{"id":2460,"date":"2017-02-15T12:07:37","date_gmt":"2017-02-15T10:07:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=2460"},"modified":"2017-02-16T12:58:06","modified_gmt":"2017-02-16T10:58:06","slug":"why-is-owen-jones-helping-to-subvert-corbyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2017-02-15\/why-is-owen-jones-helping-to-subvert-corbyn\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is Owen Jones helping to subvert Corbyn?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have never been overly sold on Owen Jones. From his platform at the Guardian, he has spent far too much time whining about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his failure to reach out to voters rather than using his rare spot in the mainstream media to help him to do precisely that.<\/p>\n

But this news has knocked me sideways. It was announced<\/a> yesterday that Jones is to give a memorial lecture in April on behalf of\u00a0the Jewish Labour Movement – the same group implicated in the recent efforts of the Israeli embassy to damage a Corbyn-led Labour party with confected allegations of anti-semitism. All of this was exposed<\/a> last month in an undercover Al Jazeera investigation.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Labour Movement was effectively shown to be acting as a front for the Israeli government’s efforts to oust Corbyn over a supposed anti-semitism crisis in the party. Israel hates Corbyn because of his long-standing position in support of Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

The announcement of Jones’ lecture was\u00a0written by Ella Rose, the former Israeli embassy official who tried to conceal her past after she became the director of the Jewish Labour Movement.<\/p>\n

She was one of those caught on Al Jazeera’s hidden cameras – in her case threatening to beat up<\/a> black-Jewish Labour party activist Jackie Walker, who has been the prime target of these phoney anti-semitism allegations. None of this is secret\u00a0history.\u00a0I first wrote about<\/a>\u00a0the Jewish Labour Movement’s role in trying to subvert Corbyn back in September.<\/p>\n

It is not even as though we can credit Jones with some kind of live-and-let-live attitude to free speech. Remember back in 2013 he pulled out at the last minute, and without warning, as a speaker at an important Stop the War rally to prevent British military intervention in Syria. His grounds? He had come under fire from the armchair interventionists because he was to speak alongside Mothers Agnes, a Syrian-based nun who was seen as being too pro-Assad. (The reasons\u00a0Syrian\u00a0Christians like Mother Agnes might support Bashar Assad were pretty obvious even then, but are blindingly so now.)<\/p>\n

Mother Agnes pulled out of the rally to try to salvage it, but Jones continued to refuse to take part.<\/p>\n

I criticised<\/a> Jones then over his cowardly and irresponsible behaviour. Now he needs to explain how the principles that drove him away from the Stop the War rally can allow him to support a group, the Jewish Labour Movement, that is so clearly and maliciously attempting to subvert the elected leader of the Labour party.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/h3>\n\"\"\n

Owen Jones has responded to this\u00a0blog post both on Twitter, calling<\/a> it “tedious nonsense” in his usual, dismissive\u00a0style, and with a post\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0that tries to deflect attention from my argument with a straw man: that a conspiracy theory\u00a0is\u00a0painting\u00a0him as\u00a0a stooge of the Israeli government.<\/p>\n

No conspiracy is being posited here – only very, very poor judgment. I have\u00a0also not accused him of working on behalf of the Israeli government. Only of assisting, presumably thoughtlessly, those who are working on behalf of the Israeli government inside the Jewish Labour Movement, including most definitely its current director, Ella Rose.<\/p>\n

Sadly, though predictably, he has avoided addressing the point of\u00a0my\u00a0criticism.<\/p>\n

It is great that he wants to pay his respects to a friend’s late father, and I am sure there are responsible ways he can do that.\u00a0But one of them is certainly not by adding his name and credibility to\u00a0an organisation that was recently exposed by\u00a0an undercover investigation to have been acting as a front for Israeli government efforts to subvert the elected leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Labour Movement has been working to\u00a0confect allegations of anti-semitism against other Labour party members. That is a serious form of verbal\u00a0violence against members of Jones’\u00a0own party that has the power to do its victims\u00a0great harm, personally and professionally.<\/p>\n

Let’s not also forget, as I pointed out, that Ella Rose, who will be hosting Owen Jones’ lecture, was\u00a0filmed threatening physical violence against a fellow Labour party member, Jackie Walker.<\/p>\n

I was astounded that Jones accepted this offer from the Jewish Labour Movement. I am even more astonished that he is so casually\u00a0dismissive\u00a0of the very real harm caused by\u00a0the actions of this organisation and its leaders.<\/p>\n

UPDATE 2:<\/h3>\n

Depressing to see that Owen Jones has now retweeted approvingly a conspiracy theory against\u00a0critics\u00a0like me. Apparently we are CIA-funded.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Paradoxically,\u00a0in\u00a0Jones’\u00a0original response, he\u00a0accused his critics of being “conspiracy theorists”. (PLEASE SEE UPDATE 3)<\/p>\n

UPDATE 3:<\/h3>\n

This has unleashed a social media\u00a0torrent of support and of opprobrium\u00a0that I was not prepared for. Two points have been raised that I want to address briefly.<\/p>\n

First: The author\u00a0of the Tweet in update 2, Jonathan Stone, the political correspondent of the Independent, has noted that the Tweet was a joke and has asked me to retract the\u00a0suggestion\u00a0that he was indulging in a conspiracy theory.\u00a0I happily do so.<\/p>\n

Second: Some have objected\u00a0that I am\u00a0arguing here for some kind of no-platforming or boycott of the Jewish Labour Movement. I am not, as should be obvious from a proper reading of what has gone before. I\u00a0would not have\u00a0criticised Jones if he had chosen a neutral venue to criticise\u00a0Ella Rose and the compromised leadership of the Jewish Labour Movement. And let’s be clear: that is what is required here from someone in Jones’ position, for all the reasons I have set out in the preceding sections.<\/p>\n

But Jones is doing something else entirely. He is giving a memorial lecture on behalf of the JLM and hosted by\u00a0it. There is an implicit relationship here: Jones has been\u00a0invited, he is a guest speaker, he is giving a memorial lecture in which a certain kind of etiquette should\u00a0be followed of respect and decorum, not least because, as he says, he was\u00a0a family friend of the man in whose honour it is being held.<\/p>\n

And he is doing this\u00a0while the JLM\u00a0is still led by those who were exposed in the Al-Jazeera investigation trying to smear\u00a0fellow Labour party members in an attempt to subvert\u00a0the party’s elected leader, Jeremy Corbyn, on behalf of a foreign country. That is no small matter. It is a covert assault on the party’s democratic structures\u00a0by the Israeli government. Leaders of the JLM are the enablers of that attack. And Jones has accepted their invitation to give a lecture. He is laundering their image whether he intends to\u00a0or not. It’s simply irresponsible\u00a0for someone with the principles Jones claims to have to take part in\u00a0this event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have never been overly sold on Owen Jones. From his platform at the Guardian, he has spent far too much time whining about Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his failure to reach out to voters rather than using his rare spot in the mainstream media to help him to do precisely that. But this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7,59],"class_list":{"0":"post-2460","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"tag-israel-lobby","8":"tag-jeremy-corbyn"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}