Letter from Jewish members of Momentum, report from Asa Winstanley, and some notes on the African Holocaust and the JLM.
Supporting Jackie Walker outside the Momentum Steering Committee /Kangaroo Court @FreeSpeechOnIsr. Tweeted by Mike Cushman
Jackie Walker ruling betrays Momentum members
Letter to Guardian
October 04, 2016
As Jewish members and supporters of Momentum, we do not believe that what Jackie Walker said during a training event at Labour party conference was antisemitic (Walker stripped of Momentum role, 4 October).
You report Jackie as saying that “she had not found a definition of antisemitism she could work with”. This is not surprising – there isn’t one. The Jewish Labour Movement, which ran the event, states that the EU Monitoring Centre on Racism’s working definition on antisemitism is the standard definition, despite the fact that its successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency, has junked this definition, which equates criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism.
Jackie also stated that Holocaust Memorial Day should be more inclusive of other acts of genocide. Why is this antisemitic? It has always been a principle of the Zionist movement that the Nazi Holocaust was exclusive to the Jews. Yehuda Bauer, professor of Holocaust studies at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, has argued that “the Nazis only attempted to annihilate one people, the Jews”. According to Bauer, “the Holocaust is very much a unique case”.
Jackie’s arguments were made in good faith. They may be right or they may be wrong. What they are not is antisemitic. The decision of Momentum’s steering committee and its chair Jon Lansman to remove Jackie Walker as vice-chair is a betrayal of the trust of thousands of Momentum members. Momentum’s grassroots members overwhelmingly support Jackie.
Tony Greenstein
Professor Haim Bresheeth
Professor Emeritus Jonathan Rosenhead
Leon Rosselson
Ruth Appleton
Rica Bird
Mike Cushman
Dr Merav Devere
Mark Elf
Sylvia Finzi
Ken Fryde
Leah Levane
Claire Glasman
Selma James
Michael Kalmanovitz
Helen Marks
Elizabeth Morley
Diana Neslen
Ilan Pappe
Martin Parnell
Roland Rance
Dr Brian Robinson
Amanda Sebestyen
Glynn Secker
David Selzer
Sam Semoff
Sam Weinstein
Naomi Wimborne-Iddrissi
Jewish anti-Zionist removed as Momentum vice chair
By Asa Winstanley, Electronic intifada
October 05, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn support group Momentum removed Black and Jewish anti-Zionist activist Jackie Walker as vice chair on Monday [October 3rd] night.
Walker told The Electronic Intifada on Friday that she had been suspended from the UK Labour Party pending investigation, for allegedly “bringing the party into disrepute.”
Walker said she would fight the suspension.
Momentum is a left-wing group established in the wake of Corbyn’s victory as Labour leader last year, attempting to capitalize on the wave of popular support generated in the campaign.
Walker’s removal as vice chair has led to an, at times acrimonious, division within the pro-Corbyn left.
The controversy seems to be an unwelcome distraction for Momentum leaders. It came just as the group was starting to get something of a breakthrough in mainstream media coverage, with Corbyn’s landslide re-election as Labour Party leader last month.
In a statement to The Electronic Intifada on Monday night, a Momentum spokesperson described comments Walker was reported to have made at a Labour Party training session last week as “ill-informed, ill-judged and offensive” and said that “Jackie should have done more to explain herself.”
But Momentum also said that it “does not regard any of the comments she appears to have made, taken individually, to be antisemitic.”
Although the Momentum steering committee voted 7 to 3 to remove Walker as vice chair, “she remains a member of Momentum and its steering committee.”
Speaking exclusively to The Electronic Intifada on Monday night, Walker said she would continue to participate in Momentum. She sent her “thanks for the overwhelming support I have had and continue to have” from Momentum members.
Although some members had told Walker they would leave the group in protest, she asked them
not to resign from Momentum but to stay on and become active in their groups to ensure the continued development of properly democratic structures in our movement.
