Corbyn: Hard For Syrians to Choose Between ISIS and USA

‘No-one should share a platform with an avowed racist’ – Jeremy Corbyn MP

Earlier this year, Jeremy Corbyn MP gave an interview, inside Parliament, to a group of antisemitic conspiracy theorists. He said it was hard for Syrians to have to choose  sides between the “rather shadowy leadership of ISIS” and the “more open and obvious leadership of the USA and the West who are propping up the government [of Iraq].” (18:40) Corbyn said this was ‘not a happy position to be’ in. Syrians were:

stuck between a war between the rather shadowy leadership of ISIS and the more open and obvious leadership of the USA and the West in propping up the government [of Iraq]……  it’s not a happy position to be if you’re a poor person stuck anywhere in Syria or Iraq

 

CORBYN AND THE ANTISEMITES: DO DENIALS OF KNOWLEDGE HOLD UP?

1. La Rouche And CEC Interview in Parliament

Jeremy Corbyn MP gave this interview just this year to the CEC,part of an antisemitic La Rouche cult. The video opens with the CEC banner. CEC’s current website says it supports La Rouche. La Rouche is a famous Jew-hater and Holocaust denier. This interview was this bloody year. Why did Jeremy Corbyn talk to them?

At 21:30, the interviewer says the organization had links with Corbyn from 2013 over Glass-Steagall

That’s why we came to the UK, it was such an extraordinary debate on the floor of the House of Commons.

To me this implies a CEC member sat in the Gallery as Corbyn’s guest and listened.

What is the excuse for this? How can Corbyn have brought La Rouche supporters into our Parliament? What due diligence was done? How long as he been involved with them? La Rouche is a barking mad holocaust denier.

And here’s Corbyn’s insane, full quote to these cult fantasists:

but also some sort of process where [Iraqis and Syrians] can feel a sense of security in their lives rather than being stuck between a war between the rather shadowy leadership of ISIS and the more open and obvious leadership of the USA and the West in propping up the government that’s selling off their oil resources very cheaply – it’s not a happy position to be if you’re a poor person stuck anywhere in Syria or Iraq.

It is utterly sickening that Corbyn could compare ISIS to America and the West in any way at all – much less draw an equivalence between them or say Syrians and Iraqis aren’t in a happy position when they have to choose.

2. Paul Eisen and Gilad Atzmon of Deir Yassin Remembered

When confronted with Corbyn’s platform sharing with anti-Semites the campaign has issued a non-denial denial on antisemitic views:

There is no question [they] have expressed them in Jeremy Corbyn’s hearing.

That is very carefully put. The real question is ‘Did Jeremy Corbyn know of the antisemitism of those he shared a platform with?’ Not ‘did they say the words next to Corbyn?’ His campaign must stop calling this question a smear, or trying to get away with saying, as they are now, that Corbyn must meet ‘those whose views he finds reprehensible.’

Before this leadership campaign, I challenge readers to give me one instance where Corbyn has ever called these people’s views “reprehensible” or called any of them out. Corbyn is acting like an ordinary politician with the non-denial-denials and the hypocrisy. For Corbyn himself said of Nick Griffin of the BNP

No-one should share a platform with an avowed racist and a fascist

Jeremy Corbyn told Cathy Newman of Channel Four that when he supported Deir Yassin Remembered it was not anti-semitic. Is that true? Here’s some evidence not so far covered in the press:

In 2005, Jeremy Corbyn went to a DYR celebration with Paul Eisen – where the famous anti-semite Gilad Atzmon was performing. Here are the photos:

Here is a link to the PDF invitation to this event which speaks of “Jewish” disdain for Christians: speaks of the Deir Yassin massacre as a “Jewish” slaughter, and says “Jews” (not Israelis, Jews) currently “persecute Christians and Muslims”. It also draws an equivalence between Deir Yassin and the Holocaust where six million Jews were slaughtered.

Jews persecute Muslims and Christians in Palestine

What of Jewish disdain for Christians

Deir Yassin, the site of the great atrocity against Palestinians and close to the site [Yad Vashem commemorating the great atrocity against Jews [the Holocaust] – from the invitation to the Paul Eisen DYR event Jeremy Corbyn attended in 2005

Now what had Paul Eisen published in 2005? Was he a known anti-Semite then? He was indeed. Here are all the blog posts by Eisen in 2005. (and for completeness 2004, 2003 as well). Directly below his piece reproducing the above anti-semitic language and pulling out photos of Jeremy Corbyn and Gilad Atzmon, Eisen gives us Holocaust denial and antisemitism:

Palestinians ..are not just facing the might of the Israeli state but also the power of organized world Jewry and its primary arm, the Holocaust – Paul Eisen, Dec 2004

And from the post immediately prior to the DYR one with Gilad Atzmon and Jeremy Corbyn, Paul Eisen writes:

After all, people once believed the earth was flat and sat on the back of four elephants riding on a turtle….People today …believe in astrology and fortune telling, iSo what is so hard to believe about the…slaughter of six million Jews?

