Mr.Farage Finds a Friend

IT's always nice to follow a character's career, having noticed them early on, and today we heard news of Raheem Kassam, a young man whose latest employer, a right-wing American outfit called the Breitbart network,  was pleased to announce that its London editor Raheem Kassam was moving on to become an adviser to the United Kingdom Independence Party(UKIP)'s leader Nigel Farage.
Extolling UKIP's recent successes, Breitbart says

"As a result, the party is moving onto an election footing, with Kassam set to lead on advising Mr Farage in developing party messaging, strategy, fundraising and publicity. The role is the first of its kind as UKIP grows and professionalises, and Breitbart London understands from senior UKIP sources that Kassam was picked specifically for his political nous and campaigning prowess.
Executive Chairman of the Breitbart News Network Stephen K Bannon said: "Raheem is a huge piece of manpower, as proven by one of the most important political movements in the world bringing him onboard. The entire company will miss his intelligence and drive."

UKIP leader Nigel Farage MEP said: "I'm delighted that Raheem has joined the People's Army of UKIP. His experience in media as well in political campaigning will be important to us on the run up to the general election in 2015."

 http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/10/23/Breitbart-London-Editor-Becomes-Senior-Aide-to-UKIPs-Nigel-Farage

Hat-tip to my friend Marko Attila Hoare for bringing this news to my attention. I must admit I'd hardly heard of Breitbart before, though its name reminds me of the crazy far-Right Norwegian gunman Breivik. Breitbart is not quite that far to the Right, but is named after a 'conservative' American called Andrew Breitbart and specialises in circulating news stories "exposing" what it calls "big government", that is anything resembling the Welfare State and taxing the rich to pay for it.

This would fit Nigel Farage's promises to outdo the Tories in cutting NHS jobs and spending, though his supporters have been denying on TV that they're against the service. (Apparently it is bad manners to remind UKIP spokespersons of anything they or their leader said from one week to the next, or before different audiences).

Breitbart has also been behind sensational stories smearing unlikely political figures by association with "terrorism", described by others as hoaxes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breitbart_%28website%29

Andrew Breitbart himself died in 2012. Conspiracy theorists claim he was assassinated on orders from President Obama. We are in the world of the Tea Party, and perhaps its wilder fringes.

Breitbart's London edition was launched on February 16, 2014 headed by right-wing journalist and climate change skeptic James Delingpole as executive editor and Raheem Kassam as managing editor. 

Raheem Kassam's work came to my notice in 2009. On December 17 that year the BBC carried a report that a man called Jonathan Hoffman had been barracked during a university debate at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS),  by people chanting that he was "Jewish", and as such, not welcome. This referred in fact to a public event held by the SOAS Palestine Society and the British Committee for Universities in Palestine (BRICUP), with speakers from South Africa, one of whom Ronnie Kasrils is himself Jewish, as is academic Steven Rose, who also spoke.

It would have been surprising if Jonathan  Hoffman had not encountered some hostility at this meeting, since he had become notorious as an aggressive leader of the Zionist Federation, and his 'question' at the SOAS meeting was an attack on one of the speakers. But Hoffman was allowed to make his point without interruption, which is more than he allowed Holocaust survivor Hajo Meyer at a House of Commons meeting the following year. The Zionist federation chair was escorted out by police after persistent heckling of Dr.Meyer.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/02/445742.html?c=on

Several other members of the SOAS audience were also Jewish, including Naomi Wimbourne-Idrissi, who can be heard on video of the meeting introducing herself as Jewish before she spoke, and being applauded. None of them experienced any anti-Jewish chanting, and indeed it seems Jonathan Hoffman himself did not notice it or think it worth mentioning in his blog about the meeting on December 13.

The person who supplied the "antisemitism" story was Raheem Kassam. The BBC referred to his membership of Student Rights, describing this as an "anti-racist" campaigning organisation, though its own website prefers to identify itself as against "extremism". We don't know who else was in Student Rights.


According to a website called Standpoint in which some of his ideas appeared, "Raheem Kassam manages the counter-radicalisation pressure group 'Student Rights' from within the Henry Jackson Society. That's a society dedicated to aggressively bringing American-style 'democracy' to other countries. He also airs his views on the Conservative Home site, which says: 'Raheem Kassam hails from Uxbridge, studied Politics at university and is now a freelance political campaign strategist'".