JLM leak
In a fast-moving series of events, comments Walker made at a training run by pro-Israel group the Jewish Labour Movement at the party conference last week were leaked to the right-wing Daily Telegraph.
The JLM’s new director Ella Rose was hired straight from a position at the Israeli embassy in August.
Speaking to The Electronic Intifada during the conference, JLM chair Jeremy Newmark denied receiving any funding from the Israeli state.
The Electronic Intifada watched at the training as JLM officer and Barnet councillor Adam Langleben filmed Walker’s comments.
Adam Langleben, Labour party member. Campaigns Officer for the JLM. Says on his Twitter page ‘Cllr for W. Hendon & Deputy Housing Spokesperson. Professional Jew at @JLC_uk [Jewish Leadership Council]. Views=Own. Proud European.
Barnet council’s register of interests lists Langleben as “membership of” or “management in” Labour Friends of Israel. Langleben did not reply to The Electronic Intifada’s request for comment.
The Momentum leadership in its statement Monday night said that “the leak is unacceptable and undermines much needed political education.”
Walker was last to speak out of a group of anti- and non-Zionist Jews at the training. The group challenged a controversial antisemitism definition promoted by JLM vice chair Mike Katz, who led the session.
Katz claimed the “EUMC definition” was the “standard.” Critics have long slammed the 2005 European Union Monitoring Center’s discussion paper on antisemitism for conflating antisemitism with criticism of Zionism, the ideology of the Israeli state.
The definition was never officially adopted by any EU body and was eventually ditched by the EUMC’s successor agency.
Walker said she “hadn’t heard a definition of antisemitism she could work with” during the training.
“African holocaust” *
Walker also said: “in terms of Holocaust Day I would also like to say, wouldn’t it be wonderful if Holocaust Day was open to all peoples who have experienced holocaust?”
Shorn of context and added to a previous conversation leaked by a pro-Israel group from Walker’s Facebook page in May, the comments from the JLM training have led to the current media storm against her.
The Facebook comment that the Jewish Chronicle apparently sent to the Compliance Unit.
Walker had written in February that the transatlantic slave trade had been an “African holocaust” and that “many Jews (my ancestors too) were the chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade.”
Walker has since elaborated that the comments applied only to “a certain economic point, in specific regions where my ancestors lived.”
Although she made the original comments in what she says was a private conversation among friends, unknown to her, her Facebook privacy settings at the time meant the comments were publicly visible.
In May, the Israel Advocacy Movement sent the comments to pro-Israel paper The Jewish Chronicle, which then published selected excerpts from the conversation, creating another media storm.
Without investigation, the Labour Party suspended Walker as soon as “the JC brought her comments to the party’s attention,” the paper boasted.
Witch hunt
But after an outcry from supportive Labour members, Walker’s suspension was lifted at the end of May.
Party officials wrote to her saying she had no case to answer and she was readmitted, to the dismay of the JLM, which claimed she was an antisemite.
Walker has since then been active in speaking out against the “witch hunt” of left-wing and pro-Palestinian Labour Party activists. This video of Walker was filmed at the Free Speech on Israel meeting at the Labour Party conference last week.
Free speech
Meanwhile, Momentum’s “The World Transformed” event on the fringe of the Labour Party conference last week received positive press from some previously hostile sources.
Walker’s local Momentum group has spoken out in support of her. The Electronic Intifada understands that there are divisions on the issue even among left-wing union leaders supportive of Momentum.
On Monday night, Momentum leaders held a three-hour meeting at the headquarters of the TSSA transport workers union, which supports Momentum. In the end they voted to remove Walker as vice chair, but to keep her on Momentum’s steering committee.
Activists from Free Speech on Israel protested outside as the Momentum leadership met, calling for them to support Walker.
The network of mostly Jewish anti-Zionists has campaigned to end the ongoing witch hunt of Labour Party members critical of Israel.
