Jews need to be part of the antifascist resistance
JVL Introduction
“Homes and shops are being vandalised, places of worship are under siege, individuals are being attacked for their ethnic and religious appearance. Jews are familiar with all of these scenarios, either first-hand or from the stories of our parents and grandparents. The history of racist violence and the constant threat of its reemergence is a key part of our religious education.” But as Newton makes clear here, right now it is not Jewish people coming under attack but Muslim people and asylum seekers; all people of colour feel threatened and unsafe such that going about daily life is a struggle. We have been here before, especially in the 70s but also much more recently. The need for the strongest and wider possible antifascist mobilisation is clear within which Jewish people must play their part. We are not (at least currently) under threat and we must stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers, with our Black and Brown neighbours and make it clear that “they shall not pass”. The very least we expect from the Jewish Establishment is to stop using Islamophobic language yourselves and to stop demonising pro Palestinian marches as antisemitic. The MP for Finchley – Sarah Sackman, even claimed that the antiracist rally in Finchley on August 7th would be antisemitic.
Part of our role is to call it out for what it is: Islamophobia, racism and fascism. On a mainstream TV channel (itv Good Morning Britain) Zarah Sultana was given a really hard time for emphasising how important it was that Starmer called this wave of appalling acts Islamophobic; as Jonathan Cook pointed out, it is impossible to imagine the same sort of treatment for Margaret Hodge insisting on the label antisemitism.
Solidarity is key as is building the broadest possible antiracist movement and also challenging the rhetoric of governments and media – the irony of seeing the Daily Mail praising the antiracists who came onto the streets to defend their own communities is palpable, We also cannot look to this government to build such a movement, focused as they are on addressing the criminality rather than the causes, the Labour Party actually advised its MPs and Councillors to stay at home. It is down to all of us.
LL
This article was originally published by Vashti (The Pickle) on Wed 7 Aug 2024. Read the original here.
The time for a Jewish anti-fascist renaissance is now
Islamophobia and fearmongering by communal leaders must be replaced with cross-community anti-fascist organising.
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The genuine problems faced by less well off white people need to be acknowledged and addressed, in a comprehensable manner without too much rhetoric. Alongside all of these issues. I do feel that the reason they came down so hard on JC was because his ability to cover these bases frightened some elites. He’d be at a Black church in South London one day and in a former mining village in County Durham the next.
In the past couple of days I’ve posted the bit about Sarah Sackman mentioned in the introduction on both Craig Murray’s website and Skwawkbox, but it only just occurred to me to do a search to see if I can ascertain exactly why she said what she said, and several articles came up at the top of the results, including one in The Telegraph in which it says the following:
A Labour MP has reported an anti-fascist group in north London to the police after a poster from a protest equated “Zionists” with the far-Right.
Sarah Sackman, the new MP for Finchley and Golders Green, said material shared by groups ahead of a demonstration in North Finchley on Wednesday evening was “clearly anti-Semitic”….
A poster from the group Finchley Against Fascism, advertising the event, read: “Get Fascists, Racists, Nazis, Zionists and Islamophobes out of Finchley.”
Ms Sackman said she had reported the posts to the Metropolitan Police and the Community Security Trust, a charity that seeks to protect British Jews from harassment and violence.
Sunder Katwala, the director of British Future, a think tank, said the protesters had “marred their defence” of the immigration office by using the “anti-Semitic” slogan “Zionists out of Finchley”.
Stand Up to Racism, the main organiser of the counter-demonstration in North Finchley, said Finchley Against Fascism was not connected to it and denounced the content of the leaflet.
Anyway, I thought I’d just point out the reason why Sackman said what she said (having now learnt why she did), and whatever one thinks and feels about Zionism and Zionists regards the genocide etc in Gaza, it probably wasn’t a good idea to include Zionists in the leaflet/poster, and was bound to be denounced as antisemetic.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/08/08/mp-complains-anti-fascists-zionists-far-right/
PS I assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that Sackman was saying it merely because she knew there would be many left-wingers in the counter protest.
Ohhh… I thought I’d come across the name somewhere before! The following passage is from a New Statesman article:
She [Sarah Sackman] did not stand as a Labour candidate during the Corbyn era: “I didn’t feel that I could ask my neighbours and friends to vote for me – to vote for Labour – in this place at that time.” Instead, she shifted her energies to the Jewish Labour Movement. She was vice-chair of the organisation when it brought its complaint against the Labour Party and its leadership via the Equality and Human Rights Commission.
https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2024/06/sarah-sackman-my-labour-values-my-jewish-identity-tension
So Sackman was involved in what was probably the biggest stitch-up in British political history, which consisted of indirectly causing concern and consternation and worry and anxiety in many in the Jewish population. And she was justly rewarded for services rendered it would appear – ie for subverting democracy, along with her playmates in the JLM and CAA and LAAS and the BoD et al.
Hopefully, one day in the not too distant future, every single one of the people involved in the A/S black op smear campaign against Jeremy and the left will be exposed to the millions they duped and deceived and cheated for what they did. And for what they ARE, as such.
And ESPECIALLY their fear-mongering!