Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, May 02, 2016

05/02 Links Pt1: Corbyn called convicted 'terrorist' an 'iconic figure'; Today's Labour suspension count 3.. so far

From Ian:

Jeremy Corbyn called convicted 'terrorist' an 'iconic figure'

Jeremy Corbyn described a convicted terrorist accused of plotting a series of suicide attacks in Israel as an “icon” and compared him to Nelson Mandela.
In a post now deleted from Mr Corbyn’s website, the Labour leader described Marwan Barghouti as an “iconic figure for ordinary Palestinians”.
Barghouti was convicted of organising attacks against Israeli civilians and allegedly founded the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, a designated terrorist organisation.
The comments threaten to intensify the anti-Semitism row that has engulfed the Labour Party in the last week.
In 2004, an Israeli court sentenced Barghouti to five life sentences and 40 years in jail. He was accused of orchestrating ambushes and suicide attacks during the Palestinian Intifada.
In the article entitled “An icon is born: Marwan Barghouti”, Mr Corbyn wrote: “His sentence of five life terms by an Israeli Court means he now becomes an iconic figure for ordinary Palestinians, and his unshakable belief that he will be freed is shared by many.
"The Palestinian papers have likened his situation to that facing Mandela after the Rivonia Treason Trial in 1964.
"Indeed the similarities go well beyond the trial and prosecution of Marwan.”
Mr Corbyn has repeatedly failed to apologise for his past links to Hamas and Hezbollah.
He once described members of the two Islamist militant organisations as “friends”.

Pressure grows on Jeremy Corbyn as dossier of anti-Semitism in Labour Party is revealed

A dossier compiled by The Telegraph includes a series of disturbing examples of anti-Semitic attitudes among party activists and leading members.
It follows the suspension from the party last week of Ken Livingstone, the former Mayor of London, and of Naz Shah, Labour MP for Bradford West, for making anti-Semitic comments.
Labour has announced an independent inquiry into anti-Semitism and other forms of racism within the party.
But Mr Livingstone, who was suspended after saying that Hitler supported Zionism “before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews”, on Saturday refused to withdraw his statements and claimed the Israeli Prime Minister agreed with him.
Our dossier reveals that:
- A London Labour council leader shared a Facebook post comparing the “terrorist state of Israel” to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). He apologised and deleted it on Saturday;
- Mr Corbyn questioned why an anti-Semitic mural in east London should be taken down;
- The Labour leader also attended events run by self-confessed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen long after his views had become clear, and
- A Labour council candidate used the derogatory term “Zios” to refer to Jews.
Muhammed Butt, leader of Brent Council and “equalities lead” on the body representing 32 London boroughs, shared a post calling Israel a terrorist state and compared it to Isil, on April 16. It showed a Palestinian girl in a skirmish with an Israeli soldier.

The Islamic Jihad Police Force

Palestine Today has a story about how Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades has busted a major drug ring, capturing some 175,000 tablets of Tramadol.

Take a look at the police:

In Gaza, apparently anyone with a gun (and a ski mask) can now legally do police work. There is no indication that Hamas is against this police force and in fact Hamas works closely with Islamic Jihad in other matters. It seems likely that Hamas allows the Islamic Jihad terrorists to act openly as an official security force.

When "human rights groups" claim that the police in Gaza are considered civilians, keep this in mind.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

US exhibits at another Arab book fair with lots of antisemitic titles

The Abu Dhabi Book Fair is in full swing, and the US Embassy is there:

So are the antisemitic book titles.

Doing a quick search for the word "Jews" in the titles of the books, here are some - from many different publishers - that are clearly antisemitic.

Jewish danger - The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, That Al Salasil Company
Jewish influence in the media by Fouad al-Rifai, Dar Al Yakeen for Publishing & Distribution
Jews and contempt of religion, Hanafi Mahalawy, Alam Al Kotob publishers

Great Deception: Are the Jews really God's chosen people?
Dr.. Mohammed Jamal Tahan, Safahat for Studies & Publishing
Secrets of Jewish supremacists, Yuri Mukan Aladdin, Publishing, Distribution & Translation
Is the Jewish religion heavenly? Abdul Majid Hamu
Human sacrifice and the Talmudic sacrifices by pagans and Jews, D / Fathi Mohamed Zoghbi,
Dar Al Afak Al Arabia
There are plenty of others whose titles don't make it obvious that they include Jew-hatred, although it is highly likely.