Free Speech on Israel activists who were in the training session along with Walker wrote that “Jackie had every right to question the JLM’s definition of anti-Semitism.”
They added that
The way Jackie has been treated demonstrates the unfitness of the JLM to deliver training on antisemitism. It is an organization committed to one, contested strand of Jewish labour tradition to the exclusion of any other; it relies on a definition of anti-Semitism that conflates Jewish identity with Zionism.
A letter from Jewish members and supporters of Momentum in The Guardian on Wednesday says that “Momentum’s grassroots members overwhelmingly support Jackie.”
Desire for a new direction.
Jackie Walker is not the issue here. At least, she shouldn’t be. The real question is why outright enemies of the party’s elected leader- committed ideological opponents of democratic socialism- should be heeded when they demand the head of one activist after another. The right trumpets its fear of MP deselection while insisting on witch hunts and purges of its own. These plotters must be faced down.
Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London. He is an associate editor with The Electronic Intifada. He first visited Palestine in 2004.
Comments
What were they thinking?
tom hall replied on Wed, 10/05/2016 – 14:53
Inviting a militant Zionist organisation to stage a “training”session on anti-Semitism was bound to produce just such an incident. Once a discredited figure like Jeremy Newmark was granted power to provoke and render judgement against Labour Party activists, the outcome was pre-ordained. At some point the Labour left and Momentum will have to recognise that appeasement of the right only whets their appetite for further concessions, at a time when those Blairite forces are prepared only to persist in their crusade against Corbyn, against the cause of Palestinian rights, and in defiance of the party membership’s declared esire for a new direction.
Jackie Walker is not the issue here. At least, she shouldn’t be. The real question is why outright enemies of the party’s elected leader- committed ideological opponents of democratic socialism- should be heeded when they demand the head of one activist after another. The right trumpets its fear of MP deselection while insisting on witch hunts and purges of its own. These plotters must be faced down.
Mark replied on Wed, 10/05/2016 – 22:08
It’s a well known that converted Jews provided the finance for Isabella and Ferdinand so that Christopher Columbus and the Jewish converts in his crew could sail the ocean blue back in 1492.
The early synagogues in the Caribbean were founded Jews who abandoned Christianity at the first opportunity when they escaped from the Inquisition and reverted back to Judaism. That’s why these Jews typically have Spanish names.
It’s amazing that Jackie can trace her ancestry right back to this tiny number of Spanish/Portuguese Jews (also known as Sephardim). Perhaps even to Columbus’s flotilla itself!
Jews from the Caribbean were the first Jewish refugees to arrive in the British colonies in America which subsequently became the USA – most notably refugees from Recife arrived in New York in 1654.
I can only trace my ancestors back to Poland/Lithuania. Unlike the western European powers of the time, the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth didn’t have anything to do with the Caribbean, or financing the Slave Trade. I believe they were more interested in the Ukraine. The overwhelming majority of Jews in the US arrived after 1880, long after slavery was abolished in the US.
NOTES
*African Holocaust or Maafa
from wikipedia
Usage of the Swahili term Maafa (“Great Disaster”) in English was introduced by Marimba Ani’s book “Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications of African Spirituality in the Diaspora”. It is derived from a Swahili term for “disaster, terrible occurrence or great tragedy”. The term was popularized in the 1990s.
The term African Holocaust is preferred by some academics, such as Maulana Karenga, because it implies intention. One problem noted by Karenga is that the wordMaafa can also translate to “accident”, and in the view of some scholars the holocaust of enslavement was not accidental. Ali Mazrui notes that the word “holocaust” is a “dual plagiarism” since the term is derived from Ancient Greek and thus, despite being associated with the genocide of the Jews, no one can have a monopoly over the term. Mazrui states: “This borrowing from borrowers without attribution is what I call ‘the dual plagiarism.’ But this plagiarism is defensible because the vocabulary of horrors like genocide and enslavement should not be subject to copyright-restrictions.”
