BOOKBUSTER REVIEW: Weaponising Anti-Semitism
By Asa Winstanley
Published by O/R Books, 2023 rrp £15
REVIEW BY GILL KNIGHT
In this book, Asa Winstanley takes the reader on a meticulously researched 7-year journey to demonstrate how accusations of anti-Semitism have become ‘weaponised’. The driving force for the research was a need to document what happened in the Labour Party during that time, and how the weapon was used to overthrow Jeremy Corbyn. If this sounds an exaggeration or misleading you only have to look at the Forde report. Martin Forde KC was appointed by Sir Keir Starmer to investigate racism and bullying in the party, and concluded: “some anti-Corbyn elements of the party seized on anti-Semitism as a way to attack Jeremy Corbyn.”
Winstanley chronicles the array of actors, groups, media reporting and events that fabricated a false ‘crisis’ of anti-Semitism, which actually began before Corbyn became Labour Party leader. He pinpoints the year of 2010 when, to assuage the groundswell of support for the Palestinians’ human rights, the Israeli think tank the Reut Institute urged Israel’s “intelligence establishment” to “drive [a] wedge between soft and hard critics” abroad. The former should be subject to “sophisticated engagement strategies” while the latter should be subject to “sabotage” and “attack”. The purpose was to divide and rule and build a firewall against Israel’s critics. And that is exactly what happened in the Labour Party – those who supported Palestinian human rights were pitted against those who supported Israel’s Zionist project. This book shows how this happened using a text that is thoroughly referenced and underpinned by hundreds of footnotes.
ISRAEL BLURRING THE LINES
So, what constitutes the ‘Israeli lobby’ that was able to create this ‘crisis’ that became so influential in UK politics? Prior to the Reut Institute exhortations, BICOM (British Israel Communication and Research Centre) had been set up in 2000 to ‘bring about a significant shift in opinion in favour of Israel amongst the general public, opinion formers and the Jewish community.’ Moreover, Winstanley shows that Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, had their eyes on Corbyn before he became leader. In addition, pro-Israel actors had strong links with the Israeli Embassy. These links were sometimes more sinister, for example the spy Shai Mascot, exposed by Al Jazeera documentary The Lobby, was fixated on bringing down MPs sympathetic to Palestine.
Israel, says Winstanley, seemed to be ‘blurring the lines between pro-Israel lobby groups overseas and its own espionage operatives. It was developing a network of front groups in the UK and passing them off as Jewish community organisations’. The CST (Community Security Trust) frequently acts as an intermediary between the Embassy and the Home Office. So in reality, the CAA (Campaign Against Anti-Semitism), the JLM (Jewish Labour Movement), the LFI (Labour Friends of Israel), the Israeli Embassy and Tel Aviv government act in unison, both covertly and overtly. All sing from the same hymn sheet in an attempt to shut down the growing BDS (Boycott Disinvestment Sanctions) movement, that highlights the apartheid nature of Israel.
The adoption of the faulty IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, the sacrifice of good comrades – Ken Livingstone, Marc Wadsworth, Jackie Walker, Chris Williamson, Tony Greenstein, members of JVL (the Jewish Voice for Labour) – were all part and parcel of the weaponisation. Glasman of the CAA called JVL ‘the Jewish Voice for Stalin’. Here, Winstanley asks a really pertinent question: ‘what if Corbyn had stood up to this purge?’ Livingstone and Corbyn together would have made such a strong team to create a different, truthful narrative.
THE DEMONISING OF CORBYN
Winstanley chooses 2018 as the tipping point for Corbyn’s demise. Finding old Facebook comments, usually taken very much out of context, is a favourite way to smear the Left, the post is then screen-shot on Twitter, the mainstream media takes up the baton, and it gets repeated by BBC Radio 4 on their Today programme. For example, Jonathan Goldstein of the Jewish Leadership Council said Jeremy Corbyn, by liking a post, was the ‘figurehead for an anti-Semitic political culture based upon an obsessive hatred of Israel’. Media hysteria is then fanned by the MSM; Jewish newspapers and the Daily Mail are to be expected but the Guardian has also been complicit in inaccurate and/or dishonest reporting.
The demonising of Corbyn continues, as does the purge of left-wing Palestine supporters in the Labour Party. Winstanley has said recently that the Israel lobby has been gifted ‘this false, weaponized anti-Semitism as a really useful political weapon against the left’ and ‘It’s going to be used over and over again, it can’t be swept under the rug, it will never go away. It can only be defeated’.
As my Jewish friend, who features in this book, says, there are only 300,000 Jews in the UK and the BoD (Board of Deputies) which is the go-to organisation when the BBC wants a comment, does not represent all of the Jewish community. This book is a must-read for all concerned with accurate reporting in the 21st Century; it reveals the dark underbelly of our political environment.
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