Once again, the US is supporting an event that includes blatant antisemitism in the Arab world. And it is not like they don't know that such things are going on.

At what point does the US State Department make an actual stand against antisemitism, instead of meaningless declarations? A simple declaration that they will not attend any fair that includes antisemitic literature is all that is needed to make a huge impact.

And yet - they don't.

(h/t Shawarma News)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

One terrorist was killed and two other people injured by a "mysterious explosion" in the northern Gaza Strip today.

Mazen Lulu, a terrorist for the Al-Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad, was killed east of Gaza City.

The explosion occurred near the Civil Administration building, indicating a war crime by putting military facilities in or near ostensibly civilian structures.

Far more terrorists have been killed by tunnel accidents and accidental explosions in Gaza than from any Israeli actions this year.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Antisemitism to defend Labour's antisemitism -all in the name of tolerance

The Intifada-Palestine site has an article about the UK Labour party's latest antisemitic incident, and it does a very nice job of proving that anti-Zionism (in the guise of pro-Palestinianism) is very often identical to antisemitism.

UK Labour Party in grip of Zionist Inquisition
by Stuart Littlewood

The orchestrated smear campaign against pro-Palestine sympathisers sent me reaching for my pen. But Gilad Atzmon too was eyeing the Labour Party’s crazed witch hunt for “antisemites” with misgiving and had already declared, in his usual robust way, that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was not so much a party as a piece of Zionist-occupied territory.

Writing in his blog about Corbyn and McDonnell’s servile commitment to expel anyone whose remarks might be interpreted by Zionist mafioso as hateful or simply upsetting to Jews, Atzmon concludes: “Corbyn’s Labour is now unequivocally a spineless club of Sabbos Goyim [sic] [which I take to mean non-Jewish dogsbodies who do menial jobs that Jews are forbidden to do for religious reasons].

“The Labour party’s policies,” says Atzmon, “are now compatible with Jewish culture: intolerant to the core and concerned primarily with the imaginary suffering of one people only. These people are not the working class, they are probably the most privileged ethnic group in Britain. Corbyn’s Labour is a Zionist Occupied Territory… It proves my theses that the Left is not a friend to Palestine, the oppressed or the workless people.

It's a breath of fresh air when they make their hate explicit.

By being upset at people who don't want to be explicitly associated with antisemitism, a lot of people who claim to to against all forms of bigotry are showing that there is one type that they actually are pretty comfortable with.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Academic fraud Noura Erakat gets Palestinian unemployment numbers way wrong

Noura Erakat is one of the more prominent of pro-Palestinian so-called academics in the US. She writes weighty papers pretending that Israel has no legal right to defend itself whatsoever, and her sycophants eat it up.

She has proven yet again that her interest in truth-telling is nil.

She tweeted:

She is quoting Middle East Monitor which in turn is quoting Qudsnet, two highly unreliable media outlets - and ones that this assistant professor of law trusts completely.

In fact, the 2015 unemployment rate in Gaza, released today, is at 41%, a little better than it was in 2014!

It is the unemployment rate of women that is at 60%, and the quality Palestinian media that Noura Erakat relies on for her pseudo-facts got it wrong.

I'm not trying to argue that Gaza is a paradise. But Erakat simply believed that the unemployment rate there went up by some 20 points in very little time when in fact it went down.

There were some other interesting facts in the annual May Day labor report that Noura would not want you to know.

Regarding wage employees in the West Bank, more than half of the employees 51% work in the private sector compared with 25% in the public sector and 24% work in Israel and Israeli settlements.

24% of all West Bank employees are employed by Israelis - and they are paid more than twice what their counterparts are paid. This means that some 40% of the wages paid to West Bank employees are coming from Israeli employers! (h/t Gabriel for fixing my math...)

