By Ian Donovan
We need CONSISTENT anti-Zionism, not a halfway house!
Trump’s phoney 20 point ‘deal’ in Gaza was always simply a Zionist stratagem to retrench and continue the genocide by slightly different means. Trump’s sponsorship and superintendence of it from September was simply a means to try to take the heat off Israel for the genocide. It aimed to allow the pathological Israeli Defence Force, ridden with mental illness, sexualised addiction to infanticide, and similar bizarre pathologies, to avoid disintegration. Another crucial objective was to find ways to defuse the anti-Zionist radicalisation of the world’s population, by a combination of repression, manipulation, and flagrant attempts to hide the truth.
The toll of the Zionist war of extermination on Gaza’s civilian population of the two years of open genocide was horrendous – an essay by two doctors associated with the Lancet (journal of the British Medical Association) and drawing on material from that journal, postulated in September 2025 that the death toll from Israel’s Gaza slaughter was 680,000, more than two thirds of whom were children under 18. The latter is hardly surprising as over half of Gaza’s population are under 18, and young people are particularly vulnerable. (see https://eirigi.org/latestnews/2025/9/14/report-death-toll-in-the-gaza-reaches-680000-yet-apartheid-israel-tries-to-tell-us-there-is-no-genocide). This is the most horrendous crime of the 21st century, and it continues under the so-called Gaza Deal. Throughout the so-called ceasefire Israel has been killing at least 15 Palestinians on average every day.
Israel needed some sort of breather because it had been fought to a standstill by Hamas. Despite the elimination of leading many leading cadres and numerous fighters, the organisation gained popular support during the worst two years of Israel’s mass extermination– as shown by the flow of younger recruits into its ranks. Hamas more than made up for its losses at the hands of Israel by such recruitment. Hamas was not blamed for the slaughter Israel perpetrated simply because the vast majority of Palestinian knew that genocide has always been on Israel’s agenda regarding them, and any act of resistance could be a pretext. They also know, however, that failing to resist only emboldens the killers, and the catch-22 that any movement of Palestinians who resist the Zionist genocide project face. Palestinian organisations, from Hamas to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) refused the demands from Trump and the Zionists that they disarm, and refused foreign overlordship, while they also supported partial cooperation with the ‘deal’ – the hostage exchange – hoping that it would allow the masses a breather from Israel’s programme of mass extermination. They were not naïve in doing this, but considered they had no choice in the circumstances.
Israel has just underlined its real genocidal interest in this deal. They were supposed to have been allowing copious amounts of aid into Gaza as there was now supposedly a ‘peace deal’ but instead, as well as banning the long-established UN Palestine aid agency UNRWA, they have now banned more than two dozen international aid agencies, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and Oxfam, from operating in Gaza. The US, UK and others who support this ‘deal’ will do nothing about that. The kind of ‘aid’ operation Israel and its imperialist allies support is the so called ‘Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’ that earlier this year would pretend to offer food aid to starving Gaza people, only to shoot them as they queued up to receive it. The so called GHF is an arm of the genocide, and that is the kind of ‘humanitarian aid’ the Zionist state and its allies support.
Fraud, Genocide and Mass Repression
Repression of the masses, particularly in the older imperialist countries, the US, Britain, West Europe and Australia is now centre stage. In Britain, we have the fraudulent proscription for “terrorism” of the obviously non-terrorist Palestine Action direct action group, and mass arrests of those civilians who publicly express opposition to genocide and support for the group. Fraud was built into Starmer’s government right from the start, as shown by Paul Holden’s expose (in The Fraud) of the prolonged, covert deception that played a major role in destroying Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and installing Starmer as a Zionist stooge, which was mainly the doing of the non-Jewish Israeli asset and covert manipulator Morgan McSweeney, who not coincidentally lived on an Israeli kibbutz in his youth. The fact that juries repeatedly acquitted Palestine Action activists of such charges as criminal damage, usually to Elbit arms factories and the like, accepting their defence that they acted to prevent a much greater crime (genocide!), was the motive for this fraudulent proscription.
Now, instead of putting PA people in front of juries for such charges, they just charge them with ‘terrorism’ instead. The people who have been on hunger strike over the last period, four of whom are still doing so and are at great risk, were arrested for participation in direct action for Palestine Action before the fraudulent proscription was enacted. Starmer’s Zionist government treated them as ‘terrorists’ anyway. It interfered with ordinary bail conditions to impose extraordinarily long remands in custody on people who would normally be bailed, precisely because they are unable to avoid jury trials in these cases, and there is a high probability that juries will acquit them. Now the manipulated two-year wait for a trial, and remand in custody, amount to a two-year prison sentence without trial without any jury getting a look-in. That’s clearly why there is a hunger strike.
The Zionist government and media reacted to this by an effective D-notice/press blackout, until in December this was challenged first when Starmer’s corrupted ‘Justice’ Secretary Lammy was confronted by relatives of the hunger strikers, where he pretended not to know about this. Then there were the actions of Your Party MP Zarah Sultana at Bronzefield Prison in Surrey, leading protests against the lack of medical care for one of the hunger strikers. These finally forced the media to cover the hunger strike. Though several have now abandoned their hunger strike, four remain on the protest, with severe health risks.
The hunger strike is currently the sharp end of this government’s repression, but it has had many other manifestations. They have used the cops to issue bans, of doubtful legality, on national Palestine solidarity demonstrations from assembling near the BBC in Portland Place on Saturdays, using the smear that the demonstration is in some way threatening to Jews, and the presence of a synagogue within half a mile of the BBC Centre. The fact that the marches always march South from Portland Place, in the opposite direction to this building and have never shown any interest in it, is immaterial for these liars. It is another anti-democratic fraud, and excuse for repression, not a reason. Indeed, it is utterly dubious as to whether these police actions, ordered by the Starmer government, are even legal, so just to make sure they are trying to ram through a new law to explicitly allow them to ban any demonstration in the vicinity of a religious building on grounds that it might be “intimidating”, which applies “regardless of whether the protest organisers intended to have that effect”. A license for fraud, basically. The same is true of their proposals to allow police to limit repeated demonstrations supposedly because of their ‘cumulative’ impact. In 2025 the Court of Appeal declared such decisions unlawful, so this fraudulent government is using its large, but illegitimate majority, to write such powers into the same Crime and Policing Bill.
