We “slaughtered” Jeremy Corbyn, says Israel lobbyist

Update, 1 February: YouTube has rejected Joe Glasman’s claim that The Electronic Intifada’s use of his video violated copyright, and has restored the video to our channel.

Update, 15 January: YouTube removed the copy of the video posted on The Electronic Intifada’s channel following a copyright claim by Joe Glasman. The Electronic Intifada has filed a counterclaim, asserting that its use of the video complies with the Fair Use doctrine of the US Copyright Act, which allows use for criticism, comment or news reporting. In the meantime, we have uploaded a copy to another site, which you can view above.

Original article

A prominent Israel lobbyist in the UK has claimed credit for last month’s electoral defeat of the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.

“The beast is slain,” Joe Glasman delighted – Corbyn has been “slaughtered.”

He rejoiced that “we defeated him” in the election. “They tried to kill us,” he ranted, but “we won.”

Glasman leads the “political investigations team” at the Campaign Against Antisemitism, or CAA – an influential anti-Palestinian lobby group.

He made his comments in a bizarre video rant addressed to his team of supporters that he posted online during the holiday break.

The video was soon set to private.

But left-wing Labour activists managed to download a copy and posted it on the Barnet Momentum Facebook page.

In the video Glasman claimed he and his supporters beat Corbyn through a coordinated campaign using methods including “our spies and intel.”

But he said his group were “not secret Mossad spies, they’re just ordinary people.”

The video swiftly became an embarrassment. Other copies posted online have been taken down following copyright claims by Glasman.

The Electronic Intifada is reposting the full video to our YouTube channel for news reporting purposes.

Partisan “charity”

After he was subjected to a four-year witch hunt targeting the left and Palestine solidarity activists over alleged “Labour anti-Semitism,” Corbyn lost last month’s general election.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism was founded in 2014 during Israel’s war against Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, to counter rising criticism of Israel. It did so primarily by smearing critics as anti-Semitic.

It has been one of the most active right-wing Zionist groups promoting the false notion that Labour became an anti-Semitic party after Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership in 2015.

But as anti-Zionist Palestine solidarity campaigner Tony Greenstein recently put it, “The one thing that the Campaign Against Antisemitism doesn’t do is to campaign against anti-Semitism.”

In fact, Greenstein argued on his blog, “anti-Semitism of the traditional kind is all but ignored by it, but [fake] ‘anti-Semitism’ of the anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian variety is very much its concern.”

Despite being a registered charity, and thus supposedly non-partisan, the CAA openly campaigned against Labour and against Corbyn.

It organized demonstrations against Labour, including one days before last month’s general election. Greenstein has complained to the Charity Commission, calling for the regulator to remove the group’s tax-exempt status.

Anti-Palestinian agenda

The Campaign Against Antisemitism habitually smears Palestinians and their supporters.

In 2017, it attacked Malaka Shwaikh, a Palestinian from Gaza then running in student elections in Exeter. The attacks sparked a barrage of threats and harassment against her.

Now a lecturer at the University of Leeds, Shwaikh told The Electronic Intifada at the time, “The right of free speech on campus has been threatened.”

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As someone who witnessed, albeit at one remove, the despicable campaign against Corbyn and Labour, it occurs to me that this gentleman's use of the term "slaughtered" is altogether apposite. The coordinated nature of the smears, in conjunction with an all but unanimous framing of the charges by the media as fully proven, took on the character of a ritual. You got up in the morning to the sound of a knife being sharpened. You went online and began the daily slog through the muck and mire that passes for news in the UK. The Guardian actually began to offer a sort of Department of Antisemitism, like a bizarre government agency. One article referred you to three more and you soon found yourself in a bureaucratic archive of mutually sustaining lies.