If Gaza was not run by terrorists, its labor statistics would be dramatically better. But people like Noura Erakat will never admit that simple, obvious fact - because they are more interested in finding new ways to bash Israel than to actually help Palestinians.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

05/01 Links: Murray: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem; Remembering the Mike’s Place

From Ian:

Col. Richard Kemp: Why we are optimistic about Zionism

By Col. Richard Kemp, Yossi Raskas and Dr. Harold Rhode
The Middle East is a mess. Terrorism is weakening resolve in the West. The migration crisis threatens to unravel the transatlantic security fabric. Civil society is faltering.
Yet we remain inspired by Israel as it celebrates its 68th year of existence. Why?
The answer is straightforward: Zionism, the movement inspired by belief that the Jewish people should return to the Land of Israel to rebuild their own sovereign state, has succeeded in one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. And it continues to lead the way as a beacon of moral clarity and success for the West.
Of course, statehood is no guarantee for security, and we cannot perfectly predict fluctuations in the terrorist marketplace. We do not know, for example, whether Iran will decide to break out toward nuclear weaponization today, tomorrow fifteen years from now. What is clear, however, is that western rapprochement with Iran is moving forward, well before either the US or the European Union is capable of outlining an effective contingency plan.
But fears regarding Israel’s survival would be overwrought. The Israel Defense Forces—the strongest military in the Middle East —will remain battle-ready, as they always have been. They will continue to set the standard, morally and militarily, for armies of liberal democracies to operate against sub-state enemies.
Ultimately, Israel will not only survive but thrive. Since its inception, the Jewish state has endured several major wars, waves of suicide attacks, and other traumatic events. Still, Israel’s birth rate is steadily climbing, its economy is punching far above its weight, and its diplomatic ties with Sunni Arab states are growing stronger.

Douglas Murray: UK: The Left's Little Antisemitism Problem

Within a week, Britain's Labour party leadership was forced to suspend one of its newest MPs and one of its oldest grandees -- and both for the same reason.
Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and Ken Livingstone both say that they condemn anti-Semitism. They always tend to add that they also condemn "Islamophobia and all other forms of racism," a disclaimer that always seems a deliberate attempt to hide a hatred of Jews under the skirts of any and all criticism of Islam. What is most fascinating is that all the while they are saying this, they stoke the very thing they claim to condemn.
They pretend that the Jewish state does such things for no reason. There is no mention of the thousands of rockets that Hamas and other Islamist groups rain down on Israel from the Gaza Strip. The comment turns a highly-targeted set of retaliatory strikes by Israel against Hamas in the Gaza Strip into a "brutal" attack "on the Palestinians" as a whole. While mentioning those death-tolls, Livingstone has no interest in explaining that the State of Israel builds bunkers for its citizens to shelter in, while Hamas uses Palestinians as human shields and useful dead bodies for the television cameras, to help Hamas appear as an aggrieved "victim."
It is the narrative of the "left" on Israel that is causing the resurgence of anti-Semitism. It is not coming from nowhere. It is coming from them. If the left wants to deal with it, they first have to deal with themselves.

Douglas Murray: Britain? Moderates? How's That Again?

A new poll of British Muslims found that a majority hold views with which most British people would disagree. For instance, 52% of British Muslims think that homosexuality should be made illegal. An earlier poll found that 27% of British Muslims have "some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks" at the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
Whenever opinion poll results come out, nearly the entire Muslim community, including nearly all Muslims in the media and all self-appointed groups of "Muslim community leaders" try to prove that the poll is a fraud.
If I had always known my "community" harboured such views, and a poll revealing this truth came out, I would be deeply ashamed. But when such polls emerge about the opinions of British Muslims, is that there is never any hint of introspection. There is no shame and no concern, only attack.
If there were indeed a "moderate majority," when a poll comes out saying that a quarter of your community wants fundamentally to alter the law of the land and live under Sharia, the other 75% would spend their time trying to change the opinions of that quarter. Instead, about 74% of the 75% not in favour of sharia spend their time covering for the 25% and attacking the polling company which discovered them.

San Francisco State University President, Leslie Wong, very much admires the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS).

He even said that "GUPS is the very purpose of this great university."

The problem that president Wong has is that GUPS, while according to him representing the very purpose of SFSU, also incites violence against Jewish supporters of Israel, which is the great majority of the Jewish people.

Why would the president of a significant American university support a student organization that quite literally calls for the murder of Jews?

Let that question sink in for a second.

By going out of his way to compliment GUPS - an organization friendly with terrorists like plane-hijacker, Leila Khaled - Wong signals to Jewish people that inciting violent hatred toward us is acceptable to himself, and to SFSU, as a matter of "social justice."

