56 thoughts on “UK Israel Lobby Excoriates Leading Jewish Corbyn Supporter for Pointing Out Jews Weren’t Only Victims of Holocaust – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. I have just read in the Guardian that Momentum and the Labour Party are both likely to expel Jackie. If true, this would be a complete surrender to the Israel Lobby. The Guardian, although generally regarded as left-wing, often takes a pro-Israel position. Historically the Labour Party supported Zionism, and strongly opposed the 1939 McDonald White Paper which imposed restrictions on Jewish immigration into Palestine.

  2. This is absolutely right. What is appalling is that the pro-Israel elements are blatant but people seem not to see through it. The Big Lie still works. I understand from the news this morning (1st Oct 2016) that Jackie Walker has been suspended from the Labour Party yet again for making the points at the ‘Training Session’ you make above. This is now a witch hunt. It is right wing Labour working with pro-Israel elements to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, and his office know this and merely want people to keep their heads down.
    This is a mistake. The pro-Israel lobby has to be confronted. It is clear that we now have trolls going through social media to find material on people in the Labour Party (and other party’s) that can be used to accuse them of antisemitism.
    Given statements coming out of Israel about the Government mounting a more intensive campaign against BDS we can expect this to escalate. We see what the Israeli’s have done in the US – taking on President Obama himself backed by the most right wing elements in the US.
    We should be aware that everything we do is being monitored to be used in a propaganda campaign. It is possible that information being gathered against British Citizens is being done so from Israel by Israeli trolls, paid for by the Israeli Government or by people doing their military service. Israel used to keep its head down. Now the pro Israel elements have been forced by Jeremy Corbyn’s election and the way right wing Labour have used the slur of antisemitism against him to ‘go public’. This is a big mistake. It is a debate they will lose. No wonder Mark Regev is worried and has been sending cables to his Likud masters in Israel telling them to ‘leave it up to him’ to deal with. They will face a lash-back at some stage. And when they do, there is the prospect of real antisemitism. That’s where crying ‘wolf’ gets you.

    1. If we focus only on the British sugar & slave trade, Walker may have a case, but I consider “chief financiers” somewhat indefinite in meaning.

      In the Netherlands Sephardic Jews at times were disproportionately involved in various aspects of the slave trade, and in the US certain Jewish investors were important in making the Southern slave economy more efficient and profitable through loans, commodity investment, and futures trading.

      I don’t remember all the firms involved, but some US famous Jewish investment banks have important roots in the ante bellum cotton trade. It might be worthwhile to contrast the roots of famous non-Jewish investment banks like Brown Brothers Harriman in ante bellum slaving and cotton trade.

      1. As far as I have read, the Jewish contribution to the slave trade was disproportionate only in the Dutch colonies, esp. Suriname and Curacao. So if she generalized that she should have taken it back.

        1. Recently a lot of archival material has become available about British Jewish financiers and their involvement in the British Altantic slave trade.

          Here’s a tidbit.

          http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-hercules/the-rothschild-bankers-the-freshfield-slavers-and-the-rise-of-capitalism-in-the-britain-and-america-the-slaving-enterprises-of-the-british-empire-by-oguejiofo-annu/

          The FT article is blocked.

          It is really time to stop calling it antisemitism when someone points out the disproportionate role of Jews in slaving.

          I have spent a long time in studying Eastern European and Jewish historical political economics. While not all Jews were in the wealthy elite, European Jews, who had greater literacy and numeracy than other European groups, have served as an (often contractual) financial commercial stratum throughout Europe and were often disproportionately involved in financial enterprises like the slave trade.

          Jewish involvement in Islamic slave trade (especially at the high end of courtesans and concubines) is well documented from Spain through India. Rabbinic law is well customized to the slave trade (matrilineality). Slavery friendly aspects of Rabbinic halakhah may be an important reason Rabbinism won out over Karaitism, whose legal codes were not nearly so friendly to the slave trade.

          Jews were heavily involved in serving feudal lords in German and Slavic lands. (In historic Poland Jews became de jure untitled members of the 2nd Estate along with the Catholic and Muslim nobility, who were titled members of the 2nd Estate.)