There was no escaping Israel's power during this period, and the spectacle of Corbyn and those closest to him surrendering time and again to the phony accusations, promising to do better, throwing supporters to this pack of wolves, proved in the end most disheartening. I don't believe Labour lost on this issue alone, but it certainly played a large role in the defeat because it offered a stage upon which all the Right's hatred of the poor, the dispossessed, the immigrant, and above all any mildly socialist alternatives to neoliberalism, could be focused with a singular, righteous fury. Antisemitism became an all purpose form of abuse, covering the entire spectrum of progressive politics- which then didn't need to be addressed. And because this tactic proved so effective, we can expect it to be deployed for a long time to come in warding off justice-centred egalitarian movements.

What a tragedy that Labour didn't fight back and publicly repudiate these scoundrels one and all. The old lessons of appeasement must be learned anew, and learned at great cost.

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I believe Tom's comment regarding Labour's failure to fight back in support of many pro Palestinian members falsely smeared as antisemitic is true. It amounted to abject appeasement. It is quite wrong to assume that the nature of our mainstream media is a reason to capitulate.
It was ethical to fight back because this was the fair and moral thing to do instead of abandoning comrades who were attacked for their legitimate views by one of Israel's nastier lobby groups.

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But how could 'Labour' have fought back publicly Tom? The only way to reach the general public is through the MSM, and if the MSM are totally hostile to you AND colluded and conspired in the A/S smear campaign, they are hardly likely to give you the opportunity to 'fight back'. So can you explain how the LP could have gone about doing it?

Take the Ken Livingstone episode for example. I had never heard of The Haavara Agreement, but a quick search re >hitler supported zionism< brought it up at the top of the results, and any journalist on this planet worthy of the name could have done the same, or of course contacted Ken himself to ask him what he was referring to. The point is that it's highly unlikely that they DIDN'T (assuming they weren't aware of the agreement already), and yet the whole of the MSM went along with the vilification and condemnation KNOWING that Ken was of course alluding to an historical fact. So how do you get the truth out there when the whole of the corporate media et al were complicit in the falsehood that Ken said something anti-semitic?

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Thanks for your comment. I agree with much of what you had to say, but I think that like Corbyn himself you were too accepting of the state of affairs you rightly denounced. In other words, you counselled a defeatist approach- a retreat, actually. If you begin by concluding there's nothing you can do, you will eventually find your forces routed, and frankly I can't understand why anyone would take an interest in politics only to adopt a position as passive as that. This was class war waged under the flag of "antisemitism", and the Labour leadership refused to treat it as such. It's not enough to proclaim radical values. You have to put them into practice on a daily basis. And if the challenge of the day is that you're being spun to death by a pack of racist liars controlled by a hostile foreign power, you'd damn well better stand up and fight back.

You ask me what specific measures I'd have liked to see the leadership take to combat this smear campaign. I admit the difficulties facing the left within the party, from the Israel lobby and from the poisonous British media were and are formidable. But the policy of appeasement undermined any prospect of a fighting strategy. At the very least, the Labour Party should have issued a blizzard of writs for defamation and taken these liars to court at the earliest stage. Doing so would have put the Israelis and their journalist friends on notice that they were about to receive some very unwelcome and consequential scrutiny.

But rather than try to offer you a detailed reply, I'd like to ask, what do you think the leadership should have done? After all, it's your question. Do you believe that all this was simply foreordained, or that the Party should abandon membership and principles in order to curry favour with its enemies? Seriously, what would you have liked to see instead of this debacle?

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Thanks for your response Tom, but I can't understand why you didn't or acknowledge the key point I was making - ie that the PTB own and control the MSM and, as such, control the narrative etc. And I think you're missing my point on several fronts. What you discern as appeasement was nothing of the sort. As Justin Schlosberg put in Chapter 4 of Bad News For Labour:

“In contrast to other contexts, the antisemitism issue by its very nature inhibits the development of a counter-narrative. This is because much of the discursive framing serves to pre-emptively delegitimise any defensive response as ‘part of the problem’”.

