David Baddiels comment about Corbyn

[Minionoftheantichrist]

I’ve looked for a thread about this but can’t see one.
David Baddiel picked up that on the leaders debate Corbyn pronounced Epstein in a way that made it sound more Jewish ie Epshteen as opposed to Epsteen. He said every Jew will have noticed this and that it’s another example of Corbyns antisemitism.

I’m Jewish. I’m no fan of Corbyn but really hadn’t noticed this and even now David Baddiel has pointed it out, am struggling to see this as an example of antisemitism. Am I missing something here? Is this antisemitic?

saying that British Jews can't 'understand English irony despite living here all their lives'

See, this is what I’m talking about. That is not what happened (and neither are some of the other points in your post), as a matter of fact. Misrepresentation such as this does not help, it only undermines.

Referring to four specific Zionist activists as a response to their argument with a Palestinian ambassador is not even close to saying that “British Jews don’t understand irony” and you know it.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-zionists-speech-english-irony-reports-parliamentary-standards-antisemitism-a8507196.html

I am not Jewish and already explained earlier in this thread my understanding of the Anglicisation of Jewish names during the last century. ( ie to assimilate into the community)

I had a certain amount of education about the Holocaust growing up but after having children and probably due to becoming a mother I could not even cope with thought of the Holocaust. Hormones have calmed down a bit now and I have recently read The Choice by Edith Egar.

The 2 things that I have learnt is firstly how chillingly evil it was to dehumanise a whole race. Secondly, it started with the type insidious racism of which Corbin is so guilty.

The ignorance on this thread is outstanding - the destruction of Jews in Germany and other European countries didn't happen overnight - it was a slow drip drip drip of insidious racism which in the end made the final solution so plausible and possible.

Cannotchange what you say is so true. My great grandparents changed their Russian Jewish sounding surnames when they came to the UK. My late DF would whisper the term Jew or Jewish when he was out the house, so scared of drawing attention to the fact that he was a Jew. His DF told him to write CofE on his navy conscription papers because he would be sure of a very bad time of it if they knew he was Jewish. He was so amazed that my DD wasn’t scared or ashamed to admit she was Jewish. Scarily though my family is feeling increasingly threatened and cautious once again. And yes the slow drip drip of insidious racism is what made the final solution seem valid and necessary.

When I got divorced 11 years ago I wondered about changing my maiden surname back to our original Russian family one. I love the name but now I’m so relieved I decided to keep to my anglicised surname as the original one would have marked me out as being of Russian Jewish ethnicity.

@Minionoftheantichrist Yes, I also wanted to change my name back to the Polish version, but we have regressed so far as a society, I'm glad I didn't

@Deathgrip I see you chose not to address any of the points about the wreath, the mural, the many, many friendships with Holocaust deniers and blood libellers, writing the foreword to the antisemitic book, etc etc et bloody cetera.

Still, I'm sure you'd have perfectly great explanations for every single one of these many, many unfortunately-misconstrued incidents, wouldn't you.

And of course you know better than 87% of Jewish people, don't you.

Do you also tell other minorities that they are wrong about racism, or is it something special about Jews?

@cannotchange You are so right. I was told this week on Twitter that Jews are being 'silly' to complain about verbal abuse, swastikas and racist graffiti on synagogues and homes, and employment discrimination and that 'any sensible person would shrug it off'. Because of course, verbal abuse, racist graffiti and discrimination never led anywhere worse, did it?

@Deathgrip it's so INTERESTING to me how people like you are so desperately keen to listen to and amplify the views of the tiny minority of Jews who DON'T think Corbyn is antisemitic, while scoffing at and discrediting the vast majority of us who DO. That doesn't trouble you at all, huh. No cognitive dissonance at all.

Fuck me, I am SO sick of this shit. SO fucking sick of it.

Duchess it’s really so sad and worrying that it no longer feels safe to celebrate our European Jewish heritage. We aren’t religious even though we are from an orthodox family but DD used to wear a little Magen David pendant. Over the last 5 years she hasn’t felt safe having it on show.

I see you chose not to address any of the points about the wreath, the mural, the many, many friendships with Holocaust deniers and blood libellers, writing the foreword to the antisemitic book, etc etc et bloody cetera.

As I said in my post, I also disagree with many of the other points you’ve misrepresented - I can spend time picking them all apart again if you like. I picked out one because it’s such a blindingly blatant misrepresentation, oft repeated.

As I also said, there are a couple of legitimate concerns (the foreword of the book and the mural support are the obvious ones although having read the responses I don’t believe they are evidence of anti-semitism).

However, when you surround them with things which are quickly proven to be misrepresentations, you steer the focus from those legitimate concerns.

87% of Jewish people... according a the Jewish Chronicle poll, who also admit to an almost entirely Conservative-voting readership.

