By Gerry Downing

Ken Livingstone, a victim of Zionist-led witch hunt for telling the truth about the relationship between Zionism and Hitler.

On 26 July, the Jewish Chronicle ran an article by Lee Harpin signaling that it was resuming its racist witch hunt against the former MP for Brent East and London Mayor Ken Livingstone and the Labour left. [1] The article is obviously a ‘plant’ by right-wing sources in Labour and the National Executive Committee, whose Compliance Unit has arbitrary powers of expulsion without hearing or right to appeal and only gives Livingstone such rights because of his high profile. Disgracefully Jeremy Corbyn indicated he wanted a second disciplinary hearing against Livingstone last April when the NEC extended his suspension from one to two years under pressure from the Zionist lobby saying: “Mr Livingstone’s failure to apologise for “grossly insensitive” comments had been “deeply disappointing” Harpin, a ‘senior reporter for the Jewish Chronicle’ relates. The Zionist are demanding his expulsion because he spoke the truth about the relationship between Zionism and the Nazis before and in the first years of WWII.

Harpin tells us, in an ‘exclusive’:

“Ken Livingstone is facing a new investigation by Labour’s disciplinary panel over comments he has made since he was suspended from the party for linking Adolf Hitler with Zionism. Labour sources have confirmed to the JC that another probe into the former Mayor of London “is under way”. It is said to center on claims against Mr Livingstone since he was first suspended from the party in June 2016 and also his failure to show any remorse. If found guilty of the new charges Mr Livingstone would almost certainly face expulsion from the party.”

The article goes on to tell us that Labour was taking the new investigation “very seriously”, that a leading QC has been appointed to conduct an assessment of the charges and they related to media remarks he made after his suspension, like his remark the “you cannot apologise for telling the truth” presumably. More than a 1,000 Jewish Labour party members signed a letter to the Guardian basically demanding that he be expelled for telling the truth about the Hitler-Zionist relationship, we are reminded. Significantly Harpin, who obviously knows more about the internal machinations of the NEC that Corbyn or McDonald, informs us that, “after taking legal advice, those bringing the new complaints against Mr Livingstone are believed to have been advised not to revisit the original remarks on Hitler and Zionism”; the truth is unchallengeable and we are left wondering who are “those bringing the new complaints”, funded by the Israeli Embassy, perhaps? Of course, leaking such internal party matters to a hostile press seeking to influence the outcome of the inquiry against Livingstone and by extension all expelled and suspended members and their supporters in the new Labour party membership and ultimately against Corbyn himself itself should itself be a disciplinary matter but of course no such probe will take place without serious pressure from party members.

And then we learn that Livingstone’s opponents are outraged he was not expelled. Signatories of that Guardian letter mentioned by Harpin included, “Luciana Berger MP, former deputy mayor of London Nicky Gavron and chair of the Jewish Labour Movement Jeremy Newmark.”. Berger is a leftist Zionist, scarcely hard line has come under pressure because she never asked a question about Israel in the Commons. She was appointed Shadow Minister for Mental Health by Corbyn but resigned on 27 June 2016 in the push to oust him. In 2010 she was parachuted into her constituency of Liverpool Wavertree by Ed Miliband. She stayed with the sitting MP Jane Kennedy and her partner, Labour official Peter Dowling, during the selection process, which was run by Dowling. The completed ballot papers were returned to Kennedy’s home address; we do not know what security obtained and who counted the votes but local Labour party members were very upset and made a great brouhaha about it all but, of course, Labour’s NEC found it to be flawless. Nicky Gavron is Jewish and was deputy mayor to Livingstone twice and, although like Berger she toes their line, she certainly is not a hard-line Zionist either. Her mother’s experiences under Hitler might have led to some doubts about whether so-called far left Labour anti-Semites are really worse than the Nazis, as some claim.

