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Labour’s anti-Semitism — 16 Comments

  1. Democrats here are going on about the “existential threat” posed by Trump, but in the UK, Labour Jew-hating really is an existential threat to British Jews. This holds on the Continent as well, as many American Jews with European family can testify.

  2. The self-understanding of British Jewry differs from that of American Jewry, with the mode understanding the community as a confession rather than an ethnic group. Most British Jews are orthodox, a dispensation that captures < 10% of American Jewry. Their basic inclinations are much more skeptical of leftism than is the case for their American counterparts.

    The prevalence of Jews among the American word-merchant sector inhibits the embrace of yet another bad cause by our horrid intelligentsia. The comparatively small Jewish population in Britain isn't nearly so prominent in public discussion, so doesn't move the needle in regard to the Near East. British intellectuals in re the Near East embrace venomous causes just as do intellectuals everywhere else.

    Jeremy Corbyn is with scant doubt the most unintelligent man to have led either the Conservative or the Labour Party since 1935, but he is a dependent and hanger-on of the intelligentsia (his wretched school record notwithstanding). Prior to entering electoral politics, he'd pretty much spent his adult life working as office plankton for trade unions, editing their newsletters and the like. His upbringing was professional-managerial bourgeois (and both of his brothers are quite accomplished). He knows nothing of business, or of any trade or profession (blue collar or white collar).

  3. British Jews have NOT turned on Labour; Labour has turned on them.

    This is entirely consistent with what’s been happening on the European continent.

    And American (mostly ethnic, no longer religious) Jews refuse to see the same leftwing threat to Judaism here.

  4. And, sadly, lefties like Glenn Greenwald who have fallen all over themselves to deny and excuse any charge of antisemitism against Labour will likely say not one word about any of this. The opinions of actual British Jews will not register with them.

    It’s a lesson for us all because Greenwald is dead on when it comes to the Russia paranoia on the Left, yet it determinedly oblivious about this.

    Mike

  5. New Statesman, a prominent leftist publication in UK which has endorsed every Labour administration since 1913, will not endorse Corbyn and stated, “….the essential judgement that must be made is on Mr Corbyn himself. His reluctance to apologise for the anti-Semitism in Labour and to take a stance on Brexit, the biggest issue facing the country, make him unfit to be prime minister.”

  6. Following that BBC documentary, Simon Schama, along with some others on the left, signed this letter that appeared in The Observer:

    The poison in Labour’s soul

    Over the past four years, we have watched the unchecked spread of vicious antisemitism – anti-Jewish racism – in the Labour party with bewilderment and disgust – all the more so since we respected Labour’s long previous history of fighting racism, and its many brave and decent members.

    As accusations of antisemitism became too insistent to ignore, the Labour leadership set out to change the narrative from hate to housekeeping. Yes, there were minor issues, the Labour leadership conceded, but those related only to the time it was taking to identify the few actual or seeming antisemites in the party and the occasionally flawed system of dealing with them. Otherwise, all suggestions that racist hate against Jews was becoming endemic to Labour were mendacious, mischievous and malign.

    Now, after the BBC’s Panorama programme, we can see for ourselves what is and isn’t false. The extent of Labour’s antisemitism, the degree to which it has been protected, sanctioned and propagated by the leadership faction, can brook no further denial; the labyrinthine attempts to deflect attention from the problem and discredit officials supposedly charged with identifying and rooting it out, are now laid bare. There is nowhere left for the Labour leadership to hide. It is clear this is not just about Jeremy Corbyn but the pernicious world view of a faction that has – temporarily, we hope – taken control of Labour.

    But yet again, rather than seize this moment to face up to the racism at its heart, the Labour leadership remains determined to go on piously protesting its innocence, rejecting the message and blaming the messenger. People prepared to bear witness have been forced to sign gagging orders; those who have dared to speak out have been bullied, defamed, and stigmatised as dishonest and disloyal. What drives them, the leadership insists, is nothing other than political or personal disaffection. We are where we were before. Whistleblowers would be heroes to any other Labour party; to this Labour party they are traitors. Regrettable double standards are therefore operating, where Labour is keen to support whistleblowers elsewhere but not in its own house.

