Workers' Liberty

Not a headline you'd expect to see here, since Tony Greenstein has spent much of his energy, for many years, on denouncing and traducing the AWL because we support the right to self-determination for Israeli Jews as well as for the Palestinians. But read on.

The left-wing website Indymedia seems to have allowed itself to be manipulated by the anti-semitic right again. A recent report on the site, citing the Iranian-government-sponsored Press TV (for which Yvonne Ridley works) as source, claims that French president Nicolas Sarkozy is a former agent of the Israeli secret police Mossad.

The debate within UCU, the University and College Union, on whether to launch a boycott of Israeli academia has been called off after lawyers consulted by the leadership declared a boycott “illegal”. After a unanimous vote by the Strategy and Finance Committee, including members of UCU Left, union branches have been told they cannot vote on a boycott,

When it comes to Israel/Palestine and the Middle East more generally, as with so many international issues, much of the revolutionary left prefers to compete to see who can be the shrillest “anti-imperialist” rather than seriously analysing the politics of the region from a class-struggle perspective and identifying working class forces with which they can make practical solidarity.

By Paul Foot

I got this letter recently from a woman in Surrey.

By John O'Mahony

A small outcry greeted Tam Dalyell MP's assertion that there are too many Jews in Tony Blair's and George Bush's entourages, and that those Jews make Britain's and the USA's policy on the Middle East.

We have opened a discussion in Solidarity about the important issue of “left-wing anti-semitism” or judeophobia. It is worthwhile here to make it clear what we are, and are not, talking about.

What is “left-wing anti-semitism”? Where is it manifested? What is to be done about it?

By Stan Crooke

In November of last year the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (SPSC) hosted Gilad Atzmon at one of their fund-raising events. Apart from being a renowned jazz musician, Atzmon is also well-known for his own brand of anti-semitism.

By Jim Higgins

It is always a pleasure to see Sean Matgamna in full spate and my enjoyment of his piece, “Paul Foot, philo-semite” (WL 32), was abated only by the fear that the might do himself a serious mischief, carrying that immense weight of heavy irony.

By Sean Matgamna

Of course you know the story. A man is in the market place, and he sees Death, and Death looks at him intently, recognising him.

In a panic, the man runs to his horse and gallops away desperately, taking the road to the city of Samara.

Steve Cohen contributes to the debate on "left-wing anti-semitism"

For forty five years as a Jew and a revolutionary Marxist I have been waiting for this debate, this disputation. The time lag it itself revealing – revealing of the left’s refusal to get beyond platitudes, often nasty platitudes, in discussing Jews.

An attempt by AWL and Committee for 2 states to explore possibilities for joint work between the PSC and the Comm for 2 States are rebuffed. Why? Well read on.

Lest anyone think that repeated invites to Marxism for anti-semitic saxophone-playing conspiracy theorist Gilad Atzmon was an aberration on the part of the SWP, National Secretary Martin Smith is appearing with him again tonight in Manchester.

Prêcheurs de Haine (Preachers of Hatred), by Pierre-André Taguieff, is a large scale, French-language study of “left-wing” “judeophobia”.

Anti-semitism in Britain is at its worst for decades: attacks on Jews, on the streets and on college campuses, have become endemic. Ninety-two such attacks were reported in July.....The role of the kitsch-left is creating the culture in which anti-semitism is now beginning to thrive, has been recorded over many years in “Solidarity”

By Stan Crooke

“Antisemitism Accusations – An Attempt to Smear Anti-Zionists into Silence” declares one of the headlines in this week’s Socialist Worker. The article in question deals with a parliamentary report on anti-semitism published earlier this month.

I don’t want to be a court jew

A court jew kneeling before the throne of the idiot anti-zionist

The court jew in the palace of the stupid anti-imperialist

Martin Buber where are you now

You who refused to kneel before the ultimate socialism of fools

– anti-semitism.

by Piotr Kendziorek and August Grabski, Members of the Revolutionary Left Current

Anti-semitism in Poland has not been articulated in the political language of the left since the time of the “anti-Zionist”(in fact: anti-semitic) propaganda campaign of the 1960s inspired by General Moczar, and a later episode of the so-called Patriotic Association ‘Grunwald’ at the beginning of the 1980s.

By David Broder

On 10 July, seven AWL members took part in a protest against the jazz musician Gilad Atzmon performing at the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) summer school, Marxism.

Thomas Haury has written extensively about left anti-semitism in both pre- and post-unification Germany.

His best-known work is “Anti-Semitism on the Left”, a lengthy study of anti-semitism (anti-Zionism) in the early years of the German Democratic Republic. Other writings by Haury include “The German Left in the Goldhagen Debate” and “The Logic of German Anti-Zionism”.

By Piotr Kendziorek and August Grabski

Anti-semitism in Poland has not been articulated in the political language of the left since the time of the ‘anti-Zionist’ (in fact: anti-semitic) propaganda campaign of the 1960s inspired by General Moczar, and the later episode of the so-called Patriotic Association ‘Grunwald’ at the beginning of the 1980s. But articles which have recently appeared in the columns of the magazines “Lewa Noga” and “Rewolucja” (which are published by the Warsaw publishers “Ksiazka i Prasa”) give rise to the question of whether the ghost of anti-semitism is not again emerging in the guise of left ‘anti-Zionism’ in Poland.

The Zionist connection. News Line editorial, Saturday, April 9, 1983

A powerful Zionist connection runs from the so-called left of the Labour Party right into the centre of Thatcher's government in Downing Street. There is no difficulty what ever in proving this.

This is an editorial from Solidarity’s forerunner, Socialist Organiser (27 September 1984

THE quote above comes from Ring Lardner Jr, the famous writer and member of the Hollywood Ten — who were convicted in 1947 of criminal contempt for refusing to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee. The ten were imprisoned for a year for their defiance.

In fact, Lardner was one of the few who did respond to a question put to him. The question of course was whether he was or had ever been a member of the Communist Party. To which he replied “I could answer the question exactly the way you want, but if I did I would hate myself in the morning”.

If a North Korean mathematician wants to come to a conference in Britain, we will be happy to discuss maths with her; we will not demand that she repudiates her state’s constitutional claim that North Korea is a socialist paradise on earth.

By a NATFHE member

On 27-29 May, the lecturers’ union NATFHE will meet in Blackpool for its last conference before merger with another lecturers’ union, AUT, to form the “Universities and College Union”, UCU.

A new attempt is being made to set up a movement in Britain to support the Palestinian Arabs by organising a boycott of Israeli goods on sale here.

The 2005 NATFHE (college and newer universities lecturers’ union) conference passed a motion — written by a member of the Socialist Workers Party — which declared, “to criticise Israeli policy or institutions is not anti-semitic.”