But Jeremy Newmark certainly is a hard-right racist Zionist. In 2013, he assisted in a bogus case of anti-Semitism against the University and College Union (UCU) which outraged the judge Anthony Snelson so much that he remarked that Mr Newmark’s evidence was: “false, preposterous, extraordinarily arrogant and disturbing”. We can now appreciate why the Labour party and the Zionists are so wary of facing Livingstone in court; it is, after all, a very difficult legal proposition that his telling of the truth about the relationship between Zionism and Hitler had upset very powerful friends of the right wingers in Labour so much and had damaged their standing and he should be expelled for it. Courts do have a legal obligation to abide by truth when established beyond reasonable doubt, unlike Labour’s NEC.

Jonathan Arkush, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, thinks relations between Labour and “the community” (i.e. himself as their spokesman – GD) had reached “a new all-time low”. And they did not control that particular NEC sub-committee; Harpin’s ‘deep throat’ further grassed that one Russell Cartwright a “hard-left Campaign for Labour Party Democracy group (sic) who had previously campaigned for Mr Livingstone” was one of the three-person panel. Well now he might even have spoken to him at length on occasions when he was an MP or Mayor of London so strong suspicion must fall on him and about 100,000 others with that shameful record. That Cartwright or the CLPD are “hard-left” is news to Labour party members but for the JC anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, or indeed London Mayor Sadiq Khan, is “hard left”.

The Evening Standard and the Times of Israel weigh in

In the Evening Standard of the 17 Match 2016, Joseph Watts wrote: ‘Most Jews can’t trust Labour’. He reports Arkush as saying: “It confirms the belief we have had for a long time that there is a real problem of anti-Semitism on the far left, which now eclipses the anti-Semitism that we have always seen coming from the far-right.” That the genuine fascistic anti-Semitism of the far right is better than the bogus ‘anti-Semitism’ of the left, which is in reality criticism of the racist state of Israel, is an outrageous claim which Zionism makes which runs throughout its whole history, as we shall show. [2]

But following the general election of 8 June the Corbyn surge in the working class as a whole now fuled greater anti-Semitism, according to the Zionists. On 21 June, the Times of Israel ran a piece about an Al Quds demo in London by Cnaan Liphshiz. His subhead ran: “Corbyn did not join this year’s Al-Quds march, though he has attended in the past, Labour’s surge in UK election fans anti-Semitism fears for some Jews”. [3] The “some Jews” turned out to be three who were “troubled by the Labour Party’s recent electoral successes despite its perceived failure to tackle anti-Semitic vitriol in its ranks”. And further “London Mayor Sadiq Khan — a Muslim Labour politician who on his first day in office reached out to the city’s Jews — allowed hundreds of protesters to march Sunday at an anti-Israel event with flags of the Hezbollah terrorist group.” A dark shadow of suspicion now falls on Sadiq also, significantly “a Muslim Labour politician”.

One of the three horrified was Sharon Klaff, “69, a yoga teacher and Jewish mother of two” who thinks that, “there probably isn’t a place for me here as a Jew. And I’m kind of wondering where’s the place of anyone who belongs to Western, democratic civilization.” Watts tells us that Klaff attended an unauthorized counter protest against the annual Al-Quds march. Right wing Zionists and fascists have counter protested this Iran-sponsored event in the past, together with the Alliance for Workers Liberty a few years ago, who were somewhat embarrassed to find themselves protesting the pro-Palestinian demonstration shoulder to shoulder with fascists so they were forced to join the march for safety, where they were not welcomed either, amusingly. Is Jeremy Corbyn really Adolph Hitler in disguise and is Britain 2017 really like Germany in 1932? Sharon thinks so, obviously.

Number two was “David Hirsh, a British Jewish columnist and prominent sociologist at the University of London, who wrote in a column in The Jewish Chronicle titled “Antisemitic Politics is the New Normal.” He believes “We were unable to stop anti-Semitic politics being normalized on the left and we were unable to stop it from moving into the mainstream,” So David is also fearful of the 1932 scenario but this time it will be the left who are attacking the Jews and nothing to fear from the actual fascists, who are far more benign, as Arkush had assured us, it seems.