The BBC had to pull its story about the SOAS event after complaints from people who had been there. But it seems to have continued treating Raheem Kassam as a reliable source on the subject of "extremism", particularly the Islamic variety, in British universities.

Having travelled from the ostensibly liberal Henry Jackson Society to the determinedly conservative (even by American Republican standards) Breitbart outfit, will Kassam be continuing to report extremism from his post in UKIP, with its known contingent of Holocaust deniers and believers in the famous Protocols? He takes up his new job in the same week that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, not known for exagerating (when right-wing parties are concerned) had this to say, about UKIP's links in Europe:

Board Vice President Jonathan Arkush said: “The Board is gravely concerned by reports that UKIP may sit in the same parliamentary grouping as a far-right Polish MEP in a bid to save its funding.  Robert Iwaszkiewicz belongs to an extremist party whose leader has a history of Holocaust denial, racist remarks and misogynistic comments.  He belongs to the far-right Polish JKM, led by Janusz Korwin-Mikke who has reportedly called into question the right of women to have the vote.

 “Furthermore, we entirely reject UKIP’s justification that ‘All groups in the European Parliament have very odd bedfellows (and) The rules to get speaking time and funding are set by the EP, not UKIP’.  Extremists and racists should be roundly rejected, not embraced.  Even France's far right Front National rejected the JKM as being too extreme.

 “For UKIP to choose such a figure as Robert Iwaszkiewicz as a bedfellow, apparently for money, is beyond belief. Nigel Farage now has some very serious questions to answer.  He has placed in issue the credibility of UKIP."  

http://www.bod.org.uk/live/content.php?Item_ID=1302

Plague Rats invade North London

AS if we did not have enough racists and fascists crawling out of the woodwork to exploit conditions of austerity and decline, accompanied by the fears and hatreds stirred by government and media, the eastward expansion of the European Union has brought to these shores not just decent workers and people fleeing persecution, but some of the very bigots and thugs responsible for that persecution.

In the past, it must be said, British intelligence connived at bringing in East Europeans who had served in the wartime SS, and similar units, perhaps with the intention of putting them to use again against the Soviet Union. Later we had several Italians wanted in connection with bombings and the "strategy of tension" in their own country, for whom London seemed like a magnet and a safehouse,

While successive Home Secretaries pretended to know nothing, MPs were fobbed off or stopped asking questions, and Italian extradition requests seemed to disappear in the post, these fascists were able to coach British admirers, and one ran a business and fundraising "charities" here, till it became safe to return home without facing more charges and enter "respectable" politics as a fascist.

But the new breed of migrant fascist is brasher and more open about conducting activity here. We have had the Hungarian organisation Jobbik running fundraisers at a London pub in spite of local protests. Jobbik has risen to be a major party in Hungary, apparently unimpeded, if not boosted by its fondness for uniforms and attacks on Jews and Gypsies.

Considering that Nazi racism regarded Poles as an inferior species, only to be used as slave labour until they could be dispensed with like the Jews, it must take a peculiar mentality among some youg Poles today to not only adopt traditional antisemitism but form groups seeking to emulate the Nazis. But such groups exist, apparently, and one of them has carried out an organised racist attack in London.   

The gang identified as Polish neo-Nazis attacked people attending a music festival in Tottenham.
 They appear to have particularly singled out Jewish people for attack.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/man-stabbed-during-violence-as-polish-neonazis-storm-tottenham-music-festival-9556346.html

Whether or not the Polish group was encouraged to launch this raid by our 'own' British Nazis we can bet they will take inspiration from it, and that it will be used by those in the media and elsewhere who make it their business to spread antagonisms, not least hostility to Polish immigrants.

So I am glad to hear there was a quick response by figures from the Polish and Jewish communities joining to condemn the attack, and by other local minorities in and around Tottenham, particularly Black and Muslim people, siding with the Jewish people who were attacked.

The Unite Against Fascism (UAF) campaign managed to call a vigil at very short notice last night at Tottenham Green.  The organisers were also able to read out a statement from the Jewish Socialists' Group. 

 :
"Greetings and congratulations from the Jewish Socialists’ Group on calling this solidarity vigil at such short notice. Unfortunately we cannot be here tonight with our banner but have spread the word through our networks.
We express solidarity with all communities in our multicultural city who experience abuse, intimidation and violence from the enemies of our common humanity.

