Having spoken but rarely and long ago on this part of the world, I can’t with confidence say why US warships are headed for Venezuela now, rather than last week .. month .. year or next week .. month .. year. Nor how real a threat they pose. I will say this though. Anyone taking at face value the statements – robotically intoned with mandatory inclusion of narco-terrorist illegal regime, and no less mandatory exclusion of oil – from Karoline Leavitt, the latest propagandist for the most lawless state on earth, should be regarded as dangerously detached from known realities and probably unfit to manage their own affairs.
Venezuela is nominally socialist, oil rich, and has the misfortune to sit on the north facing edge of a continent Uncle Sam views, even more than he does the rest of the planet, as his personal fiefdom. He even has a name for this. Check out the Monroe Doctrine.
I’ll be doing what I can over the coming week to keep tabs on things. 1 In the meantime I offer this from Al Jazeera, whose ties to Qatar make it worthless on matters, notably Syria, affecting the Emir’s interests. That aside, it’s capable of excellent reporting and analysis – and, this goes without saying – is less constrained by empire agendas than are Western corporate media.
Oddly enough, podcasts from news outlets – ABC, BBC, PBS – funded by Western governments do not feature the “funded in whole or part by” warning. That’s likely because ‘we’ don’t do propaganda while ‘they’ do.
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Meanwhile in my own country, Jeremy Corbyn faces demands that he come out and declare, “I am anti-Zionist”. Why? Corbynite Kernow Damo has a response to that, and a useful one it is too. But before I hand over to him, let me make a few remarks:
- Though I’m signed up for Your Party, and wish it all the best, I’m not wildly optimistic. Having viewed a couple of public meetings on YouTube, I’ve experienced the dismay I used to have at Woodcraft Folk events. Good and decent people, to be sure, but weighed down by IdPol, non-competitive, non-hierarchical and other unhelpful baggage. Just as kids respond well to benign but firm leadership (my dysfunctional childhood saw way too much of the firmly malign kind) so does a society shafted for decades under Labour and Tory rule need people who lead from the front. My anarchist days long gone, these ultra considerate gatherings of the witteringly toothless would try the patience of a saint.
- Above rant aside, I do not share Jeremy Corbyn’s faith in parliamentary democracy. So why did I sign up? Same reason I became a Labour Party member when Jeremy, to his own amazement, had the leadership fall into his lap. It was less a question of the man himself – clearly a kind, decent, principled and courageous individual – than of the forces he galvanised and cohered.
- The Left – and not just its IdPol wing – is too fond of purism and its attendant red lines. I saw both with Covid, Ukraine and October 7 2 and am seeing them again in demands that Jeremy announce his “anti-Zionism”. Or else.
Don’t get me wrong. Some things do merit red line status. Refusal to condemn – without hesitation, deviation, caveat or bumbling repetition – Israel’s genocide is one of them. But demanding a precise and particular form of words, from a man whose life has been spent standing up to injustice – Palestine absolutely included – at no small cost to his chosen career, is a hallmark of people less interested in change than (at best) in virtue-signalling.
With that off my chest, over to Kernow. Not only does he deliver a solid rebuttal of the red-line happy brigade. For good measure we get a brief history of the various forms and goals the Zionist movement has taken.
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- Since writing this a few hours ago I’ve consumed two sources on the Venezuela moves. One is a commendably detailed setting out of context by Nick Corbishley at Naked Capitalism, the other a twenty minute Duran discussion on what may be afoot.
- Over Covid lockdown I did more than many of my critics to draw attention to credible arguments that state responses were out of all proportion to the severity of the threat. Didn’t stop ’em damning me for not doing enough. Over Ukraine I disagreed with those who, while conceding that Russia was and continues to be provoked, insisted she still should not have invaded. I never made it a red line though: just asked what they’d have her do instead. Three years on I’m confident I’ll have their reply any day now. October 7? Like Jonathan Cook I refuse to condemn the Hamas led breakout from the concentration camp of Gaza. But neither Jonathan nor I go into the belly of the beast to take on, face to face on their home turf, Israeli and Western genocide apologists. Two who do just that to great effect are Owen Jones and Mehdi Hasan. With both I have major differences on other matters but, since they take the fight to the enemy, who am I to demand they do so in ways that don’t cross my prissy red lines?
