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Opinion Editorials, March 2020 |
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As with all genuine socialist anti-racists, I was at best underwhelmed with the candidates for the Labour leadership, and that was before they shamefully all signed up to the racist 10 pledges of the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD). We all knew Labour Friend of Israel (LFI) Emily Thornberry was a dreadful Zionist, but I, as with many other anti-racists, was bitterly disappointed to discover the rest were no better. This was particularly the case for supposed socialist and “continuity Corbyn” candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey, although given the fact she’s the pick of racist Zionist Jon Lansman, it’s not surprising. Jeremy Corbyn was very weak against the Zionists, including his Judas “friend” Jon Lansman, and his condemnation of our banner was disgraceful, but at least he never openly declared himself a Zionist racist, even if he was happy to cavort with them. Following their awful decision to grace the racist Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) and LFI “hustings”, Tony Greenstein posited the valid question as to which of the leadership candidates was the worst Zionist racist. With this question in mind, and with LFI Thornberry no longer in the race, I was interested and angered by this report in the Independent of a live debate on Sky where I will argue that Lisa Nandy appeared to go out of her way to earn that moniker. However, I will also argue that neither of the other leadership candidates are much, if any, better and the same now applies to all but one of the deputy leadership candidates. After all, a racist is a racist, end of, and one that supports a racist apartheid state while talking about racism is a hypocrite of the highest order. All four of the Labour / Zionist leadership candidates attended the racist JLM/LFI hustings where they all declared their support for a racist ideology. The JLM, formerly Paole Zion and sister party to the racist Israeli Labour Party, was reformed in 2015 with the express intention of undermining the leadership of Corbyn which they sadly succeeded in doing. As with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the JLM and LFI provide a platform for anti-Arab bigotry and have no place in our party. The decision of the leadership candidates to attend their hustings was appalling. Membership of LFI should be proscribed for Labour MPs and the JLM should be disaffiliated from the party. During the aforementioned Sky debate dreadful Zionist Lisa Nandy said: “We’ve had a collective failure of leadership at the top of the party for years, where we’ve allowed high-profile cases of anti-Semitism to go undealt with and unaddressed, and by doing so, we’ve given a green light to anti-Semites everywhere that they had a home in Labour.” She then went on to say that she resigned from Corbyn’s cabinet over “anti-Semitism”. For me, these outrageous statements, which take as given Labour’s fake “anti-Semitism” crisis, mark her out as the worst Zionist of the three remaining leadership candidates, but only just. After all, they all signed up to the BoD’s 10 pledges and effectively denounced Corbyn as an anti-Semite at the shameful JLM / LFI hustings. Having said this the rest of the candidates for leader and deputy leader have proved themselves no better, bar one. They’ve all signed up to the BoD’s outrageous 10 pledges or the equally disgraceful plan to restore “decency” to the Labour Party penned by the racist JLM. I will focus primarily on the remaining couple of leadership candidates. It seems self-proclaimed supporter of Zionism, Keir Starmer, has more in common with fellow far right racist Richard Spencer than their fascist flick. Sadly, RLB’s support for the racist ideology is unsurprising given her unholy alliance with dreadful Zionist Jon Lansman. I will deal only briefly with the equally awful candidates for deputy leader. First and foremost, it’s important to note that Richard Burgon is the stand out exception to all the other candidates for the leadership or deputy leadership, and it’s a great shame he hasn’t stood for the leadership. Dawn Butler initially refused to sign up to the BoD’s outrageous 10 pledges, but later capitulated on the equally shameful “restore decency” statement. This also makes a nonsense of her statements about racism, given her support for an apartheid state. Nonetheless, I don’t want to sign off by criticising someone who is one of the least worst racists. Apart from Burgon, all the remaining candidates seem worse. Finally my generous side always wants to believe that these sometimes self-proclaimed socialists and anti-racists have some kind of blind spot when it comes to Zionism, and I do think there must be some genuine ignorance involved. However, I find it somewhat extraordinary that elected MPs of a supposed socialist, anti-racist party lack such basic knowledge about what has been, since its inception: a racist ideology created and continues to underpin an apartheid state. I have to conclude that in many cases, including those of the three leadership candidates and some of the those for deputy, there must be some degree of cynicism involved and possibly something worse. *Jon de Rennes is Communications Manager for Labour Against Zionist Islamophobic Racism (LAZIR) *** Share the link of this article with your facebook friends
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