    In our view, those whistleblowers and Labour members who could no longer stomach what was happening in a party they loved, and were in some cases driven to the point of nervous breakdown by it, have shown a rare moral courage and decency that belongs in a great tradition, and gives us hope. In the meantime, trust between Corbyn’s Labour and most Jews in Britain appears to be fractured beyond repair. The very fact that Labour is, like the BNP before it, being statutorily investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for racism is not a matter of housekeeping, but a taint of international, historic shame.

    There are procedures that could take the heat out of this – a fully independent complaints body, for example, over which Corbyn and his inner circle exert no covert influence. Not with the aim of shuffling off blame, but in order, finally, that the party will honestly own up to what can no longer be filed away in a folder. After Panorama, damage limitation should not be the first priority for Labour. Draining the antisemitism that lies like a pool of poison in the party’s soul is. Now, nothing else will do.

    Howard Jacobson, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Sir Simon Schama, Neil Blair, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Rabbi Julia Neuberger

  7. A number of Jews have been killed, individually, in Paris in recent months. Here’s one:

    Neighbours heard him repeatedly chant “Allahu Akbar”.
    The [homicide] victim was Lucie Attal, an Orthodox Jewish woman who sometimes used the name Lucie Attal-Halimi. The perpetrator, who confessed to the crime, was Kobili Traoré, a Franco-Malian Muslim. He later told authorities he knew that his victim was Jewish.

    In fact, Kobili Traoré may never go to prison for the killing: he has been in psychiatric detention since the night of the crime, and a French judge could rule that he is mentally unfit to stand trial.

    Supposedly, he was too high on cannabis to be prosecuted, maybe. One article I read said that he won’t be prosecuted, this one says it’s unclear.

  8. Good for the British Jews.

    As for us in the USA, it’s high time to see the facts for what they are. Many liberals, including high pooh-bah Democrats are Jew haters.

  9. Many liberals, including high pooh-bah Democrats are Jew haters.

    No doubt Omar and Tlaib are Jew haters. I doubt that motivates too many others. Read Paul Hollandar’s Political Pilgrims and Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed. Our intelligentsia has an affection for venomous causes. The Soviet Union back in the day, commies in the Far East later, commies in Latin America, Arab and Muslim revanchists in the Near East, loudmouth black nationalists at home. You name it, they’ll produce an apologia for it in The Nation (denouncing the perfidy of American policy-makers) with a companion piece in the New York Review of Books by some professional scribbler about how vulgar and flat-footed American policy-makers are to let it come to this. Your reaction to this sort of thing defines in-groups and out-groups among a certain sort of haut bourgeois, which is why the likes of Pete Buttigieg will never call bullsh!t on this or ever subject it to any critical examination.

    Our intelligentsia is horrible.

  10. Is anti-semitism a form of racism?
    Is racism an all-encompassing evil that includes anti-semitism? and nationalism?
    Or is anti-semitism just plain anti-semitism?

    Why don’t we begin again to be for some things & beliefs rather than against?

  11. “even Jews who would ordinarily be inclined to vote Labour are having trouble doing so.”

    Yeah, imagine how it is for the Twin Cities Jews. They’ve provided most of the Minnesota Democratic party funding for decades. When Ilhan Omar was just a candidate, she appeared before a group of local Jews and recited some meaningless platitudes. They responded with money and votes. Now that it’s perfectly clear that she’s an Islamist Jew hater, they keep begging her privately: “Please, can you hold off on the hateful tweets long enough for our checks to clear?”

    I kid thee not. Trump, who has never said anything or acted antisemitic and has a daughter who is an observant Jew, is the real danger. But they’ll incur massive chiropractor bills from patting themselves on the back because they support Omar, who wants them dead.

  12. Pingback:The role of anti-Semitism in the UK election

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