Anti-Semitism and the British Left

[bluebeau]

Here they go again. Why does the British Left have such an antisemitism problem?

Labour fringe speaker's Holocaust remarks spark new antisemitism row

A senior Labour MP has said he is shocked at some of the anti-Semitic tweets by party members that come before its disciplinary panel. John Cryer said some of what is written "makes your hair stand up", adding: "This stuff is redolent of the 1930s."

After the Chakrabarti whitewash, I'm not listening to anything Corbyn and the left have to say any more. And don't even get me started on Ken Livingstone. I'll never trust Labour or the left ever again, until they stand up and say, "We allowed anti-semitism to arise within Labour. We just went,'deny, deny, deny' and looked the other way. We were wrong". Then, and only then, will I ever give them the time of day once again.

I doubt it is just coincidental that anti-semitism has only reared its ugly head of late, since Corbyn took over as leader of the Labour party. I'm not saying there was none at all before then, but that was when it got bad. Did you see, a few months back, a Liberal Democrat MP with anti-semitic views started shooting his mouth off? LibDem leader at the time, Tim Farron just turned around and fired him, immediately. That's leadership. Corbyn, on the other hand, has let Labour party anti-semites run riot and basically done nothing. He didn't even deal decisively with Livingstone, who should have been banned from Labour ten times over by now.

Corbyn has damaged forever Labour's reputation as a non-racist party. It took decades to build up that reputation, and just one world class muppet to ruin it.

user 1471.... Although i agree with almost everything in your post, the idea Corbyn has reacted decisively on anti-semitism is bizarre. I can't recall him even using the term without adding "and all other forms of racism" - this would be a start. Then he could admit that inviting a cleric for tea who had openly accused Jews of baking gentiles into their matzah was a mistake, and that his long association with Robert Eisen (a Holocaust denier) was also a bad idea...

BoysofMelody has it spot on.

Perking - what he seemed to be saying was that all points of view are legitimate subjects for debate except the Zionist one. Both anti-semitic and mixed up, I would say.

Can someone please explain how being critical of Israels actions over Palestine is antisemitic ? I do not like the Israeli government for what they do people that live in Palestine, that does not mean I discriminate against Jews unless I've missed something!

What I really don't understand is why Israel was recreated? I feel very naive. Instead of people getting angry can someone explain it to me?

I've read Miko Peled's book The General's Son. It's about how he started to reach out to Palestinians after his niece was murdered by a suicide bomber. He's from a well-known family and now travels around giving speeches about how he has rejected Zionism. Didn't have him down for someone who believes that Holocaust deniers should be listened to.

Off the top of my head I think Israel was created following WWII to give Jews their own nation state, as obviously in other nations they had experienced terrible antisemitism, not just in the 20th century but for hundreds of years with things like pogroms, expulsion from whole countries etc. And in their own nation this wouldn't happen.

I'm no expert though!

Thanks Isabelle that makes sense, though it does explain with the difficulty re Islam and Judaism in the same area yet segregated. Same with these man made borders in other areas of the world, they just don't work!

Fruit cider, this link may help.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_Test_of_Antisemitism

For me it's about the demonization of the state (& often of Jews) by equating it with Nazi Germany and apartheid, about the disproportionate focus, and about the deligitimization of the existence of Israel as a state (as I said below, no-one says Canada, where I now live, shouldn't exist because we're on unceded territory yet most of us - unlike Jews and Israel - have no ancestral claim to Canada).

Israel was created after the millennia-long Jewish community (pre-dating the Arab inhabitants) were joined by Jewish immigrants, pogroms against the Jewish, pogroms by the Jews, the Palestinian leadership encouraging people to leave their homes as they were sure they'd get them back & more, much back and forth, and finally recognition in 1948. Much land has been acquired in defensive wars and subsequently surrendered by Israel, but as Hamas' charter calls for the annihilation of Israel, well, it's not just about the settlements on the West Bank.

FruitCider - as stated upthread, there's nothing wrong with legitimate criticism of the Israeli government (Israeli human rights groups criticise it all the time).

There have been countless long books written on the history of Israel. Have a look at Wikipedia for a start. In a nutshell, it dates back to Theodor Herzl who in the late 19th century advocated creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Anti-Semitism was of course a major problem in Europe at the time, as evidence by the Dreyfus affair and ongoing pogroms. My great-great grandparents moved from Russia to Palestine in the mid 19th century. This year is also the centenary of the Balfour Declaration, in which the British government set out its support for the creation of a Jewish homeland.

