Labour suspends notorious anti-Zionist activist - The Jewish Chronicle

Moshe Machover, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn Labour Party, was administratively suspended on November 30 over allegations including articles had written on "weaponising of antisemitism".

In a statement he said: "I Joined the Labour Party in 2016, when it opened its doors to socialists – who are, by definition, anti-imperialists.

"I regret I am now among the numerous victims of a purge driven by right-wing heresy hunters, bureaucratic enemies of free speech .

"But at least I can use this occasion to promote the views I have been advocating for many years; in particular, socialist opposition to the Zionist project of colonisation and the Jewish-supremacist regime of the Israeli settler state."

Mr Machover - who escaped expulsion from Labour in 2017 after a controversial essay he wrote about the Nazis and Zionists was distributed at party conference - published the letter sent to him this week from the party's Governance and Legal Unit informing him of disciplinary proceedings.

Articles he wrote for the Weekly Worker - the online paper of the Communist Party of Great Britain - including one titled ‘Weaponising Antisemitism’, was among the evidence, along with online activity he had taken part in.

In the piece he wrote of the "absurdly stretched definition of 'antisemitism’ used by the anti-Corbyn campaign.”

He added: "The definition, promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, is pathetically deficient."

The Tel-Aviv born activist also wrote about the "sources of hostility to the Corbyn leadership, which fuelled and motivated the campaign of alleged ‘antisemitism’ against this leadership and the party as a whole."

In November the JC revealed Mr Machover had told a meeting of the Labour Left Alliance group he was “proud to share a panel” with ex-Labour MP Chris Williamson - as well as Tony Greenstein, who was expelled by Labour over antisemitism allegations.

Mr Machover – who had previously overturned expulsion from Labour in a high-profile case in which Jeremy Corbyn’s office admitted intervening – accused Sir Keir of making his commitment on punishing those who share platforms with antisemites to the “Board of Jewish Deputies”.

Speaking at November 4 online meeting, Mr Machover said: “The Labour Party leader made a commitment regarding what I regard not as witch-hunt – it is really a heresy hunt.

“They don’t burn us, they excommunicate us.

“What is typical of a heresy hunt is those who are excommunicated are accused of heresy themselves. That has happened to two of my colleagues on this panel.”

Last year, the JC revealed how Mr Corbyn had “raised concerns” about Labour's initial decision to expel Mr Machover from the party in October 2017 after a controversial essay he wrote about the Nazis and Zionists was distributed at party conference.

The former Labour leader complained in October 2017 to then General Secretary Iain McNicol about the expulsion of Mr Machover, who was later readmitted, after receiving “many complaints from members of the party”.

Mr Machover's essay on Nazis and Zionists, which appeared in a magazine produced by the Labour Party Marxists group, which is closely linked to the CPGB, quoted Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the Final Solution, to support the notion that the Nazis supported Zionists before the Holocaust.

Labour’s John Mann and Holocaust Educational Trust Chief Executive Karen Pollock were among those to attack the publication of the article and called for those linked to the group to be expelled from the party.

Mr Machover was initially expelled from Labour under the party’s auto-exclusion rules which bar membership of another political party.

But he argued he was not a member of the CPGB despite having articles appear in their Weekly Worker newspaper and his regular appearances at their events.

The JC contacted Labour for comment.