Organisers of a Palestine solidarity demonstration in December 2004, including Ben Jamal of Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Chris Nineham of the Stop the War coalition, are up in court on 23 February for supposedly breaching police instructions under the Public Order Act. The whole thing is fraudulent as evidence exists on film of the Police ushering and encouraging demonstrators into Trafalgar Square – after which Chris Nineham was violently arrested … supposedly for breaching police instructions and demonstrating in Trafalgar Square! Ben Jamal was arrested later for the same spurious offence. The whole thing is fraudulent from start to finish.
Then there are the several raids on pro-Palestine journalists and activists by the cops, which have resulted in spurious charges of supporting ‘terrorism’ against such leftists. Such as Sarah Wilkinson, accused in various ways of “encouraging terrorism” for expressing solidarity with Palestinian resistance to Israel – not any kind of military or terrorist activity or anything remotely like it. For thought crimes, in other words. Her trial has been set for January 2027. In Jersey, Natalie Strecker was acquitted of similar charges in November. And on Monday, January 5th this year, well-known Jewish left activist Tony Greenstein faces charges at Kingston Upon Thames for supposedly expressing support for Hamas in a tweet that compared what was going on in Gaza with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Again, there is no suggestion of any military involvement in any concrete act of supposed “terrorism”. These spurious thought-crimes based on distortions of people’s support for the Palestinians into support for specific organisations that that British state and government, acting for Israel, has decided to use as a lever to supress dissent.
When the British state decided to extend its proscription of support for the military wings of Hamas and Hizbullah, to the political parties that these military wings are attached to, which have been elected by the masses in Palestine and Gaza, it crossed the line to supporting a genocide. These laws against defence of elected parties amount to pro-genocide laws, that say that Israel is entitled to treat the mass of the populations who vote for these parties as ‘terrorists’, and therefore to exterminate them, and their families including children and babies. That is what is going on in Gaza, and similar atrocities on a smaller scale (so far) have been committed by Israel in Lebanon.
The “logic” of these charges — that these accused socialists agree politically with conservative Muslim parties like Hamas and Hezbollah, is ridiculous. The real intention of this abuse of the law is to criminalise opposition to mass murder – what they are saying is that Israel is fully entitled to murder wholesale civilians who support these parties, and anyone who supports resisting that is in some way supporting ‘terrorism’. This is the logic of Starmer’s government, and its Tory predecessor that was similarly dominated by Zionists, and it is a Nazi-like, genocidal logic. They cannot openly say these things in a court of law, so they attempt to lie about the political allegiances of such leftist activists to cast them as supporting political parties that are clearly light-years from their own views.
There have been some recent setbacks for Starmer’s government regarding some of its persecutions, such as the police investigation against the punk artist Bob Vylan, for leading large crowds at the Glastonbury rock festival chanting “Death, Death to the IDF”. They concluded that there was no evidence of wrongdoing – “insufficient evidence” and therefore there was no case to answer. A magistrate in the 6 Counties also threw out charges against Mo Chara, of the Irish punk band Kneecap, for supposedly displaying a Hezbollah flag, as the charges were filed incorrectly, without proper permission from the Attorney General, and missed a crucial six-month deadline in the North of Ireland for filing such charges. The government is now trying to appeal from this verdict, which is apparently the result of its own incompetence.
IHRA Misdefinition of ‘Anti-Semitism’ – Today’s Protocols
And another strand of Zionist and government mendacity and persecution of Palestine activists is the use of the IHRA misdefinition of ‘anti-Semitism’ to make false allegations of … anti-Semitism. The IHRA misdefinition has played a role akin to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with the Nazi holocaust, preparing Western countries to support the genocide of Palestinians. Its whole purpose is to act as a complex of phoney amalgams that exploit the issue of the Nazi genocide to try to equate opposition to Zionist ethnic cleansing/genocide with denial of the Nazi genocide, and similar things. It was used as a bludgeon during the Labour leadership of Corbyn to destroy his leadership, and to politically prepare the Labour Party under Starmer to support the genocide. And now it has been passed into law by Trump in the US – in a manner that is certainly in violation of the First Amendment to the US Constitution – as a crude weapon to attempt to deport non-citizen critics of Israel’s Gaza holocaust.
But Trump is on weak legal ground. On September 30th Federal District Judge William Young in Boston ruled that Trump and his minions had violated the First Amendment constitutional rights of non-citizens with their attempt to deport legal US residents since Trump gained office in Jan 2025. The best known were Columbia University’s Mahmoud Khalil and Tuft University’s Rumeysa Ozturk, attacked for their public opposition to Israeli’s genocide. Ibrahim Khalil was thus released on bail. This has starkly demonstrated that even the Trump administration is not all powerful in violating the democratic rights of non-citizens using the IHRA misdefinition as its basis – it comes up flatly against the basics of freedom of speech. There will be a remedy hearing for those vindicated sometime in 2026. There may also be appeals. But the Trump administration has not dared to try legal sanctions against actual US citizens over this.
In this country, the Starmer government, and its Tory predecessor have been attempting to use the IHRA misdefinition to persecute vulnerable professionals at work because of their political views. This predates the genocide itself but has carried on since. This has particularly been done by the arch Zionist Wes Streeting, who has been bolstering attempts by Israel lobbyists to victimise NHS staff who speak out on Palestine. There is also the celebrated case of David Miller, who In February 2024, won a landmark unfair dismissal case at an Employment Tribunal against Bristol University, who employed him until 2021 as a Professor of Political Sociology. His case has some aspects that are related to another important case, that of the comedian Reginald D. Hunter.
Regarding the NHS, three prominent cases involve Dr Ellen Kriesels, Dr Rehiana Ali and Dr Rahmeh Aladwan, who in the course of 2025, have been targeted by Zionists because of their strong, publicly expressed pro-Palestine views. As Crispin Flintoff, who conducted an extensive interview with them on his show on 28th December, reported:
“They have been doxxed and had their livelihoods put at risk while facing disciplinary hearings with their professional bodies. And when those bodies found they had done nothing wrong, Health Secretary Wes Streeting intervened, applying political pressure to decisions that should be independent.
