed that, as had long been suspected, Corbyn’s own
officials worked hard to sabotage
his leadership from within.
Staff at headquarters
still loyal to the Blair vision of the party even went so far as to
actively throw the 2017 general election, when Labour was a
hair’s-breadth away from ousting the Conservatives from government.
These officials hoped a crushing defeat would lead to Corbyn’s
removal from office.
The report described a
“hyper-factional atmosphere”, with officials, including
then-deputy leader Tom Watson, regularly referring to Corbyn and his
supporters as “Trots”
– a reference to Leon Trotsky, one of the leaders of a violent
Communist revolution in Russia more than a century ago.
Corbynites were thrown
out of the party on the flimsiest
pretexts, such as describing those like Blair who led the 2003
attack on Iraq as “warmongers”.
But one early, favored
tactic by staff in the disciplinary unit was to publicize
antisemitism cases and then drag out their resolution to create the
impression that the party under Corbyn was not taking the issue
seriously.
These officials also
loosened the definition of antisemitism to pursue cases against
Corbyn’s supporters who, like him, were vocal in defending
Palestinian rights or critical of Israeli policies.
This led to the
preposterous situation where Labour was suspending and expelling
anti-Zionist
Jews who supported Corbyn on the grounds that they were
supposedly antisemites, while action was delayed
on dealing with a Holocaust denier.
The narrative against
Corbyn being crafted by his own officials was eagerly picked up and
amplified by the strong contingent of Blairites among Labour
legislators
in the parliament, as well as by the corporate media and by Israel
lobbyists both inside and outside Labour.
Effort
to bury report
The parties
responsible for leaking the report in April did so because Labour,
now led by Starmer, had no intention of publicizing it.
In fact, the report
had been originally compiled as part of Labour’s submission to the
Equality and Human Rights Commission, effectively giving Corbyn’s
side of the story against his opponents.
But once Corbyn
stepped down, the party bureaucracy under Starmer preferred
to shelve it. That decision meant there would be no case for the
defense, and Corbyn’s opponents’ claims would go unchallenged.
Once leaked, Starmer
stuck to his position. Rather than use the report as an opportunity
to expose the ugly campaign against Corbyn and thereby question the
antisemitism narrative, Starmer did his level best to bury it from
sight.
He vowed
to investigate “the circumstances in which the report was put
into the public domain”. That sounded ominously like a threat to
hound those who had tried to bring to light the party’s betrayal of
its previous leader.
Rather than accept the
evidence presented in the leaked report of internal corruption and
the misuse of party funds, Starmer set
up an inquiry under QC Martin Forde to investigate the earlier
investigation.
The Forde inquiry
looked like Starmer’s effort to kick the damaging revelations into
the long grass.
The British media gave
the leaked report – despite its earth-shattering revelations of
Labour officials sabotaging an election campaign – little more than
perfunctory coverage.
Labour
‘whistleblowers’
A second, related
chance to challenge the Corbyn-antisemitism narrative reached its
conclusion last week. And again, Starmer threw in Labour’s hand.
In July last year –
long before the report had been leaked – the BBC’s prestige news
investigation show Panorama set out to answer a question it posed in
the episode’s title: “Is
Labour Antisemitic?”
John Ware, a reporter
openly hostile
to Corbyn and well-known for supporting
Israel and his antipathy
towards Muslims, was chosen to front the investigation.
The program presented
eight former staff as “whistleblowers”, their testimonies
supposedly exposing Corbyn’s indulgence of antisemitism. They
included those who would soon be revealed in the leaked report as
intractable ideological enemies of the Corbyn project and others who
oversaw the dysfunctional complaints process that dragged its heels
on resolving antisemitism cases.
The Panorama program
was dismal even by the low standards of political reporting set by
the BBC in the Corbyn era.
The show made much of
the testimony of pro-Israel lobbyists inside the Labour party
belonging to a group called the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM). They were not
identified – either by name or by affiliation – despite being
given the freedom to make anecdotal and unspecified claims of
antisemitism against Corbyn and his supporters.
The BBC’s decision
not to name these participants had nothing to do with protecting
their identities, even though that was doubtless the impression
conveyed to the audience.
Most were
already known as Israel partisans because they had been exposed in a
2017 four-part al-Jazeera undercover documentary called The Lobby.
They were filmed colluding with an Israeli embassy official, Shai
Masot, to bring down Corbyn. The BBC did not identify these
pro-Israel activists presumably because they had zero credibility as
witnesses.
One-sided
coverage
Nonetheless, a
seemingly stronger case – at least, at the time – was made by the
eight former Labour staff. Their testimonies to the BBC suggested
they had been hampered and bullied by Corbyn’s team as they tried
to stamp out antisemitism.
