In part one of this article, I looked at key elements of the new anti-Zionist movement. I argued that the left and the anti-racist movement have for years blunted the cutting edge of an effective, material anti-Zionist movement. Why is this?

It's partly because significant sections of the Left, which has monopolized Palestine activism as its own, have perhaps less understanding of West Asia than they should, and are inhibited from taking effective material actions, in part, because they are infested with Zionist entryists and have too often deferred to their ideas about ‘anti-racism’. Amongst these are echoes, or, more often, ventriloquism, of the Zionist movement’s propaganda about the alleged continued significance of Judeophobia and a determination not to look as hard at questions of institutional, structural and state racism - the main forms of racism in Western states.

The most important effects of racism from the 1970s were felt by Black people, who were then joined by the Irish during the armed struggle to sever the colonial link between Ireland and Britain (1969-94). Muslims were centre stage, especially after 9/11. Jews were not threatened by significant state racism in this period. As far as it’s possible to judge, only one major British anti-racist group in the post-war period correctly tried to focus on institutional and police racism, as opposed to the declining threat of “Nazis”. This was the Anti-Racist Alliance (1990-1994) led by the aforementioned Marc Wadsworth. Sadly, amongst the challenges the ARA faced was concerted attacks by the Zionist “anti-fascist” group Searchlight (1975-present).

Searchlight is only one of a veritable tradition of Zionist “anti-racist” and “anti-fascist” groups. This issued from the 43 Group, created by demobbed returning Jewish service personnel and by a not insignificant number of members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Astonishingly, this group affiliated, en bloc, to the Irgun in 1948. Yes, it affiliated to the far right revisionist Zionist followers of Jabotinsky, who is perhaps best known for the alliance he struck with the Ukrainian far right, which was directly involved in pogroms against Ukrainian Jews and Communists.

This group of doughty “anti-fascists” even sent perhaps 40 cadres to participate in the Nakba in 1948. All of the groups coming out of that experience (in the sense of having direct links through personnel) are effectively Zionist in nature. The 62 Group in the 1960s contained the (later to be) convicted fraudster Gerald Ronson, who was the money man, and Mossad/British intelligence liaison Gerry Gable, who was the spy chief.

Together they had a baleful influence on the anti-racist movement - spawning or playing an important role in a whole series of Zionist “anti-racist” groups, including JACOB, The Board of Deputies Defence Committee, The Group Relations Educational Trust, the Community Security Trust and even Tell Mama - in the case of Ronson; and Searchlight, and Hope not Hate in the case of Gable.

Community Security Trust and Tell Mama

Ronson and his henchmen, including Mike Whine, Mark Gardner, Richard Benson, Dave Rich, and others have been closely involved with "Israel’s" foreign intelligence agency Mossad since the 1980s at least, as part of the attempt to weaponise antisemitism by blurring the distinction with anti-Zionism.

They set up the Community Security Trust in 1994, which is the UK equivalent of the Anti-Defamation League in the US. The CST has been used as a vehicle for milking multimillion grants from the British government to counter the largely mythical threat of anti-Semitism in the UK. It was given a record level of funding post-October 7, 2023, in February this year with £54 million in new funds to take the total over 4 years to £70 million. In the process, they have been at the forefront of the witch hunt against the British Left, Muslims, and indeed anyone who has the temerity to disagree with their positive evaluation of Zionism.

Benson was given the task of setting up a Muslim version of the CST called Tell Mama. This was in order to colonise the territory of activism against Islamophobia, which determinedly focused on “hate crime” and the far right at the expense of directing attention to where it is most needed. This is against state and institutional Islamophobia, as promoted and reproduced by the counter terrorism apparatus. This is precisely the same apparatus which gifts millions each year to the CST and has also funded Tell Mama with around £4.5 million between 2007 and 2020.

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The other area which they insist on ignoring is the very significant Islamophobia being deliberately fostered by the Zionist movement itself. But the CST is apparently sometimes taken seriously in some parts of the pro-Palestine movement. Ben Soffa, who is the membership secretary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, in a Channel 4 News interview in 2014, prayed in aid of both the CST and the police to help the “solidarity” movement, a shocking, but sadly not surprising feature of the weakness of the pro-Palestine movement.

Our condemnation of that [an Israeli flag with the swastika in place of the Star of David] was actually welcomed by the Community Security Trust, the main Jewish body…opposing anti-Semitism. Sadly, these are public events and we are not the police. We argue against these people, we try and push them out, … but ultimately only the police can actually physically remove signs.

