Workers' Liberty

By Jack Yates

LEFT WING ANTI-SEMITE

Why do you misconstrue my views?
Believe me, I don't hate no Jews;

Why, again and again and again, time after time, does Jew-baiting, in one form or another, become a force in history?

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 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.

Eve Garrard has circulated the following on the activists' e-list of the lecturers' union UCU (first published here 22/11/07). Our union is affiliated to the Stop the War Coalition, which is holding a conference on December 1st. One of the speakers it has invited to this conference is Ibrahim Mousawi, the editor of al-Manar TV, Hizbullah's broadcasting network.

Mike Rowley is right to stress “the fullest freedom of speech” under what he calls “normal circumstances” (Solidarity 121), though it is not clear what these are, or whether they exist in the present climate.

As reported in the last Solidarity, a lot is being done in Oxford by local unions, Labour branches, student unions and community groups to stop the Holocaust denier David Irving and the BNP leader Nick Griffin speaking at the Oxford Union student debating society on 26 November. However, the contribution of the Unite Against Fascism national office has been questionable.

An open letter to Hilary and Steven Rose from John O’Mahony

Comrades: As well-known supporters of the proposal to boycott Israel, you will have been pleased by the boycott resolutions carried recently by the lecturers’ union UCU and the journalists’ union NUJ, and by the move to “boycott Israeli institutions” contained in Resolution 54 to the conference (starting 19 June) of the public services union Unison.

• Ernest Mandel: The Jewish Question Since World War II
• Albert Glotzer: The Jewish problem After Hitler

[Texts cut in the printed version are here restored in full]

The good news: Channel Four TV next Monday, 9 July, at 8pm, will screen a programme about the growing threat of anti-semitism in Britain. The bad news: it will be presented by the grotesque right-wing newspaper columnist Richard Littlejohn.

For a vile example of antisemitism, check out this YouTube page. It manages to denounce the war on terror and Israel as a 'racist apartheid terrorist state'. It also drips antisemitism from every sentence.

These basic policies on Israel-Palestine — policies which allow a way forward through building working-class unity across the divides — were adopted by the Executive of the Communication Workers’ Union in 2002.

If not boycott, what? There is a wide range of positive activities by which we can make solidarity with the Palestinians without the drawbacks of boycott. In fact, the boycott demand often serves a diversion, directing people towards token or downright counterproductive activities instead of what they could do positively.

Resolution 54 to Unison’s national delegate conference (June 19-22) calls for the union to support a campaign to boycott (undefined) Israeli institutions. Workers’ Liberty supporters are working with others in Unison to oppose this resolution on the basis of positive solidarity with the Palestinians.

THE Executive of the public services Unison has rejected a proposal from the relevant union committee to give money to the international trade-union news website Labourstart, on the grounds that one of the people involved in running Labourstart is a “Zionist”.

By Mark Osborn, the delegate who moved the left anti-boycott motion at UCU conference

THE new University and College Union (UCU), formed from the merger of AUT and NATFHE, met in conference for the first time at the end of May.

By Sylvia Pankhurst

The following account by Sylvia Pankhurst is of a police-sponsored pogrom against Jewish immigrants in London’s East End is taken from an issue of Women’s Dreadnought from 26 May 1917.

UCU, the lecturers’ union, formed from the merger of Natfhe and AUT, meets in conference for the first time at the end of May.

The SWP have a softish motion for a boycott of Israel on the agenda (through Brighton University and UEL).

Several high profile and large NUJ branches — ITN, BBC London and Observer — have spearheaded a campaign for ballot over the NUJ’s recent decision to “call for a boycott of Israeli goods”. They believe, of course, that the policy will overturn the decision of the 2007 Annual Delegate Meeting. The sponsors of the ballot call are probably right. Whether a vote against the boycott in such a ballot will be for the right reasons is another matter.

By Cathy Nugent

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted 66 to 54 at its recent annual delegate meeting for a motion brought by the South Yorkshire branch which says, among other things, that the union should call “for a boycott of Israeli goods similar to those boycotts in the struggles against apartheid South Africa led by trade unions, and the TUC to demand sanctions be imposed on Israel by the British government and the United Nations.”

By Sacha Ismail

At the 11 March compositing meeting for this year’s NUS conference, the session to decide motions for the Students Rights and Welfare debate featured a very strange discussion about anti-semitism.

Gilad Atzmon, the jazz musician who is prone to anti-semitic conspiracy theory rants played — not for the first time — for the Socialist Workers’ Party in December. The group’s invitation to Atzmon prompted a few words of protest by SWP apologist and children’s author Michael Rosen, writing as Isokotsky in the letters of page of Socialist Worker (7 January). Jazz fan Jim Denham has written this open letter to Atzmon.

From a witness

Last Thursday, 7 December, the London Jewish Forum was launched at City Hall. There, the Mayor of london, Ken Livingstone surprised the audience by apologising for the offence he caused with his "nazi camp guard" jibe at the Evening Standard journalist, Oliver Feingold.

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.

Those who deny that 'anti-Zionism' can ever be a cover for anti-semitism should read this:

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.