{"id":12370,"date":"2018-04-14T12:07:49","date_gmt":"2018-04-14T12:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/?p=12370"},"modified":"2021-02-19T15:36:01","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T15:36:01","slug":"smears-roll-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/republicancommunist.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/14\/smears-roll-on\/","title":{"rendered":"SMEARS ROLL ON"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mike McNair ( CPGB-Weekly Worker<\/em>) examines the ‘anti-Semitism’ smears currently focussed on the Labour Party, and in particular Jeremy Corbyn. He shows the wider political intent behind these for the Right and the Israeli state.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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SMEARS ROLL ON<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Kate Hopkins and Ian Paisley Junior, two well-known ‘anti-racists’ who support Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 smear campaign run by the media and Labour right against the left – with the enthusiastic support of the Jewish Board of Deputies and related groups – rolls on. At the time of writing there are two new pieces of \u2018scandal\u2019. First are complaints from rightwing Labour MPs and the \u2018Campaign Against Anti-Semitism\u2019 about Jeremy Corbyn attending a passover seder organised by the left Jewish group, Jewdas. (1) <\/p>\n

Second, Jon Lansman has persuaded Momentum\u2019s usually invisible National Coordinating Group to issue a statement on Twitter which \u201cacknowledges the anger, upset and despair within the British Jewish community at the numerous incidents of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party\u201d and \u201cbelieves that accusations of anti-Semitism cannot and should not be dismissed as simply rightwing smears\u201d … and so on. (2)
\nLike the initiatives of the Labour right and media, Lansman\u2019s statement carefully fuzzes over the difference between, on the one hand, opposition to the state of Israel and, on the other, the genuinely anti-Semitic arguments which blame the state of Israel on the undue influence in the world of \u2018Jews\u2019 or of \u2018finance capital\u2019 imagined with \u2018Jew-capital\u2019 tropes.<\/p>\n

There is no doubt that there is such genuine anti-Semitism in circulation on the left. We broke with Ian Donovan and Gerry Downing over their deployment of such arguments and voted, along with the other participants, to exclude them from Labour Against the Witchhunt, in order to dissociate ourselves from these ideas. Nonetheless, the actual level of support for such anti-Semitic arguments on the left is very small.<\/p>\n

This fuzzing-over is accompanied, from the right – from Lansman and the \u2018Alliance for Western Liberty\u2019 – by the claim that opposition to \u201cthe Jewish state of Israel, safe and secure\u201d (Lansman) is itself anti-Semitism. Indeed, for the AWL, it is the core of \u201cmodern anti-Semitism\u201d. (3)<\/p>\n

It is probably for this reason that Jewish opponents of the state of Israel are especially targeted: hence the expulsion of Tony Greenstein for \u2018abusive behaviour\u2019 (the original anti-Semitism claims would not have stood up in court); hence the attempt to expel Mosh\u00e9 Machover (again, diverted from original indefensible anti-Semitism claims to almost equally problematic claims of guilt by association with the CPGB); and hence the latest noise about Jewdas\u2019s seder.<\/p>\n

\u2018Safe and secure\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

It then becomes unavoidable to discuss the meaning of an open-ended commitment to \u201cthe Jewish state of Israel, safe and secure\u201d. This has a mild and defensive sound to it. It assumes, of course, the legitimacy of the systemic legal discrimination against Israel\u2019s own Arab citizens under Israel\u2019s constitution and laws. But, beyond this, what would amount to \u2018safe and secure\u2019 for the state of Israel?<\/p>\n

At the moment, it seems to involve at least the maintenance of the occupation of the West Bank (and continued Israeli settlement-building there) and the siege of Gaza. (4) From the standpoint of the new US national security advisor, John Bolton, \u201cthe two-state solution is dead\u201d and Israeli security requires short-term regime change in Iran. (5) \u00a0At various points in the past it has involved Israeli attempts to occupy southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n

US Christianist extremists advocate a much larger Israel, running from the Nile in the west to the Euphrates in the east and as far north as the Turkish border – thus including the whole of Lebanon and Jordan, most of Syria and significant parts of Iraq and Egypt. (6)<\/p>\n