In other words, it's a no-win situation. As for taking legal action, well I certainly agree that the LP should do so in respect of the Panorama hatchet-job, because it wouldn't just be a case of opinions being expressed, as with the ten people who were 'presented' as ordinary Jewish LP members, and who were all undoubtedly lying through their teeth. And as you probably know, seven of them are and were executive committee members of the JLM, and another one of them their former Campaigns Officer, and one of the other two, although not Jewish, she’s an affiliated member of the JLM, and the other is and was the BoDs Director of Public Affairs.

But that's about it in terms of suing people or organisations for defamation, because in law anyone can claim that such and such is their honest opinion, as Tony Greenstein has learnt in his court case against the CAA. In other words, for example, anyone can say that they believe Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-semite, and their is absolutely nothing he can do about it. Apart from which, such court cases can take years before they are heard, and in the meantime the damage has been done anyway. As Malcolm X said:

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses."

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I won't try to guess what you'd say to the Palestinians. Their media coverage is fairly grim.

But I asked you for your own ideas on how to fight the antisemitism smears cascading through British politics. You offered not a word as to strategy or tactics- nothing.

As far as I'm concerned, telling people there's no hope and that they ought to submit to the forces destroying their lives is worse than useless. It's inimical to their interests and calculated to ruin their morale. And trying to drag Malcolm X into the discussion in support of this position really is despicable. If ever someone stood up and fought back, it was Malcolm. In pointing out the duplicitous power of the media, he counselled all out resistance, not surrender.

That's all the time I have left for you.

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I disagree that the media is all powerful. Really that is nonsense. Corbyn wouldn't have done so well in 2017 if that was the case. Allan Howard's argument is a counsel of despair.

Yes the media is influential but it is NOT all powerful. I don't agree that the anti-semitism inhibits still less prevents a counter-narrative. There was a powerful counter narrative viz. that this was all about Zionism and Israel, that anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism and that the allegations were fake, false and tendentious. That although you may be able to find the odd antisemite in the Labour Party that is true for the last 50 years. Why now?

The problem is that Corbyn was utterly cowardly. He refused to develop a counter narrative. I'm sorry to say this but he is stupid too. Not once did he recognise what he was facing despite me and others pointing it out. He accepted the good faith of his accusers when they had none and he cast his friends to the wind, betraying Ken Livingstone first and then Chris Williamson.

Yes of course when people are accused of 'antisemitism' their first reaction is to deny it but when it is repeated then you have to call their bona fides into question. E.g. is the JLM not affiliated to the WZO? This was part of a wider problem of appeasing the Right and hoping to get into power that way. You cannot play with a tiger and that is what Corbyn did. Quite simply both he and his advisers were clueless. Seamus Milne bears the heaviest responsibility.

Yes you are right that legal action would not have been the way though my legal action is still progressing, 2 years later!

Corbyn lost, not because of the antisemitism stuff directly but because his repeated apologies, dithering, not being open and honest and appearing weak meant that people would not vote for a weak leader. I don't accept Brexit was a major factor - quite the contrary.

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I agree with most of what you said, Tony, however I dont think Corbyn is weak in any way. He has withstood the most outrageous campaign of smears, lies and personal attacks against him. He has borne it all without getting in the gutter with his detractors, even inviting them to unite with him and work for the good of all. That they did not says much more about their treacherous characters than his perceived weaknesses . His fault lies in being too respectful rather than weak. The anti Semitism smears played a large part in Labour losing the election, but they were not the only reason. We have had four years of claims that Corbyn hated Britain, that he is a spy, he sympathises with terrorists against his own country etc etc ad nauseam. He is portrayed as stupid, dull and hopeless in the msm and the BBC, when in truth he is none of those things. Until someone sorts out our dirty media, no socialist will ever win an election

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The problem is, as a member of the Labour party, I am now too scared to post any of this - in case I am called an anti semite. I am actually Jewish on my father's side - German jews in fact, but 2 generations back. But I am still scared to post anti Israel comments. This is what has been done to many of us. We all know it was a scam, but that doesn't help. What to do?