And number three was “Jack Mendel, a journalist who covered the march for the Jewish News of London, made light of the situation on Twitter, where he wrote about a photo he took of three marchers draped in Hezbollah’s flag. “Awkward! Three people came in the same terror flag. There’s a certain sense of helplessness when Hezbollah’s terror flags fly in my city”, Mendel wrote. Hezbollah are the group who gave the Israeli army a mauling when it invaded south Lebanon in 2006; the organisation itself is legal although its armed wing of the same name is classified as “terrorist”, i.e. a group who gave the state terrorist Israeli army a bloody nose.

So, a pro-Palestinian demonstration of a few hundred alarmed the entire Jewish population, we must believe. Ironically the photograph accompanying the piece showed a small crowd with two banners, one pro-Palestinian and the other held aloft by orthodox Jews, immediately identifiable by their dress, bearing the slogan, “Judaism rejects the state of Israel and condemns its criminal siege and occupation”. More anti-Semitic, self-hating Jews it seems?

An alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents says the CST

But isn’t there an alarming rise in anti-Semitic incidents over the past year? The figures produced by the Zionist Community Security Trust (CST), record 1,309 incidents of anti-Jewish hate last year, compared with 960 in 2015, a rise of 36%. The previous record number of incidents was in 2014, when 1,182 were recorded. This was during the July/August 2014 Operation Protective Edge where the United Nations reported that 2,220 Palestinians had been killed, of whom 1,492 were civilians (551 children and 299 women), 605 militants and 123 of unknown status, almost 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were left permanently disabled. 66 Israeli soldiers were killed, 5 Israeli civilians (including one child) and one Thai civilian were killed and 469 IDF soldiers and 261 Israeli civilians were injured. We might expect that some who were outraged at this wanton massacre used language that was not quite politically correct and that was the reason for the reported high level of anti-Semitic incidents.

Gerald Ronson CBE and convicted fraudster (L) with Home Secretary Amber Rudd (C) and CST Deputy Chairman Lloyd Dorfman CBE, March 2017.

The CST founding Chairman is Gerald Ronson, one of the Guinness Four convicted for share-trading fraud in 1990; one charge of conspiracy, two of false accounting, and one of theft. He was fined £5 million and given a one-year jail sentence, of which he served six months. He failed to get the conviction overturned despite a long legal battle. But his criminal record did him no appreciable harm; he got his CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours for ‘charitable services’; his was a ‘white-collar’, ‘respectable’ crime not to be taken seriously at all, we are all at it, only a few of us get inadvertently caught. No news agency doubts his CST stories, of course. [4]

If the report of the 1,309 anti-Semitic incidents in 2016 is correct we should first put them in the post Brexit context which saw an alarming rise in hate crimes against immigrants and ethnic minorities in general since the referendum. The Independent reported a 41% increase in race crimes in July, the month after the referendum and in February 2017 an overall increase of 27% in England and Wales: “The number of hate crimes recorded by regional police forces rose by up to 100 per cent in the months following the Brexit vote, new figures show. Dorset saw the greatest increase, with the 104 offences logged between July and September 2016 equating to double the total from April to June. … In total, 10 force areas saw rises of 50 per cent or more.” [5]

But how was the 36% arrived at? It is CST figures, not police statistics. The CST are good enough to tell us that the number of antisemitic incidents reported to them by the police was only 34% of the overall incidents recorded by CST in 2016, compared to 32 per cent in 2015 and 30 per cent in 2014. The rest are phone calls and email messages and verbal reports with no apparent way to determine the veracity of the reports or even identity of those reporting in the majority of cases. However, they do say that they rejected 791 reports of anti-Semitism as false, so they do have some standards, apparently or that could be a figure given to make the rest of the unchecked and uncheckable incidents more credible. They say there were:

“107 violent antisemitic assaults reported to CST in 2016, an increase of 29 per cent from the 87 violent incidents recorded in 2015 and the highest number since 2010, when CST recorded 115 violent antisemitic assaults. None of the violent incidents recorded in 2016 were classified as Extreme Violence, which would mean incidents that involved grievous bodily harm (GBH) or a threat to life”.