          Serving feudal lords meant making serfdom (i.e., a form of slavery) more economically efficient. Jews developed a lot of expertise in this area and put it to great use in the Atlantic slave trade and in slave economies of the new world.

          I also must note that white slaving is big business in Israel to this day.

          1. I see. That is an interesting article. Pro-Israel groups hacked her facebook account to make a private discussion public?! Wow!

          2. @Elisabeth: My understanding is that she thought she had set the group’s privacy setting to private or closed. But it was actually set to “public.” I did read earlier a claim she’d been hacked. But heard this expanation more recently.

      2. Mr Martillo.

        The question shouldn’t be ‘How much were Jews involved in the slave trade 300 years ago?’

        The question should be, ‘Why is Ms Walker so focused on Jews today’?

        1. Maybe because she is Jewish. I focus on Jewish historical political economics in part because of my Jewish heritage.

          It makes my blood boil when bigoted and prejudiced Jews try to engage in historical cover-ups. We don’t let Germans pull this crap. It is equally intolerable when Jews do it.

          In both cases such falsification makes understanding history impossible.

          1. Mr. Martillo.

            Ms Walker works in public service, not academia. Her main concerns should be in public welfare and in good governance, not Jews.
            There are already too many people taken up with that concern.

          2. While perfectly willing to talk about crimes associated with non-Jewish groups, Lotta despicably is unwilling to talk about crimes associated with Jewish groups. She is the perfect Jewish bigot that should be scorned by all decent human beings.

            We suffer to this day the ill effects of the German Nazism and of African slavery.

            I would consider a German denier of the German role in Holocaust to be unfit for public service. Likewise I consider a Jewish denier of the role of Jews in African slavery to be unfit for public service.

          3. BTW, I have to point out that Judaism, Jewishness, and Jewry (יהדות in Modern Israeli Hebrew — one word) play a big role in USA and in UK politics.

            The JLM, AIPAC, and the Israel Lobby in general are obvious examples.

            The general public should be more and not less interested in Jews and in Jewish history. Bigots like Lotta are trying to pull a fast one when they imply there is something underhanded in being interested in Jews and in Jewish history.

          4. Mr. Martillo.

            “She is the perfect Jewish bigot that should be scorned by all decent human beings”

            Rest assured, Sir. I am not perfect. Not even close.
            Nor am I Jewish. Nor am I a bigot.

            All of which makes you….? What?

          5. So Lotta is a lackey of Jewish bigots and not a Jewish bigot.

            Should we care? (And I don’t in fact believe her although I must admit that I have encountered some German non-Jews that despicably feel obligated to deflect any criticism of Jews even if the criticism is totally justified and long overdue.)

            Both groups don’t want any reasonable historical or contemporary scrutiny of Jewish behavior.

            Both groups are despicable.

          6. Mr Martillo.

            You sound like a man who carries around a lot of anger and hate.
            Try letting some of that go, and you’ll see, someone will soon come along to love you.
            Life is so short and precious.

            You’ve said some very hurtful things about me, so I will no longer reply to your comments.

          7. @ Lotta: The comment rules (read them) say comments must be substantive. Giving personal advice to fellow commenters is not substantive. Stay on topic. Comment directly on the subject of the post.

          1. @ Lotta: This is not a substantive comment. Read the comment rules. Write a comment that contains an argument & offers proof for it. Merely publishing a link with an obscure comment is not that.

    2. Didn’t you have anything else than J Post ? I read the FB exchange between Walker and someone else a while back, and she didn’t speak about ‘Jews’ but ‘many Jews’ and it was in the context of the discussion: saying that Jews had not only been victims throughout their entire history (and Walker has both African and Jewish ancestry) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/anti-semitism-row-momentum-organiser-jackie-walker-readmitted-to-labour-party-following-racism-a7053966.html

    3. @ Lotta: Actually Jews were financiers of the African slave trade in Holland, Brazil & even in the American South. Historical studies of the slave trade have proven Walker’s claims correct. What I find extraordinary about people like you is that you wag your finger knowingly as if the whole world should understand the obvious perfidy of statements like Walker’s, when you don’t know a thing about the subjects you’re talking about.