My Jewish family and many in their community would beg to differ. The rabbis who wrote this letter would also disagree (even the Jewish Chronicle had to eventually concede it was legitimate here www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/charedi-jeremy-corbyn-labour-antisemitism-letter-signed-by-rabbis-1.469880) as would the writer of the article I posted.

Do you also tell other minorities that they are wrong about racism, or is it something special about Jews?

My father is Jewish. That entire side of the family is Jewish. My mother is not so I am not. I grew up in an area in Manchester which was almost exclusively inhabited by Orthodox Jews due to the synagogue being located at the end of my road. The fact that I don’t agree with you does not make me an anti-semite, as much as you might want that to be the case.

I have not scoffed at or discredited anyone - I pointed out that the fact that you (deliberately or otherwise) misrepresented something that’s easily disproven, which is misleading and shouldn’t be necessary if there’s such concrete evidence of this man’s bigotry.

As Tomi Reichental, Holocaust survivor, says: 'The Holocaust didn't start with the gas chambers. It started with a whisper.'

"the foreword of the book and the mural support are the obvious ones although having read the responses I don’t believe they are evidence of anti-semitism"
What would you say if Johnson or even Blair had done those things.

87% of Jewish people... according a the Jewish Chronicle poll, who also admit to an almost entirely Conservative-voting readership

Surely you realise that just because a newspaper commissions a poll doesn't mean they carry it out themselves and only poll their own readership. I can't believe adults in this country could be so misinformed about basic things in this day and age.

The JC commissioned the polling company Survation to conduct the poll. Survation carried it out, with no input at all into its methodology by the JC.

Surely you realise that just because a newspaper commissions a poll doesn't mean they carry it out themselves and only poll their own readership. I can't believe adults in this country could be so misinformed about basic things in this day and age.

No, I can't believe it either.

It's almost like it's a complete lie.

@Deathgrip The fact that I don’t agree with you does not make me an anti-semite, as much as you might want that to be the case.

Why the fuck would I want you to be an antisemite?

I can't fucking stand this line that gets trotted out. Why do you think Jewish people would WANT a huge resurgence of antisemitism in our country?

Corbyn's dogwhistle, nudge nudge wink wink encouragement of antisemitism has made my life and my family's lives hell. Where the fuck do you get off telling us that it's what we want?

the foreword of the book and the mural support are the obvious ones although having read the responses I don’t believe they are evidence of anti-semitism

Go on then. How are they not?

How about the fact that he carried on supporting Holocaust deniers like Paul Eisen even after the Palestine Solidarity Campaign had cut all ties with him & his organisation due to their horrific antisemitism?

You think that every single one of these incidents is just an accident, do you? Funny how he's never accidentally NOT been antisemitic, isn't it.

The Jewish Chronicle is a mainstream newspaper. Every single Jewish newspaper printed the same front page to express our fear and horror of Corbyn and his party's antisemitism. How can you live with yourself, putting in all this energy to denying the direct experience of the overwhelming majority of Jews in this country? Why do you think that the views of a tiny minority of Jews shoudl be listened to , because they happen to support your political bias, while ignoring the huge majority of us?

You cannot even begin to imagine the damage that people like you are doing. There have always been and will always be extremists and racists. But it is people like you who think you are moderates, who deny and turn a blind eye to and make up bullshit excuses for the antisemites, who will allow it to fully take hold in this country.

For those who don't know about the foreword:

Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword to a book which argued that banks and the press were controlled by Jews.

In 2011 he agreed to endorse a new edition of JA Hobson’s 1902 book Imperialism: A Study, four years before he was catapulted from backbench obscurity to the Labour leadership.

In his foreword Mr Corbyn said the work was a “great tome”, praising Hobson’s “brilliant, and very controversial at the time” analysis of the “pressures” behind western, and in particular British, imperialism at the turn of the 20th century.

In the book, Hobson, an economist who was a great influence on Lenin and other Marxists, argued that those pressures were brought to bear by finance — which he claimed was controlled in Europe “by men of a single and peculiar race, who have behind them many centuries of financial experience” and “are in a unique position to control the policy of nations”.

In a clear invocation of the antisemitic Rothschild conspiracy theory, he added: “Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European State, or a great State loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?”

Mr Corbyn also praised Hobson’s “correct and prescient” passages “railing against the commercial interests that fuel the role of the popular press with tales of imperial might”. In the book, Hobson claimed that “great financial houses” have “control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the Press”.

The foreword was uncovered by the Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein.

The issue of antisemitism in Hobson’s writings has been widely covered in academic circles. In another book, The War in South Africa: Its Causes and Effects, released two years earlier in 1900, Hobson blamed “a small group of international financiers, chiefly German in origin and Jewish in race” for the Boer War. He added that “the rich and powerful liquor trade . . . is entirely in the hands of Jews . . . the stock exchange is needless to say, mostly Jewish . . . the press of Johannesburg is chiefly their property”.