Panorama allowed these
claims to go unchallenged, even though with a little digging it could
have tapped sources inside Labour who were already compiling what
would become the leaked report, presenting a very different view of
these self-styled “whistleblowers”.
The BBC also failed to
talk to Jewish
Voice for Labour (JVL), a group of Labour party members supportive of
Corbyn who challenged the way the Jewish Labour Movement had
manipulated the definition of antisemitism in the party to harm
Palestinian solidarity activists.
And the BBC did not
call as counter-witnesses any of the anti-Zionist Jews who were among
the earliest victims of the
purge of supposed antisemites by Labour’s apparent
“whistleblowers”.
Instead, it
selectively quoted from an email by Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s chief
adviser, to suggest that he had interfered in the disciplinary
process to help antisemites avoid suspension.
Proper context from
the BBC would have revealed that Milne had simply expressed
concern at how the rule book was being interpreted when several
Jews had been suspended for antisemitism – and that he had
proffered his view only because a staff member now claiming to be a
whistleblower had asked for it.
This section of the
Panorama show looked suspiciously like entrapment of Milne by Labour
staff, followed by collusion from the BBC in promoting their false
narrative.
Flawed
reporting
Despite these and many
other serious
flaws in the Panorama episode, it set the tone for subsequent
discussion of the “antisemitism problem” in Labour.
The program aired a
few months before a general election, last December, that Corbyn lost
to Boris Johnson and the ruling Conservative party.
One of the key
damaging, “gotcha” moments of the campaign was an interview with
the veteran BBC interviewer Andrew Neil in which he repeatedly asked
Corbyn to apologize for antisemitism in the party, as had been
supposedly exposed by Panorama. Corbyn’s refusal to respond
directly to the question left him looking evasive and guilty.
With the rest of the
media amplifying the Panorama claims rather than testing them, it has
become the accepted benchmark for judging the Corbyn era. The show
has even been nominated
for a Bafta award, the British equivalent to an Oscar.
Shortly after the
program aired, Corbyn’s team disputed
the Panorama narrative, saying it had contained “deliberate and
malicious misrepresentations designed to mislead the public”. They
also described the “whistleblowers” as disaffected former staff
with “political axes to grind”.
Ware and seven of the
former staff members who appeared in the program launched a
defamation
action against the Labour party.
After the internal
report was leaked in April, the legal scales tipped decisively in
Labour’s favor. Starmer was reportedly
advised by lawyers that the party would be well-positioned to defeat
the legal action and clear Corbyn and the party’s name.
But again Starmer
preferred to fold. Before the case could be tested in court, Starmer
issued an
apology last week to the ex-staff members and Ware, and paid them
a six-figure sum in damages.
Admitting that
“antisemitism has been a stain on the Labour Party in recent
years”, the statement accepted the claims of the ex-staff to be
“whistleblowers”, even capitalizing the word to aggrandize their
status.
It said:
“We acknowledge the many years of dedicated and committed service
that the Whistleblowers have given to the Labour Party … We
unreservedly withdraw all allegations of bad faith, malice and
lying.”
Threat
of bankruptcy
With typical
understatement, Corbyn said he was “disappointed” at the
settlement, calling
it a “political decision, not a legal one”. He added that it
“risks giving credibility to misleading and inaccurate allegations
about action taken to tackle antisemitism in the Labour party in
recent years.”
Starmer’s decision
also preempted – and effectively nullified – the Forde inquiry,
which was due to submit its own findings on antisemitism in Labour
later in the year.
Many in the party were
infuriated that their membership dues had been used to pay off a
group of ex-staff who, according to the leaked report, had undermined
the party’s elected leader and helped to throw a general election.
But in what looked
disturbingly like a move to silence Corbyn, Ware said he was
consulting
lawyers once again about launching a legal battle, personally
against the former Labour leader, over his criticism of the
settlement.
Mark Lewis, the
solicitor acting for Ware and the whistleblowers, has said he is also
preparing
an action for damages against Labour on behalf of 32 individuals
named in the leaked report. Among them is Lord Iain McNichol, who
served as the party’s general secretary at the time.
Lewis reportedly
intends to focus
on staff privacy breaches under the Data Protection Act,
disclosure of private information and alleged violations of
employment law.
Conversely, Mark
Howell, a Labour party member, has initiated an action against Labour
and McNichol seeking
damages for “breach of contract”. He demands that those named
in the leaked report be expelled from the party.
He is also reported to
be considering referring named staff members to the Crown Prosecution
Service under the 2006 Fraud Act for their failure to uphold the
interests of party members who paid staff salaries.
This spate of cases
threatens to hemorrhage money from the party. There have been
warnings that financial settlements, as well as members deserting the
party in droves, could ultimately
bankrupt Labour.
