October 30, 2017

Is Corbyn Embarrassing Corbyn or the Zionist "Glitterati"?

I just noticed a Marcus Dysch article in the print edition of the Jewish Chronicle headlined, "Yet again, Corbyn has embarrassed himself".  I googled those very words out of quotes to see if the piece is on line and, yes, it is.  Here's the search, Yet again, Corbyn has embarrassed himself.  And top of the list is Dysch's article.  It's a gripe about Jeremy Corbyn refusing to attend the Balfour Declaration celebratory dinner.
It was, of course, an open secret among communal leaders that Jeremy Corbyn was unlikely to accept their invitation to next week’s gala Balfour Declaration centenary dinner.
The Labour leader, with decades of anti-Israel campaigning under his belt, was never going to sit alongside the country’s glitterati — its political, social, religious, diplomatic and charity leaders — for the slap-up meal.
When the invitations went out, I was told by a senior Jewish Leadership Council figure that no pressure would be put on Mr Corbyn to turn up, nor would a fuss be made if he declined.
After the past two years of trials and tribulations between the Labour chief and the community, there was no desire to cause embarrassment, or a major row, on either side. 
As my source predicted, Emily Thornberry will represent Labour, although the Leader of the Opposition’s office failed to live up to the other part of the prophecy and blame a diary clash, offering instead no explanation for his absence.
So there was a muted response beyond Jonathan Goldstein saying it was “deeply unfortunate” and Hamas welcoming the news.
Let’s be honest, few friends of Israel will have wanted Mr Corbyn there. But it is the principle that counts.
Ms Thornberry filling in for Mr Corbyn at a Labour Friends of Israel reception at the party conference last month brought ridicule on them both when she claimed he was preparing for his speech but everyone knew he was out partying.
For the Labour leader now to avoid this major event sends another clear message, and shames his party. 
If Mr Corbyn wants to be Prime Minister, he needs first to learn how to be a statesman. The great offices of our nation demand more than former backbenchers still clinging to personal grievances.
What's noticeable about the piece is the sheer arrogance it oozes.  The "country's glitterati" are to celebrate handing Palestine on a platter to the Zionist movement.  Seniors of the Jewish Leadershio Council decided, "no pressure would be  put on Mr Corbyn to turn up, nor would a fuss be made if he declined."  Well that's very big of the big wigs and Mr Corbyn didn't even have the decency to invent an excuse for refusing to celebrate the UK's and Israel's imperial past and present.

But the google search threw up other finds too including the words Corbyn and something with embarrass as its root.  A debate between Corbyn and Owen Smith in the second Labour leadership contest had a LabourList article asking, Was Corbyn "an embarrassment" or did he carry himself "with dignity"?  Of course we now know he carried himself with enough dignity to win the contest.  That was last year, 2016.

The next article in the search with the word "embarrassment" in it was one in the Telegraph.  The word "embarrassment" used regarding his wife's coffee business.  Nothing to do with him and anyway, that was back in 2015.

Next up we have Huffington Post finding "Ex-Jeremy Corbyn Supporters" who "Are 'Embarrassed' They Voted For Him".  That was before the second leadership bid.  2016 again.  I wonder how embarrassed they are now he came close to winning the general election this year.

The list on the google page goes on.  The fact is, Marcus Dysch's arrogance is misplaced.  Corbyn has not embarrassed himself at all.  He has shown himself to be in a position to embarrass the Zionist movement which is precisely why these Zionist "glitterati" aren't making a fuss about the second slap in the face Corbyn has dealt them since refusing to attend a Labour Friends of Israel rally at the recent Labour Party Conference 2017 in Brighton.

So is Corbyn embarrassing Corbyn or is Corbyn embarrassing the Zionist "glitteratti"  You might want to ask or tell Marcus Dysch of the Jewish Chronicle.  I can't ask or tell him on Twitter because he's blocked me.




October 29, 2017

Jewish Chronicle's Maccoby Mystery Suspense

If you read my previous post, you'll know the basic plot.  The Jewish Chronicle published on its website a crop of letters from the print edition.  As it happens, I can now see the plot - which was in my mind mostly - unravelling as I write this.  Well they listed the correspondents in the sub-heading and printed out the letters, including one from Deborah Maccoby.  Well, the next day on the same page, Deborah's name had gone from the sub-heading and so had her letter from the page.

