Excellent posting by Tony Greenstein but ……
Leave a comment28/04/2016 by socialistfight
This is an excellent posting by Tony Greenstein in which he makes very perceptive points about the current attacks by the Zionist against the left in Labour.
However three extracts from Tony Greenstein’s blog of today, 28 April. In these he concedes the main basis for his charges of anti-semitism and racism against Gerry Downing and Socialist Fight.
The first quote shows that Arbam Leon was right about a people class and that situation still exists today – though arguable it was far less the case materially because of a great class differentiation in the Pale of Settlement between the mid-19th century and the holocaust. But ideologically and politically the Zionist movement were always representative of class privilege as described by Leon.
The second is the existence of a Jewish bourgeoisie with enormous power in the West. He said it was anti-semitic when we said it, now he says it himself.
And thirdly the quote still attacking Gerry Downing as a ‘lunatic Trotskyist’ for holding positions he has now conceded are correct.
Gerry Downing
In ‘The Left, the Right and the Jews’. Rubinstein speaks of ‘‘the rise of Western Jewry to unparalleled affluence and high status’ which ‘has led to the near-disappearance of a Jewish proletariat of any size; indeed, the Jews may become the first ethnic group in history without a working-class of any size.’ [W.D. Rubinstein, ‘The Left, the Right and the Jews’, p.51, Croom Helm, London 1982] The idea that Jews today are cowering in a corner fearful of a brick coming through the window or afraid to go down the road because the people in that road are likely to stone you or beat you up is an illusion.
When people raised the question of Tory support for fascists like Michal Kaminiski and Robert Zile in 2009, Vivian Wineman of the Board of Deputies wrote to David Cameron. Wineman’s timid and innocuous letter to Cameron caused a rift with the Jewish Leadership Council, an organisation of the Zionist bourgeoisie in Britain. One JLC member described colleagues as “livid” at the timing of the letter. Another was “incandescent.” [Leaders split over David Cameron’s Euro allies’ 8.10.09.,
If there’s been no sudden rise in anti-Semitism in the LP why the campaign now? I don’t accept it’s always been there. What’s been there is a confusion between Israel/Zionism and being Jewish. What’s been ‘exposed’ is a solitary tween by Vicky Kirby about ‘big noses’ a lunatic Trotskyist with theories of a Jewish Question and…. oh a former Bradford mayor who, surprise, surprise, confuses Zionists with Jews. I wonder where he got that one?
Socialist Fight 