Why the Issues Around What David Miller Said are Important and Why I Decided to Speak Out

The Genocide in Gaza is Now Being Directed by Neo-Nazis such as Ben-Gvir & Smotrich – that is why the Palestine Solidarity Movement Must Retain Its Anti-Racist Credentials

The reaction to my blog David Miller has gone from Asset to Liability and its republication by Jewish Voices for Labour have largely been positive. Most people understand why it is that I have raised the issue.

There have though been a few people and groups who have been critical, for different reasons. It is to them that I am addressing this article.

My main critic is Ian Donovan, whose Draft Theses on the Jews and Modern Imperialism, argues that United States support for Zionism and Israel is a consequence of a ‘pan-national (Jewish) bourgeoisie.’

Jews in the Palestine solidarity/anti-Zionist movement must keep their views to themselves - in singling out Jews this is another example of the anti-Semitic defence of David Miller

To anyone familiar with the international Jewish conspiracy theories, this sounds remarkably familiar. What Ian is essentially arguing is that there is an international Jewish bourgeoisie, a subset of the ruling class, who are responsible for Western imperialism supporting Zionism. In my view this is simply untrue, ahistorical, unsupported by the facts and to be blunt, bonkers.

When the SWP supported Gilad Atzmon and denied he was anti-Semitic!

Ian is someone who finds it difficult to call out anti-Semitism. Thus he supported Gilad Atzmon through thick and thin despite his anti-Semitism being obvious to just about everyone on the left. Even the SWP, after having initially supported him, realised that they were backing a loser.

For anyone with any doubts on the matter I refer them to my blog A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon. For Atzmon, like David Miller, there are no Jewish anti-Zionists. They are simply a fifth column

who will convert (to Zionism) in the next anti-Semitic wave… who makes Zionism into an eternal struggle for ‘Jewish salvation.

In his essay Truth, History, and Integrity Atzmon wrote:

If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?’ ‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? ‘We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative...’ ‘Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next-door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East.’

To Donovan none of this is anti-Semitic. But I do not address this to Ian Donovan but to those who might be taken in by these arguments.

According to Donovan this tweet is not anti-Semitic!

A more substantive argument is that at a time of Genocide in Gaza why am I bothering with anti-Semitism, which is a marginal form of prejudice. This is a strong, indeed the strongest, of all the arguments and merits a response..

It is simply this. Anti-Semitism does not hurt Jews today, certainly not in the West. Of all minority groups Jews are the ones who are protected by a state that is otherwise racist. My concern over anti-Semitism doesn’t relate to Jews but to Palestinians. It is the Palestinians who are most affected by anti-Semitism.

This may be strange but I wrote a whole book, Zionism During the Holocaust in which I explained that but for anti-Semitism there would have been no Zionism. But for Hitler, who drove out two-thirds of the Jews of Germany and exterminated the remainder, there may well not have been a ‘Jewish’ state.

Miller appearing, not once but twice, on the rabidly White Supremacist and neo-Nazi radio show of Stew Peters

The sole justification that the Israeli state has for its racism, genocide and apartheid is anti-Semitism. To indulge in anti-Semitism is to objectively help the Zionists and it confirms their narrative. That is what Miller is doing.

When Miller writes that Jewish activists in the Palestine solidarity movement are potential infiltrators and spies what he is doing is dividing the movement. Even worse he is casting doubt on the motives of Jewish activists. In student occupations, here and in the United States, in the occupations of Congress and Trump Tower, Jewish activists have been to the fore. Miller’s response is that

A basic tenet of anti-imperialism is to begin with suspicion when confronted by possible agents of Empire. And yet leftists around the world are constantly deferring to Jewish 'allies' for analysis on Zionism and West Asia, and even Islam and the Resistance. Not only do these leftists refuse to protect their movements from entryism, they actively solicit, privilege and even worship Jewish opinion about Jewish supremacist crimes.

It is clear from the above who the ‘possible agents of Empire’ are. It is ‘Jewish ‘allies’’. Note the scarequotes. Miller clearly believes that Jews in the solidarity movement are not allies but infiltrators.

It is Miller and a small group around Donovan and the Workers Party who harbour these suspicions. It is no accident that George Galloway is prominent amongst the 52 signatories of Donovan’s petition. Galloway was another person who got on famously with Gilad Atzmon.

In this Tweet on Yuval Abraham, Miller casts more doubt on Jewish anti-Zionists writing that:

It's tiring to even have to say this but there are no 'Israeli' anti-Zionists.... It is doubtful whether there are more than a handful of Jewish anti-Zionists anywhere, particularly if we assess anti-Zionism on a *material* basis rather than on words or sentiments. After all, how many Jewish martyrs have there been in the past 140 on the path to liberate Palestine from Zionism?

Now it is true that there aren’t that many Israeli anti-Zionists. Indeed there are probably more outside Israel than inside. But is anyone seriously suggesting that Ilan Pappe, Miko Peled, Moshe Machover and others I could name are infiltrators? Are Ronnie Barkan and Stavit Sinai, facing gaol terms for their activity with Palestine Action impostors?