Corbyn
to be expelled?
Within days of the
apology, a crowdfunding
campaign raised more than £280,000 for Corbyn to clear his name
in any future legal actions.
Given his own
self-serving strategy, Starmer would doubtless be embarrassed by such
a move. There are already rumors
that he is considering withdrawing the party whip from Corbyn – a
form of exile from the party.
Pressure on him to do
so is mounting. At the weekend it was reported
that ex-staff might drop the threatened case over the embarrassing
revelations contained in the leaked report should Starmer expel
Corbyn.
Quoting someone it
described as a “well-placed source”, the Mail
on Sunday
newspaper set out the new stakes. “Labour says they have zero
tolerance to anti-Semitism. Zero tolerance means no Corbyn and no
Corbynistas,” the source said.
There are already
reports of what amounts to a purge
of left-wing members from Labour.
Starmer has committed
to upholding “10
Pledges” produced by the Board of Deputies – a conservative
Jewish leadership organization hostile to Corbyn and the left –
that places it and the pro-Israel lobbyists of the Jewish Labour
Movement in charge of deciding what constitutes antisemitism in the
party.
Selective
concern
Starmer’s decision
about who can serve in his shadow cabinet is a reminder that the
storm over Corbyn was never about real antisemitism – the kind that
targets Jews for being Jews.
It was a pretext to be rid of the Corbyn
project and democratic socialism.
Starmer quickly pushed
out the last two prominent
Corbynites
in his shadow cabinet – both on matters related to criticism of
Israel.
By contrast, he has
happily indulged the kind of antisemitism that harms Jews as long as
it comes from members of his shadow cabinet who are not associated
with Corbyn.
Starmer picked
Rachel Reeves for his team, even though earlier this year she tweeted
a tribute to Nancy Astor, a supporter of Hitler and notorious
antisemite. Reeves has refused to delete the tweet.
And Steve Reed is
still the shadow communities secretary, even though this month he
referred to a Jewish newspaper tycoon, Richard Desmond, as a “puppet
master” – the very definition of an antisemitic trope.
Starmer’s “zero
tolerance” appears to be highly selective – more concerned about
harsh criticism of a state, Israel, than the othering of Jews.
Tellingly, Starmer has been under no serious pressure from the Jewish
Labour Movement, or from the media or from Jewish leadership
organizations such as the Board of Deputies to take any action
against either Reeves or Reed.
He has moved swiftly
against leftists in his party who criticize Israel but has shrugged
his shoulders at supposed “moderates” who, it could be argued,
have encouraged or glorified hatred and suspicion of Jews.
But then the
antisemitism furor was never about safeguarding Jews. It was about
creating a cover story as the establishment protected itself from
democratic socialism.
Jonathan
Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books
include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the
Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing
Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books).
His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. (vreemd genoeg kom je door klikken uit op de site van Middle East Online >> MEO, door daar eerst op de ‘knop’ home te klikken en daarna op de volgende pagina zijn naam op het zoekvlak in te voeren, krijg je artikeln van Cook te zien, echter niet het bovenstaande artikel, hier de directe link naar de site van Jonathan Cook, waar je dit artikel wel kan vinden)
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Zie ook:
‘Verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië gemanipuleerd door de massamedia‘
‘Jackie
Walker, een joods journalist, spreekt over de met beschuldigingen van
antisemitisme gevoede heksenjacht op Labour en haarzelf‘ (ook van belang voor dit bericht)
‘Boris Johnson vs. Jeremy Corbyn en de massamedia‘
‘Niet Rusland maar Trump beïnvloedt nu al de verkiezingen in Groot-Brittannië‘
‘Britse kinderen lijden anno 2018 honger, vooral in de vakanties…….‘
En zie voorts:
‘Israëlische rechter wijst directeur Human Rights Watch het totaal absurde ‘democratische’ land uit‘ (en zie de links in dat bericht, anders dan de hier getoonde)
‘Israël steelt Palestijnse grond, als ‘vergoeding krijgen’ Palestijnen traangas, made in USA‘
‘Een volk dat leeft onder bezetting heeft het recht gewapend verzet te plegen, ook het Palestijnse volk‘
(je zou zelfs kunnen zeggen dat een ieder die onder illegale bezetting
leeft, de plicht heeft verzet te plegen, denk daarbij ook aan de
nazi-Duitse bezetting van Nederland tijdens WOII; de link naar dat
bericht op Facebook werd overigens door deze organisatie
geblokkeerd….)
‘Al wat nog over is zijn hun schooluniformen: Israël vermoordt 8 Palestijnen‘
Voor meer berichten over antisemitisme, Corbyn of Labour, klik op het desbetreffende label, direct onder dit bericht.