And here the real bogus nature of the whole exercise is apparent. Because there is no record of an anti-Semitic murder in Britain this century or last online. And no attempted murders or even serious injury in recent years. Everything recorded is a push or a shove at most and anti-Semitic remarks, some very reactionary such as every racial and ethnic minority suffers from native bigots everywhere. Even in the 1947 anti-Semitic riots in England and Wales following the British hanging of the three members of the Jewish fascistic organisation Irgun in Jerusalem and the retaliation hanging of two British Army sergeants by the Irgun no one was killed, although there was damage to property and Jews were injured in these race riots.

The Institute of Race Relations records that in the twenty years after April 1993 that there were at least 105 deaths with a known or suspected racial element. “Whilst the majority of the murders that we recorded involved attacks in the street, eight came from attacks on people in their homes. Of these, several were arson attacks”. There are no such Jewish deaths in Britain that we can find for a century at least (please correct if this is wrong), Jewish people are not victims of “left-wing anti-Semitism” and such oppression they do suffer is far less than that suffered by the Black, Muslim, Irish and other ethnic minorities in general. And seriously threatening oppression comes exclusively from the far right and from outright fascist groups. Anti-Semitic remarks and tirades from leftists come as a result of genuine, if politically unsophisticated, outrage at the murderous actions of Israel against the Palestinians. This was what Naz Shah MP was guilty of in 2014. No one dared to criticise her of this during the slaughter of the Palestinians in Operation Protective Edge then because the identity of the real victims was too apparent.

Moreover, in the IRR Crime Survey for England and Wales, we learn that:

“Racial violence is largely underreported to the police. According to Home Office statistics, from 2012-2015 there has been, on average, 106,000 racially motivated ‘hate crimes’ per year. Both the 2012/13 and 2014/15 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) highlight that victims of hate crime are less likely to think the police had treated them fairly or with respect, compared with victims of CSEW crime overall. Of hate crime incidents (not exclusively those motivated by ‘race’) reported to the police, 59 per cent of victims believed the police treated them fairly, compared with 81 per cent of CSEW crime overall.” [6]

We would suggest that the opposite is the case with most of the Jewish community, given its wealth and influence in general; their oppression is vastly over-reported as we have seen above. The 87% of Jews who intended to vote Tory compared to the 13% who intended to vote Labour at the last election means the police take their complaints far more seriously that those from the poor and oppressed; that is a reflection of social class and very little to do with the so-called anti-Semitism of Labour. But, of course, not all Jews are wealthy or influential and when they are in trouble and victims of anti-Semitism the ‘respectable’ Jews turn their heads away and pretend not to see. One such case is Ben Stimson.

 Graham Philips and Ben Stimson. Ben was abandoned by the majority of the British left.

Anti-Semitism in the East and Ben Stimson

Contrary to Jonathan Arkush, there are very real fascists who do not deny the Holocaust but celebrate it and want to do it again to all Jews, communists, leftists in general and whatever ethnic minority they have traditionally targeted, Gypsies, Russians, Poles, etc. In fact, some fascist groups in Britain and elsewhere are Islamophobic and fly the Zionist flag to celebrate the oppression of the Palestinian Muslims. Britain First, the English Defence League and the British National Party support Israel as do Islamophobic groups in Europe like Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in Holland, the Vlams Beelang in Belgium, the Freedom Party in Austria and Marine Le Pen’s Front Nationale, Tony Greenstein’s blog informs us. But these latter are far right, fascist infested parties. Further east there are real live, explicitly fascist groupings, in Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, Croatia and Greece etc. We will now look at the Ukraine in particular and what happened to Ben there.

Ben is from a working-class Manchester background, of Irish-Jewish parentage. He was deeply affected by the explicitly fascist symbols flown by battalions like the Azov Brigade and the Right Sector in the Ukraine. His business had collapsed, he was unemployed and he wanted to do something useful with his life so he went to the Ukraine to assist in the struggle against these real fascists.