“After Dr Ellen Kriesels and Dr Rahmeh Aladwan were suspended from practice, you might have expected the campaign against them to end. Instead, both were arrested just before Christmas and held in custody for several hours. Dr Aladwan was arrested three times.” (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWd4wReY2QI for the citation, as well as the accompanying video)
Their cases are still ongoing, and there is a strong need for broader labour movement solidarity than they have received so far. They are very outspoken anti-Zionists and not shy of criticising the racism of dominant layers of the Jewish population and its organised political expression in ways that some sections of the ‘anti-Zionist’ Jewish left find challenging. This reflects their own oppression by Jewish-Zionists. There is some serious political learning and clarification to be done by the existing left, Jewish and non-Jewish, about liberal responses to the militant anti-Zionism of these comrades, who are decidedly not infected with the vices of liberal residual softness on Zionism (particularly among non-Jews) and Bundist prejudices among the Jewish left. There is an important discussion to be had about the politics of all this, which we will make a start in addressing presently.
Interviewed by Crispin Flintoff, Dr Ellen Kriesels (top right), Dr Rahmeh Aladwan (bottom left) and Dr Rehiana Ali
But first there is the case of David Miller. He was dismissed from his academic post at Bristol after sustained pressure from Zionist lobby groups and over 100 pro-Zionist politicians – from the Commons and Lords – of several political parties – Labour, Tory, Lib Dem, Greens and SNP. Those politicians addressed a March 2021 open letter, from the ‘All Party Parliamentary Group Against Anti-Semitism’ to the University demanding ‘action’ against him for ‘Bringing the University into Disrepute’ with his research and criticism of Zionism and its operations.
Zionist CAA Caught Red-Handed Abusing the Justice System
His victory in 2024 established in British law for the first time that anti-Zionist views constitute a protected philosophical belief under anti-discrimination laws, and that discrimination against an employee for holding and expressing this belief constituted unlawful discrimination. The victory was lessened because the Tribunal held that some of comrade Miller’s behaviour, derived from those protected beliefs, was impermissible and contributed to his dismissal, which means that though the basic principle was established, it was not comprehensive enough a victory to be ideal. But nevertheless, it established a principle that Zionists are desperate to overthrow. The University, backed by Israel lobby organisations, appealed this decision at a three-day hearing of the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) in November. Comrade Miller opposed their appeal and cross-appealed the Tribunal’s lesser findings that potentially reduced the victory. At this point, the EAT is still considering its judgement, which is likely to come by February.
However, seemingly as an attempt to interfere with this case, in June 2025 the Zionist fake-charity, the so-called ‘Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’ (CAA) filed a private prosecution against him for supposedly issuing ‘menacing’ tweets on X, basically calling for Zionists to be held accountable for their crimes. There is a more general Zionist campaign against him also, which is why when he attended the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon earlier this year as a journalist, he was ‘questioned’ by ‘anti-terrorist’ police when he returned to the UK. Quite a few others have been subjected to such intimidatory, mendacious questioning, which is not a proper arrest but rather a form of (usually) short-lived detention without trial, including recently Craig Murray, George and Gayatri Galloway, Richard Medhust. It’s a form of threatening, hostile abuse by the British state, and nothing to do with any valid ‘investigation’ of anything.
At the same time as the CAA began its action against David Miller, it issued another private prosecution, against the Black American comedian Reginald D Hunter, who lives in Scotland, for supposedly sending ‘offensive’ messages on X. On 17th October, in the CAA vs David Miller case, a magistrate ruled that the CAA had withheld significant information from the court that should have been disclosed when they filed the case. They were given 28 days to comply with an order to disclose all relevant communications between their directors, trustees and staff on whether they were seeking to silence David Miller or to undermine his Employment Appeal Tribunal. They did eventually disclose some more material which is now in the hands of the Crown Prosecution Service.
This is significant given what happened in the Reginald D Hunter case. On 23rd December a court quashed the CAA’s private prosecution against Hunter, saying the CAA was using the criminal justice system for “improper reasons.” Judge Michael Snow said
“The CAA have demonstrated by the misleading and partial way in which it summarised its application and its wilful, repeated, failure to meet its disclosure obligations, that its true and sole motive in seeking to prosecute Reginald Hunter is to have him cancelled” (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq8d9lp5y9jo)
and concluded “I have no doubt that the prosecution is abusive.” Apparently, one important fact that the CAA had also failed to disclose to the court is that it is under investigation by the Charity Commission for allegedly abusing its charitable status for political purposes.
This would appear to put the CAA’s case against David Miller also in deep trouble. But the point of these phoney prosecutions and lawfare is not necessarily to get results in terms of convictions. They are “lawfare” – an abuse of law so that the time, expense and stress undergone by those compelled to face such vexatious cases is the ‘punishment’ decreed by such abusers of legal action.
Fake Lefts and Zionist Tropes
Returning to the question of the NHS Doctors, there is a fascinating interview with Dr Aladwan on the YouTube channel of Attrition, a new show “analysing war, imperialism and Zionism.” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wX3u0MRi3s). This goes into considerable detail about the political views and racist persecution of this excellent and heroic Palestinian-Jordanian NHS Doctor.
She is clearly exemplary in her medical work but is being repeatedly dragged to spurious disciplinary hearings on Streeting’s orders for her expressed political views and her resistance to Jewish supremacist racism. It is a matter of principle for the working-class movement to defend her and her other two colleagues. Dr Aladwan was arrested just a couple of days before her recent hearing, and a list of allegations were presented to her that looked suspiciously like they were formulated by someone in the Israeli state.
Her prolific use of the phrase ‘Jewish lobby’ to describe her tormentors is completely understandable, but it is more accurate to call it a Jewish-Zionist lobby. Zionism is certainly the dominant form of Jewish thought today, but there is a large layer of Jews who abhor it, and don’t really deserve to be simply bracketed with their supremacist brethren. She is right though that Zionism, or more accurately Political Zionism, is about Jewish supremacism over the Palestinians, and aspires to supremacy over and suppression of all those who speak out against the dispossession, persecution and genocide of the Palestinians.