This weekend Neo-Nazis are attacking Jews; a few weeks ago Britain First were abusing and intimidating the Bengali community in Brick Lane. Every day the right wing press are targeting migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. They do not distinguish between their targets. We should not distinguish between ourselves in fighting back.
We must stand united and proud of all who make up multicultural London. If we can deepen our commitment to each other across the divisions the racists and neo-Nazis wish to create, they are the ones who will remain small, marginalised and isolated,
Far right groups have been emboldened by the successes of racists in recent elections – whether UKIP in Britain or the ragbag of racist, antisemitic and fascist groups across Europe, but remember, London bucked that trend.
Ours is an anti-racist and anti-fascist city. We have an anti-racist and anti-fascist majority. When we have united, we have defeated them in the past and we will do so once again. No pasaran!

Warsaw's Fighters and Martyrs - including one in London

GHETTO IN FLAMES. Germans set housing block on fire to drive out or destroy ghetto fighters. "We were beaten by the flames, not the Germans", said Marek Edelman.

SEVENTY years ago, on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover, the Warsaw ghetto revolt broke out. The Nazis having defeated and occupied Poland had crowded Jews in the capital and some from outside into a small walled off section of the city, of which the boundaries they kept shrinking.

Weakened by hunger and sickness, and subjected to brutality and demoralisation at the hands of police, collaborators and criminals, the ghetto population was expected to fall easy prey to Nazi deportations and genocide.

But the Nazis had underestimated the resilience of the Jewish labour movement, which had a tradition of organising, defiance of authority and defence against racists; and of the cultural community which kept alive people's spirits through underground publications, arts and music through all adversity. To compound their error they brought into the ghetto some youth from movements like Hechalutz and Hashomer Hatzair who had been training for life in Palestine. Deprived of that hope, these idealistic and energetic young people would defend their honour by fighting, and if necessary falling in action, where they stood.
  
At first the Jewish people in the ghetto did not realise what the Nazis had in mind for them, and even the resisters thought "resettlement to the east" might only mean forced labour camps. But as more information filtered back about the Nazi camps, so grew the determination, however hopelessly, to resist. Already in January 1943 the Nazis had to cut short their mass deportation plan, as their forces met armed resistance from the ghetto fighters. By April, they were resolved to complete their plans, but meanwhile the Jewish fighters had readied themselves, preparing bunkers within buildings, and stockpiling what weapons they could, some home-made, some smuggled in from outside.

Marek Edelman, the Bundist and deputy commander of the Jewish Combat Organization, Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB), stated that the ŻOB had 220 fighters; and each was armed with a handgun, grenades, and Molotov cocktails. His organization had three rifles in each area, as well as two land mines and one submachine gun in the whole Ghetto. The insurgents had little ammunition; more weapons were supplied throughout the uprising, and some were captured from the Germans. .

Support from outside the Ghetto was limited. Some commanders in the London-backed Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) were reportedly reluctant to spare arms for the ghetto fighters saying these might "fall into the hands of communists" . The Revisionist Zionists' separate fighting unit may have fared better than the ZOB, having links with the right-wing Polish colonels. The AK and the smaller communist Polish Workers' Party's militia People's Guard (Gwardia Ludowa, GL) did supply some weapons and amunition however, and attacked German units near the Ghetto walls, later helping some Jews escape as the ghetto fell.


On 19 April 1943, police and SS auxiliary forces entered the Ghetto. They were scheduled to  complete the deportation action within three days, but were ambushed by Jewish insurgents firing and throwing molotov cocktails and hand grenades. Two German combat vehicles were set on fire by  petrol bombs.

The German task force dispatched to put down the revolt and complete the deportation action numbered 2,090 men armed with artillery pieces, armored vehicles, minethrowers, 82 machine guns and 135 submachine guns.  Its backbone consisted of 821 Waffen-SS Panzergrenadier troops, and one SS cavalry battalion, reinforced by police battalions and Wehrmacht units, and Ukrainian, Latvian and Lithuanian police units. From what had been planned as an orderly deporation, they turned to setting buildings ablaze, eventually deciding to raze the ghetto to the ground.  
 
As the defence of the ghetto fell before this onslaught, fighters and civilians alike took to the bunkers and sewers. The Nazis used dogs to locate hideouts amid the ruins, then dropping in smoke bombs, and flooding bunkers or destroying them with explosives. Still, shoot outs took place, and sometimes captured women produced grenades concealed under their clothes. Small groups of insurgents clashed with German patrols at night..