When asked if the PSC would like the police to do that, Soffa stated, “I think that’s perfectly acceptable.”

When challenged on this in 2024, Soffa attempted to suggest that this did not amount to “collaboration”. Ben Jamal, the head of the PSC claimed in response that PSC “has not nor would collaborate with CST. We know exactly what they are and the role they play in conflating antisemitism with advocacy for Palestinian rights.” Strange then that Soffa, back in 2014, appeared not to know or at least was reluctant to say what the role of the CST is, describing it inaccurately as just a “Jewish” group.  This weakness in PSC was further illustrated in 2022, when it abandoned any opposition to Zionism. In a letter of resignation, veteran anti-Zionist activist, and PSC co-founder, Tony Greenstein, argued that the “Palestine Solidarity Campaign is today an obstacle to Palestine solidarity work.”

Searchlight and Hope Not Hate

Turning to Searchlight, in the so-called Gable memo, the veracity of which has never been challenged, Gable disclosed that he was in touch with several intelligence agencies including British and Israeli intelligence (and with a think tank that was later revealed to be a front group for BOSS, the intelligence agency of the Apartheid regime in South Africa). It beggars belief that after this disclosure the “revolutionary socialists” involved in the ANL and later Unite Against Fascism would allow state agents like Gable to be part of their organizations, but they did. When Searchlight resigned from the UAF in 2005 after some advanced comrades denounced them as Zionist, the response from UAF was to “regret” that they had left. They should never have been allowed to join in the first place.

Just like the CST, Searchlight and its offspring, Hope Not Hate, were (and are) totally unable to recognize, never mind oppose, the racism at the heart of the Zionist movement. Instead, Searchlight tried to insist that states like Libya or Iran were akin to Nazism, or that “Arab terrorists” were part of the British far right. In 2017, Hope not Hate claimed that mainstream Muslim organisations constituted some kind of security threat.

Amongst its funders, Hope Not Hate, has received more than £2.5 million (since 2013) from at least 6 family foundations with a pattern of giving to Zionist causes, including those associated with the Hamlyn, Rausing, Ronson, Sainsbury, Sebba, and Soros families. Naturally, Hope Not Hate also receives significant donations from the British state, including from the spook adjacent Building a Stronger Britain Together project (over £200,000 between 2008 and 2020) and it has helped to profile British intelligence cutouts like Inspire, in its 2017 report. It’s also worth mentioning that the aforementioned Ruth “strictly protect” Smeeth, who is now part of the Starmer government, in the House of Lords, has been a director of Hope Not Hate since the beginning.

We should look back at the history of the anti-racist movement in the UK with more than rose tinted spectacles (US readers are invited to read this passage and assess whether there are US comparators).

In the UK, even the doughty fighters of Rock Against Racism (1976-1982), the Anti-Nazi League (1977-1981 and 1992 -2003), and more so their descendants (Unite Against Fascism (from 2003), Love Music Hate Racism (from 2002), Stand Up To Racism (from 2017) historically preferred a Zionist friendly focus on “Nazis” or “fascism”. This was at a time when the real backbone of racism in the UK was the police and intelligence services (including MI5 and the Counter Terrorism Command of the police, formerly known as SO15/Special Branch). The focus on “fascism” also meant maintaining a strong focus on anti-Semitism, which soft-pedalled the reality of racism in the period in order not to offend or alienate those Zionist infiltrators who had leadership/steering group roles in groups like the ANL and UAF. These included those associated with Searchlight magazine, which would appear to have been an intelligence asset from the beginning.

Maurice Ludmer was editor of Searchlight until his death in 1981.  He had been a member of the steering group of the first Anti-Nazi League on its formation in 1977. He “had a heart attack and died at his home in Birmingham on 14 May 1981, suddenly in the middle of a phone call to a Special Branch Officer.” (emphasis added)

It will forever be impossible to build a Palestinian liberation movement internationally based on the patronising ‘solidarity’ model, which seeks perpetual victims rather than heroic, God-conscious guerrillas. And nor can Zionist entryists whether in secret dialogue with state intelligence or sometimes coming in the guise of being “non” or even (minimalist)“anti-Zionists”, be allowed to blunt the edge of the movement to end Zionism.

The online discourse has changed. The liberal-Left no longer has a monopoly on what constitutes anti-Zionism. We must build a maximalist anti-Zionist movement whose minimum demand is the liberation and decolonisation of Palestine; but it must also mobilise to decommission Zionism wherever it is found in this world.