He was arrested on his return and charged with two offences in violation of the British anti-terrorist legislation, Article 5 (1) (a) of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2006, which provides for criminal liability for participation in the preparation of terrorist acts, and Article 5 (1) (b) of the Act, which provides criminalize the promotion of a third party in the commission of terrorist acts. Initially, he was incarcerated in Belmarsh and later moved to Strangeways prison in Manchester, to be closer to his family and friends there.

His trial hearing was on 30 June in Manchester Crown Court. Seven supporters of the local Revolutionary Communist Group, of which Ben had been briefly a member, attended. I travelled up from London for what turned out to be a half an hour’s hearing. Ben spoke via video link. His barrister entered a plea bargain on his behalf; guilty on charge 2, assisting terrorist acts (driving an ambulance), in exchange for dropping of charge 1, engaging in terrorist acts, for which he could have got twenty years. He was sentenced to five years and four months on 14 July. Shamefully apart from the Revolutionary Communist Group, Socialist Fight, and some anarchist anti-fascists no left group supported or even reported on his trial. The right-wing mass media did not miss the opportunity to boost the British empire and denigrate its heroic opponent, the story made all the papers but not those of the far left. The Mail Online of 14 July described the political nature of the trial:

“Barnaby Jamieson, prosecuting, said Russia had taken steps to annex the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014 and Donbass became a focal point of the resulting conflict and endured major unrest at the hands of Russian separatists. He said: ‘From the perspective of the Putin government, the conflict was about creating ‘Novorussia’, or New Russia – and expanding Russian territory to include the entire Ukraine.’”

We are told that:

“Detective Chief Superintendent Russ Jackson, head of the North West Counter Terrorism Unit, said: ‘Stimson went over to the Ukraine with the intention of joining militia groups fighting against the Ukrainian government and the images of him holding a rifle and wearing military clothing are deeply concerning. This case demonstrates the complex work the counter terrorism unit does to stop those who commit acts of terrorism, whether that is at home or abroad. He has been jailed for the role he played in a violent conflict and I hope his conviction will send a message to all those who are even considering joining conflicts.’” [7]

The Nazi symbols of the Azov Battalion

The truth about Bandera and the Azov Batallion

Of course, these are outright distortions and lies that take no account of the nature of the Kiev government, how it came to power and what its intentions were towards the Russian speaking population of eastern Ukraine. Ben’s father, Martin, condemned the sentence as ‘very severe’:

“It’s plain, and the court accepted, that Ben went out there for humanitarian reasons to drive an ambulance. And the court also accepted that Ben is no danger to society, so I’m reeling from that. It’s very stiff”.

Chris Garrett, ‘Swampy’, fought for Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion; they had Nazi flags and symbols everywhere, he tells us. He was not arrested when he returned to the UK although he did admit to killing “a separatist” as opposed to Ben who said he would kill if he had to save his own life. Both the UK and USA governments fund and train these explicitly fascist outfits.

The “legitimate government of Ukraine”, backed by the prosecuting counsel and the Chief Superintendent in Ben’s trial, was installed in a coup in February 2014 organised by the CIA and their allies, the NGOs funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is in turn funded by the US Congress. The coup was led by thugs who proudly displayed WWII fascist symbols.

The Odessa massacre took place on May 2, 2014. Ukrainian Maidan nationalists and Nazis were brought to that city by buses to stop the anti-government protests. They murdered at least 46 protesters in the Odessa Trade-Union House, either burnt them alive or clubbed them to death when they jumped from the windows to escape the fire, they hanged a pregnant woman cleaner and the whole fascist mob cheered when her death screams ended and the murderer appeared at the window to celebrate. The Kiev government refused to investigate the case and concentrates on arresting and harassing the surviving protesters and their relatives. More than any other event this signalled to those in the Donbass that they had to defend themselves against these fascist thugs by any means necessary. And that is why Ben Stimson went to the Donbass to fight. He is a heroic anti-fascist fighter and the left and every principled anti-fascist should have attended his trial and should now support him in every way possible.