The Context

Rates of violent anti-Semitism are dramatically rising around the United States and throughout Europe.

Jews are killed by jihadis in places like Paris or Marseilles or Malmo, while within Israel Junior-Jihadis are chasing after old ladies with knives and hand-axes.

Meanwhile, throughout the Muslim Middle East, imams and ayatollahs regularly teach their congregants that Jews are the children of orangutans and swine and screech to the heavens for our genocide.

They love to tell one another that butchering Jews is beautious within the heart of Allah.

Iran inches closer to an operable nuclear weapon that it has promised to use against Israel in order to bring about genocide and the progressive-left could hardly care less. In fact, the western-left generally blames anti-Semitic violence on the victims of that violence. Of course, such a scenario would also result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Arabs, but Tehran does not seem to particularly care and neither does its western supporters.

In Europe and the United States, the Red-Green Alliance between progressives and advocates for political Islam is flourishing. And the movement to Boycott, Divest from, and Sanction Israel (BDS) - supported by Wong if he supports GUPS - is seeking to undermine the viability of the tiny Jewish state by seeking to turn universities, corporations, governments, and NGOs against it and, therefore, against the Jewish people, more generally, in an effort to eventually bring down both the country and the well-being of the Jewish people.

Israel and the Rise of the Crybullies

Of course, it is in the universities that the crybullies (snowflakes) demand their "safe spaces" while refusing to allow Jewish students any such courtesy. They complain about "microaggressions" and "micro-rapes" - like commenting on a cute sweater - even while inciting deep hatred toward Jews in the most raw terms possible.

Anti-Semitic anti-Zionists incite hatred toward Jewish supporters of Israel, and Israeli Jews, via "the Palestinian narrative." The narrative depends upon defamation, unjust insinuations, and highly biased historical conclusions that leave the great Muslim majority in the Middle East, which represents perhaps the most successful and vicious political project in human history, as innocent victims among among the minority population that they have victimized.

This results in violence against Jews supported by western academic institutions as driven by their most hateful and racist students.

Enter the General Union Palestine Students (GUPS) and their patron saint, San Francisco State University President Leslie Wong.

As Dusty over at Pro-Israel Bay Bloggers reminds us:

The president of the organization, Mohammad Hammad posted a photo on his tumblr account, declaring "I seriously can not get over how much I love this blade. It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier.

San Francisco State University General Union of Palestinian students neither condemned Hammad's words, nor distanced themselves from them.

Why does SFSU continue to tolerate the intolerable?

Indeed. That is an exceedingly good question, although, as we have just learned via the video below, it is not that the SFSU tolerates the intolerable so much as it positively encourages the intolerable.

GUPS is a student organization that is calling directly for the murder of Jews and it is supported by the president of the university.

Check the video clip. Wong's relevant remarks begin around 18:20.

"I want to offer my personal congratulations to the student leadership of GUPS. They have been an inspiration for me. And they have helped me when I have to tell other community groups to mind their own business. GUPS is the very purpose of this great university."

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Scene from one of the films shown

JTA reports:

Nearly 500 people attended the first Jewish film festival of Casablanca, which was organized in the Moroccan city by a Sephardic Jewish woman from Atlanta.

The three-day event, which ended Wednesday at the offices of Casablanca’s SOC club, featured three films about the “consequences of the emigration of the Jews from the fabric of Moroccan society,” the organizer, Vanessa Paloma, told JTA on Thursday. Each screening drew about 150 viewers, she said.

One of the two fictional features screened was “Aida,” which was also Morocco’s submission to the Academy Awards for best foreign language film, about a Paris-based Jewish music teacher’s battle with cancer.

The other was “Midnight Orchestra,” a 2015 production about the son of a Jewish musician who left Morocco amid racial tensions spurred by the Yom Kippur war.

Reactions to the festival were overwhelmingly positive, said Paloma, a singer of Judeo-Spanish music and a researcher on identity and the arts in Moroccan Judaism. She has lived in Casablanca since 2009 with her Moroccan-Jewish husband, Maurice Elbaz, who helped her produce the festival on a shoestring budget that sufficed because the filmmakers waived their fees.

But the event also provoked negative reactions in Morocco, which despite being one of the Muslim world’s few countries where Jewish heritage is celebrated openly, nonetheless has a vociferous anti-Israel lobby that at times resorts to anti-Semitic rhetoric.

