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?

I'm certainly not going to wade through the Labour Party manifesto - but just found this from the Director General at the Institute of Economic Affairs:

iea.org.uk/media/labour-faith-in-central-planning-is-fundamentally-flawed/

Labour faith in central planning is fundamentally flawed
25 September 2017

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell’s speech today shows little understanding of how markets work, let alone how they can help to solve economic and social problems. ...

Similarly, further state intervention in the labour market, which would restrict the choices available to businesses and workers alike, will hold back the ‘possibilities of technological change’ rather than embrace them. ...

Labour’s agenda of tighter regulation, renationalisation and higher taxes will discourage investment and job creation, rather than promote them.

If you use age-old antisemitic tropes in a mural, you are an antisemite. No matter what your ‘intentions’ were.

Anyone who seeks to defend that mural or claim it isn’t antisemitic is an antisemite. You are blind to your own racism.

I see that the UK recently signed trade continuity agreements (Brexit) with the Palestinian Authority and Israel on the same day -18th Feb 2019:

www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-palestinian-authority-sign-trade-continuity-agreement

www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-israel-sign-trade-continuity-agreement

Copy and paste Clav rides again showing her lack of critical thinking.

Posting something from the free market fundamentalists at the IEA as evidence that Labour were being super socialists, rather than proposing a different sort of mixed economy.

Laughable.

As is the accusation of me being racist.

Reported.

Apartheid in Israel. Where signs outside Palestinian villages under PA control ban Israelis from entering. Some signs say Israeli lives are at risk if they do. Israeli signs do not ban Palestinians.

Interestingly no one ever comments on the PA signs and the risk to Israeli (citizen) lives in Palestine, and how Israel's signs do not mention the reverse, when 'Israeli apartheid' is mentioned.

Checkpoints out of Gaza are in place due to ongoing terror threat from the region, and the checkpoints continue to stop infiltration by terrorists into Israel, whose overt expressed intentions are to murder Israeli citizens.

That particular sign only mentions it is dangerous. Others ban Israelis outright.

The United Nations (UN) International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid "inhumane acts...committed in the context of an institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”

Why is Israel carrying out Apartheid, well there are numerous bits of evidence:

srael carries out various acts that are prohibited by the UN Apartheid Convention including:

● Forcible transfer of Palestinians to make way for illegal Israeli settlements.

● Preventing Palestinians from returning to their homes and lands.

● Systematic and severe deprivation of fundamental human rights of Palestinians based on their identity.

● Denying Palestinians their right to freedom of movement and residence.

● Murder, torture, unlawful imprisonment and other severe deprivation of physical liberty, especially of Palestinians living in Gaza.

● Persecution of Palestinians because of their opposition to Apartheid

Richard Falk, emeritus professor of law at Princeton University and UN special rapporteur 2008-2014, wrote in a report to the UN Human Rights Council that Israel is guilty of racial discrimination, apartheid and torture in its “systematic oppression” of the Palestinian people. (UN document A/HRC/25/67)

The UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination censured Israel in 2012 for implementing “two entirely separate legal systems and sets of institutions for Jewish communities grouped in illegal settlements on the one hand and Palestinian populations living in Palestinian towns and villages on the other hand.” The Committee declared itself “particularly appalled at the hermetic character of the separation of two groups, who live on the same territory but do not enjoy either equal use of roads and infrastructure or equal access to basic services and water resources”. It called on Israel to eradicate all policies and practices of “racial segregation and apartheid” affecting the Palestinian people (UN document CERD/C/ISR/CO/14-16).

waronwant.org/israeli-apartheid-factsheet

boris many people on this thread, myself included, are not arguing that all of the actions of Israel currently are all ok. This isn't a b&w situation between Israel and Palestine, both sides have much to account for. It's about how the hard-left of labour have latched onto this particular conflict above all others, and how blindly sympathetic Corbyn, McDonnell etc are to not just Palestine but affiliated terrorist groups like hamas and hezbollah, and how this dogged Israel=root of evil ideology is destroying Labour. All the justifications about the mural etc are just like the denial of so many of the momentum group who eg excused ken livingstone for his comments about hitler. Anyone who denies this is at best wilfully disengenuous.

I really think the stuff about the mural is totally over blown.

He made a comment on a Facebook picture of it, about it being taken down.

The mural stuff is not an excuse I genuinely think people on that are picking peanuts out of poo, as with the wreath laying ceremony, people here are all "the munich bombers" when its people who are accused of being associated with the organisation, not the perpatrators.

I agree that Labour did not deal well with the Livingstone situation, and he had form for this too.

No one has ever said Israel = the root of all evil, that's a strawman of the otherside's making.

As said, I don't think Corbyn is great, I disagree with him on a lot of things, but this desperation to call him anti Semitic when the evidence is extremely weak shows something.

BorisBogtrotter

evidence that Labour were being super socialists, rather than proposing a different sort of mixed economy

Took me 2 minutes to find this -

May 2018 John McDonnell, Labour's Shadow Chancellor confirming that his job is to overthrow capitalism to radically challenge the system to create a socialist society.

You can listen if you like - it's quite brief;

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-politics-44189922/john-mcdonnell-says-overthrowing-capitalism-is-his-job

Missed part of the quote there Clav, copy and paste skills not up to scratch, or being selective?

"yes it is" before saying he wanted to "radically challenge the system as it now is".

However, the over throw of capitalism wasn't in the manifesto.

So again, scrambling around for bits and pieces that fit your narrative.