The ‘Lobby’, however it is formulated, is in fact a euphemism. It would have no power at all if it were not for the disproportionate representation of (mainly) Zionist Jews in the capitalist ruling classes particularly of the advanced capitalist, imperialist countries. It is simply a fact that Jews as an ethnicity make up 10% of the population of billionaires worldwide, but only 0.2% of the world’s population are Jewish. That is 50 times overrepresentation. The reason for this is a complex product of Jewish history going back to early medieval times – it has a materialist explanation – but its factual basis today is indisputable.
The “state capture” that she talks about certainly indicates the power of Jewish-Zionism in the main imperialist countries, but it would not give out that appearance if it were not for the material power of that layer of the Jewish super-rich, who are mainly concentrated in the advanced capitalist countries in West Europe, North America and Australasia (as well as Israel, if course). It is that layer of privileged Jewish-Zionists who provide the material basis for what gives the appearance of ‘state capture’ of say, Britain and the United States by Israel and its agents. They do not really have the material power to ‘capture’ these states – they are a minority, even though a large one, within the ruling classes of these countries. But they are allowed to act like they do rule these countries, certainly when it comes to anything that touches the Palestinian Question, because of the cult-like worship of most of the gentile bourgeoisie for this layer, who they credit with being the ideological inspirers and popularisers of neoliberalism and the Thatcher/Reagan revolution, which the bourgeoisie credit with saving the capitalist system from a major, systemic crisis in the 1970s.
Her criticism of many supposedly anti-Zionist Jews for trying to get her to shut up about Jewish supremacism is excellent. The contradiction of many such ‘anti-Zionist’ leftists who adhere to forms of Jewish identity politics that mimic some aspects of Zionism and thereby take offence at many sharp criticisms of Zionism, is excruciating.
If you accuse them of Zionism, they rightly take offence. But there are common tropes, as it were, between Zionism and leftist, ‘anti-Zionist’ forms of Jewish identity politics – notably the idea that to single out the outsize Jewish bourgeoisie as the prime mover of Israeli crimes is supposedly anti-Semitic. In fact, when analysed in materialist terms, this conclusion is obvious. Likewise, when anyone talks of the causes of Zionism’s extraordinary power in the Western countries, as being down to the outsize Jewish-Zionist bourgeois layer – whose correct designation is the “Jewish-Zionist bourgeois caste” – this brings forth phoney allegations that this contention, solidly based on fact, is somehow anti-Semitic. This canard is a manifestation of cross-class Jewish chauvinism.
As a result of this oppression, Dr Aladwan almost seems to have a rose-tinted view of an ‘independent’ British imperialism at times later in this interview. The interviewer, Ammar Kazmi, supplies a useful corrective to that at the end. Her view of the remedy for Zionist colonisation is understandable but may not really be practical. Though many descendants of Jewish colonists may well flee from the Zionist state when it finally collapses, that cannot be taken as read and without at least part of that population being induced to tolerate its destruction, that defeat of the Zionist entity may not be possible.
Greenstein’s About-Face to Ally with Zionists Against David Miller
Which brings us to the subject of Tony Greenstein’s recent attack on David Miller in the Weekly Worker and elsewhere, smearing him as ‘anti-Semitic’ even as he battles the Zionist CAA and other Zionists that stand behind Bristol University as they try to overturn his Employment Tribunal victory. In which he won a victory for all anti-Zionists, as the Tribunal ruled that he was unlawfully discriminated against for his anti-Zionist beliefs. This is the first time that such a victory has been won in the courts, and if Bristol University loses its appeal on the principle of this, it will become a potent legal precedent that potentially protects anti-racist opponents of Zionism in Britain generally from victimisation for their views in the workplace.
But for Tony Greenstein, what matters is not the rights of opponents of Zionism but protecting the Jewish-Zionist part of the bourgeoisie from left-wing criticism because of its role, in class terms, of being the core socio-economic formation whose interests are embodied in the project of Political Zionism. He considers that David Miller:
“…has begun propagating conspiracy theories about Zionism taking over the world and engaging in ‘state capture’. No longer is Zionism the adopted policy of western states, which support Israel because, in the words of Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig, it is an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ situated in a strategically important, energy rich region.
“Zionism is instead a monster that is engaged in a project involving the take-over and control of the world powers, including its former imperialist sponsors. Indeed it is on its way to having gained control of all of them.
“Not surprisingly it is attracting support from fascists, racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and other assorted fruitcakes and loony tunes. Zionism according to Miller is really no different from the Elders in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion who planned and plotted to take over the world and subvert the existing order. Miller is one in a long line of cranks.”
(https://tonygreenstein.com/david-millers-crazy-fantasy-of-a-global-jewish-empire-gives-imperialism-a-clean-bill-of-health/)
This is typical of Tony Greenstein. He claims to oppose the IHRA misdefinition of ‘anti-Semitism’. But in the passage quoted above, he creates his own version of the same thing. The IHRA definition, through a convoluted set of ‘examples’, is really a Zionist version of the method of amalgam that is perhaps best known from Stalin’s Moscow Trials in the late 1930s. The main amalgam that came out of that event was the assertion that one of the two main co-leaders of the Russian revolution, Trotsky, was a Nazi. The reasoning was along the lines of ‘Trotsky is against Stalin. Hitler is also against Stalin. Therefore, Trotsky must be a supporter of Hitler’.
The IHRA misdefinition uses a virtually identical form of warped logic to Stalin’s Moscow trials. With its 11 “examples” of “contemporary anti-semitism”, it basically asserts that to say that Israel is a “racist endeavour”, or to make “comparisons” of Israel’s behaviour “with the Nazis” is politically similar to denying the Nazi holocaust and is hence “anti-Semitic”. Hence, logically, to accuse Israel of genocide, i.e. of behaving like the Nazis, is “anti-Semitic”. But Israel clearly is attempting the extermination of the Gaza Palestinian population, as the whole world knows… so logically, everyone who sees this is ‘anti-Semitic’.
This is a key component of the warped politics that primed the Labour Party under Keir Starmer to support the current genocide. In that sense, the IHRA definition itself is akin to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, acting as a ‘warrant for genocide’, a distortion of reality that is used to motivate support for a genocidal programme, and to demonise anyone who defends the targets of such a programme. This is the underlying rationale as to why the Starmer regime, which is part of the political cult that leads the bulk of bourgeois politicians in the West to defer to the Zionist project on virtually everything to do with Palestine, is persecuting those who denounce the genocide in Gaza, as extensively spelt out above.
