Anti-Zionism is Not Anti-Semitic: Reinstate Moshé Machover to the British Labour Party

Anti-Zionism is Not Anti-Semitic: Reinstate Moshé Machover to the British Labour Party
Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
October 23, 2017

On October 3, eminent Israeli scholar Moshé Machover was summarily expelled from the British Labour Party for authoring an allegedly anti-Semitic article. In reality, however, Prof. Machover’s article discusses well-documented ideological parallels and active collaboration between Zionism and Nazism in the 1930s and ’40s, the current relevance of which is only confirmed by neo-Nazis like Richard Spencer, who calls himself a “white Zionist.”

Unable to dispute such facts, Zionists resort to smearing anti-Zionism — which is anti-racist, anti-apartheid, anti-colonialist, and anti-fascist — as anti-Semitic. Above all, this McCarthyite witch-hunt is designed to silence the surging Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, many of whose supporters are Jewish.

BDS, which resembles the divestment movement from apartheid South Africa and many other social justice movements, demands an end to Israeli occupation and apartheid, full equality for all, and Palestinian refugees’ right to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled.

In short, the Labour Party doesn’t have an “anti-Semitism” problem; it has a Zionism problem, as reflected in this baseless expulsion. Along with Jewish Voice for Labour and many others, we call on the Leader of the Party, and its National Executive, to immediately reinstate Prof. Machover and end all Labour complicity in attacks on the Palestine freedom movement.