Readers will be familiar with this site’s past scrutiny of Momentum, Corbyn’s Revolutionary Guard. The organisation now has branches right across the country, and they always seem to be willing to defend even the most indefensible behaviour from the hard left.
Against that background, meet Bradford Momentum, the local branch covering the constituency of Naz Shah, the Labour MP who has just been suspended for, among other things, supporting the deportation of Israelis to America and complaining that “the Jews are rallying” to fix online polls.
Shah herself has conceded that her views were anti-semitic and wrong. But, apparently, Bradford Momentum does not accept that to be the case.
This morning, the group’s Facebook page shared a blogpost disputing her apology:
They’ve deleted it since I tweeted about it, but the full piece can be found here. Here are a few extracts:
Nothing she said was anti-semitic – in fact, it was funny
‘…there is nothing anti-Semitic in what Naz Shah has said. She made what was quite a flippant humorous joke…’
Shah’s apology was forced out of her like a defendant at a Stalinist showtrial
‘Naz Shah has confessed to her comments being anti-Semitic. Isn’t that enough proof? No. The defendants in the Stalin purge trials also confessed to being Trotsky’s agents and more. It is perfectly possible to create a psychological atmosphere such that people will confess to all manner of things, even though they are not guilty. Police interrogators have, throughout the years, been quite skilled in obtaining false confessions without the need to beat people up or torture them.’
Israeli policy towards Gaza is like that of the Nazis towards the Warsaw ghetto
‘The people of Gaza were and are being subject to a merciless blockade by Israel in which the number of calories per person is calculated by Israel before food is allowed in. There is a previous precedent for this. Under the rule of Governor General Hans Frank in the Nazi occupied Polish General-Gouvernment, the number of calories allowed into the Warsaw ghetto was also calculated.’
Concern about anti-semitism is ‘bogus’ because British Jews are ‘extremely prosperous’
‘Not one of the hypocrites on the Labour Right who have condemned the ‘anti-Semitism’ of Naz Shah condemned Israel’s bombing of Gaza or have campaigned for the lifting of the siege. That is the issue not the bogus issue of anti-Semitism. Racism isn’t prejudice. It is about the exercise of power. Jews didn’t suffer because of peoples’ opinions in Europe but because of what was done to them. Britain’s Jews are not oppressed, economically or racially. On the contrary British Jews live in a golden age. There is no state racism directed at Jews, as opposed to Muslims and Black people. British Jewry is an extremely prosperous and privileged community.’
The Israeli Government is behind a propaganda campaign to destabilise Jeremy Corbyn
‘What is happening is that the millions of pounds that the Israeli government has devoted to propaganda is being spent now to destabilise Jeremy Corbyn and the new Labour leadership. They are hunting down every tweet, email etc. in order to create an atmosphere of permanent instability.’
Jon Lansman, Momentum’s founder, is holding secret meetings with Jewish groups in the Labour Party
‘Jon Lansman, Chair of Momentum is holding secret talks with the Jewish Labour Movement, British branch of the Israeli Labour Party, and Labour Friends of Israel in the naive hope that they will be supportive of Corbyn’
When will Labour accept that it has a growing problem with anti-semitism, and that the influx of Corbyn fans has made that situation worse? For how long will the Party continue to refuse to act on the issue?