You would expect, as a basic principle, that those on the left, who claim to be anti-Zionists would defend each other against such politically motivated Zionist smears. But not Tony Greenstein. Even though he is facing persecution and a state frameup himself, he declares that others – and David Miller in particular – are guilty of the kind of thing he is falsely accused of … by a similar piece of logic to kind of falsehood that is being used to persecute many others, including him.
So, we have yet another amalgam, this time from Tony Greenstein, against anyone who refuses to discount certain specific material facts when addressing the crimes of Political Zionism. Two propositions are given the same treatment as in the IHRA ‘examples.’ The first is this alleged proposition:
“… Miller’s focus on the Zionist lobby has resulted in him beginning to be unable to see the wood for the trees. He is unable to put the power and influence of the Zionist lobby in perspective. No longer is Israel the attack dog of US imperialism: rather it is Israel which is in control of imperialism. Indeed it has become the major imperialist power!” (ibid)
Israel – an Imperialist Force in its Own Right
But what Greenstein really rejects is the notion that Israel is an imperialist power at all. However, there is a problem there – if it is not imperialist, since we actually live in a world when those capitalist countries that are not imperialist powers are invariably victims of imperialism, you arrive at the proposition that Israel is in some way a victim of imperialism. For Marxists, the imperialist world is fundamentally divided into oppressor and oppressed nations, as Lenin explained:
“That is why the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which forms the essence of imperialism, and is deceitfully evaded by the social-chauvinists and Kautsky. This division is not significant from the angle of bourgeois pacifism or the philistine Utopia of peaceful competition among independent nations under capitalism, but it is most significant from the angle of the revolutionary struggle against imperialism.” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1915/oct/16.htm)
If Israel is not imperialist, then logically it must either be included among the ranks of colonies and or semi-colonies – oppressed countries, or at a pinch, among the ranks of what Lenin called ‘dependant countries’, that is, countries like Argentina, which are still oppressed by imperialism. The only other types of states that exist in an imperialist-derived world are workers states (either revolutionary, or degenerated/deformed), and the anomaly that is Russia, a new kind of non-imperialist bourgeois state that is itself deformed by the material heritage of the first and longest-lasting workers’ state that it has been unable to abolish. Since obviously none of the latter are remotely relevant to Israel, denying that Israel is imperialist implies that it is some kind of oppressed nation. So, something remarkably similar to the Zionist claim of eternal victimhood is smuggled in by the back door.
This is a question that the Trotskyist left has never really addressed. Calling Israel a ‘colonial settler state’ does not really address whether it is imperialist or a semi-colony. It should be noted that the United States, Australia, Canada and New Zealand are in their origin colonial-settler states. The first is the world imperialist hegemon; the last three are (relatively minor) imperialist countries, clearly, oppressor nations. They are not oppressed in any way; the idea is absurd. But these were all created and except for the US (which separated completely from Britain much earlier) became British ‘Dominions’ long before the dawning of the 20th Century, and there is no mystery about what their ‘mother country’ is. They were proto-imperialist oppressor nations when they were created in the 19th Century and moved seamlessly into the imperialist epoch as minor imperialist offspring of British colonialism. This is not particularly controversial on the Trotskyist left.
But Israel has proven difficult for the Trotskyist left to address. The statement that Israel is a ‘colonial settler state’ is utterly nebulous about whether it is imperialist, or some kind of semi-colony. The only ostensibly Trotskyist group prior to this that took a coherent (but wrong) position on this was the (now defunct) Communist Workers Group of New Zealand (led by David Bedggood), which argued that Israel is a semi-colony, albeit of a ‘special kind’. But if Israel is a semi-colony, then it is qualitatively co-equal to the Arab semi-colonial states that neighbour it, and there is no basis to take a side in conflicts between Israel and those states. This provides some theoretical backing for the position of the old international Spartacist tendency of taking no sides in the 1948, 1967 and 1973 wars between the Arab states and Israel, an appalling position which they never theorised in terms of taking a position on the nature of Israel.
Taking the position that Israel is imperialist has immediate effects – it immediately raises the question of the nature of the large Jewish-Zionist ethnic factions within the imperialist bourgeoisie that are loyal to Israel as ‘their’ state, and who have ‘birthright’ citizenship rights in that state by virtue of Israel’s racist Law of Return. If Israel is imperialist, then that array of factions is imperialist also and their loyalty to Israel becomes a prime political issue. That is simply the logic of characterising Israel as imperialist. But obviously Israel is not an oppressed nation – it is one of the world’s most obvious, blatant oppressors and undoubtedly the most openly racist state in the world. It is an advanced capitalist country with a major array of cross-border factions in the wider imperialist bourgeoise supporting its activities as an oppressor. The idea that it is not imperialist is completely at odds with reality.
It is the only new imperialist country created in the 20th Century and a transplanted entity, like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, created by genocide. But it was transplanted as imperialist from the very beginning. Unlike the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand which were products of early British colonialism created while capitalism was still a progressive development out of feudalism. These became imperialist toward the end of the 19th Century when progressive capitalism itself developed into imperialist capitalism, characterised by “reaction all the way down the line” as Lenin put it. Israel was created as a transplanted imperialist state from its inception in 1948.
So here comes Greenstein’s version of the IHRA version of anti-Semitism. Greenstein complains that:
“Miller has begun propagating conspiracy theories about Zionism taking over the world and engaging in ‘state capture’. No longer is Zionism the adopted policy of western states, which support Israel because, in the words of Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig, it is an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ situated in a strategically important, energy rich region.
“Zionism is instead a monster that is engaged in a project involving the take-over and control of the world powers, including its former imperialist sponsors. Indeed it is on its way to having gained control of all of them.
“Not surprisingly it is attracting support from fascists, racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and other assorted fruitcakes and loony tunes. Zionism according to Miller is really no different from the Elders in the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion who planned and plotted to take over the world and subvert the existing order. Miller is one in a long line of cranks.” (https://tonygreenstein.com/david-millers-crazy-fantasy-of-a-global-jewish-empire-gives-imperialism-a-clean-bill-of-health/)
The core of this argument in the sentence that argues that Western states “…support Israel because, in the words of Reagan’s Secretary of State Alexander Haig, it is an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ situated in a strategically important, energy rich region.”