  3. Of course the Zionists want to monopolise the Holocaust horror story for themselves, and have been pretty successful up to the 1980s, until disabled people like me began throw the spotlight on the thousands of disabled people who the Nazis kindly assisted in their “suicide”. I wrote the play “The First To Go” to both inform the ignorant public of this secret history, and to break the Zionist’s with-holding of the truth.

  4. It’s utterly shameful and unacceptable that pro-Zionist is now the accepted norm in the Labour party, etc. – i.e. pro war crimes, genocide and slaughter. This, despite the fact that many Jews condemn Zionism as a political movement which uses their religion as a cover and a powerful tool to enlist support. Plus, extremely harmful to Jews endeavoring to co-exist peacefully with non-Jews worldwide.
    And all based on a book which is based on a 6,000 year-old Earth and ‘creationism’. Totally at odds with the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution, etc. Even more bizarre is the fact that many Zionist rabbis accept evolution which proves that the Bible is a work of fiction. But, still cling to the claim on Palestine which is based on the same work of fiction.

  5. Because I have good number of years in Holocaust studies, I have to point out that Newmark has a point.

    We can say that German Nazi genocide of Jews and others starts in 1933 when the German Nazis took power. The Holocaust became official Nazi policy at the Wannsee in January 1942 even though it started a few months earlier. The Final Solution was directed solely at European Jews and the Soviet political class, which the German Nazis considered thoroughly Jewish.

    I don’t consider the Holocaust to be a particularly good example of genocide because it was in many regards blowback for the important role that so many Jews played in Soviet atrocities and genocide.

    If it were up to me, I would replace the Holocaust Memorial Day with Nakba Observance because the Nakba is far more typical of white racist European genocidal settler colonialism in which white racist Europeans destroy or drive out a native non-European population so that it can be replaced with a white European population possibly accompanied by a favored non-European lackey population meant to serve the white Europeans. The genocidal goals of the white racist invaders in Palestine are well documented back to the 1880s. In addition, the Nakba continues right before our eyes.

    One can argue that German Nazi (and more recently Serb nationalist) evil lies in the effort to do in Europe what white Europeans had been doing outside of Europe since the beginning of the 16th century.

    1. You make an important point Joachim. and deepen our understanding of what happened to Jews and other victims of the Nazi’s. By framing the Nazi persecutions as an expression of European racist colonialism you show how the specific construction of European racism has been nurtured and developed as an aspect/justification for the dehumanising of Africans by Europeans exploiting their resources over centuries. Many Nazi depictions of Jews give them negroid features and draw on images of the devil and demons that were honed by Europeans in Africa.
      All these attempts to racialise people, to differentiate between races are, in my view, done in order to make a distinction between the ‘haves’ and ‘must-not-haves’. That is why racism is increasingly important to the zionist project and a powerful scourge in modern Israel today. It is a bulwark in justifying the European appropriation of Palestine and the dehumanising of Palestinians.

      I have no disagreement with anything Jackie Walker imperfectly tried to express at the JLM meeting. I’m familiar enough with the issues to work out what she was taking issue with and what she was imperfectly trying to express in a hostile meeting.
      What I do take issue with her and Momentum steering group is her decision to attend that event and to speak as she did, in a personal capacity. She indulged herself, used clumsy language to express what sometimes came across as half framed thoughts that were disrespectful in tone. In doing so she abdicated her responsibility as a senior representative of Momentum, in a setting run by one of our main Zionist accusers and an architect of the year long smear campaign. She walked into a trap set for us all, showed extreme political nativity and has helped to damage our cause and opened herself up to further abuse.
      As soon as that workshop was announced some time back many of us knew it was a sham – part of the ongoing smear campaign – and a show of strength moment for the JLM and Zionists and those weaponising antisemitism to attack Corbyns Labour and Momentum.
      So why was Jackie Walker present giving credence to their claims to be genuine? Which she confirms in her statement issued after the sxxx hit the fan.
      Many of us anti Zionist Jews face these same hostile encounters repeatedly; in our shuls, our families, in political activities daily, weekly, all our lives.
      She spoke as though she is a novice in these engagements.