I found the original page on Google cache, did my previous post and tweeted thus:
And the Jewish Chronicle tweeted their reply thus:

What that meant was that the print edition of the JC which most people get on Friday carried all the letters published on line on that day, 27 October 2017, but not Deborah's.

Deborah's local JC stockist didn't get their copies on Friday and she still hasn't seen it.  "My" copy is a typical JC and it passes through many family member hands before it reaches my pair.  In fact, I was reduced to buying the blooming thing for the first time since my mother died last year.

And what do you know?

Look at the blurry pic I just took.


I think you can make out the names.  They are:

Jeff Lewis
Avi Moshe
Neville Landau
Josephine Bacon
Rabbi Gideon Schulman
Tony Adler
Barbara Epstein
Bryan Diamond
Neville Goldschneider
Professor Geoffrey Alderman

Now this is where the plot gets a bit thicker.  Let's have a look at the first manifestation of the JC letters webpage:


See the names of the correspondents? Jeff Lewis, Avi Moshe, Neville Landau, Josephine Bacon, Rabbi Gideon Schulman, Tony Adler, Barbara Epstein, Bryan Diamond, Neville Goldschneider and Deborah Maccoby.

And after the "correction":


See the names?  Jeff Lewis, Avi Moshe, Neville Landau, Josephine Bacon, Rabbi Gideon Schulman, Tony Adler, Barbara Epstein, Bryan Diamond and Neville Goldschneider.

Now this chimes with what the JC said in their tweet.  You see?  Deborah Maccoby's letter wasn't published in Friday's print edition.  But scroll back up and see Professor Geoffrey Alderman in the print edition but not the webpage.  More mystery.  What happened to the Professor?

But back to Deborah.  According to Deborah, she sent the letter in good time for publication in last Friday's edition so if it was going to be published she would have expected it to be published then.  Now the JC, via its tweet, seems to saying that her letter is going to be in this Friday's edition.  Before I saw the last print edition today I had assumed Deborah's letter was in that one.  So now, if the JC, is saying that Deborah's letter is pegged to go into the edition of  Friday 3 November we can expect to see the letter in print on that day and on line on the same day.

In the meantime. let's see that letter again in case it does another disappear:

About free speech

In his Holocaust Education Trust dinner speech ( “The scourge of antisemitism is changing form”, JC, October 20 2017) Andrew Neil erroneously cited the Free Speech on Israel fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference: “the chair of the meeting asked: ‘We demand the right to debate ‘Holocaust: yes or no’”.

The chair of the meeting, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, made no mention of the Holocaust.  The guest speaker, Miko Peled, an Israeli-American who is not a member of the Labour Party, said:

“This is about free speech, the freedom to criticise and to discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust: yes or no, Palestine, the liberation, the whole spectrum.  There should be no limits on the discussion”.

Peled was defining free speech as a principle, not calling for a Labour Party debate about whether or not the Holocaust happened, as was implied by Mr Neil.

Later in his speech, Andrew Neil quoted Mark Twain: “the truth has barely got its boots on before a lie is halfway round the world”.  Exactly. 

Deborah Maccoby, 
Leeds LS17

I must say, I'm still puzzled about Professor Geoffrey Alderman.  Why didn't his letter appear on line?

Spot the difference as the Jewish Chronicle removes a published letter from its website

My friend Deborah Maccoby had a letter published in the Jewish Chronicle last week which read as follows:

About free speech

In his Holocaust Education Trust dinner speech ( “The scourge of antisemitism is changing form”, JC, October 20 2017) Andrew Neil erroneously cited the Free Speech on Israel fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference: “the chair of the meeting asked: ‘We demand the right to debate ‘Holocaust: yes or no’”.

The chair of the meeting, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, made no mention of the Holocaust.  The guest speaker, Miko Peled, an Israeli-American who is not a member of the Labour Party, said:

“This is about free speech, the freedom to criticise and to discuss every issue, whether it’s the Holocaust: yes or no, Palestine, the liberation, the whole spectrum.  There should be no limits on the discussion”.

Peled was defining free speech as a principle, not calling for a Labour Party debate about whether or not the Holocaust happened, as was implied by Mr Neil.

Later in his speech, Andrew Neil quoted Mark Twain: “the truth has barely got its boots on before a lie is halfway round the world”.  Exactly. 

