Left antisemitism

See our publications and more articles on fighting antisemitism.

Protest for two states!

This graphic, compiled from UN figures, is taken from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. The deaths have been fewer in recent weeks — one, four, four on Fridays 13, 20, 27 April, as against 44 total for the first five Fridays. That must be partly due to the protests against the killings organised within Israel, and also by left-wing Jewish groups in the USA. At the Workers’ Liberty forum in London on 26 April about Israel-Palestine, the left, and antisemitism, two additional sets of figures were cited. A pro-Israeli-government speaker from the floor told us that the Israeli government has reported...

Reinstate Marc Wadsworth

The expulsion of Marc Wadsworth a longstanding anti-racist campaigner and journalist for bringing the Labour Party in disrepute is a serious mistake, setting any real fight against antisemitism backwards. The case highlights how far there is to go to reform Labour’s disciplinary procedures even while a left and pro-Corbyn majority is on the NEC. The charges against Wadsworth stem from the launch of the Chakrabarti Report where he accused a Daily Telegraph journalist Kate McCann of “working hand in hand” with Labour MP Ruth Smeeth. Wadsworth had been leafletting outside and a copy of the...

Momentum on Antisemitism

That the Labour left movement Momentum has released a statement taking on antisemitism in the Labour Party and the left is welcome. Until now Momentum had been silent on the issue, and had made no suggestions for political education or training on the issue. The statement from the group’s National Coordinating Group goes some way to addressing these shortfalls but is not as comprehensive as the one agreed by the Momentum Steering Committee in 2016 but never released. The 2016 statement calls for the implementation of the Chakrabarti report and for a fairer disciplinary process that would avoid...

Learning from the mural row

In the recent furore about antisemitism on the left triggered by the uncovering of Jeremy Corbyn’s 2012 defence of Kalen Ockerman’s mural Freedom for Humanity, much of the coverage found it unnecessary to explain the nature of the mural’s antisemitism. But explained it should be, if we want to learn from the episode rather than just use it as a factional gambit. First, there is the Eye of Providence which is depicted on the dollar bill, but is a common piece of antisemitic iconography (see below). Then, the depiction of the bankers and capitalists. Most clearly, the banker on the left...

Protest against Israeli shootings: For an independent Palestine alongside Israel

The Israeli army has killed 44 Palestinians, and injured hundreds more, after Israeli Defence Force (IDF) snipers opened fire on demonstrations on Israel’s border with the Palestinian territory of Gaza, on Fridays between 30 March and 27 April. One protestor, 18-year-old Abdel Fattah Abdel Nabi, was shot in the back as he turned to flee IDF fire. Another victim was Gazan journalist Yaser Murtaja, killed by a bullet to the abdomen underneath his bullet-proof vest clearly marking him out as a member of the press. While the bulk of both demonstrations have been peaceful and unarmed, some...

Antisemitism is an issue

It is strange to see things for which Solidarity and Workers’ Liberty have long been despised and abused, among much of the left, the kitsch left, now being brandished as weapons against the Corbyn Labour Party by our political enemies. Certainly “left-wing” antisemitism, expressed as “anti-Zionism”, is a malignant and powerful force on the left. Especially among the would-be revolutionary left, who on many other things say what we say. The core of the antisemitic infection is denial that Israel has a right to exist — insistence that it is a historically illegitimate state which should be done...

21 lies the "Holocaust-mitigator" left tells itself on Israel/Palestine

A central fact of our political situation is that the left, especially the ostensible revolutionary left, is a major source of antisemitism — they say “anti-Zionism” — in the country and in the labour movement, including the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn has admitted that there are pockets of antisemitism in the Labour Party. On the self-described revolutionary left you will find only pockets of opposition to the “anti-Zionism” which becomes antisemitism — AWL for example. The root of “left-wing” antisemitism is the belief that Israel should not exist, that it is a historically non-legitimate...

Big rise in antisemitism since 2013

The year 2017 saw a 60% increase in antisemitic incidents in the USA, and a doubling of the number of cases of antisemitic harassment, vandalism, and attacks in schools and on college campuses. Over 1,000 of the 1,986 antisemitic incidents reported and collated by the Anti-Defamation League happened in schools or universities. The total number has been increasing since 2013, and is now over two and a half times its level then (bit.ly/adl-2017) . The rise parallels, and must surely be driven by, the surge in “America First”, anti-”globalist” feeling flagshipped by Donald Trump. Many nationalist...

Friends of Israel groups blocked from joining anti-racist demonstration

The logic of absolute anti-Zionism played itself out on the streets of Glasgow during last Saturday’s Stand Up to Racism (SUTR) demonstration. For absolute anti-Zionism, Zionism is not just another nationalism. On the contrary, it is a monolithic and uniquely evil ideology, pro-imperialist by nature, inherently racist (if not outright fascist), and necessarily genocidal. By the same token, Israel is not the expression of Hebrew-Jewish national self-determination. Instead, it is the product of ethnic cleansing, a settler state which is inherently expansionist, and an apartheid state incapable...

TV fictions and AWL reality

An open letter to Ashok Kumar It’s been said before, and it will bear saying again. If everything published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last five decades were to disappear, and if future historians of socialism had to rely on what our political opponents said about us, then the historians would find it impossible to make political sense of the story. On the one hand we are people who do, and have always done, everything we can to help workers in their struggle against employers and governments. We throw everything we have into that. We preach working-class revolutionary...

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