JFJFP

August 22, 2015

Sarah Benton

The article from the FT is followed by one by Dyab Abu Jahjah and then by Owen Jones. The Jewish Chronicle has done its best to ransack Corbyn’s past and associate him with every terrorist they can find, and thus proudly announces:
“Poll reveals 7 in 10 Jews fear Jeremy Corbyn leadership victory

Almost seven in 10 British Jews are concerned about the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party, an exclusive JC poll has revealed.” No response needed to the JC’s nightmares.

Jeremy Corbyn called for an end to the arms trade with Israel when he addressed the rally [above] against Israel’s attack on Gaza, Hyde Park, August 2014. Photo from Islington Gazette.

Spotlight falls on Corbyn’s foreign policies

By Kiran Stacey, Political Correspondent, Financial Times
August 19, 2015

At a campaign rally for the Labour leadership, Jeremy Corbyn began with a lengthy description of his meeting with Colombian farm workers.

Members of the Colombia Agricultural Workers Union had briefed the MP on the harassment they face at the hands of the government. “It was interesting, it was frightening, it was horrific,” said Mr Corbyn. “Our job is to show solidarity with them.”

If starting a speech to Labour members in Cardiff with a long passage about workers’ rights in South America seems quixotic, it is also a sign of how intrinsic foreign policy is to Mr Corbyn’s political make-up.

His foreign policy views are fairly typical of the Labour left. He is a veteran of the Stop the War coalition against the Iraq war, a vociferous campaigner for Palestinian rights, a defender of Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan president, and a regular critic of the US.
Frequently, Mr Corbyn’s views have become mainstream in the long term, though frequently contentious at the time.

He was willing to meet Gerry Adams and fellow Sinn Féin politicians in the 1980s while the IRA was still bombing England, and invited them to parliament shortly after the 1984 Brighton bombing.

Tweeted by Jayne Fisher, “The wonderful @jeremycorbyn ‘the MP for all of us’ addressing #GazA9 solidarity anti-war rally in Hyde Park”,
‏@JayneBFisher

He has long defended Mordechai Vanunu, imprisoned for blowing the whistle on the Israeli nuclear weapons programme. He campaigned against apartheid in South Africa and was arrested in 1984 while protesting outside the South African embassy in London.

But in recent weeks he has also attracted criticism for some of the positions he has taken and allies he has made while campaigning for various causes.

The most contentious aspect of his world view is his alleged encounters with people such as Paul Eisen. Mr Eisen, a self-confirmed Holocaust denier, has said Mr Corbyn has donated to his Deir Yassin Remembered organisation, which seeks to publicise claims that Jewish fighters killed about 100 Arab villagers in 1948.

In answers published on Wednesday, Mr Corbyn’s office said he had “no recollection whatsoever” of donating to the organisation. He did say he had attended its events but added he no longer did so. “Holocaust denial is vile and wrong: the Holocaust was the most vile part of our history,” he said.

Mr Corbyn was also criticised on Wednesday for sharing a platform with Dyab Abou Jahjah, an Arab rights activist who had previously told a Dutch newspaper: “I consider every death of an American, British or Dutch soldier as a victory.”

Mr Corbyn admitted on Wednesday that he had met Mr Jahjah, but added: “The idea that I’m some kind of racist or antisemitic person is beyond appalling, disgusting and deeply offensive.”

The MP for Islington North has also defended describing the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah as “friends”. He told Channel 4 News: “I spoke at a meeting about the Middle East crisis in parliament and there were people there from Hizbollah, and I said I welcomed our friends from Hizbollah to have a discussion and a debate.” He added: “I said I wanted Hamas to be part of that debate.”

Meanwhile, he has proposed levying sanctions on Israel and, in particular, banning arms sales to the country.

Like many on the left, Mr Corbyn is not only a fierce critic of Israel but also the US. He has said Tony Blair and George W Bush should face war crimes charges, and warned several times in recent years that the US was about to launch strikes against Iran.

This criticism of Washington extends to hostility towards Nato — “I’d rather we weren’t in it.” Mr Corbyn opposes the Trident nuclear weapons system and the Nato target of spending 2 per cent of gross domestic product on defence. He has called the alliance expansionist and said it is hypocritical for attacking Russia’s invasion of Crimea.

In an article for the Stop the War campaign, he wrote: “[Nato’s] attempt to encircle Russia is one of the big threats of our time.” He has also defended the Russian state-run Russia Today television channel. He tweeted during the royal wedding in 2011: “Try Russia Today. Free of Royal Wedding and more objective on Libya than most.”

If Mr Corbyn does become Labour leader, one of the biggest questions he will face is which direction to take his party in its attitude towards Europe. In the last parliament, Ed Miliband made a virtue of Labour’s pro-European stance, opposing the Conservatives’ promise of an in-out referendum.