Note that in this sentence, Greenstein, who sometimes aspires to Marxism, does not clarify if Israel, this supposed “unsinkable aircraft carrier” is imperialist, or some kind of vassal state of imperialism, i.e. a semi-colony. The whole sophistry about an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” implies that Israel is some kind of colonial or semi-colonial possession of the United States, as does the phrase about “its former imperialist sponsors” which also implies that Israel is not itself imperialist. It obviously is not a colony; it does not have a US Governor and colonial administration. That leaves Israel as a semi-colony. But he doesn’t say that either. He leaves it hanging in the air.
This position is a classic evasion of the pseudo-Trotskyist left. Apparently, Israel is different to every other state in the world, as it not considered appropriate to clarify whether it is imperialist, or not. If it were defined as non-imperialist, some kind of semi-colony in fact, then it would be the duty of Marxists in the tradition of Lenin and Trotsky to treat it as an oppressed country and defend it against imperialism. But if a tendency defines it as imperialist, then it’s actual material attributes, including its international dimension, lead immediately to Zionists, and their capitulators on the Jewish left such as Tony Greenstein, accusing any such tendency or individual of ‘anti-Semitism’.
This word “crank” directed against David Miller is in this context an anti-communist, anti-Marxist, anti-left slur. He’s not the first person to be smeared in this manner. Recall that Jackie Walker was called a “crank” by Owen Jones when Jones went into full cowardly retreat in the face of the ‘anti-Semitism” witchhunt when Corbyn led the Labour Party. Greenstein was himself called a ‘crank’ by the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism for speaking at a rally against the witchhunt on 20th July 2021 – along with every single person who attended the rally. (https://antisemitism.org/tony-greenstein-and-piers-corbyn-make-nazi-comparisons-in-speeches-at-far-left-demonstration-outside-labour-party-hq-in-anticipation-of-significant-nec-meeting)
Then again, arch-Zionist and warmongering hack Nick Cohen said the whole movement behind Corbyn were “cranks” when writing in the Spectator in May 2018 (https://spectator.com/article/corbyn-s-cranks-aren-t-interested-in-power/). He also had his anti-socialist demonology up to scratch about the Corbynites, but (unfortunately) it was massively exaggerated. He began his screed:
“It ought to be a statement of the obvious that Labour is fighting a civil war between revolutionary socialists and social democrats, which goes back to the Russian revolution 100 years ago. The armies may have changed, but the battle line remains as static as ever.” (https://spectator.com/article/corbyn-s-cranks-aren-t-interested-in-power/)
In Cohen’s paranoid, neoliberal mind, left reformists like Corbyn and those who followed him were fantasised as being “revolutionary socialists” inspired by the Russian Revolution. Unfortunately, this was not true – if it were true then Corbyn, with his hundred of thousands of supporters would be able to build a mass communist party in Britain. Your Party is not that, though it could evolve in a genuine working-class party where such a programme would get a hearing.
There is something of the Nick Cohen in Tony Greenstein’s denunciation of David Miller as a “crank” for addressing a crucial issue that genuine revolutionary Marxists are duty-bound to address, if they are to fully understand Zionism. That is Tony Greenstein’s version of the IHRA version of anti-Semitism – to address a key question – that he now admits is based on fact – is a sign of “anti-Semitism”. What is really is a sign of is the antipathy of Tony Greenstein and others who adhere to his kind of Jewish identity politics, to Marxism when it uses the same, historical materialist method in examining the Jewish Question as it uses when examining any other political question.
When David Miller talks about “state capture”, a “Jewish Empire” or “Pax Judaica” he is addressing phenomena that at least empirically, appear to many people to be a reality. Whatever your analysis of the causes of these phenomena, the view that Israel has enormous power in Western counties is increasingly common and grounded in political reality. Abuse of people who attempt to address this fact as ‘anti-Semitic’ and ‘cranks’ is little different from Zionist abuse against the Palestine Solidarity movement generally. As an example of this, it is worth listening to the interview given by the Jordanian-Palestinian Doctor, Rahmeh Aladwan with Ammar Kamzi of Attrition, referred to above, where she explores this question in depth from the point of view of her own oppression as a target of Zionist witchhunting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wX3u0MRi3s).
Greenstein’s Anti-Communist Snake-Oil
Even more to the point is to analyse the causes of this phenomenon. This Tony Greenstein manifestly fails to do. He shown this when he berates David Miller for a Tweet he sent out in August 2023, which made three points:
“1. Jews are not discriminated against.
2. They are over-represented in Europe, North America and Latin America in positions of cultural, economic and political power.
3. They are therefore, in a position to discriminate against actually marginalised groups.”
His response was as follows:
“Miller was correct to say that Jews are not discriminated against or experiencing racism. There is no state anti-Semitism in Britain or Europe. Anti-Semitism is a marginal prejudice. I could even accept his observations on Jewish ‘overrepresentation’ in positions of power, because statistically and sociologically it is undoubtedly true, though how relevant it is debateable.
However Miller’s third point that this enabled Jews to discriminate against those who were oppressed was wrong. If Jews in powerful positions discriminate against others they do it as part of the organisations they are a part of, not as collective Jews.”
Later on, he says of point 2 that:
“It is … entirely legitimate to ask why Jews are represented in the numbers Miller suggests. I have no doubt that there are historical-materialist reasons. However it is the conclusions and the use to which Miller puts these which I am questioning.”
So, let’s get this straight – Greenstein says that the statistics that David Miller puts forward on “Jewish ‘overrepresentation’ in positions of power” are “undoubtedly true” and that “entirely legitimate to ask why Jews are represented in the numbers” that David Miller (and others) suggests, and he even concedes “. I have no doubt that there are historical-materialist reasons” for these things. But nevertheless, he says that “how relevant” these things are is “debateable” (!!). This is flat denial of reality – and shows Greenstein systematically, and quite cynically, confusing class/national consciousness and collectivity with ‘conspiracy theories.” He writes:
“Now it may well be true that Jews are statistically over-represented in certain sections in proportion to their numbers in society but it is quite another thing to suggest that they act collectively.”
