To wonder why the Corbynite left is so obsessed with Palestine?

[Antigony]

To be clear - I don't agree with everything the Israeli government is doing.

But there are vast numbers of governments around the world who are doing terrible things. There's the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur Muslims, the Australian government's offshore internment of asylum seekers for years driving some to suicide, the Saudi Arabian government's warmongering and bombing in Yemen, Maduro in Venezuela stopping food aid from reaching his starving people, the Iranian government hanging gay people etc.

Why have so many people on the British left seized on and fetishised this one injustice? Why do they all put Palestinian flags in their twitter bios and jump on every opportunity to criticise Israel, but don't do the same for these other countries?

“The fact that Corbyn's own words regarding 'Israel's right to exist' are twisted in to 'oh, he was just talking about BBC bias”

Not being twisted. That is what he said.

*as a pet Palestinian woman whose grandad was kicked out ...

Just because one definition of a concept was adopted at a certain point doesn't mean that that concept did not exist prior. Anti semitism wasn't invented 8 years ago . Corbyn's words were as antisemitic then as they are now.

They weren't, he was talking about BBC bias and the way they deal with any criticism of Israel.

Anti semtism wasn't invented 8 years ago, but the document dictating what can is considered anti semitic was only adopted by the IHRA its self in 2016, and had taken considerable working out and changes had been made to it since it had been first developed between 2003 and 2004.

Retrospecitively applying a very specific condition of a document not fully adopted by the organisation that uses it to define anti antisemitism till after the fact is utterly vacuous and shows your desperation.

You have to at least admit that Corbyn’s words are open to interpretation.

I think he is the worst leader the Labour Party has ever had, and the reason we are going to have a conservative government until the end of time, and I have been saying so vocally since before he was elected. But it seems wildly unlikely that a person with a lifetime commitment to human rights and an anti racism campaigner would be an anti Semite, surely? He is certainly pro Palestine, and opposed to the Friends of Israel groups in Parliament.

Corbyn is not committed to human rights; he presided over the destruction of All Women Shortlists.

I agree that he's a terrible leader.

But I don't think that all of the points against him are valid.

Corbyn is quite plainly an antisemite. That’s just a fact.

Sorry I haven't read this whole thread so this may have come up, but surely there's a foundation of hard-left anti-Semitism stemming from Marxism, and Marx's own widely known anti-Semitism -eg his views that Jews were the epitome of capitalism (based of course on his repulsive racist stereotyping), and therefore one of ways of "freeing" the world of capitalism is through "emancipating" [eradicating] the Jews from their religion.

Much of the current resurgence of the hard-left stems from the 70s Militant groups which adhered so much to Marxism, so goes way before the creation of Israel. The Israel/Palestine situation is a handy peg on which to hang their hat, but the view that Jews=power/money/capitalism still persists - eg the mural that Corbyn so spectacularly failed to condemn here

Btw this doesn't mean it's not legitimate to criticise some of the actions of the recent Israeli government, but the eradication of Israel (anti-Zionism) is unquestionably a goal for some on the hard-left and is unquestionably anti-Semitic. A two-state solution is barely mentioned any more.

"Corbyn is quite plainly an antisemite. That’s just a fact."

Yet you can't back that statement up, its always he was "associated with" or a tenuous link to something.

Like this: "- eg the mural that Corbyn so spectacularly failed to condem"

He commented on a facebook post by the artist about about it being taken down.

The Mural was made as part of the occupy movement and depicted real historic figures , only two of which are Jewish.

The mural was made as an intended cricticism of the international business and banking exploiting the poor of the world, a big theme of the occupy movement.

The images could be taken to be anti Semitic, if you are looking for inference.

However, taking this as evidence of Corbyn being antisemitic, and using it to make this accusation is ridiculous.

“Corbyn is quite plainly an antisemite. That’s just a fact.”

No he isn’t. I don’t know whether he is or not. I have seen no firm evidence either way.

BTW the portrayal of Corbyn and his policies as radical socialists is laughable, go take a look at the radical socialist countries that employ similar policies, like Germany, Denmark, Norway etc.

I've just did - the Danish PM disagrees with you;
fee.org/articles/scandinavia-is-no-socialist-valhalla/

Addressing Harvard University last year, Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen tried to set the record straight.
“I know that some people associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism," he said. “I would like to make one thing clear.Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy."^

From the same article:
Indeed, viewing Scandinavian countries as socialist–or even left-wing–overlooks an essential truth about how their economies are organized.

While these nations do have high taxes and generous welfare, in many respects, their markets are unusually free, adopting exactly the kind of policies that the British Left, with its rigid adherence to central planning and intervention, spends its time fighting against.