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I agree; if one is unable to refute smears and outright lies, as per the BBC's shameless Panorama, that leaves the dreadful israeli support lobby a totally open goal to say and do what they want. I was a LP Member until there was a sort of scuffle because I opined that I was in agreement with Chris Williamson's position and statements about attacks on the LP on the basis of anti Semitism. 'Rubbish' said I; Corbyn is absolutely no anti Semite and is genetically incapable of telling lies. He says nothing rather than tell a lie. As and aside Bozo johnson is the total reverse; he would rather tell a lie than say anything.
So, I was investigated by the local committee/LP procedural and have decided not to stay. As it happens the LP is the only political party I have belonged to and that for only a year or two.
I am amazed and was disappointed that Corbyn and Co. did not kick back, forcefully; tell margaret hodge at al that they are the liars and, as you say, litigate. The disgustingly shameless hasbarah spouting attack dogs for israeli apologists do not deserve a civilised response. So many of these tripe hounds use the tried and tested PLOM gambit, Poor Little Old Me. Everyhting is fair game for them until they get a smack back; then, it's 'Anti Semitic' and PLOM!
I am fed up hearing some jewish people bang on all day, every day, about their terrible treatment and parlous state. Frankly it is self fulfilling cr*p because next, there really is a rise in anti Semitism.
I will willingly join maragaret hodge and her ilk on any picket line to support their cause if only, they will join with me and condemn israel(N*zir*el) for their egregiously cruel and illegal activities in Palestine.
My mentors are people like Avi Schlam, Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein.
We all know why the israeli embassy was so engaged with Corbyn/the LP and this GE: they were scared shitl*ss that there might be a government in power that would start to take N*z*r**l to task, at last.

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Loto should have been pro-active and fight back with every means possible,legal action for the smear,Directly challenging msm for they decades of unqualified support of Israel.loto should have been more robust in challenging HQ senior staff for they inaction on Anti semitism and made it known to the british public on how slow the investigation has been conducted.of course the issue of the day is brexit never the less its the right thing to do.

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Yes, Tom Hall is quite right: Labour left itself open by accepting the smears and promising to do better. No doubt there were incidents of anti-Semitism which needed to be dealt with, but that Corbyn is an anti-Semite , that the Party is "institutionally" anti-Semitic, and that these groundless accusations have stuck is a stunning example of defating your enemy by accusing them of your own sins. Corbyn's response should have been that he wouldn't take lessons in anti-racism from the Zionists who ethnically-cleansed nearly a million Palestinians in 1948, nor from any Zionist, as the founder of Zionism wrote this: "The Yid is a hideous distortion of the human character, something unspeakably low and repulsive...We'll breathe more easily having got rid, once and for all, of these people who, with furtive shame, we were obliged to treat as our fellow tribesmen." The history of Zionist anti-Semitism is perfectly well-documented, and today the concept of the "wrong kind of Jew" is still abroad. Many Jews supported Corbyn but they were never allowed to speak. The BBC inteviewed spokes people for "the Jewish community" many times but overwhelmingly they were Zionists or Zionist apologists. Louise Ellman might have had her own chair in the BBC's studios. How many times was Michael Rosen asked for his view. He has received vile abuse and there are moves to have him removed from his broadcasting role. The wrong kind of Jew. This is anti-Semitism. It is the anti-Semitism of the Zionists who can't accept it is possible to be a Jew and not accept their doctrine. This is vicious and totalitarian. It is reminiscent of Rabbi Herzog's view that Jewish children rescued from the Nazis and adopted by Christian families would be better off dead. But the claim that the Zionist lobby was decisive in the election is megalomania. How many Jews are there in the UK? What lost Labour the key 60 seats was the EU. Real anti-Semites? Machete attacks on rabbis. Don't cry wolf.

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You start by saying that Tom is right Frank, and then, in effect, spend the second half of your post citing examples of how the MSM only ever gave a voice to the smearers. And THAT's the whole point of course. And even when various people said that it was all grossly exaggerated and/or a smear campaign, THEY were just vilified and condemned and attacked as being in denial and, as such, being part of the problem, or as being conspiracy theorists. When you own and control the MSM - the corporate MSM, along with the semi-corporate BBC - then YOU control the narrative.