And then:
“The whole concept of ‘Jewish Power’ is an updated version of historic Jewish conspiracy theories.”
This is a sleight-of-hand worthy of any Zionist. Because it deliberately attempts to equate the collectivity of a class, or rather of a faction (or array of factions) of a class united by a political programme, i.e., a quasi-nationalist programme, with the notion of Jewish conspiracy or Jewish “collectivity”. This is an attack on Marxism, and an attempt to equate any attempt to apply the same basic historically materialist tenets as can be legitimately applied to any other bourgeois faction, to those sections (the majority) of the Jewish bourgeoisie who support Zionism, just because they are Jewish.
It is Jewish exceptionalism, in other words. Greenstein says it is ‘anti-Semitic’ to say that Jewish-Zionist bourgeois organise ‘collectively’. But they don’t organise “as Jews” but as Jewish-Zionist bourgeois to fight for Zionist political objectives, which are ethnocentric, that centre on creating and defending a racist Jewish state. They organise politically along these class-programmatic lines, just as sections of the British bourgeoisie who supported Brexit, did and do still organise along these class-programmatic lines in such parties as UKIP and the Brexit Party (now Reform). To equate that concept with a cross-class “conspiracy” of Jews as laid out in Jewish conspiracy theories, such as those between capitalists and communists beloved by the Nazis, is just as outrageous a slur as that in the Moscow Trials that accused Trotsky of being a Nazi because he fought against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution under Stalin. This is Greenstein’s version of the IHRA.
It is complete and utter political and intellectual dishonesty and proof of a complete lack of political integrity. It is anti-communist snake oil. It is racist, because it really implies that Jews, unlike every other human group, are not subject to the basic tenets of historical materialism, and in some way exist outside those tenets, which are universal. It is anti-communist, racist gibberish, in other words, and a serious sign of political and moral decay.
The apparent phenomenon of ‘state capture’ showed itself most dramatically in Britain in October and November with the affair of the Tel Aviv Macabees Europa League soccer match against Aston Villa in Birmingham. Macabees fans earlier rampaged around Amsterdam, pulling down Palestinian flags wherever they were to be found, physically attacking many people in Amsterdam who showed visible signs of sympathy for Palestinians, and singing racist songs that glorified the genocide, such as “there are no schools in Gaza, because the children are all dead”. When the West Midlands Police imposed a ban on these extremely violent racists attending the match at Villa Park, knowing full well they would initiate extreme violence in Birmingham, they were denounced as ‘anti-Semitic’ by all four major bourgeois parties in Britain: Labour, Tory, Lib Dems and Reform. Macabees fans then rioted in Tel Aviv and a local Tel Aviv ‘derby’ match had to be cancelled. This made it politically impossible for Macabees fans to go to Villa Park despite the Zionist parties’ views. But after the match, still an ‘investigation’ is going ahead into supposed ‘anti-Semitism’ in the WMP, and their alleged ‘influence’ by the local MP, the Independent Ayub Khan, who is close to Your Party.
This is just one example. Many others are well known. The numerous attacks on democratic rights of opponents of the Gaza genocide detailed in this article are all other examples of the same thing. The explanation of this is twofold – one is the massive overrepresentation of Jewish-Zionists in the ruling classes of West Europe and North America compared to the weight of the Jewish population among the population as a whole. Forbes notes that 10% of billionaires worldwide are of Jewish origin, whereas only 0.2% of the world’s population are of Jewish origin, which is 50 times overrepresentation. Within the major imperialist countries, this translates into overrepresentation of dozens of times over, so that Norman Finkelstein commented about this that:
“In many countries, not least the US and the UK, Jews occupy strategic positions in the entertainment industry, the arts, publishing, journals of opinion, the academy, the legal profession, and government. Jews are represented in Britain in numbers that are many times their proportion of the population,
“…. if these raw data didn’t translate into outsized Jewish political power. … It is certainly legitimate to query the amplitude of this political power and whether it has been exaggerated, but it cannot be right to deny (or suppress) critical socioeconomic facts.” (https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/finkelstein-on-corbyn-mania/)
As an example of incredible dishonesty in his writings, Greenstein attributes these words to David Miller, when they came from a famous 2018 Essay by Norman Finkelstein, Corbyn Mania, which was written as commentary on the witchhunt in the Labour Party.
The explanation for these phenomena, and the outsize influence that they give in Western politics, is that this ‘outsize’ layer of Jews, almost all of whom are Zionists, in strategic positions, above all in the ruling class, constitute a Jewish-Zionist caste in the ruling class, which organises on the basis of Zionist politics, is ethnocentric, and based on loyalty to Israel, a state of which they are entitled to citizenship of by birth. They are a caste within the imperialist bourgeoisie with a special material interest in Israel as an ethnic state.
A caste is a layer within a class that has a special interest in something that sets them apart from the bulk of the class. The trade union bureaucracy is a special layer within the working class that makes its living from bargaining over the price of labour power with the employing class and gains significant material privileges in doing so. As Trotsky first noted in the 1930s, the Stalinist bureaucracy in a degenerated/deformed workers state is a layer within the proletariat of that state that has a special interest in administering what Marx called ‘bourgeois right’, that is inequalities within the working class that, at a still-low level of the social productivity of labour, that are necessary for the economy to function. Like the trade union bureaucracy but even more so, they acquire a privileged social position from this function, that in Russia in the 1920s allowed them to politically expropriate the bulk of the proletariat and monopolise power.