Corbyn did not write one single word to indicate that he disagreed with the blatantly, virulently, foully antisemitic underpinnings of the book. He simply said how brilliant it was.

Anyone who knows this and still says he's not an antisemite is either a liar or very, very, very stupid.

Seriously? If Boris Johnson had said / done those things, absolutely nothing at all would happen. Do you know the things Johnson has said and written, in his own words and with no mitigation whatsoever? This is not about him so I won’t digress, but you can find a lovely collection here if you’re interested:
www.businessinsider.com/boris-johnson-record-sexist-homophobic-and-racist-comments-bumboys-piccaninnies-2019-6?r=US&IR=T

You seem to assume I’m an unquestioning supporter of Corbyn. My original post made it clear that’s not the case but of course that has been ignored.

I am not even a zealous supporter of Corbyn - I do not think he’s perfect, I do think he is the best of the options available to us. I don’t believe he’s an anti-semite. I definitely don’t believe he’s done enough to deal with the issue of the anti-semitism of others within the party but I don’t believe that’s due to inherent racism.

Again, are we just pretending that the Select Committee findings don’t exist? I repeat: “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party”.

The findings did also state the leadership's lack of action "risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally antisemitic". As I said before and am saying again now, I would agree. That’s not the same thing as saying Corbyn is anti-semitic.

Here's some more.

I'll remind you, this is the person that @Deathgrip , who is such an expert, having lived on the same road as some Orthodox Jews, is so certain isn't an antisemite.

Taken from Daniel Finkelstein's Times column:

Hobson follows this up with: “Does anyone seriously suppose that a great war could be undertaken by any European state, or a great state loan subscribed, if the house of Rothschild and its connections set their face against it?”

Mr Corbyn writes that “Hobson’s railing against the commercial interests that fuel the role of the popular press with tales of imperial might, that then lead on to racist caricatures of African and Asian peoples, was both correct and prescient”. This is arresting given that Hobson’s railing forms part of the Rothschild and “single and peculiar race” part of the book.

Having established that the finance houses (“this little group of financial kings”) are controlled by the Jews, Hobson goes on to say that “there is not a war, a revolution, an anarchist assassination, or any other public shock, which is not gainful to these men; they are harpies who suck their gains from every new forced expenditure and every sudden disturbance of public credit”.

Then, Hobson continues, “the direct influence exercised by great financial houses in ‘high politics’ is supported by the control which they exercise over the body of public opinion through the press”.

In other words Mr Corbyn is praising as “correct and prescient” a directly antisemitic analysis.

Did Mr Corbyn not read the book before he praised it? Did he read it but, as with the Mear One mural, not notice that it was antisemitic? Did he realise it but decide it didn’t matter because there were other more important things about it?

One thing is clear. The problem of left-wing antisemitism isn’t really about Israel. It’s much more deeply embedded than that.

@Deathgrip , you would be the first to add it to your list of the other despicable things he's said. Or maybe you wouldn't because antisemitism doesn't count as racism, does it?

There's also a good Guardian article here about the Mear One mural, for those who, unlike @Deathgrip with his/her absolute certainty that the antisemite Jeremy Corbyn isn't antisemitic, would actually like to face the reality of who he is and what he believe.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/28/antisemitism-open-your-eyes-jeremy-corbyn-labour

Corbyn is not the first person to write a foreword for a book they haven’t properly read or - as I suspect in this case - for a century-old book they read years before and haven’t read since.

It’s an incredibly stupid, beyond idiotic thing to do - you’ll get no argument from me there, hence why I mentioned it being one of the few legitimate concerns raised.

I do not believe this in itself is incontrovertible evidence that Corbyn himself is anti-semitic. Had he written the book, of course it would be. He should never have put his name to it, even if he’d condemned those sections it would have been a stupid thing to do.

I'm not saying he's an antisemite. I'm saying he's a "useful idiot " for people who are. And , as such, like Johnson, totally unsuitable for the job of Prime Minister.

And for those who aren't going to continue sticking by the ludicrous, insulting claim that the antisemite Jeremy Corbyn isn't an antisemite, here is some information about his close links with the open, overt Holocaust denier Paul Eisen and his organisation, and how Corbyn continued to be closely involved with and to give money to him, even after most other people and organisations, including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, had severed links with him for being an open Holocaust denier:

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1024586364157915137.html

I'll remind you, this is the person that @Deathgrip , who is such an expert, having lived on the same road as some Orthodox Jews, is so certain isn't an antisemite.

There you go with your deliberate misrepresentations again - if you’re so correct you shouldn’t need to do this, should you? Says a lot.

@DuchessMustard , I was trying to say the kindest interpretation of this is that he's a useful idiot.
He shouldn't be anywhere near one of those scumbag Holocaust deniers.