Tony Greenstein

Tony Greenstein is a British left-wing activist and writer. An anti-fascist and former squatter, he was a founder member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and stood for parliament as a representative of the Alliance for Green Socialism. In 2018, he was expelled from the Labour Party for "harassment" and "abusive language", following accusations of antisemitism.

Quotes

• Done so and voted – in favour of course. Please try to make sure that people on BIN [Boycott Israel Network] vote and to vote yes. It will be quite good for us that a JC [Jewish Chronicle] poll comes out in favour of working with the EDL [English Defence League]!!!
  • Post on the Boycott Israel Network forum about a Jewish Chronicle poll asking "Should Rabbis work with the EDL?" cited in "Anti-Zionists urge rabbis to work with EDL" The Jewish Chronicle (15 October 2010)
  • An attempt (according to The Jewish Chronicle article) to depict Jews as racist. The poll, which was abandoned because the organised abuse would make it unreliable, was in the process of gaining an overwhelming 'no' vote.

• [T]his guy has problems - he thinks he's me - put this Zio out of his misery otherwise he might self harm.
  • Tweet (19 February 2018), as cited in "UK's Labour Party Expels Jewish Activist for anti-Semitism", Haaretz (19 February 2018)
  • Haaretz reported the term "Zio" had been held to be abusive in the 2016 report into allegations of Labour Party antisemitism, usually known as the Chakrabarti Inquiry. See entry "March 31, 2018" in "Corrections and Clarifications 2018", The Times (London) website.

• Nazi Germany in a sense built the state of Israel at a crucial time and you can actually say that the state of Israel today is Hitler’s bastard offspring because the ideology, the ideology that permeates Israel, Jewish racial supremacy, originated in the fascist states of Europe.
  • Comments during a session at a Palestine Expo event entitled Britain, Zionism and Jewish Resistance to Israel at London’s Olympia (6 or 7 July 2019), cited in "Infamous anti-Israel activist called Jewish state 'Hitler's bastard offspring'" The Jewish Chronicle (10 July 2019)

About Greenstein

In alphabetical order by author or source.

• For students of anti-Zionism and borderline antisemitism (and sometimes worse) there has been much to ponder in the past couple of years. Even someone as extreme as Tony Greenstein — expelled from Labour recently — has been called a Jewish tribalist by that Judaeophobic jazz musician Gilad Atzmon whom Greenstein in return calls an antisemite and a Holocaust denier. Atzmon for his part has been lionised by George Galloway who claimed to have read chapters of one of Atzmon’s appalling anti-Jewish books to his wife in bed. The other week, Greenstein was on Galloway’s Russian government funded TV show, Sputnik and no one mentioned Atzmon. Pals for now in battling the witch-hunt.
  • David Aaronovitch "Beyond the fringe and gathering Momentum" The Jewish Chronicle (8 March 2018)
  • Aaronovitch is referring to the claims of such groups as Labour Against the Witchhunt.

• The depressing reality is that this book will be read and admired by people who don’t like Jews. It may well provide them with a vehicle to spread their hatred. ... In this book, in 2023, we have the myth that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis and consigned Jews to death. To my mind, this is a fabrication which Greenstein has created by stitching together quotes from Holocaust historians who wouldn’t recognise his work as having anything to do with their own.
• The author was only recently held by a British Court to be a "notorious antisemite". In my opinion this book is antisemitic rubbish.
  • Marc Goldberg "Book Review: Zionism During the Holocaust: The Weaponisation of Memory in the Service of State and Nation" Fathom (July 2023)
  • The book was issued by New Generation Publishing in 2022. Greenstein sued the Campaign Against Antisemitism for describing him as a "notorious antisemite", a claim which was dismissed by the High Court in November 2020. Greenstein was declared bankrupt for failure to pay the CAA's legal costs.

• Labour is now mounting an inquiry into accusations of antisemitism in the Oxford University Labour Club. I chaired the club way back in 1984, and recall that it invited one Tony Greenstein to speak on behalf of a group called the Labour Movement Campaign for Palestine. Greenstein caused bewilderment and outrage in defending terrorist violence against Israel. When a resolution was put to affiliate the club to his organisation, only two votes were cast in favour with dozens opposed. Greenstein recalls this and has more recently lambasted me and my university comrades as "the biggest collection of dimwits I recall". For good measure, he defended the IRA's attempted murder of Margaret Thatcher as a "military target".
  • Oliver Kamm "The fight's gone out of me" The Jewish Chronicle (17 March 2016)

• [Greenstein is] probably the rudest person I know in politics. He says many offensive things, most of the time.
  • Jon Lansman speaking at Limmud (26 December 2017), as cited in "Lansman: Tories as antisemitic as Labour", The Jewish Chronicle (26 December 2017)
  • Lansman was asked about the continuing Labour Party membership of certain individuals. At the time of Lansman's comments, Greenstein was suspended from Labour Party membership.

• In Britain, however, such anti-Israel attitudes have moved from the radical fringe closer to the mainstream and have even begun significantly to infiltrate the Labor party. Tony Greenstein, chairman of the Labor Committee on Palestine, has for instance been one of the more persistent advocates of the "Zionism is Fascism" myth as well as the thesis of Nazi-Zionist collaboration. Interestingly enough, one of Greenstein's discussion documents on Zionism (entitled "Anti-Semitism's Twin in Jewish Garb") was hailed by an organ of the neo-Nazi National Front as "excellent." Such strange convergences between the Left and the Right are by no means new in modern history, though there is something peculiarly grotesque in the spectacle of self-confessed Nazis expressing their approval of Jewish left-wingers who equate Zionism with fascism!
  • Robert S. Wistrich "The New War Against the Jews" Commentary (May 1985)

See also

• Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party