      Hundreds of thousands of members and supporters deserved better from our national leaders and from her at that event.

      There is nothing being said or done to Jackie Walker and Momentum and Chakrobarti and Corbyn by the zionist racists and the anti Corbyn camp since that event that was not already being said and done. But now they are strengtgened and overshadowing an excellent re-start to Corbyns leadership and the focus on our policies.
      I feel angry and let down by the lack of integrity and failure of judgement and leadership displayed by Jackie Walker and Momentum steering group who let this happen.

      Hundreds of thousands of members and supporters deserve better.

  6. Superb!

    One other aspect of misrepresentation of the holocaust that seldom, if ever, merits discussion is the fact that many non-Jews, both by Jewish and secular definition, were murdered AS JEWS. Many victims were considered to be and therefore consigned to gas and flames because they were defined as Jewish by NAZI criteria.

    They didn’t live or worship or even have extraordinary traffic with Jews in their everyday lives. Their crime was to having ANY Jews in their family or ancestry carried to an insane extreme. Systematized murder took place in double, not single, digit millions!

    Though Jews were cursed with ‘top billing’, they were far from comprising the entire cast.

    Sacrifices of ALL HOLOCAUST VICTIMS have been hijacked and trivialized by a Zionist attempt to rewrite history for political advantage and as cover for their own crimes against humanity. There is NOTHING JEWISH about ethnic cleansing and ‘resettling’ populations in ghettos where water and food are used to oppress and labor is captive.

    1. Jews can be defined:

      by German Nazi racial definition,

      by Zionist ethnic definition,

      by Soviet national definition, and

      by either Rabbinic or Karaite religious definitions.

      Only the religious definitions make sense.

      Even in historic Poland, which was the native homeland of the vast majority of people that descend from Jewish religious communities and that have ever lived, there simply was not a single Jewish racial, ethnic, or national group.

      Some descended from Jewish religious communities had ancestors that spoke Yiddish/Zhargon and earlier ancestors that were non-Jewish Slavs or non-Jewish Turks that converted to (Rabbinic) Judaism.

      Others descended from Jewish religious communities had ancestors that spoke Kypczak and earlier ancestors that were non-Jewish Tatars that converted to (Karaite) Judaism.

      Thus in historic Poland before secularization became common, there were two distinct Jewish religious communities that practiced variant forms of Judaism. There was not a single Jewish racial, ethnic, or national group, which however defined is just propaganda nonsense of the respective ideologies.

  7. Friends of Israel can not bring themselves to face the truth. Jews from a much-oppressed minority owe allegiance to an imperialistic state in alliance with an imperial power whose reach is worldwide. I started as a friend of Israel but now an implacable foe on account of its attitude to Palestinians. However, I have all the time in the world for Jews and I hold them as a role model for minority communities trying to build a life for themselves in hostile environments.

  8. I was just wondering. Is Jackie Walker actually Jewish? She looks half-black to me. I could be wrong. It’s a common name. Could you confirm? Thanks.

    1. You mean that, because the Jewish masters slept with their female slaves, their offspring is not Jewish in the Halachic sense? I do not know about her exact heritage. A female Jewish ancestor could have been involved later.

      1. My intention was to get Richard to confirm what he knows, as the point of Walker’s Jewishness has not been mentioned elsewhere. If it is the case, the attacks upon her are discredited, or they will turn onto self-hating Jew.

        I’m imagining Black father/Jewish mother, but I wanted to clear this matter up, as the subject is sensitive in Britain.

        1. @ Laguerre: Her Jewishness has been widely written about. She published an entire book about her mother which went over this ground. The reason it is “sensitive” in the UK is that many Jews there do not want to acknowledge a Black woman who is an anti-Zionist as Jewish. That’s their problem. Not Walker’s.

          1. She writes: ” I am Jewish, my Russian born Jewish father and Jamaican born mother of Jewish descent brought together in their shared political commitment to the Civil Rights movement of 1950s America.”

      2. @ Elisabeth: Walker’s father is Jewish. She considers herself Jewish. She is Jewish as far as I’m concerned. But Orthodox rabbis would dispute this. Personally, they have no standing in matters of personal identity as far as I’m concerned.

