{"id":2494,"date":"2017-03-31T01:24:46","date_gmt":"2017-03-30T23:24:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=2494"},"modified":"2017-03-31T09:05:59","modified_gmt":"2017-03-31T07:05:59","slug":"labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2017-03-31\/labours-witch-hunt-against-ken-livingstone\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour’s witch-hunt against Ken Livingstone"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet\u00a0more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations\u00a0that he had made\u00a0anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims.<\/p>\n

Now as Livingstone fights to avoid expulsion<\/a> before a closed hearing of the party’s national constitutional committee, it emerges that Labour’s general secretary, Iain McNicol, has written to Livingstone saying that the hearing is not interested in the historical accuracy of his statements or whether what he said\u00a0was\u00a0anti-semitic. Rather, it is about whether his conduct has been \u201cgrossly detrimental\u201d to the party.<\/p>\n

In other words, this is a kangaroo court. Because, of course Livingstone’s comments have been detrimental to the party. Not least, they have angered the UK’s powerful Israel lobby. That is the same lobby \u2013 directed by the Israeli embassy and working through groups like the Jewish Labour Movement \u2013 that was\u00a0recently exposed by an undercover Al Jazeera investigation as plotting to bring down a British government minister. Crossing people like that is undoubtedly detrimental to the party, because they are prepared to destroy Labour before they allow it, or its leader, to campaign on behalf of Palestinian rights.<\/p>\n

That is why, as long as Livingstone or Corbyn are around, the JLM and its allies in the liberal media, like the Guardian’s Owen Jones and Jonathan Freedland, will keep helping to confect an “anti-semitism crisis”\u00a0in Labour, acerbating the very problems\u00a0they blame Corbyn for creating.<\/p>\n

In this context, one can understand why McNicol is denying Livingstone the chance to air the historical facts in an open hearing. Because the better the case Livingstone\u00a0makes for collaboration between the Nazis and Zionists, the more detriment the JLM and others will do to\u00a0the Labour party. Certainly, JLM leader Jeremy Newmark, who testified against Livingstone on Thursday, will benefit from the lack of public scrutiny of his statements.<\/p>\n

McNicol’s logic here is entirely circular, of course. As long as Labour indulges the JLM leadership, and continues to draw a veil over\u00a0Israeli oppression of Palestinians, the party\u00a0will have a quiet life. If Labour\u00a0tries to do the right thing \u2013 promoting\u00a0justice for the Palestinians, upholding international law and soothing a long-festering wound of British malfeasance in the Middle East\u00a0\u2013 it will face a\u00a0perfect storm from the JLM.<\/p>\n

Remember as you watch this farce play out that Owen Jones is due to give a memorial lecture<\/a> this Sunday (April 2) to the JLM, whose leaders barely bother to\u00a0conceal the fact that they are more loyal to the Israeli government than the democratically elected leader of their own party. If Jones cares about Labour as much as he claims, he shouldn’t touch the JLM with a barge-pole. Instead it has him in a bear hug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ongoing Ken Livingstone (“Get Corbyn!”) saga grows yet\u00a0more preposterous. After outrage that the former London mayor had said Hitler was a Zionist (when he clearly hadn’t, as I pointed out at the time\u00a0here and here), Labour suspended Livingstone amid accusations\u00a0that he had made\u00a0anti-semitic, offensive and false historical claims. Now as Livingstone fights to avoid […]<\/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-2494","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\/2494","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=2494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2494\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}