But Mr Corbyn has a more ambivalent attitude towards the institutions of the union, taking a position closer to that of Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, who has criticised the EU while saying he wants to remain within it.

Mr Corbyn recently told the Financial Times he believed the European Central Bank had been “brutal” in its attitude towards Greece, and that the recent debt deal would eventually have to be renegotiated. And he has said that if David Cameron, the prime minister, opts out of EU-guaranteed workers’ rights, he would campaign for the UK to leave the bloc altogether.

The most immediate chance for Mr Corbyn to make his mark in foreign policy, however, is over the issue of Islamist fighters in Syria. He is the only leadership candidate to rule out voting for British air strikes in the country against the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Government officials have said they will not bring a vote on bombing Isis in Syria unless they can guarantee Labour support. A Corbyn victory next month would scupper the chances of that.

Dyab Abu Jahjah displays the Geuzen prize awarded him by a students’ association in Ghent, Belgium, 2014.

It was awarded for his “critical thinking, determination in the fight for equality and against injustice and the stubborn way he continues to lead the debate and action. He condemns the persistence of exclusion, discrimination and racism against minorities…His actions and his words are expressed in a humanistic perspective that emphasizes the universality of human rights.” ‘t zat wel gaan Facebook page.

On my link to Jeremy Corbyn and the smear campaign against me and him in the UK

By Dyab Abu Jahjah, blog
August 19, 2015

When a friend of mine called me this morning telling me that the British tabloid The Sun dedicated a whole article to me I thought he was confusing me with someone else. “The sun? shouldn’t they be picking on some model with an anorexia problem or some Tory lord who can’t keep his pants on around young girls?”. Ever since it was clear that Jeremy Corbyn makes a realistic chance of winning the contest for labour leadership, sleeping dogs have been called into action. Jeremy Corbyn is the worst nightmare of the ruling elite in Britain and beyond. A man who was consistent all through his political career in his socialist ideas, support for legitimate resistance, and promotion of dialogue among peoples.

It is in this framework that I have briefly met and collaborated with Jeremy Corbyn in 2009. We organised a debate at the British parliament where Corbyn, myself, and Hezbullah MP, and current Lebanese government minister, Hussein Haj Hassan spoke. A day before, we had also spoken together at a rally of the British anti-war movement. Corbyn’s openness to dialogue is what made the visit possible. The pro-Israel lobby then woke up and started a smear campaign against me resulting in a hasty and unjustified decision by the interior minister to deny me re-entry to the UK. That campaign had almost the same content of the current campaign that is spearheaded by the pro-Israel lobby and the conservatives. The claims are that I am antisemitic, that I am a bigot, and that I rejoice the death of British soldiers.

The first claim is the most repeated and is based upon two separate elements. First the fact that I am indeed opposed to Zionism and to the policies of the state of Israel. I am indeed a supporter of a one secular state for all solution in Palestine in the line of the south African dismantling of the apartheid state. I do not support ethnic-religious colonial states, whether they are Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist. Therefore, all the supporter of the ethnic-religious colonial state of Israel have all the reasons to express their horror of my position. However, when they accuse me of antisemitism because of that they have no ground to stand on. Equating Zionism with Judaism is what they do in this case, and that itself is antisemitic.

The second reason I am accused of antisemitism is the fact that the AEL, an organisation that I have presided, launched a campaign of satirical cartoons and articles in response to the Danish cartoons in 2006 that stereotyped and stigmatized Muslims via their prophet. Our campaign tried to demonstrate the double standards dominating the freedom of speech discourse in Europe. In that campaign the AEL broke every possible taboo in Europe. All the cartoons where offensive to people for all kinds of reasons. The important thing to note regarding that campaign is that the AEL published a disclaimer with each cartoon stating that we do not endorse the message of any of these cartoons and that we are doing this as an exercise in Freedom of speech and in order to demonstrate the double standards. We were Charlie avant la letter. And our campaign worked. Not only have we received thousands of hate mails including death threats from enlightened otherwise pro-satire Europeans, The AEL was also convicted in the Netherlands by a court because of the cartoons. We rested our case.

Now, one can question our tactic, but no one can claim that we support the content of satire that we have ourselves, at the time, characterized as vile and offensive and meant only to demonstrate hypocrisy. Such a claim would be false, and utterly ludicrous.

The accusation of bigotry on other issues is also to be brought back to that same satire campaign and the same context and is therefore groundless.

As for rejoicing [in] the death of British occupation soldiers in Iraq, this is a misrepresentation of a position that I still uphold until this day. The occupation and destruction of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful, criminal and a crime against humanity. We still witness the repercussions of that terrible crime until this day. The criminals responsible for it, including Tony Blair, are still at large enjoying impunity. Every soldier taking part in an illegal occupation is a legitimate target for resistance. This is a guaranteed right of resistance to all occupied people under international law. However, rejoicing the death of people, even enemy soldiers, is not something that I would do. Rejoicing the victory of peoples resistance against occupation, is another matter.

