Antisemitism row erupts at Hackney Labour party meeting
Hackney is home to more than 20,000 Charedi Orthodox Jews
A Hackney Labour meeting descended into “uproar” after a party activist spoke out, making a connection between Zionism and Nazism.
A motion was put forward at a Labour Party branch meeting of Cazenove and Springfield wards earlier this month, declaring that opposition to the Jewish state is not the same as antisemitism.
The proposer of the motion is said to have then drawn a comparison between Zionism and Nazism, and was accused of conflating the two.
Rabbi Abraham Pinter, a member of Hackney’s Orthodox Jewish community and a former Labour councillor, said the incident heightened his concerns about antisemitism in the Labour party.
Rabbi Pinter told the Hackney Citizen: “I found this hugely upsetting. I acted out of character and started shouting at the proposer.
“The chair then went on to apologise to the member who made this outrageous analogy for the interruption.
“I was so upset and very traumatised. I was physically sick when I came home.”
“I didn’t feel like I was getting much support from other members – although I did [later] get a few supportive calls from members of the party.”
Hackney Labour party declined to reveal to the Hackney Citizen the identities of the proposer of the motion and the chair of the meeting.
Rabbi Pinter said: “I don’t want to target anybody in particular or encourage disciplinary action.
“I wanted to raise that the issue needs to be addressed in principle. It’s an issue for the whole party.”
‘Provocative’
The motion, which was put forward at the meeting on 12 May, stated:
“Since the Labour Party cannot function without rational debate, we affirm that: The rejection of the ideology of Zionism cannot be conflated with or regarded as being antisemitism; Non-racist protests against actions of the Jewish State of Israel cannot accurately be described as manifestations of antisemitism.”
Rabbi Pinter said using the term ‘Jewish State’ was provocative. “Why use that term if you don’t want to be provocative? Normally you would just say Israel,” he said.
Cllr Michael Desmond, one of the Labour councillors for Hackney Downs ward said: “Unfortunately while putting forward that motion it was implied that Zionism had a connection to Nazism. This led to a bit of a melee and the chair brought the meeting to order.
“After the uproar died down I and many others got involved to say it was completely unacceptable and inappropriate.
“The person seconding the motion withdrew his support so essentially it didn’t reach a conclusion and the matter was withdrawn.”
Susan Fajana-Thomas, the chair of Hackney North Labour party, said an investigation has been launched into the incident.
“We have been briefed about the meeting and we are trying to establish exactly what happened.
“We have processes in place for dealing with racism and if our investigation turns up anything we will deal with it as a constituency Labour party,” she said.
However Ms Fajana-Thomas said they had not received any formal complaints.
By all means criticise the policies of the Israeli government . There is nothing wrong with that . Israel has a robust democracy and an open and free media unlike any of its neighbours. However antizionism goes beyond criticism of government . It calls into question Israel’s very right to exist and on the basis Israelis are highly unlikely to accede to what is in effect an antisemites charter , the only means of accomplishing such an outcome would be by bloodshed on an unprecedented scale.
So yes criticise Israel’s government by all means , but when that crosses over into denial of Jewish right to self determination within any border while demanding that same right for Palestine , it is patently antisemitic. Labour is in denial .
A non-story run for the purposes of mischief making.
We shouId applaud Rabbi Pinter for standing up for what is right
This story well done and it needed to be reported. But why on earth do you have a photo with it of Hassidic Jews? And why do you call them “Orthodox”? Maybe this will help you out: the ones with the big furry hats? They’re Hassids or Chassids. They belong to one of a handful of teeny tiny sects that started in the 1600s in Poland. And sort of like the Amish in North America they hold onto olden days ways of doing things. Especially clothes. Orthodox Jews don’t. (And lots of Jews including secular Jews like me don’t agree with the version of Judaism, which isn’t ‘orthodox’ anyway, that the Orthodox practice.) Next time you want to photo to illustrate ‘Jewish neighborhood’ just saw a falafel place.
Of all the things the council could talk about.. Syria, climate change, immigration, crime in Hackney? No, it’s always the iniquities of a tiny middle eastern democracy. Pathetic.
Seems he didn’t, though.
Petuniacat00 ; it’s like the scene from a Woody Allen film (I can’t remember which one).
He’s sitting round a table with his new girlfriend and her family. He’s dressed and looks as Woody Allen always does. That is, until we see him through the eyes of his girlfriends mother; she sees a nasty little jew with payes (dangling hair by the ears), a big black hat and a long black coat. The perceived stereotype for all jews. As usual, Woody makes his point while being hilarious.