And by pogroms I mean in the British Mandate

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1929_Hebron_massacre

Argh, horrible typo.

freedom to discuss everything withOUT criminal charges

Well yeah comparing it to the holocaust is just stupid. I mean my people (bosniak) experienced genocide and I wouldn't even compare that to the holocaust! The scale was unprecedented and the world needs to work together to ensure no genocides happen again, because of what the holocaust taught us. To deny the holocaust happened is just unspeakable... having said that I don't condone Israels actions towards the Gaza Strip.

I'm going to d

It would be so easy to stop talk of anti-semitism once in for all by JC publicly stating that he condemns all anti Semitic hate speech.

It isn't straightforward though is it? Apart from extreme positions, one person's anti Semitic-hate speech is another person's ligitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel.

Boysofmelody it really isn't hard to tell the difference between criticism of the current Israeli regime and anti Semitic comments.
It's disingenuous in the extreme to equate the two.
Some labour members have gone far beyond a concern over Israeli domestic policy and he needs to make it clear 100% there is no place in the party for these views.

I could be missing something, but I really can’t get my head round why so many view Israel’s actions as particularly terrible. Anti-semitism is surely the only explanation.

There are so many terrible regimes in the world, which commit appalling human rights abuses. There are also countries such as Saudi Arabia where half the population is cruelly oppressed from cradle to grave. Why do the Left feel so much more for Palestinians than they do for any other oppressed people?

Hmmm

Boysofmelody it really isn't hard to tell the difference between criticism of the current Israeli regime and anti Semitic comments.
It's disingenuous in the extreme to equate the two.

At the extremes yes, but there's a murky area in between. Knee jerk anti-Israeli (not anti Jewish) views are idiotic, but are morally defensible on free speech grounds in my view.

Because Israel is a fundamentally racist state, in that it privileges those from a jewish ethnicity over people of other ethnicities, particularly those from the palestinian arab population. While the justification for the state of Israel is the very real persecution of jews throughout history and around the world, most socialists reject the legitimacy of all declaredly racist states. Nearly 60 years after the creation of the state of Israel, the displaced palestinians are still living in appalling conditions, and the israeli state is not seeking a just or peaceful solution.

Which is not denying the evil done in the pogroms and holocaust, or the huge gifts of jewish culture to human civilization around the world

But it is right for the British Labour Party to examine the complicity/ responsibility of the British state in creating this situation.

How do they "privilege" non-Jewish Israelis? I don't get this as I know Druze, Christians, & Muslims serve in the IDF, in the border police, go to the same universities, sit in the Knesset, on the judiciary, work as doctors in Israeli hospitals.

And given that Jordan has had people who identify as Palestinians in camps for generations, why is that not a problem? Or Hamas horribly misusing funds for terror against Israeli civilians (of all religions)? The focus seems disproportionate.

Miss mayhem - almost all Muslim states have Islam as the official religion and discriminate in one way or another again non-adherents. Germany has a right of return for Eastern Europeans of German racial stock. Do socialists reject their legitimacy, as you put it? If course not. This is another "rule" that applies to Israel but no-one else. Hence suspicions of anti-Semitism.

I live in the same city as Naz Shah. Believe me I have heard and seen racism on a daily basis. (It is a very divided place hence riots) I must say hand on heart I don't hear anti-Semitic comments at all. (I have heard other things which are very shocking believe me)
I genuinely am shocked that this is a problem still in 2017 in a party that abhors racism.

Well it's about Empire too isn't it? We've made a hash of a few places.

Breaking one up is hard to get right.

It's horribly depressing and yet so many Labour supporters turn a blind eye.

I have quite a few Jewish friends worried about this but nothing is being done.

Well this odd.

A Tory supporter comes along and professes to never trust JC again citing a controversy that has been around for a while.

On the day Labour present a manifesto that is all over the .media is v popular and could very well tip them into power.

The OP has made pretty much no contribution to the 'debate.

They have said the populist chanting is silly and supports the notion that hard left violence is Just as bad as hard right which has been rightly ridiculed.
The OP is a Tory shut stirrer by all clear evidence.