So here you have the other side of the story, and you can judge for yourself.

This “fanatic”, “firebrand”, “extremist”, “terrorist” is also a recognised columnist of a prestigious centre-right newspaper in Belgium and has been chosen as the 4TH most influential Belgian of Foreign origin, only preceded by 3 people who are the former Prime minister Di Rupo, the Leader of the Green Party Almaci, and Vincent Kompany, the captain of Manchester City. If you think that you can bring the time back to 2003 when another Belgium reacted hysterically to our emancipation movement, the AEL, you are committing a terrible mistake. We are in 2015 and in the mean time I have won every possible law case against me and even enemies of that time, became friends today.

Yes, I do support Jeremy Corbyn, and I am hopeful he will win the leadership of Labour and help build a better future for the British people. I am like Mr Corbyn a socialist, and we do share similar values. This does not mean that I agree with him on everything and I am sure that he also disagrees with me on some things. He was not my cheerleader then and I am not his cheerleader now, serious people do not reason in these terms.

The subliminal ego of British conservatism is a sewer that stinks to centuries of colonial theft, oppression, murder and lies. And I am catching a tiny bit of that stench right now. It makes me more determined to revisit the UK, to speak to people there, and to struggle together for a better future in Europe and beyond. See you soon in London.

unjustified decision by the interior minister to deny me re-entry to the UK. That campaign had almost the same content of the current campaign that is spearheaded by the pro-Israel lobby and the conservatives. The claims are that I am antisemitic, that I am a bigot, and that I rejoice the death of British soldiers.

The accusation of bigotry on other issues is also to be brought back to that same satire campaign and the same context and is therefore groundless.

As for rejoicing the death of British occupation soldiers in Iraq, this is a misrepresentation of a position that I still uphold until this day. The occupation and destruction of Iraq in 2003 was unlawful, criminal and a crime against humanity. We still witness the repercussions of that terrible crime until this day. The criminals responsible for it, including Tony Blair, are still at large enjoying impunity. Every soldier taking part in an illegal occupation is a legitimate target for resistance. This is a guaranteed right of resistance to all occupied people under international law. However, rejoicing the death of people, even enemy soldiers, is not something that I would do. Rejoicing the victory of peoples resistance against occupation, is another matter.

So here you have the other side of the story, and you can judge for yourself.

Stand by for more attacks on Corbyn’s principled foreign policy stance

By Owen Jones, CiF, Guardian
August 21, 2015

When the Chilcot report is finally released – perhaps at some point in the 24th century – it will be a reminder of the greatest western foreign policy catastrophe of our time. Hundreds of thousands dead, many more maimed; millions displaced; the torture cells; the dropping of white phosphorus on Fallujah; the unleashing of grotesque sectarian conflict; the rise of fundamentalist extremists, culminating in the nightmare of Isis.

But it was those who criticised the war whose careers suffered: the resignations came from the likes of Robin Cook and the heads of the BBC, not those who prosecuted the war. Tony Blair’s career flourished, allowing him to work for murderous despots with no criticism – with honourable exceptions – from his own supporters.

That’s why Jeremy Corbyn, the possible next Labour leader, is right to pledge to apologise for the Iraq war. Only by doing so can lessons be learned and future catastrophes averted. He is similarly right to call for Isis to be tackled by challenging sickening dictatorships such as that of Saudi Arabia – which beheads people for being gay and which is armed to the teeth by our countries – which are the heartlands of extremism. These points are not made because the west is the cause of all global injustice – it is certainly not – but in recognition of the fact that we have most influence over the actions of our own governments.

But it is for his stance on foreign-policy issues that Corbyn is now under particular fire. The Tories are currently assembling the mother of all attack dossiers to deploy against Corbyn should he triumph in the Labour leadership contest, and foreign policy will be at the absolute core of it. He will be portrayed as a Britain-hater who associates with extremists who wish the west ill.

One of Corbyn’s great foreign-policy passions over the years has been Palestine. And it is here he is accused of having shared platforms or met with antisemites.

As someone who spends a lot of time speaking at events ranging from conferences to protests – though nowhere near as much as Corbyn has over several decades – I know how absurdly impractical it would be to research the backgrounds of every other participant. Corbyn himself abhors antisemitism, and anti-racism is central to his political DNA. The problem is this. Most people in the movement for Palestinian justice are motivated by well, justice, for a people deprived of that basic right: national self-determination. But there is a minority who are antisemites. That means those – like Corbyn, or me, for that matter – who are active in the cause for Palestinian justice are at risk of inadvertently associating with antisemites. These antisemites have to be unequivocally challenged and driven out.

One response to the current onslaught against Jeremy Corbyn is to become defensive. A far better response is to accept that antisemitism lurks in progressive movements and make sure that it is recognised, routed out and defeated.

Meeting and greeting Jeremy Corbyn