In fact, “the legitimate government of Ukraine” is the only government in the world to honour as a national hero a Nazi collaborator, Stepan Bandera, who slaughtered thousands of Jews and Poles on his own behalf and for Hitler. Ukraine President Poroshenko has repeatedly praised the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) for fighting for Ukrainian independence and its “heroism,” has made the anniversary of the foundation of UPA a national holiday, 1st January. The Ukrainian parliament has ratified a bill that criminalizes criticizing UPA.

Filip Mazurczak, in his July 2016 article The Volhynia Genocide and Polish-Ukrainian Reconciliation, tells us that: “Those who claim that Ukraine needs Stepan Bandera and UPA to have a strong identity are ignorant of Ukrainian history”. He goes on:

As a response (to Polish oppression of ethnic Ukrainians in Poland), in 1929 the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) was formed. It engaged in terrorism, such as the assassination of the Polish minister Bronisław Pieracki in 1934. OUN was influenced by the fascist ideology of Dmytro Dontsov, who sought to violently establish an ethnically homogenous Ukrainian state. The OUN had two factions, a more moderate one led by Andriy Melnyk, and a genocidal one led by Stepan Bandera.

In 1939, Western Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Ukrainian nationalists rejoiced, and in 1940 the Bandera faction of the OUN formed the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). In 1943, UPA sought to exterminate all non-Ukrainians in Western Ukraine. They were above all Poles, but also Jews, Armenians, and other minorities, as well as anti-nationalist Ukrainians. Upwards of 100,000 civilians were murdered. UPA’s methods were sadistic; pregnant women stabbed with bayonets in the belly and children forced to drink their murdered parents’ blood were commonplace.

After Western Ukraine was annexed by the USSR, Stalin threw UPA members into the gulags, where, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote, they led rebellions. Since Ukraine became independent in 1991, it has been divided on this matter. In the eastern half of the country, the UPA and Bandera are overwhelmingly considered to be fascist scum. In the west, however, many see them as heroes. [8]

A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in Einsatzgruppen report of July 16, 1941,  stated: “Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows”. A Banderist statement said: “The Jews of the Soviet Union are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” When the Nazis invaded the USSR in June 1941 and captured the East Galician capital of Lvov, Bandera’s lieutenants issued a declaration of independence in his name. They further promised to work closely with Hitler, helped to launch a pogrom that killed four thousand Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles. “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,” a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Munich, Germany. 25th Nov 2013. Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, Effraim Zuroff, stands next to a campaign poster in Munich, Germany, 25 November 2013. The poster campaign under the motto ‘Late! But not too late!’ is supposed to continue in eight cities after successful runs in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne. Photo: TOBIAS HASE/dpa/Alamy Live News

Sam Sokol reported in the Jerusalem Post on 18 January 2016 that when the US had decided to fund the Azov Battalion, the modern-day Banderist fascists, Britain quickly followed suit and this enraged the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which had successfully blocked the Battalion from holding a recruitment meeting in Nantes, France, just prior. Efraim Zuroff, head of the Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem said:

“This step is hardly surprising to anyone who has been following the growing danger of Holocaust distortion in post-Communist Europe, and especially in the Baltics, Ukraine and Hungary. In recent years, the United States has purposely ignored the glorification of Nazi collaborators, the granting of financial benefits to those who fought alongside the Nazis, and the systematic promotion of the canard of equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes by these countries because of various political interests.” [9]

However far right Zionists like the Vaad of Ukraine, a Jewish communal body favoured the move. Vyacheslav A. Likhachev, speaking on behalf of the Vaad said:

“I appreciate this decision. It must be clearly understood: there is no kind of ‘neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia’ now. Azov is a regular military unit subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is not irregular division neither a political group. Its commanders and fighters might have personal political views as individuals, but as an armed police unit Azov is a part of the system of the Ukrainian defence forces, Russian aggression is a much bigger threat than Azov, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the Azov regiment and political projects related to its former commander (Stephan Banders – SF, our bolding).” [10]

