Left antisemitism

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No to right-wing witch-hunts, no to 'left' anti-semitism

Shortly before Christmas, the media picked up on anti-semitic comments made on Facebook by University of London Union President Clare Solomon (a member of Counterfire, a group expelled from the SWP). This is an issue where the student left should proceed carefully, because these new media attacks on Clare cannot be entirely separated from an ongoing right-wing campaign to discredit the student movement. We must vigorously oppose such witch-hunts. At the same time, as left activists within the student movement, we see it as our duty to condemn Clare's comments and moreover to criticise the...

Anti-Semitism and the Left: an Open Letter to Tony Cliff [1988]

Click here to download pdf . Dear Cliff: The present nightmarish reawakening of the furies of Judeophobia in Eastern Europe demands of honest socialists whose commitment to the destruction of Israel puts them in an attitude of comprehensive hostility to all but a handful of the Jews alive in the world today that they look at their own political features in the mirror of these events. After Hitler, anti-semitism disguised itself, and drew new nourishment from the conflict between Arab and Jew in the Middle East which had been intensified by the Holocaust. It was a doctrine that dared no longer...

Zionism, anti-semitism and the left

Moishe Postone is a Marxist academic based at the University of Chicago. As well as writing extensively on Marx’s political economy, he has also been central to the development of theories of “left anti-semitism”, which look at ways in which positions taken by left groups, particularly on Israel/Palestine, can feed into, or be based on, hostility to Jews. Martin Thomas spoke to him. Click here to download this interview as a pdf, and here to read in Portuguese translation (thanks to Nuno Miguel Cardoso Machado ). Q. To many people on the left today, anti-semitism seems to be just another form...

Anti-semitism and the Iraq inquiry

One startling aspect of the Iraq war inquiry which interviewed Tony Blair on 29 January is the furore which developed around two of its five members, Martin Gilbert and Lawrence Freedman. (Both are ‘Sirs’, but they’ll have to do without for the duration of this article.) Both Gilbert and Freedman are Jewish, a fact not missed by former British ambassador to Libya Oliver Miles. On 22 November Miles wrote in the Independent on Sunday: “The Prime Minister's choice of the members of the committee has been criticised. None is a military man… Rather less attention has been paid to the curious...

The GMB's amendment on "boycott Israel"

GMB official Richard Ashcough spoke to Solidarity about the GMB’s amendment to the FBU motion, which aimed to target the focus of the boycott onto goods produced in the Occupied Territories. This tactic has some precedent; left-wing Israeli peace campaign Gush Shalom runs a campaign to boycott goods produced in illegal settlements (in Israel, it’s possible to distinguish which goods these are by barcode numbers). GMB officer Richard Ascough said the amendment intended to add some “balance.” “We were concerned that the FBU motion didn’t criticise Hamas as well as Israeli violence, and we weren...

The Fire Brigade Union's case for "boycott Israel"

John McGhee, FBU National Officer, spoke to Martin Thomas about the FBU’s “boycott Israel” motion to TUC Congress. We’re glad there was debate at the TUC about Palestinian rights. But we think that the boycott of Israeli goods which the FBU motion proposed as its main practical measure would be counterproductive. British unions could do a great deal in the way of positive solidarity through making links, rather than boycotting. For example, the RMT, when it had a policy of solidarity rather than boycott, organised a demonstration to protest against Israeli Railways’ treatment of Arab workers —...

Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: Moishe Postone speaks on "a fetishized, profoundly reactionary form of anti-capitalism..."

Moishe Postone is speaking in London on Monday 15 Jun 2009 - 7:00pm, Room G50, SOAS, Thornhaugh St/ Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG Moishe Postone's talk is entitled "History, the Holocaust, and the Left". His article "History and Helplessness: Mass Mobilization and Contemporary Forms of Anticapitalism" is available for free download here . Excerpts: The impasse to which I am referring has been dramatized recently by many responses on the Left, in the United States and in Europe, to the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, as well as by the character of the mass...

Unison: oppose moves to "boycott" Israeli workers

This year's conference of the public services union Unison (16-19 June) has a motion (no.72) from the National Executive to confirm the "economic, cultural, academic, and sporting boycott of Israel" which Unison voted through in 2007, with amendments seeking to sharpen the "shun-Israel" message. An amendment from the Scottish region (72.01) seeks to "review" the relations which Unison has with the Israeli trade union movement, the Histadrut, as part of its general links with public service unions internationally, and to demand "a ban on imports... and until such a ban is introduced, a boycott"...

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