Avi Shlaim – Why is Labour ignoring our complaint?
JVL Introduction
Avi Shlaim, who spoke at our official launch event in September 2017, writes about the complaint he made, with other Jewish Labour Party members about Neil Coyle’s call to proscribe JVL The Labour Party has effectively ignored the complaint for more than six months, while at the same time Labour continues to investigate and discipline left wing Jewish members for alleged antisemitism.
Professor Shlaim’s article is particularly timely in the light of our 4th submission to the EHRC (here 13.03.22), which focuses on the Labour Party’s apparent targeting of left wing Jews, especially those who are not zionist.
We are grateful to Middle East Eye for giving us permission to publish this article.
This article was originally published by Middle East Eye on Mon 14 Mar 2022. Read the original here.
Labour antisemitism allegations: Are left-wing Jewish party members being targeted?
By applying a fundamentally flawed definition of antisemitism, Labour appears to be rooting out anti-Zionist critics of Israel
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I have to say it is no longer viable to support the Labour Party.
The LP is in all respects now a right-wing Tory Party (B team). They have become a disgraceful shadow of the past and I will now no longer support them.
As if we didn’t know before, thanks to Amnesty, the world knows now for certain that Israel is an apartheid State and therefore it is also a racist State. Keir Starmer supports Zionism, the driving force behind the occupation of Israel, “without qualification”. Accordingly, by his own admission, Starmer is a racist, which means Avi has little hope of getting a meaningful reply no matter how hard he tries.
“I cannot help wondering how the Labour Party would have responded to a call for the mass expulsion of Labour Friends of Israel.”
But this is our mistake there should be such a call.
Israel only exists because of ethnic cleansing in 1948. This is a historical fact that almost nobody disputes. Ethnic Cleaning is proved conclusively by Israel’s failure to allow the Palestinian refugees to return.
So my question is this : is it OK to have advocates of Ethnic Cleansing as Labour Party members ? Since when was Ethnic Cleansing a legitimate tactic ? My answer is it is not OK.
Pedantic to comment on modern misuses of the word “rigorous”, but we expect precision from Prof Shlaim. ‘Rigour’ even as a synonym for ‘searching, exacting, thorough’ is exactly what the McCarthyite persecutors lack. Sloppiness characterizes their ‘procedures’. Ruthless, indeed vindictive, would be an exact description of methods and intentions.
Heartfelt thanks to Avi and others for not giving up on these complaints. Gross hypocrisy in Labour’s lack of response when it is socialist Jews in the firing line.
The LP that we all loved has long gone under the helm of the shyster Starmer.
So sad to read this.
Imagine the reaction if a ‘Labour friends of Russia’ organisation was successfully pushing Starmer et al. to persecute and expel all those members critical of Putins illegal and murderous attempts to occupy Ukraine.
Something is seriously wrong, and the corruption goes well beyond Labour.
I also I’m complete and utter SOLIDARITY with JVL members and those that have/are being treated so disgracefully but K.STARMER and his neoliberal monsters.
I have voted Labour for as long as I can remember and am still a paid up member of the party BUT I just can’t support Starmer or the PLP I am a devout democratic socialist and WE need to get OUR party back, we MUST stand up and be counted
SOLIDARITY FOREVER with Jeremy Corbyn and Palestinians everywhere
We must give credit where credit is due. Starmer and his Zionist acolytes treat eminent scholars, senior QCs and knights of the realm with the same contempt they reserve for the rest of us lesser anti Zionist mortals!
It is distressing to witness the ongoing persecution of left wing Jewish members, whose “crime” is to seek justice for the Palestinian people who are oppressed by the Apartheid State of Israel.
Our fight against Apartheid in South Africa was long and bitter.
Those of us who sang “Free Nelson Mandela” now call for “Freedom for Palestinians”.
Those who oppose Jews and non-Jews in the Labour Party who cry out for JUSTICE choose to put themselves on the wrong side of history.
Solidarity with Avi Shlaim, Geoffrey Bindman, Harold Immanuel and all those courageous members of the Labour Party who oppose the hypocrisy of Labour’s right-wing leadership who choose to stand with the oppressor and not the oppressed.
Coyle is an all round charmer. His views are shared by Starmer.
As my late Jewish, and loyal, left wing and caring socialist member of the LP was still under suspension for anti-semitism when he died I just thank JVL and Bindmans for continuing the fight to get justice for all those members, Jewish or not, suspended or expelled for bogus anti-semitism, when all they are doing is supporting a resolution passed twice at LP conference, and ignored, to support the brave Palestinians who are struggling with the harsh reality of oppression by the Israeli government. A second member died before being cleared too and many more have notices of investigation against them. The LP, when I joined in 1971, was considered a broad church, as they say, but no longer. If a member, especially a Jewish one, and even more so if you are on the JVL committee, objects to the mass destruction of Palestinian homes, schools, hospitals, olive groves etc, killing thousands of innocent people, including children, then you are not considered the right kind of socialist, or indeed Jew, and Starmer wants you banished from the party, so he can get on with scouring HIS party of any hint of left wing politics. I’M ANGRY that my party has been stolen from me by an uncaring Zionist bully.
Why wait on Labour for anything, and what do the Labour Party offer the working class ?
Related to this is the absurdity of the Labour Party rules. To get elected Starmer cynically told the electorate, the membership, a pack of lies. Now in power, the only people who can get rid of him are the PLP who are being gerrymandered further by the process adopted to select new MPs.