Your claims and criticisms about Labour are still unfounded, and its hilarious that your critique before was based on C and P from the IEA.

You realise they would criticise the systems in Nordic countries and Germany in the same way?

"overthrow capitalism to radically challenge the system to create a socialist society. "

You realise a socialist society does not need to be a communist society right? There are varying degrees of them including the Nordic Model of social democracy.

But I'd imagine as that would require actual critical thinking and knowledge, rather than copying and pasting.

Anyway,

I'm off out for the night.

Glad to see MN agreed with me about the unfair abuse I was given

Tooldes.

Editor of the New European, GQ magazine April 2018;

If your worldview is that Jews control global capitalism and that Israel is a fascist state, you can see why, in your warped state of mind, you could be forgiven for thinking you had a friend in Corbyn

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-anti-semitism

However, the overthrow of capitalism wasn't in the manifesto

Reuters interview Nov 2018;

Opposition Labour Party plots overthrow of capitalism

LONDON (Reuters)-The British Labour Party’s would-be Chancellor, John McDonnell, has a message for the world: he is deadly serious about overthrowing capitalism and building a socialist society.

McDonnell, who describes Karl Marx as one of his main influences, has been at the vanguard of a left-wing revival in Britain’s main opposition party under fellow socialist Jeremy Corbyn. He has promised sweeping nationalisation, higher public spending and an overhaul of the banking system.

Asked about his entry in the Who’s Who directory of influential people which lists his passion for “generally fermenting the overthrow of capitalism”, McDonnell said it was a joke about beer-making, but he agrees with the principle.

uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-labour-mcdonnell/opposition-labour-party-plots-overthrow-of-capitalism-idUKKCN1NS17X

I'm signing off as well.

Funnily enugh I read an article about this subject earlier on.

www.opendemocracy.net/north-africa-west-asia/william-eichler/singling-out-israel-perspective-from-left

-Singling out Israel: a perspective from the left

Left wingers have been found to be statistically much less likely to be anti-semitic than people further to the right, and the UK Jewish population is small and intergrated- to suggest an obsession comes from a hatred of the community is just totally unconvincing.
Also a hugely dissproportionate amount of socialism's intellectual side comes from jewish writers and groups like the Bundists (Trotsky, Marx, Rosa Luxemberg, Lenin, Goldman- even Einstein and up to the Millibands today) Antisemitism is obviously incompatable with socialism- though of course that doesnt always stop people. European jews suffered for this at the hands of the Right in the last century with the 'judeo-bolshevism' (now reborn as 'cutural-marxism') conspiracies as well as the pgooroms and the whole racial science stuff.

There seems to be a lot of weird re-writing of history going on over it and its worrying. The huge rise in anti-semitism in Europe at the moment is again coming from the far right.

whether you think think corbyn is racist or not is one thing but 'by assosication'. he is connected to an unusually high amount of people who clearly have questionable views about jews. The posters on here who are clearly in denial and find it hard to acknowledge still that there is any problem with jew hating in the labour party are all part of the problem. op created this thread about such people. they have selective vision and will argue the toss/twist any opposing view to suit their own agenda. they are clearly not jewish. i don't get offended easily but i burst into tears when i saw that mural. no jew could look at that and not immediately see something that reminded them of something similar to goebbels imagery. if something similar had been created by the artist that used people from different ethnicity's these same people would probably be in uproar. you make me sick

I've seen some complete rubbish said about Marx recently. This supposed 'anti-semitism' comes from him applying his atheist beliefs across all the religions. He hated all religion. However he supported Jewish emancipation where they were disriminated against in jobs, education etc. Its not important anyway because there arnt any Marxists currently anywhere near the top in UK politics, despite what our reliable tabloids tell us.

Corbyn seems to be a special case. I think he probably is an anti-semite but is too dull witted to realise it himself.

whether you think think corbyn is racist or not is one thing but 'by assosication'.

Exactly, this guilt by association thing is weapon that is being used back onto the "left" and they are struggling to defend it.

They where all over the fact David Duke backed Trump, the fact he also backed Corbyn along with Stormfront is just met with silence. Its just become pure tribalistic IDPOL stuff now.

I personally don't think he is an Anti-Semite, I think he is anti-west old school left rebellion, you only have to look at who he surrounded himself with to see that, there was no way a couple of years ago you could say that you didn't like Corbyn without the thread filling up with posts about being a blue labour/tory/daily mail reader. It says something when the same posters who would call everyone out are now "not a fan of corbyn"

There was a reason why Labour tried to get away from the hard left and go more centrist, the fact brexit has happened and shown many "life long lefties" want to follow neo-liberalism is why politics in general is shot to shit.

I have not read the whole of this thread, because it is so horribly long. So maybe this has been said before.
But the original question was something like "Why does the Left concentrate on Palestine?"
The Left generally has always been anxious to support the oppressed throughout the world. Fine. That is the nature of the Left, and a good thing too.
But Palestine in particular? Over and above, say Venezuela, and a dozen other examples?
Perhaps it is because of a sort of "half-thought-out" memory of Communism, which stigmatised Jewish people as typical Capitalists?

Marx was an anti Semite? Karl Marx with the rabbi in the family?

Marx was an anti Semite? Karl Marx with the rabbi in the family?

Karl Marx's father converted to Christianity when he was a young child. One article I read says that his father did this to evade anti-Semite laws at the time - but the fact that he switched religions so easily led Karl to regard religion with distain.

*his father converted to Christianity when Karl was a young child.