  9. 786 I’m curious about this…there seems to be a bit more parsing than I’d like but I may be in error (wouldn’t be the first time, by far).
    Is is being proposed that the only dead who fit under the rubric of “Holocaust” are those who were targeted by name, i.e., European Jews and the Soviet political class, after 1941? What of the Gypsies? The Freemasons? The hundreds of thousands of Germans (and some Austrians) who fell afoul of the NSDAP? What of those who perished prior to 1941?
    But I have always considered large numbers of Germans and Gypsies as victims of the Holocaust because their deaths were attributable, not to the war, but to the policies of the NSDAP. Is it being asserted that the majority of victims of Buchenwald and Dachau–to cite just two infamous examples–were not technically “Holocaust Victims” because they were not Jews or Soviet ideologues, or because those were concentration camps and not extermination camps? It’s a touchy subject, so I must append the disclaimer which has, unfortunately, become customary for me when discussing such issues by assuring everypony that I am inquiring out of genuine curiosity. Is there any general consensus on how the Holocaust is delineated? Thanks.

    1. @ Wulf: It must include all groups designated by the Nazis for extermination, not just Jews. Though Jews were among the most hated of the Nazi’s victims and millions of them were murdered. So perhaps we have “pride of place” in an ironic way. But all must be recognized. The problem is that the Israel Lobby wishes to monopolize Jewish suffering and deny it to others. It seeks to deny other Holocausts like the Armenian genocide. That’s wrong.

      1. Sorry, I did not know the rule. It’s now a new day.

        Reasonable people have different takes on the terminology of genocide.

        I think most scholars in Holocaust and genocide studies agree that the German Nazi government ran several genocides in parallel. The genocide of Jews began in 1933 and initially consisted of driving Jews out of German-controlled territory. The Endlösung (German)/Final Solution/Holocaust/שואה (Hebrew)/חורבן (Yiddish), which started in 1941 and became official at the Wannsee Conference in 1942, was the final phase of the genocide of those that were Jewish according to German Nazi racial definition. This definition included the Soviet political class and sometimes did not include Karaite Tatar Jews, whose treatment by German Nazis was inconsistent.

        Some historians credit Eli Wiesel with giving the term “Holocaust” its current usage.

        I consider this usage to be completely obnoxious because it is from Greek ὁλόκαυστος for burnt offering (to the gods). The Greek term translates the Hebrew קָרְבַּן עוֹלָה. Elie Wiesel generally uses Holocaust to suggest that Jews murdered in the Holocaust were an offering for the creation of Israel. I prefer the Hebrew term שואה/shoah, which in point of fact has a core meaning of catastrophe, cataclysm, or disaster. It is similar to نكبة/nakba, which means catastrophe, calamity, or disaster although no one ever points out the likeness of meanings.

        In common usage, Holocaust is often used as equivalent to genocide or to describe all German genocide in toto, but these usages are misleading.

        I don’t consider the Holocaust to be a good example of genocide because many if not most of the perpetrators, who were Slavs, East Europeans, or Soviet nationals and not Germans, were seeking revenge for Soviet atrocities, in which Soviet national Jews figured prominently as planners or perpetrators. A typical example of such Soviet atrocities was the Katyn Massacre, in which the highest ranking Soviet national Jewish planner was Lazar Kaganovich. Many Soviet national Jews were involved in this crime up and down the chain of command in the NKVD, which was disproportionately Soviet national Jewish.

        The Holocaust/שואה should be treated as a combination of genocide and blowback.

        As I previously stated, I would like Holocaust Memory Day renamed Nakba and Genocide Observance Day. We don’t remember the Nakba because it continues before our eyes. Genocide Observance includes the German Nazi, Serb nationalist, Czarist, Armenian, Assyrian, Rwandan, and other genocides.

        Renaming Holocaust Memory Day thus might be effective in sending a message to the State of Israel and to my evil relatives, who together probably count as the largest contributors to Netanyahu’s political campaigns.

        1. @ Joachim: I vehemently object to blaming the mass extermination of European Jewry on “Jewish Bolsheviks” and “blowback.” It’s disgusting. Stop doing that here. I found everything else in your comment worth reading. But stay away from that if you wish to continue commenting here.