Palestinians were allied to Hitler.
Google Haj Amin Al Husseini, Hitler.
“The rejection of the ideology of Zionism cannot be conflated with or regarded as being antisemitism”;
In fact denying Jews self determination in their historic homeland while extending this right to Palestinians (a right I and most UK Jews support and would like to see upheld) is racist. The normal response to this from the Left is that they support a single binational state. Why then do they oppose all Jewish settlement in the West Bank (with the provisio that the 1967 borders will need altering after 60 years of changing demographics – and that this alteration should not be at the expense of the quality or quantity of land allocated to the Palestinian state), even when settlers have paid for their land? Is it not (to use the Left’s own terms) ethnic cleansing?
In fact why are the same people who supported separation for Scotland demanding suzerainty for the Jews? Why is the whole idea of national borders and national identity undermined only for one people?
“Palestinian were allied to Hitler.” Actually one Palestinian leader held inconclusive talks with Hitler but, like Netanyahu, let’s not let the actual facts confuse a declamatory soundbite. Using your logic the Jews were also allied to Hitler via Avraham Stern.
These “teeny tiny” sects make up the vast majority of all Jews in Hackney which is home to the largest Hasdic community in Europe. One third of British Jews under 18 years of age are in fact Haredi of which the majority are Hasidic. The picture represents Hackney’s orthodox Jews very well. It is a picture of typical Jews in Upper Clapton Hackney
Everyone has a right to critisize any goverment, but we all know that it’s the antisemites who do it
Why is it that these Labour meetings discuss only the wrongs of the Jews 2,000 miles away? Why do they not issue a whisper about – for example – the Turks who invaded and have held northern Cyprus for over 40 years? Answer – no Jews among the invaders to have a dig at !
John D Chart
Am not Jewish but as a decades long Labour supporter I am embarrassed of my party. Well done Rabbi. No need to apologise.
Indeed, it is not Israel but Islamism that has a long history of links with National Socialism. Paul Berman’s excellent The Flight of the Intellectuals tells this story.
The Palestinians had a much closer relationship with the Nazis than through the Mufti and his supporters and the Palestinians would have prefered the Germans to have won the war and then been able to deal with Jews is the manner developed in Europe.
Just in case you don’t know what Jews look like, here’s a picture of some.
Strangely it is ok for Zionists to use Nazi analogies e.g comparing a peaceful protest outside a shop selling illegal goods from Israeli illegal colonies with Krystalnacht.
And it ill behoves Harvey and Jonathan Hoffman to complain given their long association with the English Defence League.
tem alguma coisa contra os judeus haredi ou ortodoxos
Eu sou judeu haredi sefardi mas não gosto ouvir falar mal do meu povo seja ele como for.
E assim os judeus hassidicos e um minag dos אַשְׁכֲּנָזִים ashkenazim e um costume diferente por isso cala se e não fale mal do povo
E se você judeu ” petuniacat00″ não devia falar mal do povo porque nos somos נשמה אחת (uma única alma) por isso seja la quem você for mas não fala mal do povo .
The bigotry in the Labour party is sickening. These people are hypocrites who pretend to be anti-racist, but in reality are vicious anti-semites.
As an Israeli member of the Israel socialist party meretz I am dumbfounded. Maybe we better double our army and send operatives from shin bet to Hackney. Where ever that bedeviled place is.
No. It’s not OK to use Nazism as a metaphor. So two wrongs. No rights.
There is nothing “illegal” about Jews selling their goods on land they have paid for. While forced expropriation is illegal, you have no evidence to link specific products to such abuses, and in fact much of the produce of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is the result of partnerships between Jews and Palestinians. Like Soda Stream, which just made hundreds of Palestinian workers unemployed thanks to sympathising bleeding hearts like yourself.
Or do you think that a Jewish presence in the land allocated to a future Palestinian state is so intolerable that it in itself is the illegality? Do you think all contracts of sale of land to Jews are unacceptable?
Do you boycott Turkish Cypriot products because of North Cyprus?
Are you the racist?
Zionism is not Judaism
ask the Charedi community of Stamford Hill who are resolutely anti Zionist and anti Israel
conflating the two so that anti Zionism or opposition to Israeli government policy are claimed to be antisemitism is an insult to jewish people around the globe and in Israel who oppose the brutality of the occupation
Once the moral panic is over … and one has to hope that such a campaign is not evidence of American-style Right wing Zionist politics entering the British arena nor “death by soundbyte” politics… the issue will no doubt return to being the business for historians alone which no one else has the attention span to consider.
