THE ELECTRONIC INTIFADA

Podcast Ep 79: Weaponising Anti-Semitism

Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada Podcast 21 June 2023

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TDZWN6X9CAs?feature=oembed&On episode 79, Asa Winstanley and Ali Abunimah talk about Asa’s brand-new book, Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn.

The book is a culmination of Asa’s years of investigations into the campaign to sabotage the former UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn. It contains a ton of new details and the kind of sharp analysis that has made Asa the preeminent expert on this story.

Asa details the inner workings of the Israel lobby’s efforts to undermine Corbyn and smear him and his supporters – many of them anti-Zionist Jews – as anti-Jewish bigots.

“It is sabotage from a hostile foreign power at the end of the day,” Asa explains.

“They do it through front groups, they do through cutouts, and even worse, they present themselves as the Jewish community. … So it’s a real kind of dangerous sectarian agitation in that respect.”

We talk about the lessons learned for the future, and what Palestine solidarity activists should expect.

The smear tactic, he warns, is “going to be used over and over again, it can’t be swept under the rug, it will never go away. It can only be defeated. Defeated.”

It was essential, Asa explains, to have been able to report on this story for The Electronic Intifada over the last eight years without corporate censorship.

“This book is a real example of independent media [and] the funding of independent media being important because I was only able to follow this story for seven, eight years now and report on it in such detail because I was able to do so professionally for The Electronic Intifada.”

“And without the support of our readers and donors, that would have been impossible. So this book, in a very real sense, only exists because people are willing to put their hands in their pockets and support independent journalism,” he says.