On May 8, the Germans discovered the bunker at Mila 18, the ZOB's command post. The ZOB commander Mordechai Aniliewicz was among those who perished there, but his deputy Marek Edelman escaped with a few comrades through the sewers. As late as June 5, 1943 there was a clash between German troops and Jewish fighters in the ruins of the destroyed ghetto. Some of those who escaped the ghetto were able to participate in the Warsaw uprising in June 1944. Jews deported from Warsaw to Treblinka concentration camp also took part in the revolt and break out there.

 Although many ghetto survivors went to Israel after the war, Edelman, who became a cardiologist, insisted on remaining in Poland, through all the difficult years of Stalinism and nationalism, to preserve Jewish life and uphold his ideas of freedom.  

On April 19, 1943, the same day that the Nazis were setting out to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto, the US and British governments convened a conference in Bermuda, to discuss what could be done to help the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. They did not come up with anything.

SZMUEL ARTUR ZYGIELBOJM

One man who had been pleading for help from the day his country was invaded was a Jewish trade unionist and socialist called Szmuel 'Artur' Zygielbojm. Before the war a city councillor in Lodz, Zygielbojm was asked by the Jewish worker's Bund to be its representative in the Polish parliament in exile, in London. He had gone to America in 1940 to raise awareness of the looming tragedy in Poland, and as reports of the ghettos and camps reached him via Polish couriers, he was able to speak in the House of Commons and on BBC radio.

By the beginning of May, it had become apparent that the Bermuda Conference was producing nothing, and with news that the Warsaw ghetto revolt had been suppressed Zygielbojm  also learned that his wife Manya and 16-year-old son Tuvia had been killed there. On May 12, Zygielbojm killed himself as a protest against the indifference and inaction of the Allied governments.
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In his "suicide letter,"  Zygielbojm stated that while the Nazis were responsible for the murder of the Polish Jews, the Allies also were culpable:

The responsibility for the crime of the murder of the whole Jewish nationality in Poland rests first of all on those who are carrying it out, but indirectly it falls also upon the whole of humanity, on the peoples of the Allied nations and on their governments, who up to this day have not taken any real steps to halt this crime. By looking on passively upon this murder of defenseless millions tortured children, women and men they have become partners to the responsibility.

I am obliged to state that although the Polish Government contributed largely to the arousing of public opinion in the world, it still did not do enough. It did not do anything that was not routine, that might have been appropriate to the dimensions of the tragedy taking place in Poland....

I cannot continue to live and to be silent while the remnants of Polish Jewry, whose representative I am, are being murdered. My comrades in the Warsaw ghetto fell with arms in their hands in the last heroic battle. I was not permitted to fall like them, together with them, but I belong with them, to their mass grave.

By my death, I wish to give expression to my most profound protest against the inaction in which the world watches and permits the destruction of the Jewish people.

A monument to Zygielbojm was incorporated into a building on a housing estate on part of what was the wartime ghetto in Warsaw.

In London, a campaign partly led by the Jewish Socialists' Group (JSG) resulted in a plaque commemorating Zygielbojm being put up on the corner of Porchester Road and Porchester Square, near where he lived. Among those who participated in the memorial's unveiling were members of Zygielbojm's family, the Polish ambassador, and the mayor of Westminster.  

This year, on the 70th anniversary the JSG has called a meeting on Sunday 12th May, 7.30-9.30pm
MIC Centre 81-103 Euston Street NW1 2EZ

FOR YOUR FREEDOM AND OURS!

Remember Szmul Zygielbojm
Remember the Warsaw Ghetto resisters
Please come to an event marking the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Revolt and the suicide here in London of the Bundist, Szmul Zygielbojm, who sat on the National Council of the Polish Government in Exile.

The evening will include talks about Zygielbojm’s life, personal reminiscences from the Warsaw Ghetto, and  Yiddish songs, poetry and readings.

Speakers:
Wlodka Blit-Robertson (Warsaw Ghetto survivor)
Robert Szaniawski (Polish Embassy)
David Rosenberg (JSG)
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Ghetto songs from Yiddish singer/performer Rachel Weston accompanied by Carol Isaacs (London Klezmer Quartet)

www.jewishsocialist.org.uk 

See also:Freedom in his Heart: Marek Edelman