Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party cannot deal with its antisemitism
The left has absorbed the Marxist concept that the world is divided into the powerful and the powerless. Those with power can never be good; those without power, like the Palestinians, can never be bad. Those who make money have power over those who don’t. Those who make money are bad; those without money are good. Jews make money. Therefore Jews are powerful and bad.
Worse, Israel is militarily powerful. That is seen as its crime; and it’s also why anti-Israelism is umbilically connected to antisemitism. The fact that Jews are now equipped with military power, albeit solely to defend themselves against annihilation, breathes life into the paranoid delusion that the Jews are so powerful they pose a threat to everyone else.
Antisemitism is now surging across continents in an unholy alliance between the left, neo-Nazis and the Islamic world.
Such a derangement of reason on a global scale is terrifying and, as with antisemitism throughout the ages, ultimately unfathomable. For the west, however, support for Palestinianism has clearly destroyed its moral compass.
The left believes that it is morally unimpeachable and simply incapable of racism. Its support for the Palestine cause demonstrates and reinforces its self-righteousness.
It won’t begin to address its own antisemitism, therefore, until and unless it acknowledges that the evil it has supported abroad has seeded itself not just in the Labour party but throughout the “anti-racist” world.
Sanders Fills Ranks With Anti-Israel Advocates Tied to Anti-Semitism Scandal
Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I., Vt.) top advisers have deep ties to the anti-Israel community and were chastised several years ago for their involvement in an anti-Semitism scandal that gripped a prominent Washington, D.C., think-tank.Bernie Sanders staffer fired for anti-Netanyahu rant hired to run B’Tselem USA
Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic-socialist who has once again thrown his hat into the ring for a 2020 presidential bid, has begun to rely in recent months on two staffers: Foreign policy adviser Matt Duss and campaign manager Faiz Shakir, both of whom faced charges of promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories during their time at the Center for American Progress, or CAP, a liberal think-tank.
Sanders's dependence on Duss and Shakir has been making waves in the pro-Israel and Jewish community in recent months, given the duo's prominent role in CAP's 2012 anti-Semitism row, which saw several staffers at the organization's Think Progress blog rebuked for invoking age-old canards about Jewish control of money and politics. Duss has faced additional scrutiny in the subsequent years for publishing Nazi-era propaganda posters and steadfastly standing against the U.S.-Israel alliance
As the matter of anti-Jewish bias in prominent D.C. political circles makes its way back into the news following a series of anti-Semitic comments by freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), many in the pro-Israel community are beginning to raise questions about Sanders' choice to fill his ranks with individuals closely tied to some of the most prominent anti-Israel causes.
In 2012, Duss was CAP's Middle East director, while Shakir served as editor-in-chief of the group's Think Progress blog, which has since become regarded as a hotbed for anti-Israel activism.
During their tenure at CAP, Duss and Shakir emerged at the forefront of a scandal involving several Think Progress bloggers who accused pro-Israel Jews and members of Congress of being "Israel firsters," a term implying that those who support the Jewish state have dual loyalties.
The scandal rocked CAP for several months and drew condemnation across the board, including from the Obama administration, which distanced itself from Duss, Shakir, and the rest of Think Progress's former staff.
The Israeli human rights organization B’tselem said Tuesday that former Bernie Sanders adviser and long-time anti-occupation activist Simone Zimmerman has been appointed the new director of its American operations.Honest Reporting: Boycotting Israel – Is it Free Speech?
Zimmerman is an “American Jewish anti-occupation activist” who will “work to amplify B’Tselem’s voice among US policy makers and the broader public,” the rights group said in an official statement.
“As a Jewish activist who has worked for years to challenge my own community’s denialism about the reality of the occupation, I am excited to take on my new role,” the statement quoted Zimmerman as saying. “I hope to deepen the partnership between the anti-occupation movements working on the ground and those working here in the USA.”
In 2016 Zimmerman was suspended from her role as adviser to US Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign after reports surfaced of her harsh and foul-mouthed criticism of Israeli policies and of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After Zimmerman, a former J Street student activist, was hired by the Sanders campaign, it was discovered she previously wrote on Facebook, “Bibi Netanyahu is an arrogant, deceptive, cynical, manipulative asshole,” according to the Washington-based Free Beacon.
Boycotting Israel and other Western countries70 years of transcripts from UK’s parliament show clear ‘obsession’ with Israel
Most of the Western world treats boycotts similarly to the United States. For example, courts and legislative bodies in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Chile, and others have struck down local or private BDS activities or even passed anti-BDS laws, on similar principles.
The Irish senate advanced legislation banning products originating from Israeli settlements in disputed territories, yet Ireland’s attorney general opposes passing the measure into law, warning that it may violate European Union trade rules, which supersede the individual laws of EU member states.
Indeed, even the less onerous measure of applying special labels to settlement goods has been struck down in other EU countries, such as Greece.
While EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, declared that boycotting Israel constitutes “free speech,” this is merely a talking point which does not constitute binding law. By contrast, the EU’s 2016 Report on Competition Policy interprets the EU trade law as including, “the need to fight against unfair collective boycotts.” The chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations with Israel confirmed that this language was indeed intended to prevent private boycotts against Israel (as well as others) as a matter of EU trade law.
EU law is evolving, but its underlying philosophy appears to be that no party should be allowed to interfere with the trade priorities set by the EU itself.
In conclusion
There was indeed an American boycott against South Africa: enacted by the United States Congress under the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. The United States also enacted an embargo against Cuba, waged economic warfare against Japan, imposed sanctions on Iran, and more. The common denominator among them is that they were imposed by the United States federal government. The Constitution does not hold that boycotts are illegal, only that private, concerted boycotts of foreign nations are illegal.
Once we strip away the slogans and propaganda we see the truth: a boycotting Israel has never been “free speech,” by any laws. Open debate is essential to democracy, but taking illegal, private actions against foreign nations undermines our entire system of government.
Using a new analytics tool, researcher David Collier picks up 17,667 parliamentary references to the Jewish state — more than Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine combined
By expending so much energy discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, West Bank settlements or Gaza, parliamentarians – who have only a finite amount of time to spend in debates – grapple less with issues around Islamist extremism, terrorism, corrupt and undemocratic governance, economic weakness, and Iranian expansionism which lay at the root of the Middle East’s ills.
Collier also notes the rise in mentions of anti-Semitism in parliament in recent years.
“It is part of a trend. It isn’t tied to a single individual, nor can accusations of anti-Semitism simply be a plot to unseat Corbyn,” he asks. “If the anti-Semitism ‘smear’ exists to unseat Corbyn, why were there spikes of discussion in 2004, ‘8, ‘9, ’11 and ’14?”
“The rise of Corbyn is linked to the rise of anti-Semitism, in that extremist ideologies have entered the mainstream … Corbyn is a symptom of a problem that is getting worse,” he writes.
Collier argued to The Times of Israel that the increasing preoccupation with Israel and rising anti-Semitism were “absolutely connected.”
“Whilst not all anti-Israel activity is rooted in anti-Semitism, anti-Semitism is part and parcel of anti-Israel activism,” he said. “Any rise in one, will inevitably bring about a rise in the other.”