Jaouad Benaissi, an author and former member of the Socialist Union of Popular Forces party, complained on Facebook about the festival’s theme, writing that “man-made artworks have nothing to do with religion,” and therefore the Jewish theme was inappropriate – a message similar to that of Abdelilah Jouhari, a journalist who accused Paloma of “trying to make business with religion,” as reported by the news site Le 360.

There were plenty of other criticisms.

The Secretary General of the Moroccan Observatory Against Normalization with the Zionist Entity, Aziz Hnawa, couched his criticism on the claim that such a festival is discriminatory on the basis of religion and race. Meaning that a Jewish film festival discriminates against non-Jews. He said that such a festival could be used to foment unrest among other minority groups in Northern Africa, who might demand their own film festivals!

He also was upset that some of the films referred to Israel as opposed to "The Zionist Entity."

Film critic Hassan Benslakhh said that to organize such a festival in Morocco is a high provocation.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Antisemitic "anti-Zionists" gleefully cherry-pick history of Haavara agreement

It is very telling to see how many self-professed "anti-Zionists, not antisemites" are eagerly supporting Ken Livingstone's statement that "Let’s remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism – this before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews."

As the UK Labour party reeled from this and other antisemitic statements, so-called "anti-Zionists" went on the offensive, claiming that Livingstone said nothing wrong, because of the controversial Haavara agreement struck between Zionists and Germany in the 1930s to save the lives of German Jews.

To use that agreement as proof of "Hitler supporting Zionism" is nothing but a manifestation of antisemitism.

Others have shown how Livingstone's history is absurd. But that doesn't stop Israel-haters to pretend that he was right. For example:

This morning another example came up, as +972 columnist Mairav Zonszein retweeted this (since deleted but he had tweeted the same link here):

(Zonszein, it will be remembered, penned a NYT op-ed that falsely claimed that Israel made her abortion much more onerous than if it has been done in other Western countries. And she herself is happy to cherry-pick quotes to pretend to prove Israelis are evil.)

Nasir linked to a blog post by another self-avowed "anti-Zionist" who pretends to be against antisemitism, Tony Greenstein, who published this image:

Zonszein and Nasir could have read the rest of the article posted - "the very physical existence of a half-million Jews was at stake" - but their desire to conflate Zionism with Nazism is so deep that they couldn't be bothered to read beyond the highlighted section to gleefully trumpet that Livingstone was right.

However, the article excerpted here is an excellent overview of the agreement itself - and its ultimate effectiveness. Here is the entire section:

A painful controversy divided the Jewish people during the time of Chaim Arlosoroff's term on the world Zionist Executive . It related to the question whether Jewish representatives - more concretely, whether the world Zionist movement - should establish contacts with Nazi Germany for the purpose of getting Jews and Jewish property out of the country. The official Zionist response was : Yes, because there were no chances of a quick end to Hitlerism, and the very physical existence of a half million Jews was at stake . Chaim Arlosoroff was one of the major proponents and implementers of this position, which found its practical expression in the Transfer Agreement .

The opponents of the Transfer argued : Jewish national and human honor could not tolerate the slightest dealings with the Nazis . The controversy was explosive . The Jews in Palestine and the world Zionist organization were accused of breaking the anti-Nazi economic boycott, of "demoralizing" the struggle against Germany. The very usefulness of the Transfer Agreement was questioned - it could at best rescue only selected individuals along with their meager possessions . Naturally, the opposition was directed primarily against Labor, which was in the leadership of HaVaad HaLeumi and the world Zionist organization, and against Chaim Arlosoroff personally, the "architect" of the agreement .

The supporters of the Transfer Agreement replied : Jewish tradition has created two principles, highly moral commandments and standards for Jewish behavior in cases where Jewish lives are being threatened : Pikuakh Nefesh and Pidyon Shevuyim . (Pikuakh nefesh : saving a life . The preservation of life takes precedence over all commandments. Pidyon shevuyim : ransom of captives, even if it means negotiating with criminals .)