As Justin Schlosberg points out in Chapter 4 of Bad News For Labour:

“In contrast to other contexts, the antisemitism issue by its very nature inhibits the development of a counter-narrative. This is because much of the discursive framing serves to pre-emptively delegitimise any defensive response as ‘part of the problem’”.

And as Malcolm X said:

“The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”

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Sorry Allan I don't want to sound flippant when you and others have made some interesting and extremely valid points regarding the power of the media; but Malcolm X quote " The media's the most powerful entity on earth-they have............. I would agree, until Trump came on the seen, who has managed to turn that theory upside down; none of the media can actually get a hand on him, it would seem to the outside world.

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Thank you for shining light into that dark tunnel and making clear with facts & details the shenanigans that I felt were going on but did not know how to expose! A terrifying cogent explanation! Why are so many people so gullible? All those folk who voted Tory will live to regret it but that is no consolation for the ghastly vision of our future in UK Europe & the world.

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From the evidence we have all been privy to, anyone with their eyes open would of seen these shenanigans. Shenanigans created by rightwing media, the government in office and of course Israel and the Zionists who were planted inside the bowels of the Labour Party.

This was never really about antisemitism, it was about having a formula that would not only work against the Labour Party getting into No 10 but ensuring they will be kicked into the long grass for many years. It was a well planned assassination driven by both money and power.

The Labour Party are presently looking over what went wrong and how they can right that wrong. The simple answer is, unless they can get the relevant power and money behind them and unless they are willing to be equally as corrupt as the Tory Party, they are a lost cause.

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When boys cry "wolf" and are believed we are all the poorer, for reasons made clear in the story.

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Its disheartening to read such Zionist ingress into the complete fibre of the economic, political and media of all western countries. The propaganda controlled and directed against anyone who speaks truth about Zionists actions against Palestinians in their land is out rightly declared anti semitic what a logic and what poor minds of the European public which is so gullible. Shame on this unjust world.

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It is not too late to challenge the Election result in a petition based on this defamation; a precedent already exists for doing just that. Back in November of 2010, when it was a Labour PM under attack for lying about a political opponent in order to retain his seat, there was a successful petition challenge to deprive him of his victory which ultimately also barred him from standing for public office. A Guardian article predicted the impact this would have on politics: “The former immigration minister Phil Woolas was ejected from parliament today after two high court judges ruled that he lied about his Liberal Democrat opponent during the general election, in a judgment that is likely to have profound implications for all future campaigns.”

That was then, with a Labour candidate under attack but the picture is fundamentally no different now, after a relentless Tory campaign of unverified fact-free lies, smears and deformation has managed to depict Jeremy Corbyn, a dignified man of peace, as a hateful, vilified racist! Labour accepted full responsibility: “The deputy leader Harriet Harman said it was “no part of Labour’s politics to try to win elections by telling lies” and the party would not support any appeal.” So where do we stand now? Surely the Woolas case set an important precedent with regard to the use of false information to incite anger and stoke a fabricated ethnic divide. Because the UK lacks a written constitution, our law is governed by precedent.

On a Discussion Forum on Craig Murray’s blog we share evidence and strategies to expose the truth re an election result we believe was rigged by manipulating the postal votes handled by the IDOX Postal Vote Managed Service. Our electoral services have been outsourced to unregulated private companies like IDOX. If you are as concerned about the safety or integrity of your vote and harbour suspicions check out the Elections Aftermath Forum on Craig Murray’s blog site and join the discussion.

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This entire thread as a non-supporter of EI or its causes is giving me incredible happiness on this cold wintry day, but I'll just say that even a broken clock is right on the time it was set at when it was shattered...and when Miryam Spencer is right that Labour is, I'm so glad to agree, a lost cause.

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This is outrageous behavior. All aid to the government of Israel should be closed down. Horrible people to do this.

