To ask about Jeremy Corbyn and anti semitism

[TheoriginalLEM]

So having decided to vote labour I had a conversation with a Jewish work colleague who said she couldn't vote for him, hated him even. It took me a few seconds and then i realised why. I said that I had stuck my fingers in my ears and my head in the sand somewhat about this, hoping it was just the media etc.

We didn't get into it as I could see she was uncomfortable.

So can someone tell me if and why he is an anti-semite? It doesn't sit well with me to vote for someone like that but I desperately want the Tories gone and my politics is definitely to the left.

I'm honestly not being goady and I know I could google but i wouldn't know where to start to get an unbiased view

arse So are you saying the Jewish wing of the labour party are lying?

Arse what about the examples of Corbyn's behaviour, things he has said and done, anti-Semitic people he has praised etc outlined on this thread?

And Dan Carden didn't sing 'hey Jews' at the top of his voice on a Cheltenham coach, despite multiple independent witnesses and whats app real time message records confirming that he did? As just one example...
Some right wing henchman on the bus forced Calden to sing racist songs did they??

I was asked if I thought Jews were exaggerating to damage Corbyn. I have answered.

So the antisemitism complaints are a Jewish plot to oust Corbyn?

Are you sure that’s a line you want to be taking?

And I should take your word over people directly affected by it because....?

A few more examples arse:

Ms Shah apologised for a string of comments on Twitter, including one suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States, although she was subsequently re-instated.

Mr Livingstone quit the party after a long-running row over claims Adolf Hitler had once supported Zionism while Mr Williamson was stripped of his membership for saying the problem of anti-Semitism had been over-stated and Labour had been "too apologetic" over the issue.

Mr Williamson's case is still ongoing - he was allowed back into the party several months later, but was suspended again two days later. pending further consideration of his future.

In February this year Labour released figures showing that the party received 673 accusations of anti-Semitism by Labour members between April 2018 and January 2019. However the scale of the issue remains disputed.

In April 2019, the Sunday Times reported that Labour had received 863 complaints against party members, including councillors.

The newspaper claimed leaked e-mails it had seen showed more than half of the cases remained unresolved while there had been no investigation in 28% of them.

It said fewer than 30 people had been expelled while members investigated for posting online comments such as "Heil Hitler" and "Jews are the problem" had not been suspended.

Mr Corbyn's opponents accuse him of being too close to Hamas, a militant Islamist group, and Hezbollah, a Lebanese paramilitary group. Both groups are widely viewed in the West as terrorist organisations.

He described representatives of Hamas as his "friends" after inviting them to a controversial meeting in Parliament in 2009.

Mr Corbyn faced criticism in August 2018 after a video emerged on the Daily Mail website of a 2013 clip in which he said a group of British Zionists had "no sense of English irony".

Former chief rabbi Lord Sacks branded the comments "the most offensive statement" by a politician since Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech and accused the Labour leader of being an anti-Semite.

In August 2018, the Labour leader also came under fire over his presence at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 which is said to have honoured the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre, during which 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage by Palestinian militants and killed.

The Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Mr Corbyn deserved "unequivocal condemnation" for laying a wreath on the grave of one of those behind the atrocity.

Earlier in August 2018, Jeremy Corbyn apologised over an event he hosted as a backbench MP in 2010 where a Holocaust survivor compared Israel to Nazism.

In March 2018, Mr Corbyn was criticised for sending an apparently supportive message to the creator of an allegedly anti-Semitic mural in 2012.

In February 2019, nine MPs quit Labour, many of them citing the leadership's handling of anti-Semitism as their reason for leaving.

Ms Berger, who had a police escort at the 2018 Labour Party conference, said she had come to the "sickening conclusion" that the party had become institutionally anti-Semitic and that she was "embarrassed and ashamed" to stay.

In March 2018, the head of the Labour Party's disputes panel quit after it emerged she had opposed the suspension of a council candidate accused of Holocaust denial.

Christine Shawcroft said she had not not been aware of the "abhorrent" Facebook post that had led to his suspension

In July 2018, the UK's three main Jewish newspapers published the same front page, warning that a government led by Mr Corbyn would pose an "existential threat to Jewish life".

That small sample above is pretty damming I would say, for a possible future Prime Minister of this country.

Of course Tories that care not one jot about anti semitism are jumping on this. But the anti semitism is still real.

