Does Labour have an antisemitism problem?

It is clear the direction of a political party can drive people with unpalatable beliefs underground but it cannot irradiate them. We just don’t have a tolerant society and this is mirrored by MPs. Right or left.

On the radio this morning many callers questioned why Gaza and Middle East politics was an issue at this election. It’s patently obvious that some of the electorate in Rochdale are very interested and it’s identity and religion. Something many white and CofE folk just don’t see. Labour wanted the Muslim vote. They clearly saw this as important but seemed oblivious to the fact that anti Jew rhetoric is very close to the surface. Just telling folk they are not wanted in the Labour Party just pushes them underground and paying lip service. Ali was one of these.

Omg @BarelyLiterate excellent comment. This is what I've been trying to put into words for ages, exactly this! Perfectly put 👏

Yes but it also has a faction problem

As per usual, people who are against genocide are being called Antisemitic by the Zionists. Stop using Jews as human shields

Tentative post wondering if this is the post in "active" about the fact they've withdrawn support?

Yes, on the left wing of the Labour party. This is because:

1. Antisemitism is a feature, not a bug, of socialism. Marx said Jews were [ugly insect word I won't spell out] who controlled the strings of global capitalism and enslaved the proletariat (Das Kapital). He also said in his Letters to Engels that the Jews manufacture and fake their own persecution in order to get pity and therefore to get what they want (this is the old antisemitic myth that Ali was riffing off when he said that Israel let 7/10 happen in order to "do what they bloody wanted" in Gaza).
2. There is a strand of fundamentalist Islam (NOT the view of the VAST majority of the world's Muslims) which is antisemitic. Fundamentalists can find backing for this view in the Quran and Hadiths. Of course, this is an outmoded view of Islam which can only be seen in the context of Islam's early years. Just as fundamentalist Christians can find justification for antisemitism and misogyny in the Bible - but vast majority of modern moderate Christians hold no truck with it and leave it in history where it belongs. Nevertheless, it is there for fundamentalist nutters to find, and sadly held up by Hamas' stated aims for Israel (destroy it).
3. Labour is reliant on the Muslim vote in areas like Rochdale, Tower Hamlets, Bradford etc etc

So what we've ended up with is an ugly combination of Marxist-socialist antisemitism and fundamentalist-religious antisemitism and this combination has been taken up eagerly by the educated-beyond-their-abilities middle class graduates which now make up the core of the activist wing of the Labour party (older working class women like me having abandoned Labour long ago).

Hence the problem. A difficult one for Starmer to solve. He's being brave in confronting it but there's only so far he can go without hemoragghing members.

It’s not just Labour. Anti-semitism is rife across all left wing groups in British politics. The worldview of these groups is based fundamentally on identity politics and a binary division of the world into ‘The Oppressor’ vs ‘The Victim’. Oppressors are hated, victims are defended, irrespective of the actual realities of the situation.

Everything & everyone is assigned one of these roles. In the Middle East, Israel is cast as the oppressor & Palestine as the victim. No nuance is permitted to challenge this division. Israel is not a democracy, it is an ‘apartheid state’. Hamas are not murderous terrorists. They are, by definition, victims. The Israeli civilians who were slaughtered on 7th October were not ordinary people, they were, by definition, oppressors.

They are all as bad as each other in one way or another, and the only option left is to vote for the one whose policies offend you the least.

Or do as I do, and vote Monster Raving Loony. At least their manifesto is clear and to the point.

Imo opinion there was no anti-semetism problem with Corbyn.
More an anti-Corbyn PLP problem.

I think they probably do.

Whether the voters actually care about it is a different matter.

It's very depressing, I was thinking about it this morning.

A lot of the antisemites have also moved to Greens. And Lib Dems...what do they actually stand for?