So even in the Ukraine, there are the Zionist Jonathan Arkushs who excuse the Nazis and point to a bigger enemy. Not many in the Ukraine want to make such a spurious distinction. Jews now as then are differentiated not only as pro and anti-Nazi but politically more importantly as leftist working-class poor and wealthy rightist Zionists. “Of course, manifestations of neo-Nazism in Ukraine are unacceptable”, Likhachev hypocritically says. “But it has nothing to do with the question of assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces.” – Really??

Anti-Semitism used against Ben

In the beginning of Ben’s incarceration in Belmarsh high-security jail, the prison authorities confiscated the letters and the magazines I sent because they said he is not allowed any political communications. The reason they gave was that the letter or publication could “harm my rehabilitation”. So, they see it as a thought crime to oppose the work of the CIA abroad. The threat of legal action by the Revolutionary Communist Group resulted in the letters getting through. Ben reports that he is subjected to vile anti-Semitic abuse. “throw some Zyklon B in with him” one guard said and another one boasted of being “in the fascist party”. The prison authorities dismissed all his complaints about this saying they were “offensive”. He says he fears for his personal safety as jihadists are allowed on the wing and they know he is Jewish.

Graham Philips, the independent journalist who reports extensively on the Ukraine says in his blog:

“However, in any case, Ben’s situation has my full support. As a point of principle, I absolutely support a verdict of innocent for Ben. The UK justice system must be fair, and consistent. How can it be that a man who goes to fight for a neo-Nazi Ukrainian battalion is free to walk the streets of the UK absolutely untouched? Part of a Ukrainian army guilty of carrying out multiple crimes against civilians of Donbass, shelling civilian areas…, mass death and destruction.”

In his BBC Trending blog on 24 July, Sam Bright wrote an article [11] to improve on the blows struck against the left at Ben’s conviction. In a piece, The communist soldier using charity sites to fund his war. he targeted:

“Russell Bentley, a Texas native who describes himself as a pro-Russian communist. When the conflict started, Bentley was working as an ordinary lumberjack in Austin. Yet by December 2014 he had reached the epicentre of the conflict – armed with a rocket propelled grenade launcher and tasked with repelling Ukrainian forces at Donetsk airport, a key strategic position.”

Bentley had used crowd funding to raise money for his mission, Bright complained and this had to stop because the fascists should not be stopped in their murderous onslaught against the Donbass, we must believe. And there are others:

“Among them is 38-year-old Graham Phillips from Nottingham in the UK. Since November 2013, Phillips has been covering the conflict, broadcasting amateur videos from Donbas, often in the midst of tearing bullets and toppling buildings. His daredevil style has drawn the attention of audiences, and he boasts 86,000 subscribers on YouTube. From 2014 to 2015, Phillips was employed by Zvezda – a media channel run by the Russian Ministry of Defence, and he also freelanced for the state-operated TV channel RT.”

What’s to be done about these two who have become so popular with the anti-imperialist left? Well Bright points out that: “Benjamin Stimson, from Manchester in the UK, was sentenced by Manchester Crown Court to five years and four months in prison for assisting separatist forces in Donbass” and another US citizen, Patrick Lancaster, who has, outrageously, contributed to The Telegraph and Sky News whilst saying that the Ukraine’s current president, Petro Poroshenko, “is an enemy of the people”. Such voices must be stilled, is Bright’s obvious message. An assassination job for the SAS via MI6 perhaps?