Eisen denies the gas chambers too and says Zyklon B was used for delousing. Awesome. On the board of DYR at this time, when Corbyn attended, was the anti-semite Israel Shamir.

Nor were these facts obscure. They made the national press. David Aaronvitch wrote this in the Times:

a Swedish fascist, Shamir sits on the 16-person board of advisers of .. Deir Yassin Remembered (DYR)… Shamir argued the Jews..were guilty of kidnapping Christian children and drinking their blood.

Now let us recall that Jeremy Corbyn has said ‘Nobody should share a platform with an avowed racist.’ Paul Eisen is one, DYR was anti-semitic at the time, and it was well known.

Further, Gilad Atzmon performed at this event. Was Atzmon a known anti-Semite in 2005? You bet. In 2003, Atzmon started his anti-semitic rants against Jews:

there is no anti-Semitism

we should …regard any act against Jews as a political reaction rather than an irrational racist attack…we must begin to take the accusation that the Jewish people are trying to control the world very seriously. ..American Jewry makes any debate on whether the ‘Protocols of the elder of Zion’ are an authentic document or rather a forgery irrelevant. American Jews do try to control the world

That was two years before Corbyn shared a platform with him and Eisen. In 2004, Gilad Atzmon  told students:

“I’m not going to say whether it is right or not to burn down a synagogue, I can see that it is a rational act”.

And 2005, Atzmon circulated Eisen’s Holocaust denying post above. Labour, even the far left, ran a mile.

But Jeremy Corbyn went along, to an event by the antisemitic DYR, with an antisemitic invitation, and shared a platform with two very well known racists, in 2005. How can he say he did not know? It was his duty to know. And is it true? What correspondence exists? Can he say it was never flagged up to him?

Six years later (!), in 2011 Eisen praised Corbyn again. This is the original piece from which his notorious 2015 “Jeremy Corbyn:the finest man in British politics” is taken.

I’d hardly begun my pitch before his cheque book was out and he was a paid-up member. From that day on, Jeremy, without fuss or bother, attended every single Deir Yassin commemoration. 

A little later the Jewish peace group Just Peace UK wanted to hold a vigil at the Edith Cavell statue near St Martin’s in the Fields but the authorities were being unhelpful. I wanted to impress them, so impetuously I said that I knew Jeremy Corbyn and I’d get him to sort it out. “Oh great” they said leaving me wondering what on earth I was going to do now. Well I did contact Jeremy and he did sort it out and the vigil did take place

The statue of Edith Cavell is in St. Martin’s Place, WC2. It is miles from Corbyn’s constituency of Islington North. Hansard records Corbyn as saying that he attended the demo in 2001.

So now we have Jeremy Corbyn with Paul Eisen in 2000, 2001, 2005, and 2013 (at least). In 2007 the PCS movement finally disassociated themselves with Eisen as an anti-Semite and holocaust denier (two years after he denied the holocaust). This led to Eisen stopping his DYR “celebrations” as nobody would come. But, he says, Jeremy Corbyn stuck by him:

During the time when I felt so marginalised and isolated 

The implication here is that when Eisen’s antisemitism made him a pariah even in the PCS, Corbyn, whom he says is a patron of PCS, was kind to him.

In 2007 DYR day was deserted. Eisen didn’t blog again til 2011  (with the Corbyn blog). Eisen was not “obscure”, as some of todays Corbyn defenders have said. He was a massively well-known anti-semite to the Palestinian movement.

On what possible grounds then did Jeremy Corbyn attend another DYR event in 2013?

By now he must have been well aware of his constituent Eisen’s wild antisemitism. Was the eye-watering anti-Semite Gilad Atzmon present again? Atzmon advertises the event here and here. I think not because it seems he was at DYR Glasgow where, damningly for Corbyn, Jewish groups had succeeded in canceling the antisemitic groups’s event. By this time even BDS had disassociated from Eisen.

So ‘There is no suggestion he has said [antisemitic] thing in Jeremy’s hearing’ won’t do.

