REMOVING Jackie Walker from her position as Momentum vice-chair, as the group’s steering committee has done, is an act of political cowardice and confusion.

It was pushed through by seven votes to three in response to allegations by the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) that this black Jewish woman made anti-semitic comments that have already seen her suspended by the Labour Party. If Walker had indeed been guilty of anti-semitism, she should have been ditched by both Momentum and Labour and any other labour movement organisation.

Momentum insists that she remains a member of its steering committee and maintains that nothing she said was anti-semitic, while calling her comments “ill-informed, ill-judged and offensive.”

The group also asked Labour not to expel her, but the ill-fated recent decision by the party’s national executive committee to ask the JLM, known until 2004 as Poale Zion, to “train” party leaders on what constitutes anti-semitism does not augur well. The JLM is not the sole voice of Jewish members of the Labour Party.

It supports Israel’s dispossession of the Palestinian people, Tel Aviv’s wars against its neighbours and rejects the worldwide boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign to persuade Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and siege of the Gaza strip. It is effectively an arm of Israel’s Labour Party inside Labour.

Many British Jews, including Labour members, reject that stance and oppose this zionist group having pride of place to put forward unchallenged its view of what constitutes anti-semitism.

It must be remembered that Walker’s comments were made during participation in a JLM “training session” fringe event at Labour’s conference in Liverpool where she engaged in discussion. Her comments were recorded without her knowledge and forwarded to the media alongside a tidal wave of feigned shock and outrage designed to produce maximum impact.

She is reported to have suggested that Holocaust Memorial Day should commemorate other holocausts, questioned enhanced security levels at Jewish schools and observed that no standard definition of anti-semitism exists.

Momentum’s steering committee majority may view her comments as “ill-informed, ill-judged and offensive” and they are entitled to that opinion. What she said cannot, however, be read as anti-semitic, which ought to be the main point at issue. If Labour expels Walker on these trumped-up charges, where does this leave Momentum? The organisation says that it “exists to build on the energy and enthusiasm from the Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader campaign to increase participatory democracy, solidarity and grassroots power and help Labour become the transformative governing party of the 21st century.”

Socialists, both inside and outside Labour, have long recognised that the wave of largely spurious allegations of anti-semitism being rampant in the party — which prompted Shami Chakrabarti’s inquiry — were intended to undermine Corbyn’s leadership. If Momentum refuses to ditch Walker while the Labour apparatus plumps for expulsion, will we hear a chorus of claims that “Corbyn’s fan club” harbours an anti-semite?

Vanquished challenger Owen Smith paraded his political ignorance during the election campaign by accusing the Alliance for Workers Liberty, which has renounced its status as a political party in order to facilitate its relocation into Labour, of “left anti-semitism” — an absurd formulation comparable with left racism or left Islamophobia. In reality, this supposed ex-party has well-attested pro-zionist credentials. Meeting a witch-hunt halfway is unprincipled and doomed to failure. There should be no credence given in the labour movement to JLM-inspired smears spread to damage Corbyn.