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I have watched in horror as prominent Labour Party figures, including most of the candidates for leadership, have succumbed to the vile disinformation campaign about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. If they can't identify a big lie like this, should they really be running for high office?

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Totally agree with you Patricia; this would have been a great opportunity to have kicked back at all those dreadful zionist liars and taken the fight to them. Appears it wasn't the Jewish vote that sunk Corbyn but those misguided Northern voters who seem to think that another lying P.O.S. called Bozo is going to bring them health, wealth and happiness. What, from the Nasty Party and dominic cummins?

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I feel sorry for Jeremy Corbyn. He should become but won't become Britain's next PM. NATO should be dissolved, US Bases should leave other nations & the industrial nations should cut aid to Israel.

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You are a disgrace to the human race... Do and Can't you see the stark abuse of human rights that the zionists applying in Palestine, it is not hidden, it is documented.. What do you say for applying Apartheid laws on the different people on the same land that was occupied and still occupied.. What do you say about the unlawful wall,, what do you say about the Jewish roads and muslim and christians roads,, what do you say about killing journalists, medics, etc, etc.. etc.. what do you say about snipering children and others.

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This Jew supports Corbyn, although not the Labour Party. Labour worked to sabatoge Corbyn. Maybe he'd like to build a Marxist-Leninist Party in Britain, rather than a capitalist liberal party.

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I feel that the World really is at a cross roads, a new horizon could be beckoning. Will Humanity proceed down the line of self aggrandising and sybaritic idiocy towards annihilation or will the lemmings stop at the brink?
I've nearly had my time but I am utterly concerned for my kids and grandchildren. What a f*ck up Homo Sapiens has made of things so far.

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Problem with that is, the MSM have done such a job on Marxism that it would be seen as bad straight away, a new party, set up for justice for all should be the way forward.

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Mr. Glassman, what do you think of the Israeli aggression against the natives of Palestine, the way they have been treated over the last 60 years? Do you have any feeling for their freedom?

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I have been wondering, and possibly even seen it proposed, that the current World wide kick back against racism with the BLM movement is having/will have a side effect of bringing the criminality of Naz*rael into contention. And further seen it suggested that other instances of suppression/subjugation of a People/ethnic group or groups of people might coalesce into this movement or something similar.
Oh, if only: if only the current World outrage against the brutalising of BAME people were to extend to the War Crimes committed by israel. That would be a dream. I hope.

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Jeremy Corbyn and his ministers had a fantastic fully costed manifesto apart from waspi women. If labour had got in people in this country would have been a lot happier. Jeremy Corbyn stood for hope and for making us all feel we would be worth something. He has my unstinting admiration and respect speaking out for me a disabled person.

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Watched his video on Corbyn Slauhtered. This man is a deluded and dangerous fanatic.

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Here we are a year after the election and for me, this was more important than Brexit.

The rightwing media controlled by money and power, the right-wing Tories and their disinformation, and crucial to the loss of the election - and the CONTROL of our election, 'Israel' and the Zionists who were planted inside the Labour Party.

As someone else said above, "This was never really about antisemitism, it was about having a formula that would not only work against the Labour Party getting into No 10 but ensuring they will be kicked into the long grass for many years. It was a well-planned assassination driven by both money and power."

Crikey, they talk about Russian influence in UK and US elections, when the control by Israel has been far worse.

The worrying aspect is that the vast majority of the electorate do not see this - they have been brainwashed by the MSM and live by the right-wing soundbites, both sides of the pond.

Meanwhile, Starmer is making matters worse - instead of taking this shambolic self-serving government to task every second of every day, he makes Corbyn the main news item. The damn fool, but who is pulling his strings?

Socialism and the Labour Party appear dead in the water - the electorate in the UK and US have a stark choice, or rather no choice. When will it end? There needs to be change.

Asa Winstanley

Asa Winstanley's picture

Asa Winstanley is an investigative journalist who lives in London. He is an associate editor of The Electronic Intifada and co-host of our podcast.

He is author of the bestselling book Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2023).