The transfer was being undertaken in that spirit . In modern Jewish history there is no lack of examples of sending emissaries even to our persecutors . Did not Herzl go to St . Petersburg to negotiate with the Russian Minister Plehve? Did not Jabotinsky negotiate an agreement with Petlura's chief lieutenant Slavinski in the hope of saving the Jewish communities in the Ukraine from slaughter? Transfer was the practical meaning of Zionism. Herzl himself defined Zionism as a "transport organization ."

In such an atmosphere of sharp debate pro and con, of inflamed emotions against sober and practical calculations, the negotiations concerning transfer were begun with the Heinrich Bruning government as far back as the summer of 1931 . Because of the financial panic and the bank crisis in Germany, the government had set a limit of 200 marks on the amount of money that could be taken out of the country.

Chaim Arlosoroff, together with a number of leaders of the German Zionist organization, attempted to have the regulation repealed . But it was not until September 1933 that the German government gave its consent to the Transfer Agreement. From that moment until the outbreak of World War II, the Haavara (transfer) carried out annually 50,000 transactions. Most of the 50,000 German Jews who emigrated to Palestine utilized the Transfer Agreement, taking out with them 140 million Reichsmarks. 60% of the capital invested during that period in Eretz Israel came from these funds . All of the colonization in Emek Hefer was due to the transfer. All these accomplishments strengthened the yishuv. They helped to create on the internal front many of the advances necessary for a successful policy in the years of struggle for the establishment of the State .

Thus history settled the argument and showed that in the new economic and political realities created by the Transfer, there was more foresight than in all the opposition which had created such a perfervid hostility toward Labor and particularly toward Chaim Arlosoroff.

The people who now claim the moral high ground by saying "ooh, ooh, Zionist Jews cooperated with Hitler!" are engaging in the worst kind of antisemitism. 50,000 Jewish lives were saved because of this agreement, as distasteful and controversial as it was at the time. But the zeal to associate Zionists and Nazis is simply too great to worry about details like that.

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Kosher chicken soup - and Sabra hummus - for sale in Gaza

The Metro Market in Gaza has some specials, all of which happen to be made in Israel.

Kosher chicken (flavored) soup.

Hot chocolate mix from Kahan's.

Coffee-flavored milkshakes from Elite.

Sugat's colored frosting.

Sabra hummus!

They don't seem too embarrassed to sell Israeli products - in fact they feature them (along with M&Ms, Nutella, Heinz and lots of other well-known brands.)

Here's a video of a flash mob at their store featured on their home page:

Previous articles on Metro Market here, here and here.

(h/t Mike)

We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

04/30 Links: Stephen Pollard: The Left's hatred of Jews chills me to the bone; Murray: Labour’s anti-Semitism problem stems from its grassroots

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: The Left's hatred of Jews chills me to the bone

It matters, of course, to all of us, because – as we have seen both on 9/11 and ever since, Islamist terrorism is not specific in its targeting. But it matters to me more, I would say, than anything else I can think of. Because although these maniacs will happily kill anyone, they say, and their subsequent murders show, that – quite specifically – they want to kill me. A Jew. So on level I am not in the least bit shocked, or even surprised, by the reemergence of Jew hatred as a thing in recent years. By what arrogance would we think that our generation, alone in history, would be free of the oldest hatred?

But on another, more visceral level, it chills me to the bone. And it’s not the terrorists. They threaten me, of course, as they threaten us all. Yet to me, the real chill comes from their fellow travelers – the useful idiots of the terrorists and Jew-murderers who say they do not have a racist bone in their body, but when it comes to Jews, a blind spot emerges. The likes, to be blunt, of the now suspended Ken Livingstone, who claims never to have come across a single example of Anti-semitism in the Labour Party. He clearly has never looked in the mirror. Much has been written – especially by the brilliant Nick Cohen – on the "Red/Green Alliance"; the phenomenon by which a swathe of the Left has linked up with radical Islam, leading to the bizarre spectacle of Leftist feminists supporting Islamists who would cut off the hands of women who read books.
With "anti-Western-imperialism" as part of the glue binding the alliance, everything else falls into place. So Hamas and Hezbollah might have as their defining goal the elimination of an entire people from the face of the earth, but that unfortunate consequence for Jews is by the by, because Hamas and Hezbollah are freedom fighters.
And because Israel is part of the Western imperium, as well as a key target for Islamists, it is also enemy number one for progressives. So an obsessive preoccupation with the Jewish state becomes the default position of the Left. China, Zimbabwe, Saudi Arabia – pah! The focus must be on Israel and Israel alone. From that springs an entire worldview that encompasses "Zionist" control of the media, of business, of everything. And we can’t be accused of targeting Jews because we don’t use the word. We say Zionist, not Jew.
So deep does this warping of what it means to be Left and progressive now run that it is almost prosaic to assert Zionist control. But now, to cap it, we have a Labour leader whose entire political career has been in this milieu – feeding it, growing it and pushing it.
For months now, week by week, examples have been emerging of cut and dried anti-Semitism – most dressed up, oh so cleverly, as anti-Zionism, but much not even bothering to hide it. And the Labour leader’s response to the criticism that he is soft on anti-Semitism and that it’s his political mindset that has fuelled its rise is not to get hard on anti-Semitism. It’s to get irritated.

