CST urges action over ‘disgusting’ Shoah slur
AN ANTISEMITISM watchdog has condemned a prominent anti-Zionist campaigner’s “disgusting slur” after he said the “pro-Israel lobby” was exploiting the legacy of the Holocaust to try to silence criticism of the country.
In an interview with an online American news channel, Moshe Machover, a Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party member, also claimed the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs was “driving” an “immense public campaign” in the UK against Jeremy Corbyn’s adoption of new guidelines on antisemitism.
A Community Security Trust spokesman told the JC that Labour had to “take action” over Mr Machover’s “disgusting slur”.
Mr Machover, a retired Israeli-born professor, was expelled by Labour in October last year over an article he wrote titled ‘Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism’ which quoted Reinhard Heydrich, one of Hitler’s most notorious lieutenants.
But his expulsion, for alleged membership of the Communist Party of Great Britain, was overturned, and he was readmitted into Labour.
Discussing Labour’s new code, in an interview aired by The Real News Channel last Friday, Mr Machover said: “The view of the pro-Israel lobby is that antisemitism is something that is ‘sui generis’ — it is not like any form of racism.
“Just as they like to claim the Holocaust, the genocide in effect of Jews under the Nazi regime in Europe is not a genocide,
Moshe Machover it cannot be compared or even discussed with other cases of genocide but it is just something on its own.
“It’s a kind of object outside of general history — it shouldn’t be discussed in connection with any other genocides. You know, it is to make Israel, in effect, something special, and Israeli supporters something special.”
Mr Machover added: “For those various parts of the Israel lobby and the conservative establishment inside and outside the party the main point is to ring-fence Israel and the Zionist project of colonialisation against criticism.
“They are not really interested in antisemitism per se. This is not why they have made this immense public campaign part of which is motorised or driven from Israel via the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs.”
Assessing the criticism of Mr Corbyn further, Mr Machover added that the “attacks” were “a joining together of conservatives and Zionists within the Labour Party as well as the conservative Jewish establishment, the self-proclaimed leadership of the Jewish community here and also forces without”.
A CST spokesman said: “Criticism of the Labour Party’s new code has come from the Board of Deputies, JLC, CST, the Jewish Labour Movement, the Chief Rabbi and dozens of rabbis from across the religious spectrum.
“For Machover to dismiss this as simply the ‘Israeli lobby’ working to stop criticism of Israel is a disgusting slur on British Jews.
“If Labour want to demonstrate that their new code is really as strong as they claim, let them prove it by taking action
here.”