Some Afrocentric scholars prefer the term Maafa to African Holocaust, because they believe that indigenous African terminology more truly confers the events. The term Maafa may serve “much the same cultural psychological purpose for Africans as the idea of the Holocaust serves to name the culturally distinct Jewish experience of genocide under German Nazism.”
Other arguments in favour of Maafa rather than African Holocaust emphasize that the denial of the validity of the African people’s humanity is an unparalleled centuries-long phenomenon: “The Maafa is a continual, constant, complete, and total system of human negation and nullification.”
The terms “Transatlantic Slave Trade“, “Atlantic Slave Trade” and “Slave Trade” have also been said by some to be deeply problematic, because they serve as euphemisms for intense violence and mass murder. Referred to as a “trade”, this prolonged period of persecution and suffering is rendered as a commercial dilemma, rather than as a moral atrocity. With trade as the primary focus, the broader tragedy becomes consigned to a secondary point, as mere “collateral damage” of a commercial venture. Others, however, feel that avoidance of the term trade is an apologetic act on behalf of capitalism, absolving capitalist structures of involvement in human catastrophe.
from AFRICAN HOLOCAUST
Not Just History, But Legacy
The number who as a result of the slave trade died exceeded the 65–75 million inhabitants remaining in Africa at the trade’s end. Over 10 million died as direct consequences of the Atlantic slave trade alone. But no one knows the exact number.
from The Missing 100 million
Over 100 million died in the Arab/European/American slave societies:The Afrikan Holocaust:
1200 Years of Arab Slavery,
500 Years of European-American Slavery,
100+ MILLION DEAD
The Single Greatest Crime in History
Jewish Labour Movement
About
The Jewish Labour Movement is a membership organisation of Labour supporting members of the Jewish Community. A formal affiliate of the Labour Party in the Uk since 1920, JLM campaigns within the party and the wider community to support labour values within the UK, Israel and Internationally.In addition to the UK Labour Party, the Jewish Labour Movement is also affiliated to the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Zionist Federation of the UK, and organise within the World Zionist Organisation alongside our sister party in Israel, Havodah – the Israeli Labor Party.
Our membership is made up of Parliamentarians, Councillors, activists, Party members and Party supporters. We are run by and on behalf of our members.
We work throughout the year in support of Labour candidates at election time, as well as the ideas and campaigns we believe will bring about the change our community and our country needs.
Our aim:
- To organise and maintain a political movement of Jewish people within the UK Labour Party and the international labour movement.
Our objects:
- To maintain and promote Labour or Socialist Zionism as the movement for self-determination of the Jewish people within the state of Israel.
- To support, develop and promote political activists who work to enable the objects and values of the Jewish Labour Movement.
Our values:
- To work for democratic socialism in the UK and Israel.
- To maintain Jewish identity and to support the rights of Jews everywhere to lead full lives as equal citizens.
- To apply Jewish ethical principles to create a society based on social justices and a sustainable environment.
- To fight antisemitism, racism and all forms of discrimination and racial hatred; to oppose the activities of fascist, racist and antisemitic groups.
- To promote the centrality of Israel in Jewish life and its development on the basis of freedom, social justice and equality for all its citizens.
- To work for international peace and cooperation. To support economic and social development for all peoples of the Middle East.
- To work with other organisations affiliated to the Labour Party in Britain and co-operate with other European Socialist Parties and members of the Socialist International.
National Executive Committee
National Movement Chair
Jeremy NewmarkNational Secretary
Cllr Peter MasonNational Vice Chairs
Mike Katz
Sarah SackmanNational Treasurer
Nick ConwayCampaigns Officer
Cllr Adam LanglebenInternational Officer
Ethan SchwartzLocal Government Officer
Cllr Joe GoldbergMembership Officer
Judith BaraNetworks Officer
Rachel WenstonePolicy Officer
Cllr Neil NervaPolitical Education Officer
Jay StollTrade Union Officer
Lee PetarYouth & Students Officer
Liron Velleman