          1. [comment deleted: when I tell you not to do something it doesn’t mean do the opposite.]

  10. Why not call it “Holocausts (plural) Memorial Day. It eliminates any confusion – there have been many other genocides and does not denigrate the crime that the Nazis committed (not just against the Jews). No sane person pretends that extermination took place or tries to excuse it.

    The British people and the Labour movement in particular have always been supportive of immigrants, especially Jews. My father, a life-long Labour supported, fought the fascists at Cable Street in 1936.

    Labour members have a right to criticise Israeli government policies. Trying to label us antisemites is not going to succeed. My best friend was a Jew. He is dead but would agree with me. The “mobbing” of Jackie Walker is horrible to watch. I shall continue to defend her.

  11. In another 10-20 years the remaining people who personally remember the Holocaust will be dead. In another 30-40 years after that, the children of holocaust victims will be gone. This means that by about 2075, the Nazi horrors will be the history books, but the personal, emotional experiences of the holocaust will no longer exist. It will thus eventually become like any major event in human history, including other massive horrors that do not evoke emotional responses as does the Holocaust now. It will become part of the history of the Jews and others. But this won’t stop people from “using” the holocaust for their own political arguments. But it will be like using arguments invoking the Spanish Inquisition, the American Civil War or the Crusades.

    It is clear that many Jews and Israelis use the holocaust by “owning” it and bashing their opponents with it. At the same time Israel’s opponents (including here on this blog) similarly use it to bash Israel, drawing parallel to their behavior with that of the Nazis or showing that Jews collaborated or in some other way were responsible.

    But its all pointless, because nobody is convinced, it doesn’t matter, its just used to rally the troops on either side. Some people love to focus on the past rather than the future.

    Enjoy yourselves!

  12. Happy “L’Shana Tova” everyone.

    This is the beginning of the 5777th year of the Jewish Calendar.

    I mention that fact to demonstrate that within the context of Jewish/Middle Eastern history, we are,in fact,
    dealing with a cornucorpia of worms! (or flowers – if you’d rather).

    Most people use the terms Jewish and Semitic as synonymous. They clearly aren’t! After 3500 years of.
    diaspora, thanks to the Babylonian and Roman Empires, is there anyone naive enough to believe that the
    Jewish bloodline (not to mention OTHER Arabic strains) have remained even 50% Semitic, much less 100%
    as the rhetoric would imply!

    Further, is one to infer that “Gypsies” were included within the Semitic family?

    1. The example Holocaust usages provided by Lotta are metaphorical. The Israeli Declaration of Independence in Hebrew uses שואה and טבח (massacre). Holocaust is a completely misleading and ideological translation of שואה, to which (I believe) most genuine scholars of Shoah and genocide studies object or with which they are uncomfortable. Disaster is a better translation, but it is probably preferable to use the Hebrew word just as ܣܝܦܐ (Sayfo/a = sword in Syriac) is employed for the genocide of Assyrians in 1914–1918, 1922–1925.

      Because the Nakba is the best documented of all genocides from the early planning phase in the 1880s through the major genocide actions of 1947-8 and ongoing crimes of genocide to this day while Holocaust memorialization is corrupted by use of the Holocaust to justify genocide against the native population of Palestine, Holocaust Memorial Day should be renamed Nakba and Genocide Awareness Day.

      Of course, the German genocide of Jews is the 2nd most well-documented genocide. It starts in 1933 with the ongoing effort to drive Jews out of Germany. The Holocaust starts in 1941-2, and there are legitimate disputes about its origin, and, of course, a discussion of misuse of the Holocaust to justify genocide against the native Palestinians should in the future be a major part of Nakba and Genocide Awareness Day.

      1. You are absolutely right in your objection to the word ‘Holocaust’. I think it only came in use in Europe after the airing of the TV series with the same name. I remember that at the time, my parents talked about the inappropriateness of the word in the same way that you do. But it became such an acceptable term afterwards, that I also started to use it. But in my more careful moments I avoid it, and I use terms like ‘shoah’, or ‘the genocide on’ or ‘ extermination/mass murder of’ European Jews, or things like that.

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