The question is did Corbyn know of Eisen’s antisemitism in advance? Of Gilad Atzmon’s antisemitism in advance? He must either have known or have been criminally negligent.

2. Dyab Abou Jahjah’s antisemitism

My last blog demonstrated that Jeremy Corbyn was fully aware that Jahjah had published an anti-Semitic cartoon and celebrated 9/11 when he organised Jahjah’s appearance at a Stop the War Coalition meeting. The blog ‘Harry’s Pace’ had published both two days earlier and bombarded the Quaker House with ’emails and calls all day’ over ‘accusations of antisemitism’ said John Rees in Corbyn’s hearing.

So Jeremy Corbyn absolutely knew that Dyab Aboujahjah had published this cartoon

 

and celebrated 9/11 as “sweet revenge” when he hosted him at Stop the War and in Parliament. Corbyn also knew, as he sat on the stage as it was discussed, of MASSIVE protests from the Jewish community including over the specific charge Abou Jahjah’s antisemitism.

Corbyn knew. Whether Jahjah said these words “in his hearing” surely does not matter.

3. Paul Sizer’s Antisemitism

Jeremy Corbyn defended  the Church of England’s Paul Sizer, banned from social media for antisemitic posts, in 2012, writing a letter to his bishop.

Sizer had posted a link from Holocaust-denying website The Ugly Truth. Corbyn said this was merely a mistake.

MP Jeremy Corbyn, a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, claimed the use of the link had been “a technical oversight”.

He added: “The internet is a complicated piece of technology and with the best will in the world, imperfect links are made.”

Mr Corbyn wrote that Rev Sizer “seems to have come under attack by certain individuals intent on discrediting the excellent work that Stephen does in highlighting the injustices of the Palestinian Israeli situation”.

He claimed the criticism was “part of a wider pattern of demonising those who dare to stand up and speak out against Zionism”.

OK. But actually Sizer was told about the link long in advance and didn’t remove it for four months. Was it known about then? Yes, it was hugely covered in the media. The Board of Deputies brought a complaint using an ancient act of Parliament. They pointed out that far from Corbyn’s “accidental” antisemitic link Sizer had made no fewer than FIVE of them:

The matters complained of disclose a clear and consistent pattern of activity on the part of Rev Sizer. The evidence indicates that he spends time trawling dark and extreme corners of the internet for material to add to his website. Rev Sizer re-publishes such items… introducing his readers to the racist and antisemitic websites..As the evidence demonstrates, there are five instances of this over the 11 month period from July 2011 to June 2012.

The Council for Christians and Jews protested:

We have paid particular attention to a link posted by Mr Sizer on his Facebook page to ‘The Ugly Truth’, an antisemitic website. We consider this to be wholly unacceptable. We cannot accept it was an accident, because Mr Sizer was alerted to the antisemitic nature of the website in November and again in December, but only removed the link in January when contacted by the Jewish Chronicle

So that was the situation in 2012 when Jeremy Corbyn wrote that letter. It is quite obvious he knew then of Rev. Sizer’s views.

Sizer continued to write antisemitic blogs

• The section dealing with the writing of Mark Braverman has been heavily edited so as to remove his most penetrating comments on the Holocaust and Jewish ‘specialness’.

until he was banned by the C of E from using any kind of social media.

Therefore it is time for the Corbyn campaign to be absolutely open about what Jeremy Corbyn knew of the anti-semitism of:

CEC and La Rouche

Dyab Abou Jahjah

Paul Eisen, Gilad Atzmon, and DYR

and Paul Sizer

at the times he shared a platform with Eisen and Atzmon, defended Sizer, and provided platforms by his own invitation  to Dyab Abou Jahjah and CEC/La Rouche. He should also be asked by mainstream journalists what Jewish groups said to him at the time. Pleading no knowledge of the antisemitism just won’t cut it.

Credit to Anna Gizowska

I want to credit the freelance journalist Anna Gizowska, @AnnaGiz, on Twitter. Anna alerted me to Dyab Abou Jahjah’s antisemitic cartoons published and his quote that ‘Every dead American, British and Dutch soldier I consider as a victory.’ I then spent a fair bit of time tracking down the originals and finding Abou Jahjah’s racist and homophobic blog before writing my piece. Anna originally did not want to be credited for her discovery as she was still researching Corbyn, but I asked her permission to credit her for finding the tweet where Abou Jahjah said Corbyn was his “friend”, which sent us both down the research rabbit hole, with good journalistic results.