The Interregnum

Claims that anti-racist Jewish peace activist is an antisemite are debunked by video made by the accuser

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15 May 2019|The Interregnum|Mohamed Elmaazi

The Pro-Corbyn group Jewish Voice for Labour has slammed the “twisted” mischaracterisation of comments made by its secretary, by the Jewish Chronicle and Luciana Berger, among others. A further examination of the evidence shows how baseless these claims really are.

Featured image via WithHunt documentary

UPDATE: The header summary and introductory paragraph have been amended to reflect the “official statement” from JVL that superceded the initial statement quoted; on 15 May 2019 at 17:58.

Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) has slammed the ‘twisting’ of recent comments made by its secretary, by right-wingers labelling him as an antisemite.

Jews for Justice in Palestine

Glyn Secker, JVL’s secretary, spoke at a rally held on 11 May 2019. A coalition of groups hastily organised the rally in response to the Israeli government’s  latest round of bombardment of the Gaza strip.

Lee Harpin, of the Jewish Chronicle, tweeted out:

“Just heard Glyn Secker – a ⁦@UKLabour⁩ and ⁦@JVoiceLabour⁩ member – tell #labourpalestine demo “Jews are in the gutter” and Jews “are the problem.” He was loudly cheered. Disgusting.”

Luciana Berger, the former Labour MP who joined the newly formed Change UK /The Independent Group, retweeted Harpin’s tweet while adding:

“Antisemitism on the streets of London in 2019.”

Berger, who left the Labour Party claiming that it was “institutionally anti-Semitic”, remains a supporter of  the pro-Zionist Labour Friends of Israel group.

Debunked in under 30 seconds

But as independent journalist Jamie Stern-Weiner pointed out people like Harpin and Berger grossly misrepresented Secker’s comments. Stern-Weiner published a transcript of Secker’s remarks which can be read here.

What makes the false claims about Secker’s comments all the more bizarre, is that the right-wing Campaign Against Antisemitism tweeted a similar misrepresentation of what he said, while embedding the actual video of his speech.

Glyn Secker: Some Jewish community leaders are turning  a ‘blind eye to the extreme right’

Far from claiming that “Jews are the problem” and “Jews are in the gutter”, Secker was actually calling-out the tolerance that some Jewish community leaders show towards extreme Zionists who have links to far-right white supremacists.

Secker, who himself is Jewish, said:

“Jewish leaders here also turn a blind eye to the extreme right, even when their own Zionist Federation embraces the English Defence League, a neo-fascist group banned by Facebook. What on earth are Jews doing in the gutter with these rats?

When will they condemn the Israeli government [inaudible-doing deals?] with Hungarian, Polish and Brazilian fascists?

When will they condemn the IDF slaughter of the unarmed at Gaza? When will they join the anti-fascist movement against Yaxley-Lennon aka Robinson?”

He continued:

“Here’s a warning to the Jewish leadership: While you foment your campaign of allegations of antisemitism against Corbyn and the left to silence Israel’s critics, while you cry wolf month after month, year after year in the Labour Party, and remain blind to the explosion of the far right and Islamophobia, you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem! And also, you serve to protect the poison that will destroy both our freedom and yours. Well, sisters and brothers, whose side are we on?”

In other words, the tweet actually debunks itself. Though  that didn’t stop Harpin from repeating his blatant mischaracterisations in an ‘exclusive’ article about the speech.

A well-known critique

On 1 May 2019, Rachel Shenhav-Goldberg, an Israeli researcher made some strikingly similar critiques about links between certain Zionists and non-Jewish far-right nationalists. Writing in +972Magazine Shenhav-Golberg argued that:

“For some years now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been forming close diplomatic relations with far-right nationalist world leaders. This alignment might promote Netanyahu’s plan to strengthen Jewish nationalism in Israel, but it concomitantly weakens diaspora Jews and makes them more vulnerable to anti-Semitism and hate crimes in their own countries.”

Shenhav-Golberg’s research focuses on, “institutionalized racism in Israel and antisemitism in North America”.

Zionism: a rational and reactionary response to the real threat of anti-Jewish bigotry

Zionism is a Judeo-European ethno-nationalist and settler-colonialist ideology. It emerged in Europe as a response to the very real threat of antisemitism in Europe. But that does not mean it had widspread support among European Jews for much of its history. On the contrary, there is a long and rich tradition of opposition to political Zionism from Jewish people of different backgrounds. Secker, who is also a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians, is very much  part of that anti-racist tradition.

Jews against Zionism, a rich tradition

As Palestinian American Scholar Joseph Massad explained to journalists Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton in 2017:

“the [Jewish Labour] Bund remained the most popular organisation [among Polish Jews], very hostile to Zionism. Zionism of course was hostile to it. My understanding, according to scholarship, until the last elections held in Poland in the late 1930s, consistently the Bund continued to command the majority vote of Polish Jews in those parliamentary elections against the Zionists. The Zionists remained the minority.

And as we know of course they were opposed all along not only by socialist and communist Jews, but also by secular liberal West European Jews. They were opposed by Reform Judaism[…] And these people of course were very hostile to Zionism, that for them wanted to transform what they consider to be a religion, meaning their Judaism, into a nationality.

Also you have Orthodox Jewry that were appalled at the Zionist project.

Therefore, as the Colombia University professor notes, far from Zionism being widely accepted among Jewish people:

“we see a huge coalition of Jews, religious and secular alike, liberal and radical alike, socialist and communist Jews, all opposed to the Zionist project, seeing it as anti-Semitic, as right-wing, and as indeed seeking the self-expulsion of Jews from Europe.”

Despite opposition from Jewish Europeans, Zionists ultimately won the backing of the British and French empires.

 The result has been that a very racist apartheid state was formed upon the destruction of historic Palestine. The ethnic cleansing of its indigenous population is a process that continues to this day.

The Killing Fields of Gaza

As of 14 May 2019 the UNHCR reported that “during three days of intense hostilities” in Gaza, between 3 and 6 May 2019, Israeli occupation forces killed twenty five Palestinians “including three children and two pregnant women”. Four Israeli civilians were also killed. On top of which 153 Palestinians and 123 Israelis were injured. 

Between 23 and 25 March 2019 Israeli airstrikes in Gaza internally displaced:

“A total of 16 families, comprising 83 people, including 44 children”.

The UN body is also reporting that the increase in severe poverty in Gaza has resulted in an “increase in child labour”. And this year has already seen Israeli occupation forces displace  more Palestinians  in Occupied East Jerusalem than in all of 2018.

Speaking up and speaking out

Secker and the others came to protest and speak out against the brutality of the Israeli occupation, and the continued bombardment of its indigenous peoples. Any review of Secker’s activism over the years, along with the video itself, should eliminate any doubt about his commitment to anti-racism, in all its forms. Smears from the likes of Harpin and Berger notwithstanding.

 

 

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