Norwegian "socialism" is funded by investment in capitalism projects around the world.
*

We Are Not Here to Manage Capitalism.Labour Takes a Socialist Turn
www.thenation.com/article/we-are-not-here-to-manage-capitalism-labour-takes-a-socialist-turn/

Meanwhile, the membership of Germany’s once-dominant Social Democratic Party, still reeling from their humiliating collapse in September’s election,

www.politico.eu/article/matteo-renzi-martin-schulz-italy-germany-who-killed-european-social-democracy/

I also think there is a strain of left-wing (and I'm on the left broadly myself) that is quite frankly close minded and black and white. For some reason, the Israel-Palestine situation has been grabbed as this great opportunity to be on the side of the "good guys". Netanyahu is pretty horrid, so there's no need to do any thinking about the wider context and history of the region, the development of Israel. It's also kind of a small enough or distant enough of a problem to not really matter to those living in Western Europe.

I just did

However, taking this as evidence of Corbyn being antisemitic, and using it to make this accusation is ridiculous.

How many other non-antisemites do you know who have ‘accidentally’ done so many antisemitic things?

My primary issue though is with Corbyn’s active decision to associate himself with Hezbollah and Hamas. A few years ago he attended a conference in Qatar alongside a Hezbollah commander who masterminded multiple suicide bomb attacks in Tel Aviv, which each killed 15+, including children.

Corbyn describe the atmosphere at this conference as ‘electrifying.’

Hezbollah and Hamas are both antisemitic organisations who want to kill Jews.

If a politician went to the US to attend a KKK conference, you would conclude that that politician was a racist.

Why isn’t it racist to call those who want to kill Jews your friends?

The double standards in this thread is revolting.

Viva Palestina.

And no I had Jews as friends and I consider myself a Semite by religious text.

@BorisBogtrotter

Why don’t we imagine that all these examples of Corbyn’s antisemitism were directed at another ethnic minority?

Let’s say....

1. Corbyn defended a mural that depicted black people as monkeys, then later claimed that he hadn’t looked closely enough at the mural before supporting it.

1. Corbyn attends a KKK conference and calls the people ‘his great friends’. He invites them to Parliament for tea.

1. Corbyn calls for the word ‘Black’ to be removed from ‘Black History Month’ because there are other oppressed groups (reference to Corbyn’s attempt to get word ‘Holocaust’ removed from Holocaust Memorial Day)

1. Corbyn is videoed at a wreath laying ceremony at the grave of Steven Lawrence’s murderers.

1. Corbyn’s friend Pete Willsman launches into an anti-black rant at a Labour NEC meeting, in Corbyn’s presence. Corbyn does not intervene.

1. Corbyn - without any evidence - says that ‘the hand of Africa’ was behind an attack in Egypt.

Do you think we’d all be giving him the benefit of the doubt then? Of course we fucking wouldn’t.

Corbyn is not committed to human rights; he presided over the destruction of All Women Shortlists.

Thats an abuse of human rights? Seriously?

Omg boris the cognitive dissonance is amazing! You actually genuinely see nothing anti-Semitic in that mural? And yes, Corbyn 'only' commented on the Facebook page - in support of the artist - then after a huge backlash backtracked and said he "hadn't looked at the picture properly" (paraphrasing). Just like he had "just" been casually strolling through the cemetery and "didn't think" he was at the wreath laying ceremony of the Munich bombers.

Yes, really. No political party that ignores human rights legislation should be trusted.
Womens rights are protected by legislation including The Equality Act and Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

You can see anti semtism in that mural if you are looking for it.

However if you talk to the artist about the intention of the mural you would see that it wasn't antisemitic at all ( its ironic that it depcits Aleister Crowley a well known antisemite but is still called).
Taken in context it is very much about the protests of the Occupy movement.

The laying of the wreath stuff is fucking tenuous as well.

Were the people buried there part of black September, its debatable.

Were they the Munich bombers as you have said? No.

Copy and paste Clav.

You have proved my point.

None of the Labour manifesto at the last election proposes rigid central planning, in fact it was broadly in line with the Nordic and Northern European Social democracies in terms of policy.

Proving once again that you apply no critical thinking to what you copy and paste, simply try and find stuff that you think backs you up.

This certainly doesn't.

Amandette your post is so ridiculous it doesn't even bother writing a response to each post.

Each analogy is fundamentally flawed and bares no comparison to the reality of what happened in any situation.

BorisBogtrotter
None of the Labour manifesto at the last election proposes rigid central planning

Are you trying to say that the Labour Party misled everyone in their election manifesto - and now they've shown their true colours?

Not at all.

Where have they proposed rigid central planning? What they have proposed is a different type of mixed economy, which the Nordic countries and Germany both have versions of.

Do love that your copy and paste job proved my point.