Deborah Maccoby, 
Leeds LS17
The link to the letter was here.   Clicking on the link though, you will not now find the letter.  Thanks to Google cache I know that you would have seen the letter if you'd have clicked the link between some time on 27 Oct 2017 and roughly "28 Oct 2017 02:46:01 GMT".  But now, sadly it's gone.

It's a real shame because I tweeted the link and it got several retweets and likes:
The removal of Deborah's letter from the webpage involved significant changes to the page's appearance. Look, here it is before:


Obviously, scrolling down you would see the letter, which fortunately still appears in Google cache together with the link to the Andrew Neil article which Deborah was criticising.

And here's the page after the letter was removed:

I can't help wondering if Andrew Neil (on Twitter as @afneil) asked @StephenPollard to have the letter removed.  But whatever or whoever caused Deborah Maccoby's published letter to be removed from the Jewish Chronicle, thanks to Google cache and to me everyone can see the letter and everyone can see that it has been removed.

Who knows?  Maybe the Jewish Chronicle will restore the page to its original splendour.

October 16, 2017

Fake Twitter Account Alert

I got a tweet just yesterday purporting to support my own tweet and Ken Loach.  It was clearly antisemitic.  Here it is:
I wasn't sure what to do at first.  I checked the account and saw there were 4 of my mutual followers (ie I follow them and they follow me) and I alerted them by DM.  Two unfollowed, the other two don't seem to check their accounts regularly.  All four seem to routinely follow the accounts that follow them and this fake account only intersperses tweets with antisemitism.

Here's a screengrab of terry45336188's account:



One of the people who did respond to my DM said that a lot of these bogus accounts use 8 numerics after a name as this terry45336188 did.

I noticed that the account "joined April 2012".  So it appears it wasn't founded specifically to undermine Corbyn but it is definitely a bogus account.

Moral of the story, never just follow an account because it follows you, always scan the profile and a few tweets of an  account you are liking, retweeting or following.  Sorry to come across as censorious but Zionists are jumping through hoops to smear their critics, opponents and victims as antisemitic.  This is all they have because there is, of course, no case for Israel.  Their claims are getting increasingly desperate and ludicrous but they are still space and time consuming so a little bit of due diligence can stop these time and space wasters, er, wasting time and space. N'est pas?

Thank you!

PS: I just checked the account again and I am blocked.  They're determined, these people. Can they be a genuine Corbyn supporter and an antisemite?  It's very doubtful.  If they were sincere in their antisemitism they would surely have remonstrated with me to persuade me that antisemitism is ok.  If they didn't realise that slagging off Jews qua Jews is antisemitic then still they might have put an argument together or simply apologised having seen the error of their ways.  But instead of that, I get this:


I looked at their account with another account of mine and they're just as shrill but there was nothing explicitly antisemitic but he really wants an endorsement from Ken Loach.  See this:




And this:


Don't these Jew haters just love Ken Loach, the high profile anti-Zionist, Zionists have had in their cross hairs since the Labour Party Conference.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.....

Another Letter by Loach, Another Lie by Rich

Ken Loach has had a letter published in the New York Times refuting demonstrably false claims made about him by Howard Jacobson.

Here's the letter:
To the Editor:
Re: “Now Labour is the Enemy of the Jews,” (front page, Oct. 7-8):
Howard Jacobson alleges that I defended questioning the Holocaust. I did not and do not. In a confused BBC interview, where question and answer overlapped, my words were twisted to give a meaning contrary to that intended. The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged. In Primo Levi’s words: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”
Exaggerated or false charges of anti-Semitism have coincided with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Discredit his supporters, and you weaken his leadership. The Jewish Socialist Group wrote: “accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.”
We will not be intimidated. The Labour Party will continue to assert “the values of peace, universal rights and International law” as proclaimed in its manifesto.
KEN LOACH
LONDON
And here's what he was refuting:
In a moment that will live in infamy, the distinguished film director Ken Loach defended questioning the Holocaust. “I think history is for all of us to discuss,” he said, dodging the question of why the Labour Party should have chosen the Holocaust, of all historical events — and not slavery, say — to subject to scrutiny. 
But the defaming of Ken Loach didn't start with Howard Jacobson and didn't end with him either.  Dave Rich of the Community Security Trust thought he detected a claim of victimhood in Loach's letter.  He tweeted:
I immediately knew he was lying but I was pleased Ken Loach had another chance to answer his slanderers so I followed the link and word searched "victim".  Obviously, you don't have to use the word "victim" to claim to be one.  But on reading the letter and re-reading it, there was nothing there to suggest that he was claiming that he was a victim.  Scroll back up.  See what he wrote.  Any sign of self-pity?  This is a guy who supports the Palestinian cause.  It's inconceivable that he would claim victim status when the only reason he's being smeared is because he supports the cause of a victimised nation.  Of course, Ken Loach has been victimised but I think he has enough self-awareness to refrain from complaining about it.  He was simply setting the record straight.