The main problem is the idea of a Jewish state which claims the loyalty of all the Jews in the world and can offer them \u2018safety and security\u2019 from the supposedly endemic anti-Semitism elsewhere. This would require at least a very substantial expansion of Israeli territory, given that only around 43% of the world\u2019s Jews live in Israel. (7) There is not enough space to double the Israeli population without territorial expansion, even if the Israeli Arabs and those of the West Bank and Gaza were ethnically cleansed. Israel has a population of eight and a half million, of whom around seven million are Jews.<\/p>\n

The Israelis within living memory forcibly squatted a large quantity of land, and in the West Bank continue to do so on land previously owned mainly by local Arabic-speakers, who have an inherent call on the sympathies of the other 205 million Arabic-speakers in the Middle East. Hence, the \u2018security\u2019 of Israel unavoidably depends on the seven million holding the 205 million in subordination, and not just holding down the 1.8 million Israeli Arabs or the five million in the occupied territories.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s ability to do this is dependent on US support – in particular the willingness and ability of the US to \u2018take down\u2019 other regimes in the region; and on periodic displays of radical technical military superiority (particularly command of the air). Moreover, Israel\u2019s ability to conduct military operations lasting more than a few days rests on the immediate resupply of munitions from the US – as became apparent both in the Yom Kippur war of 1973 and the 2006 Lebanon war.<\/p>\n

In short, the actual military-logistical situation of the state of Israel is the same as that of the medieval crusader states – dependent on continued outside military intervention for survival. At 70 years old, it has so far lasted four-fifths as long as the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem in its original location, and around two-fifths as long as the principality of Antioch (in modern Syria) and county of Tripoli (modern Lebanon). The modern USA is no doubt a lot more powerful than the medieval Christian kingdoms of Europe, so we can probably expect Israel to last longer than the crusader states. But it is just as dependent on its backers.
\nThe \u2018defensible borders\u2019 require periodic attacks on neighbouring countries. The USA attacked Iraq for its own geopolitical reasons, but the large majority of Israelis backed the invasion in the name of Israel\u2019s security. (8) The demand for the bombing of Iran in the US is, again, motivated by geopolitical interests, but one of the central \u2018cover stories\u2019 is the supposed Iranian \u2018existential\u2019 threat to Israel.<\/p>\n

The point is not that socialists should desire that Israel meet the fate of the crusader states. CPGB comrades have argued that the workers\u2019 movement needs to propose a strategic solution, which involves the recognition of the right of the Hebrew-speaking population in what is now Israel to self-determination, as well as the same right of the Arabic-speaking people of present-day Israel, the occupied territories, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, including the right to unite. We take this view from the arguments originally developed by Matzpen and since then defended by comrade Machover.<\/p>\n

The point is, rather, that, because the US is the essential guarantor of the state of Israel\u2019s existence, unqualified commitment to the \u201csafe and secure\u201d survival of the present state of Israel requires support for US policy in the Middle East, up to and including the infliction of destruction and barbarism on nearby states. To imagine otherwise is self-deception – very common among liberals, but self-deception nonetheless.<\/p>\n

Ongoing<\/strong>
\nThe \u2018anti-Semitism\u2019 smear campaign on the Labour left has been ongoing since the unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. The leadership has made a series of concessions to it, but it is clear that none of these concessions have done anything other than whet the appetite for more of the same.<\/p>\n

Moreover, from the point of view of the right recapturing Labour, the campaign seems not to be working. The Times<\/em> on March 31 carried a report of a YouGov polling of party members, which showed that Corbyn\u2019s support among them has strengthened over the past period, and that the smears are widely recognised as such. And yet the campaign continues. Why?<\/p>\n

