Friday, July 12, 2019
From Ian:
Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party can't deal with its Jew-hatred
The routine and horrific anti-Semitism in Labour
Melanie Phillips: Why the Labour party can't deal with its Jew-hatred
This contemporary expression of the oldest hatred didn’t start with Corbyn and it won’t end with him. It has been around for decades and is endemic in progressive circles, not just in Britain but throughout the West.
Support for the Palestinian cause is the signature motif of the left. And that cause is founded upon blood libels, conspiracy theories and other murderous and ancient anti-Jewish tropes.
Mahmoud Abbas, viewed by the western left as a statesman-in-waiting, has a doctorate in Holocaust denial, explicitly venerates the Palestinian Nazi-ally Haj Amin al Husseini who undertook to slaughter every Jew in the Middle East in the event of Hitler’s victory, and uses his media outlets to transmit medieval and Nazi-style demonization of the Jews.
At the end of last year, a preacher said typically on Palestinian Authority TV that the Jews “expose their fangs whenever they get the chance… always fighting, always scheming and always plotting against humanity… ”
So why should Labour Party members who support the Palestinians with their agenda of Holocaust denial, attacks on Judaism and unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish power now be so shocked that other party members are themselves coming out with Holocaust denial, attacks on Judaism and unhinged conspiracy theories about Jewish power?
This was true of the Labour Party even under leaders such as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who were themselves personally sympathetic to Israel and the Jewish people. But because they also believed in the power of reason, compromise and “peace processes” to resolve all conflict, they blinded themselves to the implacably anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist foundations of the Palestine cause which they also championed as “deserving.”
This is why anti-Zionism has weaponized antisemitism in progressive circles.
The Labour Party may be destroyed altogether by the twin issues of Brexit and antisemitism. The former has the capacity to reshape British politics altogether. The latter threatens to destroy the party because if Labour isn’t a moral project it is nothing.
That applies in turn to the left in general; which is why it is now philosophically bankrupt, repudiating decency, evidence and reason itself while supporting abuses of intellectual, political or religious power and abandoning their victims throughout the Western world.
The routine and horrific anti-Semitism in Labour
The programme painted a picture for the general viewer of just how routine and horrific anti-Semitism has become in the Labour party. Izzy Lenga, the international officer of the Jewish Labour Movement, said she’d been subjected to anti-Semitism ‘every single day’, including being told ‘Hitler didn’t go far enough’ and witnessing Holocaust denial in Labour meetings. Another activist, who voted for Corbyn as leader, told Panorama: ‘They might not call me a “dirty Jew” but they’ll call me a “dirty Zionist”, with pride.’The Labour elite are willing to sacrifice Jews for their messianic belief in a Leninist future
One Jewish interviewee said: ‘We are very frightened of what Corbyn might do because we have seen these behaviours before.’ Another admitted: ‘We feel like we don’t belong here and we have to do far more than anybody else to prove that we do.’ The same member said he’d been called ‘a fucking Jew’ and ‘a Jewish pig’.
MP Louise Ellman spoke about anti-Semitism in her Liverpool Riverside constituency, where one activist had said ‘Zionists are targets and deserve to feel uncomfortable’ while another declared: ‘Every Jew is a Zio-fascist’. Party investigations officer Ben Westerman was sent to Liverpool to assess the problem. At the end of one interview, a party member confronted Westerman, who is Jewish, and demanded: ‘Where are you from?… Are you from Israel?’
The pressure took its toll on the staff. Withers Green was diagnosed with depression and anxiety; Buckingham had a breakdown; Matthews contemplated suicide. Another staffer felt her work had meant nothing when she learned that, as of the Spring, just 15 members had been expelled for anti-Semitism. She and the rest of her former co-workers exuded utter dejection, the ideal mood for watching the programme because, in the end, very little will come of it. Labour’s anti-Semites will continue to be anti-Semitic and their enablers will continue to expect credit for the occasional strongly-worded tweet in rebuke.
What secures Jeremy Corbyn in post is not the anti-Semites in the grassroots but his MPs, who even now are preparing to campaign to put him in Downing Street if the new Prime Minister calls an election. Faced with a choice between the Jews and their latest miserable persecutors, Labour MPs have not only chosen to back the latter — they’ve chosen to be the latter. They are not merely feckless bystanders, they are knowing accomplices. They are this century’s guilty men and women and Panorama viewers glimpsed the horrors in which they are complicit.
The reaction of the Labour party to the Panorama programme reflects the desire of the Corbynista elite to pull up the ideological drawbridge and, in true Leninist fashion, not to cede any concession to their critics.Is the UK Becoming Unlivable for Jews?
Following the student protests of the 1960s, a small group on the far left within the Labour party including Jeremy Corbyn perceived a middle ground between the parliamentary socialism of the Labour party and the revolutionary activism of the New Left.
Figures such as Corbyn were therefore happy to work with and appear on platforms with the extra-parliamentary far left. This belief superseded any concern that antisemitic comments might be uttered on these platforms.
The decision in 2013 to allow “supporters” to join Labour facilitated the far left’s entry into the party – to overcome a barrier that they had been trying to traverse for almost a century.
Today the party is being run by past fellow travellers from both the pro-Kremlin wing of the Communist party and the Trotskyist Militant Tendency. As Jon Lansman’s withdrawal from seeking the post of General Secretary of the party last year illustrated, even the Bennites have been sidelined.
The Jewish question is ideologically unimportant for many in Labour’s inner circle today because it has always been regarded historically as a peripheral issue in Marxism-Leninism, an irritating diversion from the long march to achieve a more just society.
Jews in Britain are fearing the worst: Jeremy Corbyn taking power. With a documented rise in UK anti-Semitism and Corbyn in the running for prime minister, British Jews may soon begin mass migrating to Israel. Our Ellie Hochenberg has the story.
