{Originally posted to the website Beyond the Great Divide}
Anti-Semitic anti-Zionism surrounds Jeremy Corbyn. It is part of the ideological diet he has been fed on for decades. Whenever I have looked at anti-Israel activity taking place in the UK, Corbyn has been at the front of it. He is still a patron of the anti-Zionist Palestine Solidarity campaign. He has personally campaigned to have Israel culturally, economically, politically and academically isolated. When he has stood on anti-Zionism platforms, there were no boundaries and he was never bothered by the extremism of those alongside him. Radical Islamists, rabid Jew-haters, none of it mattered – as long as the target was Israel, that person was considered a ‘friend’.
Look at this post from Ben White. A well-known UK anti-Zionist propagandist:
Almost everything White has ever written supports the destruction of Israel. The transliterated Arabic in the post reads ‘everything I do for Palestine, comes from my heart. Free (release) from Hebron to Haifa, from Bethlehem to Jaffa‘. A clear call for an end to all of Israel. This was Corbyn’s response:
I have a question for Corbyn. Put aside the fact you respond to a post calling for the complete destruction of a democracy with compliments. I have read most of White’s writings. There is no call for peace anywhere. They are full of lies, propaganda and distortion. They all seek an end to Israel. Which one of these ‘superb writings‘ would you recommend?
This isn’t about criticism of Israel or working for peace. ‘Two-Staters’ sit far to the right of Corbyn’s political position. Corbyn has drunk the cool-aid of antisemitic anti-Zionism. The building block is the belief that Jews are rich, white, privileged colonial invaders and the cement that holds the brickwork of anti-Zionism together is a mixture of lies, demonisation and antisemitic tropes. It is why Corbyn cannot back down on the ‘Israel as racist’ clause in the IHRA definition.
Event after event, we are seeing videos of Corbyn helping people spread antisemitism. These events, each and every one, sought to work for the destruction of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. They did so by telling lies about Jews. You really think he is going to turn his back on his friends and call them racists?
Mads Gilbert
As an example we can see an October 2014 post from Palestine Live:
In my report into Palestine Live, I pointed out that in this image, Jeremy Corbyn was sandwiched between two antisemitic activists. Elleanne Green, founder of Palestine Live and Sandra Watfa, the public face of an Islamic protest group Inminds. It shows how distorted people’s vision has become, that this image is not viewed with horror. It is little different from seeing Theresa May having a discussion alongside a spokesperson for the KKK and the founder of the Neo-Nazi hate-site Stormfront. Had someone found such an image, May would not have lasted a day. Things are different with Corbyn. He is surrounded by 10000’s of people who see nothing wrong in the cool-aid of anti-Zionism.
The subject of the post is Dr Mads Gilbert. He is currently a member of the revolutionary socialist Red Party in Norway. Gilbert achieved a degree of fame as a doctor treating patients in Gaza during the 2009 and 2014 conflicts with Israel. Jeremy Corbyn clearly refers to him as ‘his friend’ (that should already send warning bells). Gilbert has been described as ‘a full-time propagandist from Norway who exploits medicine to promote hate‘. UKMedia Watch have also had cause to address him. This is what Gilbert said on 9/11:
‘The attack on New York did not come as a surprise with the politics the West has followed the last decades. I am upset by the terrorist attack, but I am at least as upset over the suffering that the US has caused. It is in this context that 5000 dead has to be seen. If the U.S. government has a legitimate right to bomb and kill civilians in Iraq, the oppressed has a moral right to attack the U.S. with the weapons they may create as well. Dead civilians are the same whether they are Americans, Palestinians or Iraqis.” When asked if he supported a terrorist attack against the US he answered: “Terror is a poor weapon, but my answer is yes, within the context I have mentioned.’
Sandra Watfa and antisemitic anti-Zionism
I hardly need to re-post the horrific antisemitic imagery that Elleanne Green has been sharing for years (see the Palestine Live report part one). The top part of the Corbyn Sandwich is Sandra Watfa. Recently Sandra spoke at the Hezbollah supporting al-Quds demonstration in London.
‘A favourite pastime of the Israeli occupation is to abduct children on their way to school, especially just before exams so that they are forced to repeat the year.’
‘Let us not forget the armed struggle, that is also resistance! The United nations has on many occasions with specific reference to Southern Africa and Palestine reaffirmed the legitimacy of the armed struggle and people’s struggle for liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation. When we look at history we see all successful struggles for freedom have included multiple forms of resistance including armed resistance. But once success is achieved there is a rush by historians and the media in the pay of the empire to hide the armed struggle aspect of those successful freedom movements so as not to encourage other liberation struggles to learn from them and in order that the empire can dictate the form of struggle allowed for a subjugated people.’