Historically speaking, the foremost Zionists most certainly had connections to the German National Socialist Party and the analysis only becomes worse if one extends that other fascists.
Herzl allied himself with Count von Plehve (“an ardent supporter of zionism”) less than four months after the Kishinev pogrom; Jabotinsky made a pact with Petlyura, the Ukrainian leader whose forces massacred some 100,000 Jews in 1918-21; Ben-Gurion allied himself with the French extreme right during the Algerian war; the terrorist Irgun and Stern gangs looked to the Nazi for support; and Joachim Prinz, vice-chairman of the World Jewish Congress book, ‘Wir Juden (We, Jews)’ was a synthesis of Nazi and Zionist ideas which saw the two movements as ideologically complementary.
As did much of the movement at that time.
Furthermore, most contemporary criticism from the Left was that had the the Zionist Federations thrown in their weight and wealth with Leftist movements, instead of attempting to succour the favours from the Nazis and their ilk, there was a good chance that Nazism might not have risen in the first place. Both the German and Hungarian Zionist Federations came up for specific criticisms for their willingness to collude.
However, rather than fall for a simplicistic “black-white/good-bad” dichomoty, or become confused by the vitriol being expressed on all sides, one should see what is going in two primary lights;
Firstly, a fight between Left and Right, liberal and ultra conservative – and even Fascist elements within Judaism – over the ownership over a spiritual idea … and, indeed, Israel itself.
Secondly, an exercise in power and influence – and its vigorous silencing and manipulation of politicians and press – being weilded by Right wing Zionist elements largely within the USA. Not all of whom are even Jewish.
Coordinated influence seen in such movements as those to outlaw democratic boycotting of rouge states.
It is difficult to know which is the most concerning.
It’s also worth remembering that many of the most vigorous critics of Zionism and current Israeli policies are both Jewish and within Israel itself. Israel herself has a far more free debate going than is allowed in, say, the USA. We should follow its example and avoid going down the American way.
Suffering and oppression are sadly part of the human condition. It appears our species takes it in turns just as who is to suffer and who is to oppress. Our sympathies today should clearly lie with those who are current victims of oppression rather than oppressors who seek to exploit the historical oppressions of others long dead and unrelated to themselves … many of whom were willingly and knowingly sacrificed by Zionist leaders for the Zionist cause.
Many on the Left shared in the dream. Sadly it became just another nightmare of Right wing/European Imperialistic genocide and ethnic cleansing – that is not properly taught in schools. Its shockwaves continue to reverberate and cause understandable reactions across the Middle East only to our disadvantage.
I am sorry, I have no idea how to fit such a short introduction to the issue into a Twitter sized soundbyte.
What more important, in this age of multiculturalism, is that the debate was also the values of racial purity versus the virtues of integrationism and assimilation, Zionism favouring the former.
The Zionists found favour with the Nazis, even the SS, precisely due to this and entered into memorandums and agreements with them. Officially, Zionism was not seen as being in conflict with the National Socialism and, in return, International Zionist representatives announced that Jews should not take part in the anti-Fascist movements.
(An order, by the way, Left-wing Zionists such as the Poalei Zion and the Hashomer Hatzair ignored).
As Herzl himself wrote, “Anti-Semites will become our surest friends, anti-Semitic countries our allies.”
From 1933 to 1941, the German Zionist federation, was committed to a policy of compromise and collaboration with Hitler and the Nazi authorities, even as they persecuted other Jews. In return, the Zionist leaders were granted special treatment separate from the “integrationist” Jews the Nazis were hunting down, e.g. in Bavaria, the Gestapo instructed the police that members of the Zionist organization should not be treated with “the harshness needed” in dealing with the members of German Jewish assimilationist organizations.
Zionist leaders collaborated with the Nazis for eight years, their primary goal being to create a Zionist State, a racist world view which made them more anti-British than anti- Nazi.
The Zionist leaders even went as far as to sabotaging the anti-Fascist struggles. To them, the aim of creating a Zionist state in Palestine was more important that saving Jewish lives. They offered to break the boycott which the world anti-Fascists were trying to organize to bring Hitler to his knees and, in return, were offered privileged opportunities. Many future Israeli prime ministers took advantages from said “haavara” agreement, including Ben Gurion, Moshe Sharret, Golda Meir, and Levi Eshkol.
(It was more important to save Zionist capital from Nazi Germany than to save the lives of poor Jews who were seen as burdens to the cause. According to “Judenrat” by Isaiah Trunk, “50% of Jews could have escaped if they had not followed the instructions of the Jewish councils”).