So did he write anything at all that could be construed as claiming victimhood?  Let's take it line by line.
1.   Howard Jacobson alleges that I defended questioning the Holocaust.
Nothing there.
2.  I did not and do not.  
Nope, not there.
3.   In a confused BBC interview, where question and answer overlapped, my words were twisted to give a meaning contrary to that intended. 
 Nor there.
4.   The Holocaust is as real a historical event as World War II itself and not to be challenged.
Hmm, nothing in that line about Ken at all.  I'm starting to think Dave Rich made this up.  Surely there was a kernel of truth, as Goebbels used to say.  Let's keep looking:
5.   In Primo Levi’s words: “Those who deny Auschwitz would be ready to remake it.”
Aha!  Now I could give Dave a bit of a pass here and say that he might have thought that in agreeing with Primo Levi, Loach was actually likening himself to Levi.  See if he tries that one.  It would be all he's got because, well, let's see some more...
6.   Exaggerated or false charges of anti-Semitism have coincided with the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader.
Nope, that's about Corbyn, not Ken.
7.   Discredit his supporters, and you weaken his leadership. 
Again. mostly about the leadership but also about the supporters.  Discrediting isn't necessarily victimising.  Dave to me is an utterly discredited figure.  He's hardly a victim.
8.   The Jewish Socialist Group wrote: “accusations of anti-Semitism are being weaponised to attack the Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour Party.”
Now that's not a claim of victimhood, in fact it looks like Dave's job description.

Ok, to the final paragraph and what have we here?
9.   We will not be intimidated.
What we have here is a flat contradiction of what Dave Rich is claiming Ken Loach said.  What's extremely concerning is that Dave was so confident that his followers would "agree" with him, he even helpfully provided the link to the letter that he so flagrantly lied about.  If you look at the tweet, look at the replies too.  Last I checked I was the only one pointing out that Dave was misrepresenting what Ken Loach had said.

So to the last line:
10.  The Labour Party will continue to assert “the values of peace, universal rights and International law” as proclaimed in its manifesto.
And so we see, er, nothing to see.  And that is Dave Rich, one of the UK's most prominent antisemitism hunters.

But I did say in the headline, "Another Lie by Rich". So what else have we.  How far before yesterday do we have to go.  Well, the day before yesterday.  Really.  Check out this exchange between Rich and Jamie Stern-WeinerHere's a tweet that sums up the whole thing but there's a whole thread above and below it:
And from exactly one year ago, here's Dave smearing Jonathan Rosenhead of  Free Speech on Israel.

And here's what he was referring to on Free Speech on Israel:
It is impossible to know from the outside exactly what and who have made this moral panic [the antisemitism smear campaign] go with such a swing. Key individuals may well be Jeremy Newmark, well-placed in JLM, though only just in time, to fan these flames. The wily Mark Regev took up his post as Israeli ambassador in London at the start of April. In July Ella Rose left her job as public affairs officer at the Israeli Embassy to become Director of JLM. Who knows? Organisationally, judging by their public pronouncements there is an at least informal coalition of forces involving JLM, Progress (the Blairite pressure group), and Labour Friends of Israel which have all been promoting the idea that the left is permeated with antisemitism.
 See that?  Dave was clever here. He put the word "wily" in quotes but not the word "Jews".  So he could, and did, claim that he wasn't actually misquoting.  Again check out the thread.

And this is Dave Rich's job and, apparently his hobby too.

Dave Rich is just one player in this annoying and damaging game.  He's not a particularly bright one by any means, in fact, a sure sign that Rosenhead wasn't generalising about wily Jews is that, whilst many of the merchants of smear can be justly accused of fabrication, Dave Rich and many others can never be accused of being wily.