‘My father is from Akko in Palestine. Akko was ethnically cleansed in 1948 but Akko was well situated to defend itself against the Zionist invaders. So what the Zionist forces did was put back bacteria in the spring that fed the town. The spring was called Capri and it ran from the North. The Zionist forces put Typhus bacteria into the water that ran straight into the town. The people got sick and the town fell to the Zionist forces. Those that weren’t slaughtered became refugees. My father lost his home my father’s town of Akko is now called Acre, that is terrorism. The terrorists holding that flag, the flag they hold is the Israeli flag, and if you want to burn any terrorist flag that is the flag to burn! Victory to the resistance! Free Palestine!’.
Horrific lies and massive historical distortion, all used to legitimise the murder of Jews. Watfa has also shared posts that deny the Holocaust and she has used antisemitic hashtags such as #jewnitedstates.
More on the Gilbert event
Having received Corbyn’s blessing, Elleanne Green went ahead with trying to arrange an event:
To which Corbyn responded:
Corbyn ups his praise of Gilbert to ‘wonderful man’. They were of course in contact. This from the PSC website July 2014:
‘Jeremy Corbyn MP: “The UK has a very close relationship with Israel, including buying and selling arms, and it’s time that this relationship was brought to an end since Israel is now under investigation for war crimes over the bombing of Gaza. I received an email from Dr Mads Gilbert, working in Shifa Hospital, and it brought tears to my eyes when he was describing the pools of blood, the electricity cut off, the lack of clean water and the continuous surge of the dead and injured pouring into the hospital. It’s people like that who are saving lives, and Israel which is taking lives.’
Also note that Mads Gilbert gave a talk to SPSC on 26/11/2015 entitled bandages and bullets. He launched his book at an event in SOAS 17/6/2015, you can see some video from the event. Here is a link to a January 2009 debate in the House of Commons entitled Palestinian Territories (Economic Aid) where Louise Ellman says in response to a speech by Corbyn:
‘We have heard a great deal of testimony from a number of Norwegian doctors, and particularly from Dr. Mads Gilbert. It is important to register that Dr. Gilbert is a well known activist on Palestinian issues and, much more than that, some years ago gave to his local Norwegian newspaper an interview in which he praised the 9/11 bombers. I state those facts just to put a question mark against whether Dr. Gilbert and others of his ilk are as impartial as the media believe them to be.’
It is something Corbyn seems to have ignored.
More events
The three people Elleanne tagged in that Mats Gilbert post are Jeremy Corbyn, Jack Bond and Alero Elizabeth Dudley. They were tagged because one month earlier, they had helped Elleanne arrange another meeting in Westminster via Corbyn’s office. That was the Max Blumenthal event.
The event saw neo-Nazi James Thring speak before Blumenthal took to the stage to peddle his usual lies. This event, a mixture of far-right and far-left antisemitism, was arranged by Corbyn’s office, at the request of Elleanne Green, and it all took place inside a secret antisemitic Facebook Group – Palestine Live.
Lies, lies and more lies of anti-Zionism
But the propaganda doesn’t just come from those he stands alongside. This video of Jeremy Corbyn is from the Palestine Solidarity Campaign conference in 2010
Absolute total poppycock. The video also shows how European funding has been used to spread antisemitism. Jeremy Corbyn was part of a group of *sixty* European lawmakers sent to Gaza by the Palestine Return Centre (PRC). It came several months after the 2009 conflict. These lawmakers are then hand-held in Gaza and introduced to the people that Hamas want them to meet. It is a diet of lies and propaganda. A soup of antisemitic, anti-Zionism. The lawmakers then return to their homes and begin spreading these lies as ‘witness testimony’. Just like the one Corbyn spread in the video.
The PRC also led the event where Gerald Kaufman used the term ‘Jewish money‘ to describe Israeli political power in the UK. At another PRC event (the one that led to Jenny Tonge’s departure from the Liberal Democrats), I heard about Jews being blamed for the Holocaust. Who funds this hate to be spread? Nobody knows, because according to NGO monitor, the PRC don’t ‘publish donors or financial information‘. In other words we have politicians being sent to Hamas territory funded by anonymous donors. All to spread the lies of anti-Zionism.
Another interesting point on the tale of shooting Hebrew speakers. In Max Blumenthal’s book ‘The 51 Day War’, Blumenthal spins a similar story:
‘The soldiers ordered the family to re-evacuate the house under the shelling the army had just initiated. Then they summoned Mahmoud’s father Abdul Hadi El-Said. As soon as he appeared at his doorstep, they asked him if he spoke Hebrew. When he answered in the affirmative, the soldiers shot him in the chest’. (The 51 Day War, page 92).
It seems like there is a script sheet of propaganda tales. ‘Shooting Hebrew speakers’ is clearly on it. Gullible western antisemites are fed these stories in Gaza and then return to spread the disease.
Corbyn comes from a political faction that is anti-Jewish to its core. For decades he has swallowed this propaganda whole. British Jews now want him to get a grip on the antisemitism in the Labour Party. There is no way this is ever going to happen. Corbyn does not even know what antisemitism is.