Miller’s retweeting of an article from the Mankind Quarterly magazine founded by White Segregationists and neo-Nazis, including its Editor Richard Lynn, was the final straw for me

What is most heartening today is that there has been such a growth in the number of Jewish anti-Zionists. But of course that has not stopped the genocide. Why? Because Jews in the West are not the reason why US imperialism supports Israel or why racists like Trump and Starmer etc. are so enthusiastic about the Israeli state. Jews are the pretext, the moral alibi. Israel is supported because it is the West’s attack dog. What Israel is doing in Gaza the US did in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The role of anti-Zionist Jews is to call out the lie that Western support for Israel has anything to do with anti-Semitism. If there wasn’t even one Jew in the West the support Israel gets would be exactly the same.

Of course the Zionist lobbies, which in Israel are called the Jewish lobby, are infuriating and need to be combated at every step. Groups like the misnamed Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s and UK Lawyers for Israel are poisonous and pernicious, as are their American counterparts, AIPAC, ADL etc. But these groups get their power from the fact that they are swimming with not against the imperialist tide. Without it they would be nothing.

Zionism was not a Jewish creation. It was Christians who believed that a Jewish ‘return’ to Palestine was necessary for the Second Coming of Christ, who were Zionists long before Jews. When Palmerston and Shaftesbury approached the Board of Deputies in 1840 for support for the idea of Jewish colonisation they got a frosty answer.

When in 1917 Britain’s anti-Semitic Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Arthur Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration the only person in Lloyd George’s War Cabinet to oppose it was its only Jewish member, Sir Edwin Montagu. As Stuart Cohen wrote in English Zionists and British Jews

It was only when Zionism was seen as patriotic that the Anglo-Jewish bourgeoisie slowly fell into line. The Conjoint Foreign Committee and both Claude Montefiore and Lucien Wolf in particular, were slow to see the convergence of Zionist and imperial interests.

That most perceptive of non-Jewish imperialist politicians and an ardent supporter of Zionism, Winston Churchill, wrote a seminal article in 1920 Zionism v Bolshevism. For Churchill the good Jews were Zionists and the bad Jews were revolutionaries, socialists communists. Zionism was seen as the antidote to socialism in the words of Count von Plehve, the instigator of the Kishinev pogroms.

So to answer my own question. I have spoken out on David Miller’s anti-Semitic ramblings NOT because I am in the least concerned that anything he says will hurt even one Jew. It won’t but it will hurt the Palestinians and that is where my concerns lie. I am not in the least concerned about the existence of anti-Semitism in Britain today. That is why I have been a constant critic of the SWP’s Stand Up to Racism who equate Islamaphobia and Anti-Semitism and why I have taken them to task for marching with Zionist groups.

People have also asked me why I opposed Miller’s suggestion of targeting individual Zionists. My reasons are that it is fruitless. Individual Zionist crackpots are not responsible for Zionism or what Israel is doing. Of course when these fascists attack our marches or protests I am in favour of dealing with them in the way Trotsky advocated dealing with all fascists – by equating their heads with the pavement

Racism in Britain is Israel’s Responsibility - once we have got the ‘soldier of Zion’ out of British institutions then the British state will become a benign institution - what this nonsense demonstrates is that Miller is no socialist

That is why I have written a number of blog such as EXCLUSIVE – We Name the Gang of Zionists Whose Purpose is to Disrupt Palestinian Events in London and EXCLUSIVE – Focus on Zionism's Fascist Wing - Katie Hopkins Shows the Depth of Racism Amongst British Jewry and EXCLUSIVE - MICHAEL ENGLISH, CLOSE ASSOCIATE OF JONATHAN HOFFMAN VISITED BY MANCHESTER COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICE to name but three. I have in particular targeted Jonathan Hoffman and those around him who have tried to disrupt Palestine solidarity actions but to go chasing around after every Zionist nutcase is counter-productive.

Let me also make clear before Miller portrays himself as a hero who is being cancelled that I do not support him being no platformed or cancelled as Palestine Solidarity Campaign is apparently doing..

However Miller is his own worst enemy. When he was sacked at Bristol University he had very little support from his academic colleagues unlike Norman Finkelstein who was also sacked. Why do people think that is?

I know that Noam Chomsky, who signed a petition in his support was bitterly critical of his comments because I had an exchange with him over the subject. On 17 March 2021 he described to me Miller’s comments as ‘ugly and offensive.’

I hope that this explains why it is important that people who believe that racism and anti-Semitism has no place in the Palestine solidarity movement and who believe that the cause of Palestine is an anti-racist one will attend the debate that the Socialist Labour Network is holding tonight at 7 pm when a motion Zionism is an Imperialist/Settler Colonial not a Jewish Ideology is debated.

Any member of the SLN or anyone who was formerly a member of the two organisations that merged to create the SLN – Labour Against the Witchhunt and Labour in Exile Network will be able to attend and then vote accordingly. To register click here

https://tinyurl.com/4zw6pk6v

Tony Greenstein