Conclusion

The main problem with the verdict on Ben is that it designates the defenders of the Donbass as terrorists and their fascist infested militia opponents, the Azov battalion, for instance, now part of the Ukraine national army, as legitimate government soldiers who are attacked by Russian backed terrorists. There are no organisations in Ukraine which are designated ‘terrorist’ by the Home Office. The character of this conflict was determined by four things:

1. The fascist-led Maidan coup itself backed by the USA and the EU.
2. The vote in the parliament to ban the Russian language. Although vetoed by the President the intentions were clearly signalled. The Donbass is overwhelmingly Russian speaking
3. The shocking Trade Union House massacre in Odessa by a fascist mob on 2 May 2014 where at least 46 were burned or clubbed to death when they survived jumping from the windows of the burning building the whole fascist crew cheered at the death screams of a pregnant cleaner when her murderer appeared at the window to celebrate.

More than any other act this determined the character of the war and drove the Russian speaking population to rise up and seize control of the state forces in that region to defend themselves against that terrible fate.

4. The banning of the Communist Party, the promotion of war time Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a national hero, the promotion of Nazi-type flags and symbols and the banning of the celebration of the defeat of the Nazis by the Red Army in the region in May 1945.

The consequences having to plead guilty to assisting terrorism for defending Donetsk and Lugansk against fascist onslaught are serious; it might mean that those who went to Rojova to fight ISIS may also be charged when they return. Spanish anti fascists who went there in the tradition of the International Brigades were arrested on returning home but the case against them was dropped.

Ben Stimson was put in this appalling position by the failure of the left in Britain to oppose the Maidan coup and the fascist led assaults on the Russian speaking population in the Donbass. And also by the unexplained withdrawal of the majority of the leadership of Solidarity with Antifascist Resistance in Ukrainian from any political struggle against the Kiev regime and fascism in general in the region.

Notes

[1] Lee Harpin, Jewish Chronicle, 26-7-17: Ken Livingstone faces new investigation after Hitler comments

Labour confirm probe into Ken’s conduct and comments after his suspension from party will go ahead

https://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/ken-livingstone-faces-new-investigation-after-hitler-comments-1.441974

[2] Evening Standard, 17 march 2016, Most Jews can’t trust Labour http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/most-jews-cant-trust-labour-corbyn-under-fire-for-farleft-antisemitism-a3205656.html

[3] Cnaan Liphshiz, Times of Israel, June 21, 2017, Corbyn did not join this year’s Al-Quds march, though he has attended in the past, Labour’s surge in UK election fans anti-Semitism fears for some Jews’There’s a certain sense of helplessness when Hezbollah’s terror flags fly in my city,’ writes one Jewish journalist after Sunday’s Al-Quds rally, http://www.timesofisrael.com/labours-surge-in-election-adds-to-anti-semitism-fears-for-some-uk-jews/

[4] Gerald M Ronson, The Jewish Chronicle, April 29, 2011, CST represents all Jews, https://www.thejc.com/comment/comment/cst-represents-all-jews-1.68589

[5] Jon Sharman and Ian Jones, The Independent, 15 February 2017, Hate crimes rise by up to 100 per cent across England and Wales, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-vote-hate-crime-rise-100-per-cent-england-wales-police-figures-new-racism-eu-a7580516.html

[6] IRR, Racial Violence Statistic, http://www.irr.org.uk/research/statistics/racial-violence/

[7] Scott Campbell, Mail Online, 14 July 2017, Jobless British man who joined a pro-Russian militia in Ukraine, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4697734/Benjamin-Stimson-joined-pro-Russian-militia-jailed.html#ixzz4oEqR759L

[8] Filip Mazurczak, 13 July 2016, The Volhynia Genocide and Polish-Ukrainian Reconciliation, hose who claim that Ukraine needs Stepan Bandera and UPA to have a strong identity are ignorant of Ukrainian history. http://visegradinsight.eu/the-volhynia-genocide-and-polish-ukrainian-reconciliation/

[9] Sam Sokol, Jerusalem Post, January 18, 2016, US lifts ban on funding ‘neo-Nazi’ Ukrainian militia, http://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/US-lifts-ban-on-funding-neo-Nazi-Ukrainian-militia-441884

[10] Ibid.

[11] Sam Bright, BBC Trending, 24 July, The communist soldier using charity sites to fund his war, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-40647061