It is paradoxical, given the current underhand challenge being made against the politicians and democratic values of the United Kingdom that, for them, the worst enemy was “assimilation”.
In a memorandum to the Nazi party, the leaders of the federation wrote, “we too are against mixed marriages and for the maintaining of the purity of the Jewish group…The Jews who are conscious of their identity and in whose name we speak, can find a place within the structure of the German State, for they are free of the resentment that the assimilated Jews must feel … we believe in the possibility of loyal relations between those Jews conscious of their community and the German [Nazi] State … Zionism hopes it will be able to collaborate with a government that is fundamentally hostile to the Jews.”
Addressing Jews who supported the Pre-War international anti-German boycott, they called it, “essentially non-Zionist”.
Reinhardt Heydrich, the head of the S.S. security, wrote of them, “We must separate the Jews into two categories, the Zionists and the partisans of assimilation. The Zionists profess a strictly racial concept … our good wishes and our official goodwill go with them.”
Rudolf Kastner, the vice-president of the Hungarian Zionist organization, negotiated with Eichmann to allow the departure to Palestine of 1,684 “useful” Jews in return for allowing Eichmann to make 460,000 Hungarian believe that they were not being deported to Auchwitz but simply being transferred.
Kastner went on to deliberately committed perjury in court to defend his Nazi collaborators under the instruction of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress. ried for collaboration with the Nazis. Kastner was never tried for collaboration out of fear the revelations it would bring about would collapse the government of Israel.
The most extremist Zionist groups, actually advocated an alliance with Hitler and Nazi Germany, against Great Britain and sought to establish a nationalist totalitarian regime in Israel.
“… Cooperation between the Israel liberation movement and the new order in Europe conform with one of the speeches of the Chancellor of the Third Reich, in which Hitler stressed the need to use every combination of coalition to isolate and defeat England.”
“The establishment of the historical Jewish State on a national and totalitarian base, linked by a treaty to a German Reich, could contribute to the reinforcement in the future of Germany’s position in the Middle East.”
“The cooperation of the Israel liberation movement would go in the direction of the recent speeches of the Reich chancellor, in which Mr. Hitler stressed that all negotiations and any alliance should serve to isolate England and to defeat it.”
Yitzhak Shamir, actually a Russian named Yezernitsky, was arrest by the British authorities for “terrorism and collaboration with the Nazi enemy” but went on to become Israel’s Prime Minister and political leader. Ben Gurion described him as “a racist, ready to destroy all the Arabs in his dream of unification of Israel”.
“[Shamir] can be accused of racism, but then one will have to put on trial the entire Zionist movement, which is founded on the principle of a purely Jewish entity in Palestine.”
Well pointed out!
Labour’s obsession and love to torment.
The problem is, Israel is not democracy. Except, perhaps, in a similar manner to how pre-Mandella South Africa was a “democracy”, or the Southern States of the USA were a “democracy”.
Israel is moving towards a being an exclusive and totalitarian theocracy which is destablising, and being used as an excuse to destabilise, a very sensitive and critical region. The politics are a problem as critical as climate change etc and, ultimately would even effect the running costs of the Council (e.g. oil price fluctations).
Imagine an England where only Christians have human rights and are allowed to marry each other etc etc etc, or a Britain where the English roll tanks over Welsh villages, having driven out the original occupants, and build condos on top of where they once stood; where they divert water from Welsh farmers, and build impossible obstructions between them and their markets, which requires manually off loading and re-loading every truck of produce on its way.
It was not the council discussing it, it was the local Labour Party; and it’s not the job of the council to fix Syria, climate change, immigration etc.
However, when it comes to the question of divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and Palestinian rights, it does effect how the council is run and it does need to be freely discussed without being obstructed by the habitual strategy of using accusations of antisemitism as a chilling effect.
Hackney has a large Jewish community which is split on the subject of political Zionism but, for the most part, tends to the Right.
It’s a relevant part of our lives to discuss in a mature and honest fashion.
The Left always used to be “obsessed” about human rights, fairness and equality (… career politics these days aside …), and so it’s no wonder that it should be discussed by the party at a local level.
Hackney has a long history of taking a stand about such ethical and human rights abuse.
It’s a terrible and offensive blow to democracy that such stands are now being made illegal in our country and borough, due to American-Israeli Right wing Zionist pressures.
The Mufti spent most of WW2 in Berlin hoping to get active support for his cause from the nazis. So far as I can tell, he did achieve 1 thing – the creation of the various Bosnian SS units. But I think it is stupid and dangerous to attempt to associate nazism with either zionism or palestinian nationalism.