Thread by @AsaWinstanley

A warning to Labour activists on what to expect to happen next in the Labour “anti-Semitism crisis” witch hunt. Plus how this sabotage can be defeated.

A thread 👇🏻

Something the right & pro-Israel groups are going to try at some point -probably as a final resort - is to manufacture what they’ll claim is an “exodus of Jewish members” from Labour.

Expect a group of high profile right-wing and/or pro-Israel MPs, councillors or members to resign from Labour in protest. Don’t fall for this.

In reality, this will be just another attempt to sabotage Labour: possibly settling up a new “moderate” splinter party in the process, using false claims of anti-Semitism as their totemic issue.

Israel lobby groups tried this years ago as part of their costly legal assault against the University and College Union. See my 2012 court report. The false claim was that “Jewish members have left UCU in droves” electronicintifada.net/content/how-is…

That case failed on every count, with the judge trouncing it as “wreckage” and “an impermissible attempt to achieve a political end by litigious means” electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-wins…

The Israel lobby had to pay UCU’s court costs, thought to amount to £100s of Ks. But for a while, it generated some very bad headlines for UCU, and it achieved a sort of victory in the sense that discussion of academic boycott of Israel was severely chilled.

Not coincidentally, the leading force in the case against UCU was one of the anti-Palestinian groups currently assaulting Labour: the Jewish Leadership Council — then led by none other than Jeremy Newmark.

Newmark was singled out by the judge for giving particularly “preposterous,” “arrogant” and “disturbing” evidence which showed contempt for freedom of speech. He was basically called a liar by the judge — giving “untrue” evidence.

After later being quietly kicked out of the JLC for fiddling his expenses (as we learned only this year), Newmark went on to reinvent himself as a Labour Party activist and councillor — as yet another way to defend Israeli apartheid.

He re-founded the moribund Jewish Labour Movement in February 2016, installing a full-time director for the first time by hiring her away from the Israeli embassy (Ella Rose).

The JLM — in close coordination with the Israeli embassy — has been a leading force in the last almost three years of defamation of Labour as an “antisemitic party”.

And so we are where we are now.

I’ve been privately predicting to comrades for months they will try the same “Jewish members are leaving in droves” nonsense in Labour which they did in UCU.

But now there were some early signs of this actually beginning to happen this week: a) John Mann claimed there was a “continuous roll call of brilliant Jewish activists resigning from the Labour Party”. No names of course.

b) The JLM’s Adam Langleben claimed Labour is now “institutionally racist” because it refuses to adopt a rule that says it’s “anti-Semitic” for Palestinians to call their own oppression racist.

c) An anonymous Labour source briefed The Evening Standard that “a number of Jewish Labour MPs” may quit Labour and stand as independents in defence of Margaret Hodge’s slander of Corbyn as a “fucking anti-Semite and racist”.

Again the most important thing is: DO NOT FALL FOR IT. This is a *political disagreement* above all about the nature of the new, socialist Labour Party. Don’t fall into the sectarian agitation trap. It’s an attempt to sabotage the party and the leadership.

The lesson for Labour: the only way to defeat these dirty tactics is by fighting them, head on. They can not be accommodated or compromised with. electronicintifada.net/content/jeremy…