I have made the fundamental points before. The capitalist class rules from day to day, in spite of universal suffrage, through the duopoly of \u2018professional politicians\u2019, in combination with advertising-funded media, and with the sale of justice through the \u2018free market in legal services\u2019. A relatively immediate backstop to protect their interests is the threat of the flight of capital in case of policies they disapprove (recently employed in response to the very tepid reformism of Fran\u00e7ois Hollande\u2019s administration in France). The House of Lords and monarchy, and the monarchist political culture of the armed forces, are remote backstops in case of loss of control through these mechanisms.<\/p>\n

The duopoly has the advantage for the capitalists that voters can seem to get rid of the current rulers:<\/p>\n

The accursed Power which stands on Privilege,
\nAnd goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge,
\nBroke – and Democracy resumed her reign
\nWhich goes with Bridge, and Women, and Champagne (9)<\/p>\n

To be able to work this system requires two parties, both of which are committed to the capitalist constitutional order. Ideally, Whig and Tory, or Liberal and Tory, as in 18th and 19th century England, or Democrat and Republican, as in the modern USA. In electoral regimes which are more representative than \u2018first past the post\u2019 the duopoly has to be constituted in the form of coalitions rather than single parties.<\/p>\n

In the later 19th century, the workers\u2019 movement came up with the idea of workers\u2019 independent political parties, composed of individual members democratically organised, and founded on a definite programme for the immediate replacement of capitalist class rule and the future development of socialism. The success of the German Social Democratic Party with this model (in spite of illegality between 1878 and 1890) made it popular across Europe and to some extent more widely. Such parties were a serious problem for the system of political management in capitalist interests through the duopoly of corrupt professional politicians.<\/p>\n

Labour Party<\/strong>
\nLabour was never quite the same thing. Rather, it is a party founded on a contradiction. On the one hand Labour claims, both by its name and by its affiliate structure, to be not a party founded on a specific political platform, but rather the united representative of the working class as a whole. In this character, it blocks the legitimacy of the existence of alternative parties within the workers\u2019 movement. (I emphasise \u2018legitimacy\u2019 because it is \u2018first past the post\u2019 which is the primary obstacle to the electoral representation of alternative parties.)<\/p>\n

On the other hand, in contradiction to this claim, Labour is characterised by loyalty to the British constitution and to the British national interest. Though these are not explicit political commitments in the party rules, they extend way beyond the right and can be found even among leftwing advocates of constitutional reform. None of this is any novelty in Labour. It was already present in the pre-1914 Parliamentary Labour Party\u2019s tailing of the Liberals on international politics and in Labour\u2019s involvement in support for World War I.<\/p>\n

Its primary institutional expression is, precisely, the regime of bans and proscriptions. Labour claims by its name and its affiliate structure to represent the working class as a whole – but, by the bans and proscriptions, it claims to exclude the representation of the part of the working class which is not loyal to the constitution and British interests.<\/p>\n

If Labour had open and transparent programmatic commitments to British nationalism and loyalism, it would be hard for it to claim that it represents the working class as a whole, and thus block the legitimacy of any alternative workers\u2019 party and to hold on to the system of trade union affiliation, and so on. These commitments must thus take indirect forms: bans and proscriptions and witch-hunting, together with the protected privileges of the PLP.<\/p>\n

In this aspect, the Labour Party serves as an indirect agency of the British state: as it propagates loyalty to the constitution and national interest among the working class, Labour MPs can in principle be trusted to carry out ministerial roles in the interests of the state (and thus, indirectly, of capitals operating on British territory).<\/p>\n

Britain and US<\/strong>
\nJeremy Corbyn\u2019s victory in two leadership elections, and the Tories\u2019 failure to inflict a crushing defeat on Labour in June 2017, pose a particular problem for this regime. Since 1940 the fundamental orientation of British state policy has been the acceptance of subordinate-ally status in relation to the USA in exchange for protection. It was not peculiar to Blair to go into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: the Wilson government conducted various counterinsurgency operations, in particular in Yemen and Oman, and backed the US war in Vietnam; the Attlee government took Britain into the Korean war. (10)<\/p>\n