Your Party – its tricky isn’t it? If a major gripe about left of centre Parliamentary parties is that the leadership always loses any accountability to its base then a bottom up, community based approach is a credible response. I too am supportive without being wildly optimistic. After watching a couple of zoomed meetings myself I was left contemplating the enormity of the challenge and the huge amount of work that a bottom up approach requires. As for potential policy positions who could argue with ‘peace’ – but no mention of the Ukraine / Russia elephant in the European room.
There’s always democratic centralism …
Indeed there is and I can’t see how an effective party of the Left could progress without it. Am I right in thinking that this is easier to implement in relatively small leadership groups than throughout large organisations?
Well Stalin abolished the Soviets in the late 1920s so I guess the jury’s out!
“For the first time in history, Jews are being told they have to be Zionists. It’s a heresy hunt. The Labour Party has been suborned in a battle between orthodox and heretical Jews. Why does the Labour Party get to decide what Jewish values are?” Cushman says that he and others are part of a long tradition of non- and anti-Zionist Jewish socialism.”
http://www.middleeasteye.net/big-story/labour-antisemitism-jewish-opponents-israel-targeted
i.e: Any member of that community not conforming to the imposed narrative is denied their identity as part of that community.
The more I’ve contemplated the line of argument Damo puts forward over the past few hours, the more problematic this seems as to where it is likely to take us.
The very obvious trap which is identified has more than one layer and more than one dimension. Having effectively monopolised and copyrighted the term anti-Semitism to exclude other Semitic peoples in the region, including Palestinians, non-Zionist members of the Jewish Community, and anyone who is not a Zionist, those controlling the policies and narrative in Israel, as Damo explains, then go on to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
Including non-Zionist Jews.
However, the other side of that multi-layered “trap” also seeks to equates Zionism with Israel. Subtly defining not only Israel but Israeli policy, behaviour, and actions with Zionism. Which is inseparable from what Israel is and anything it does in then name of Zionism.
In this framing, not only is it impossible to separate Zionism from Israel/Israel from Zionism in the narrative it is also impossible to critique those policies, actions and behaviours of Israel/Zionism without being labelled anti-Zionist and by extension, anti-Semitic. Zionism is Israel. Israel is Zionism. That’s the trap.
If anyone else does this, they are portrayed as anti-Semitic for conflating Zionism with Israel/Israel with Zionism. However, the double standard operating here is that those using it in this way get to have their cake and eat it by doing the very same they vilify others for doing in pursuit of their objectives of imposing a Supremacist State that dominates anyone not Zionist.
That is the multi-faceted construction of the “trap” which Damo only partially dissects.
As Alistair Crooke continues to argue, this is an eschatological self-framing by Zionism. Not Zionism as it might once have been constructed, but Zionism as it self-identifies and is practiced by those who act as apologists for Israel and its actions today.
A framing which not only operates within Israel, but also in those parts of the non Jewish Zionist World which shares the same eschatology. A framing which by design deliberately seeks to prevent not only any other narrative, but which also;
a) precludes any change of direction to that taken by both Jewish Zionism inherent in the existence of Israel as an eschatological project and non-Jewish Zionism with the same aims and objectives;
and
b) to impose the objectives of that narrative by systematically and ruthlessly destroying any opposition to that objective. As we are seeing with the Palestinian people.
It is not simply criticism of Zionist dominated Israel’s actions in pursuit of it’s self-identifying Zionist objectives that is considered anti-Zionism and therefore anti-Semitic, it is also that any attempt to prevent Israel/Zion from pursuing those objectives and the methods used to pursue them which is also anti-Semitic in the mindset of those using this narrative to pursue those objectives.
That would seem to be the logical conclusion of a position which also effectively criticises any International body from the ICC to the UN of anti-Semitism for opposing anything and everything done by an Israel which overwhelmingly considers itself a Zionist Project based on Zionist Supremacy and lethal dominance over anyone who is not Zionist and who is, by definition, not only inferior but also Amalek – with all that entails. Opposition per se is both anti-Israel AND anti-Zionist, and therefore anti-Semitic.