The J-Z caste within the bourgeoisie does not really have a materially privileged position within the imperialist bourgeoisie, as that class is enormously privileged anyway, but is has acquired an enormous political authority within the imperialist bourgeoisie. That is, it has a politically privileged status, because to the bulk of the same class it is the layer than won hegemony for the programme of neoliberalism within the bourgeoisie in the 1970s and is credited with saving the system of capitalism itself from what appeared to be a very dangerous, potentially terminal crisis. The fact that Jews were the embodiment of commercial capital in medieval times, and therefore in some ways are seen as having a ‘capitalist’ culture linked to finance, that is older than the capitalist system itself, has given them a kind of cult status among a class that is unsure of its permanence and thereby on the lookout for saviours. That is the basis of a cult of ‘Jewishness’ among the imperialist bourgeoisie. It is a cult status that regards the J-Z caste as the most class-conscious layer of the bourgeois class. It is this that explains the phenomenon that Norman Finkelstein spells out in, again, in his Corbyn Mania essay:
“…Not only is it no longer a social liability to be Jewish, it even carries social cachet. Whereas it once was a step up for a Jew to marry into a ruling elite family, it now appears to be a step up for the ruling elite to marry into a Jewish family. Isn’t it a straw in the wind that both President Bill Clinton’s pride and joy Chelsea and President Donald Trump’s pride and joy Ivanka married Jews?” (ibid)
That is the explanation for what Tony Greenstein calls ‘Jewish power’ and attempts to attribute to David Miller, though there does not seem to be any evidence that he has ever used that term. The J-Z caste is the source of what Norman Finkelstein calls “outsized Jewish political power”. But Greenstein misattributes the Finkelstein quote, which is not the same in any case, to David Miller, in a pathetic attempt to smear him as having a concept of “Jewish Power” in classless terms.
With that understanding, that the J-Z caste within the imperialist bourgeoisie is the source of such apparent phenomena as ‘state capture’, when David Miller talks about a “Jewish Empire” and “Pax-Judaica” as explanations for those phenomena, he is talking about the power of the J-Z caste. Understanding that, such terms are probably a bit prosaic, grandiose and unnecessary to explain what is at bottom a simple phenomenon, though an analysis that generates acute hostility from Jewish chauvinists, both Zionist and ‘anti-Zionist’, no matter how it is described. The most you can say about them is that their grandiosity is perhaps counterproductive.
“State capture” is really a bit of smoke and mirrors, because the J-Z caste does not have the social weight to enforce such a ‘capture’ against the gentile majority of the bourgeoisie if they were not inclined to go along with it. But it appears that way because the gentile imperialist bourgeoisie defer to the J-Z caste, because of the cult of the J-Z caste as the most class-conscious section induces that behaviour from so many of them. That is the explanation for the otherwise perplexing and counter-intuitive phenomenon of apparent ‘state capture’. It’s not a static phenomenon, and the more it comes under pressure, as it has during the current genocide, the more startling some of its manifestations become.
Two other points Greenstein makes against David Miller are the product of some political weaknesses of David Miller. They are not central to this issue, but incidental. The first concerns retweeting a couple of posts on X by some ‘paleo-Nazis’, far rightists who are in the minority who have not gone over to worship of Israel, and saying they make some ‘interesting’ points, e.g. about Jewish so-called ‘super-intelligence’. Greenstein screams that these far rightists are talking about so-called ‘race science’, and indeed they no doubt are. They are extremely wrong about that, though there are undoubtedly quite a few fields of intellectual endeavour where Jews are very prominent, and even dominant. This is not a product of some mystical essence of ‘race’, however, but of the Jews’ class history.
In their role as the repository of commercial capital, which they were in medieval times centuries before capitalism proper emerged, they were the only part of a society based on natural economy that developed serious international connections and thereby, developed something of an international culture. This exposed them to all kinds of intellectual trends in various countries that others in medieval society were completely sheltered from and knew nothing about. This had recurring consequences as a cultural acquisition that, like all cultures, cascades down through generations, centuries, and even millennia. There is nothing particularly mysterious about it, properly understood.
This may appear mysterious to someone looking into the history, and some academics, even very right-wing academics, and people who follow them, are also fascinated by them, for their own reasons. They might even discover something of interest, among their usual dross. The fact that Jews have recently been elevated from a population that suffered considerable oppression to one that (in its Zionist mainstream) is the perpetrator of oppression undoubtedly means that some elements of truth may be discovered by some otherwise deluded and reactionary people. There is nothing inherently wrong with investigating or researching such things, but it is best to be very discriminating about who you engage in public exchanges with. But academics sometimes make errors of this sort. It is, however, a smear to try to make out that David Miller is in some way in tune with the overall ideas of these reprobates because he briefly engaged with them. That is unscrupulous, as unscrupulous as attributing the formulations of Norman Finkelstein to David Miller as shown above.
In any case, there is nothing wrong with leftists doing academic research that involves deep- going research into fascist sources. How else could such useful works as Ian Kershaw’s biographical volumes on Hitler have been written? No doubt in doing so, he had to engage with some dubious people on some level. The question of how to do so is a matter of judgement, but the idea that in doing so, one is tainted in some way, is an absurd and unscrupulous thing to propagate without actual evidence.
The other point he quotes is some derogatory remarks about the politics of Zarah Sultana by David Miller that have little connection with his views on the complex question of the nature of Zionism. He also attacks David, in the manner of the AWL, for working with Chris Williamson on Palestine Declassified, which is ‘funded by the Iranian state’. That is a reactionary criticism, as that programme reaches many with some very salient points about the current genocide, among other things. As Marxist and anti-imperialists, we are glad that the Iranian state gave Israel a bloody nose in the 12-day war last June.
He quotes David Miller as saying that Zarah Sultana’s:
“…commitment to the sort of muscular liberalism which was produced by the War on Terror — weaponising feminism, sexuality and gender against Muslims — has done enormous damage to Your Party’s prospects to alliance-building.”
This is a wrong-headed criticism that reflects David Miller’s association with Chris Williamson, a deputy leader of the Workers Party of Britain, who in term is evidently influenced by the social conservatism of George Galloway. But it has little bearing anyone’s understanding of Zionism and the class nature of its international dimension, and its pretty bizarre for Greenstein to suggest that it does. There are people active on the left who have been attacked by Tony for holding similar views to David Miller on Zionism for far longer, well over a decade, who have very different views to David Miller on trans rights, which is actually mainly what David Miller is referring to – as Greenstein is well aware.
The statement that “Miller Has Abandoned Anti-Zionism in Favour of Conspiracy Theories” in Greenstein’s article is a feeble lie, as is his attempt to attribute the views of Norman Finkelstein to Miller in a blatant falsification of quotes. But that is the product of the political weakness of Greenstein who wants to police the left against Marxist criticism of the JZ caste, wherever it comes from, and is totally unscrupulous about how he does it.