There is a particular need to hem in Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott (and their supporters) on this issue because the Iraq war lacked united backing from the British state core, and consequently gave rise to an enormous mass anti-war movement, with which Corbyn in particular was closely associated. As an activist movement it ebbed away, but it left behind a legacy of scepticism on the left towards US policy in the Middle East and America\u2019s Israeli side-kick. The Gaza war of 2008-09 (\u2018Operation Cast Lead\u2019) attracted much more open hostility than had been the case with previous Israeli operations.<\/p>\n

The British state needs to restore the trustworthiness of a potential Labour government in the eyes of the USA. To that end Labour has to offer explicit support for US policy in the Middle East. This was the point of David Cameron\u2019s demands for backing the bombing of the Syrian state and of the Syrian Islamist opposition, and the ridiculous momentary glorification of Hilary Benn in December 2015.<\/p>\n

But this direct demand for support has not gone down to well – after all, US policy in the Middle East does not look terribly successful. Then there was Cameron\u2019s ostensible leading role, with Labour backing, in the state failure and humanitarian disaster of Libya in the name of \u2018humanitarian intervention\u2019.<\/p>\n

It is in this context that the big lie that anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism has been promoted and continues to be promoted. It takes advantage of a vulnerability of the broad left – its intersectionality, its inability to confront identity-oppression claims – by weaponising anti-racism.<\/p>\n

The big lie about \u2018Labour\u2019s anti-Semitism problem\u2019 will thus persist until one of two things happens: either the Labour leadership gives Israel the blank cheque which will – when the time comes – \u2018justify\u2019 bombing Iran and\/or again invading Lebanon and\/or further ethnic cleansing in the West Bank; or \u2018moderate\u2019 Labour MPs are prepared to sacrifice their careers by splitting the party in order to secure a Labour defeat. The Times<\/em> and The Daily Telegraph<\/em> over the last few weeks have offered a succession of journalistic blandishments in favour of this course of action, imagining it as also allowing the creation of a centrist anti-Brexit party.<\/p>\n

No amount of soft talk to the Board of Deputies, no amount of violations of natural justice in Labour\u2019s disciplinary procedures, no number of anti-war activists thrown to the wolves will prevent it rolling on. Only a fightback on the underlying issues can stop it.<\/p>\n

Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-politics-43624231, April 3 2018.
\n2. www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/entry\/momentum-anti-semitism_uk_5ac255c3e4b00fa46f850df2.
\n3. Eg, Solidarity March 28 2018.
\n4. Eg, http:\/\/jcpa.org\/requirements-for-defensible-borders.
\n5. See, for example, \u2018Tough on Iran, critical of \u201cPalestine\u201d: meet John Bolton, Trump\u2019s new national security adviser\u2019 Ha\u2019aretzMarch 23 2018.
\n6. Eg, https:\/\/theisraelbible.com\/biblical-boundaries-land-israel\/; http:\/\/www.factsaboutisrael.uk\/future-borders-of-israel-in-prophecy. Daniel Pipes\u2019s \u2018Imperial Israel: the Nile-to-Euphrates calumny\u2019 (www.danielpipes.org\/247\/imperial-israel-the-nile-to-euphrates-calumny) may or may not have been true of \u2018mainstream\u2019 opinion in the 1990s.
\n7. https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jewish_population_by_country.
\n8. M Schulman, \u2018Tel Aviv diary: in hindsight, Iraq war only benefited Iran\u2019 Newsweek March 18 (www.newsweek.com\/tel-aviv-diary-855178).
\n9. Hilaire Belloc, \u2018On a general election\u2019 (1906).
\n10. Before 1940, of course, it was a matter of maintaining British imperial interests: for example, the 1924 MacDonald Labour government continued support to \u201cair control\u201d bombing in Iraq and elsewhere – see JS Corum, \u2018The myth of air control: reassessing the history\u2019 Aerospace Power Journal winter 2000, pp61-77.<\/p>\n

This article was first posted at:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.weeklyworker.co.uk\/worker\/1197\/smears-roll-on\/<\/p>\n

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also see articles at:-<\/p>\n

‘SCOTTISH STAND UP TO RACISM’ BOWS TO ZIONIST PRESSURE<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n