Even being against capitalism is weaponised in this way:
https://iea.org.uk/on-anti-capitalism-and-anti-semitism/
It is no more possible to avoid being anti-Zionist for opposing what Israel is doing in the name of Zionism as it is for a socialist or a Communist to avoid being anti-Capitalist. Or a critic of US foreign policy being labelled anti-American.
Claiming not to be anti-Zionist or refusing to answer that question will not avoid what Damo is trying to avoid, simply because any action which seeks to prevent Israel from imposing a Zionist Supremacist State in whatever borders those pursuing that Project determine will be called out and labelled as anti-Zionism and by extension, anti-Semitic.
Not for what they say or don’t say, but for the very act of opposition.
All that does is walk into the same multi-edged trap from another direction, throws non-Zionist Jewish allies under the bus, and precludes oneself from any action which opposes what the Zionist based State of Israel is doing in pursuit of a project which sees any deviation from a single Zionist State which dominates anyone not of that project which has the right to exterminate anyone it considers at any one time as Amalek, as Existential.
Any action of opposition or critique is going to be labelled anti-Zionist/anti-Semitic regardless of not answering that question. It needs to be met head on and not inch or quarter given by making it explicit that those pursuing that line consider any opposition to anything Israel does as anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Lobbing that ball back into the court of these chancers.
I guess we’ll find out, but your second sentence does not necessarily follow from your first. As for throwing non Zionist Jews “under a bus” by refusing to argue interminably over the z-word but acting unwaveringly for Palestine justice by opposing the Israeli state, I don’t see it. I could be missing something but what is this bus that’ll run them over? Opponents of the ethno-state may still work together, no?
You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
“ACTING unwaveringly for Palestine justice by opposing the Israeli state” is considered ipso facto by the Israeli State, its sponsors in the West, and its apologists to be just as anti-Zionist as explicitly declaring verbally that you are anti-Zionist.
Because in ACTING for that justice, one is acting against the Zionist project as it currently exists and is therefore anti-Zionist in the eyes of all those pushing the Zionist Project and the methods used to achieve the objectives of that Project.
Refusing to declare anti-Zionism will not avoid the trap Damo talks about, simply because the trap will be sprung regardless, based on the ACTIONS of pursuing justice for the Palestinians rather than any explicit verbal statement.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
Here’s Alistair Crooks today……
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/09/01/israels-new-violent-zionism-as-a-harbinger-of-imperial-geo-politics-of-submission-and-obedience/
…..quoting Yossi Klein in Haaretz, that:
“We are indeed in the stage of barbarism, but this is not the end of Zionism … [This barbarism] has not killed Zionism. On the contrary, it has made it relevant. Zionism has had various versions, but none resembled the new, updated, violent Zionism: the Zionism of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir …
“The old Zionism is no longer relevant. It established a state and revived its language. It has no more goals … If you ask a Zionist today what their Zionism is, they wouldn’t know how to answer. ‘Zionism’ has become an empty word … Until [that is] Meir Kahane came along. He came with an updated Zionism whose goals are clear: to expel Arabs and settle Jews. This is a Zionism that doesn’t hide behind pretty words. “Voluntary evacuation” makes it laugh. “Transfer” enchants it. It is proud of “apartheid” … To be a Zionist today is to be Ben-Gvir. To be non-Zionist is to be antisemitic. An antisemite [today] is someone who reads Haaretz …”.
Crooke goes on to add meat to the quotes earlier in the article – eg:
“We need genocide every few years; the murder of the Palestinian people is a legitimate, even essential act”. This is how a “moderate” general in the IDF speaks … killing 50,000 people is “necessary”.