Douglas Murray: Labour’s anti-Semitism problem stems from its grassroots

If I were the Conservative party I’d be getting worried: Labour’s implosion is happening too fast. At this rate they could fall apart and regroup in time to go into the next election with a respectable leader.
Everybody knows the latest developments. Naz Shah MP was found to have said some anti-Semitic things on social media. After some bitter internal wrangling she was suspended from the party. Fellow MP Rupa Huq tried to come to her defence and compared anti-Semitism to any old mishap. And then Ken Livingstone smoothed it all over by talking about which of Hitler’s policies he thinks Zionists agree with. The low-point today was probably the former Mayor of London and stalwart Corbynista locking himself in a disabled loo in London’s Millbank while questions about his views on Hitler were shouted at him through the door by a press pack.
Of course this is only happening because the Labour party is run by a man who has spent his entire political life in these fever-swamps. Jeremy Corbyn having to suspend Ken Livingstone from the Labour party is a truly impossible divorce – impossible because it makes Corbyn’s position impossible. How can Ken Livingstone be out of the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn be leading it? There is barely a sliver of moonlight between their views on Jews and Israel.
But now everybody is talking about the Jews and Labour’s anti-Semitism problem. Yet they still refuse to get to the point. Because it is not as though anti-Semitism is simply transferred in the water-supply. Of course there are anti-Semitic tendencies in every strain of politics. I could point to a strain within the Conservative tradition. But in the Conservative tradition it is dying. The problem for Labour is that anti-Semitism in their party is a growth industry. And the simple reason for that is a demographic one.

Toby Young: It will take more than Labour’s ‘inquiry’ to deal with the left’s anti-Semitism problem
[Includes a 10min Podcast]

Anyone concerned about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party should welcome the appointment of Shami Chakrabarti, the former head of Liberty, to lead an internal inquiry into the matter, but it’s a little late in the day to be addressing this issue. And will the inquiry’s terms of reference allow her to investigate the leader of the party?
The Jewish Chronicle drew attention to Jeremy Corbyn’s links to a rogues gallery of “Holocaust deniers, terrorists and some outright anti-Semites” back in August of last year. Among other dubious acts, Corbyn donated money to an organisation run by Paul Eisen, a self-confessed Holocaust denier who boasts of links to the Labour leader dating back 15 years. Corbyn’s own brother has strayed dangerously close to anti-Semitism, such as the time he described Jewish Labour MP Louise Ellman as a “Zionist” who “can’t cope with anyone supporting rights for Palestine”. When questioned about this, Corbyn insisted his brother “was not wrong”.
The hard left has had a problem with Jews that dates back at least as far as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. In 1945, George Orwell wrote an essay called ‘Anti-Semitism in Britain’ in which he pointed out it was as much of a problem on the left as it was on the right. Orwell thought it was a kind of “neurosis”, “an ability to believe stories that could not possibly be true”.
For those seeking to understand the phenomenon, I recommend this article in The Tower by Jamie Palmer, which documents changing attitudes towards Israel on the hard left, from broad sympathy to fanatical hatred. It was written before Ken Livingstone made his bizarre claims about the links between Hitler and Zionism, but traces this particular smear (as well as many others circulating among Corbyn’s supporters) back to a barrage of anti-Semitic misinformation disseminated by Stalin’s propagandists in the late 1940s and early 1950s to justify the Communist’s state’s systematic persecution of Jews, including purges, torture, show trials, imprisonment and execution.