……. about the all out nature of the project
“It is this train of apocalyptic thought that is bleeding into the Trump Administration in its various formats: It is metamorphosing the Administration’s ethical posture towards one of ‘war is war and must be absolute’. Anything less must be seen as mere moral posturing. (This is the Talmudical understanding arising from the story of wiping out the Amalek…”
Those committed to opening this Pandora’s box are not simply going to shrug their shoulders and say; ‘bugger it, they won’t say they are anti-Zionists. Now we can’t call them out as anti-Semites and get our paid for politicians and media to condemn them with banner headlines, twenty minute news broadcast denunciations, and 24/7 documentaries vilifying them the way we did before.’
They are going to do that anyway on the basis that ACTING to support justice for the Palestinians is anti-Zionist and therefore anti-Semitic.
Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.
That logic of that reality is that refusing to explicitly accept that the position of support for the Palestinians is by definition anti-Zionist on the basis that to do so would unleash this campaign of anti-Semitism allegations again is self-defeating.
Because ACTING for Palestinian justice is going to unleash the same campaign, the same allegations, and the same villification.
The only way to avoid it is to not only not say it explicitly, but also not to take ACTION which will most definitely be portrayed as anti-Zionist.
ie. Pack up and go home.
Now I recall reading recently something along the lines that Zara Sultana had publicly stated that this was going to be met head on this time around. Hinting that there would be no explicit OR implicit (ie. hiding and running away from the issue in the way that Damo argues) apologies.
It’s going to happen. Refusing to answer the question rather than face it head on is not going to stop it. The charge needs to be faced head on, as Zara Sultana alluded to, by throwing it back. Using the charge as a counter-accusation that any ACTION in support of justice for Palestinians, their right to self-defence etc, is being defined by the Zionists as anti-Semitic for the purpose of weaponising the term as a means to commit Genocide and advance an ideology (Zionism) which is now based on racist supremacy.
Is anyone accusing Corbyn of NOT taking action? I’m not here to argue his corner but it seems to me that, as I found with my Covid critics, many of his accusers have a far thinner record of action on Palestine.
Not sure where that question was raised?
The question is surely that of any opposition to Israel as an Apartheid Supremacist State must by definition be anti-Zionist, simply because Israel as an Apartheid Supremacist State is a Zionist project.
The argument is that this is not, as Damo implies, a matter of semantics which by not answering that question or not declaring that principle will avoid the “trap” because acting against the Zionist project is to be anti-Zionist and the allegation will be made on that basis anyway.
As Tony Greenstein notes here……..
https://tonygreenstein.substack.com/p/has-jeremy-corbyn-learnt-anything
“A Jewish state, like any ethno-religious state is a racist state…….Israel cannot be reformed. It must be replaced by a unitary democratic secular state.
That is what anti-Zionism means……
……Your Party will face many difficulties in the years ahead. If it is to succeed, it must have a united leadership agreed upon common principles. One of those must be its attitude to Apartheid Israel. It has to be an anti-Zionist party. Yes we will be accused of ‘anti-Semitism’ but it will be easier to rebut if we are clear about our principles.”
And that is surely the point.
At this stage the point is to build a broad based movement on this issue, of people actually doing things to advance the demise of the racist ethno-state. That, and a pivot to targeting businesses in the West profiting from apartheid, is what ended it in South Africa.
ACTION may be small, like individual BDS and going on demos, or bigger like disrupting the genocide the way Palestine Action do. In between are the mass defiance of August 9, and the one scheduled for September 9. I’m more interested in what people DO to oppose the murderous regime state than the form of words they use.
This may change. A time may come when it matters whether a Corbyn declares himself anti-Zionist. Right now I see him – and again I stress my political distance from the man – doing more than many of his critics. Ergo he is anti-Zionist whether he says so or not.
Jackie Walker, on the Crispin Flintoff podcast, provides as cogent an argument on the matter as any I’ve seen so far:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8hf4tyiUTI&ab_channel=TheCrispinFlintoffShow
Particularly the point she makes that actual Palestinians don’t have a problem with the term, nor do they see the issue as something problematic in this way.
Indeed, it seems more than reasonable to defer to them, the majority of activists doing all the donkey work on the front line, and their belagured allies in the wider diaspora of anti-Zionist members of the Jewish community (who seem to be being outlawed in much the same way as those who defend the position of the immutability of biological sex) and their experience rather than going along with an Overton Window approach.