Arse what about the examples of Corbyn's behaviour, things he has said and done, anti-Semitic people he has praised etc outlined on this thread?

I've heard them all a hundred times glitch and I don't believe they represent antisemitism. As a Jew I believe I have a heightened awareness of what antisemitism is, what it feels like/looks like and it does not apply to Corbyn. I am not at all fearful of a Corbyn government but I am VERY fearful for myself and my country of a Johnson government.

it really troubles me the way so many people are supposedly so very concerned about antisemitism when I have hardly heard about it in the mainstream media all my life. I think we all know it hasn't just been invented yet suddenly it's practically all I hear!

Just to be clear I am not Jewish, but I can not, and will not support a party that thinks any of the above is okay.

I can only assume there are levels of behaviour you are prepared to put up with @ArseDarkly . I'm sure the nasties view you as a pet, or, in political terms "a useful idiot" . Much like Corbyn himself.

@ArseDarkly You really think Corbyn defending this mural is not anti Semitic?

I don't believe that the fears of any other ethnic minority would be dismissed in such a cavalier and offensive fashion as @ArseDarkly has just done.

87% of British Jews believe Corbyn to be an anti-semite.

And they are either doing so maliciously to promote the Tories or because they are incapable of critical thought.

Talk about gaslighting! Replace Jew with Muslim and Labour with Tory and see how it sounds

Thanks for posting the mural, I could not attach it, but yes thats the one.

*A few more examples arse:

Ms Shah apologised for a string of comments on Twitter, including one suggesting Israel should be moved to the United States, although she was subsequently re-instated.*

If that was the end of it she thinks victims of CSE should shut up for sale if diversity.

My local MP has had a few run one despite being labour with Naz Shah she's a disgusting vile individual, and this is who he surrounds his self with.

He forced Sarah champion to resign as she was causing too much trouble for him.

I'll say it again either Jeremy Corbyn is anti Semitic, or incompetent which is it?

@caranconnor I asked about that same mural upthread. I had to ask, because no, I could not see antisemitic elements immediately. The pyramid and eye is a known symbol of freemasonry, and has been taken up as the symbol of a 'world order' of sinister men running the world.

Apparently some now say this is antisemitic, because other people also independently say that some of those men are Jewish. Put that another way - any similar symbol is now automatically considered to be antisemitic, because a few idiots say that Jews are among that group. It's not enough.

Apparently some of the men around the table are supposed to look Jewish. Please bear in mind that in cities nowadays we are strongly encouraged not to judge people on appearance and many of us don't.

I really did not see anti semitic elements in that picture at first glance: I saw it as the usual complaint against money and power of the few. If this artist has form for being one of those aforementioned idiots, then fair enough. But not all of us really follow the art world, especially the modern art world, so we would not know those hidden messages and really would not have read those in.

This is not enough to convince me of institutional anti-semitic bias in a man who has spent long years in public service campaigning for peace. Who is finally in a position to threaten the establishment line and is therefore under fire. Nor are similar arguments enough to convince me of any similar leanings from Chris Williamson, who used to be my MP and leader of my council. The evidence is simply not there.

The evidence is there, you just refuse to see it. Its again and again and again.

No, the mural on its own is insufficient to convict. Of course corbyn isn't going to stand and yell 'I hate Jews' but there is such a long list of him being friends with rabid anti semites, supporting them, being a member of blatantly anti semitic groups, giving a platform to those with anti semitic agenda, participating in events with anti semitic tones and participants, not realising he had endorsed anti semitic opinions. It just goes on and on and on.

I was prepared to forgive corbyn a lot but he simply has never failed to disappoint.

As said previously hes either a complete idiot or antisemitic.

Why do 87% of British jews believe Jeremy corbyn to be antisemitic? This wasnt the case for Blair, Brown, Smith, Foot, Kinnock or, in fact any other Labour leader in history. Many in the jewish community are so.scared they are looking to leave the country.

"I really did not see anti semitic elements in that picture at first glance"

It's got images straight out of the Goebbels playbook. And maybe you aren't familiar with that for whatever bizarre ill informed reason. But you are not leader of the Labour Party. Who should be well versed in that sort of thing.
It should be fucking obvious. Unless you want to pretend it isn't.

I think if this mural thing has been an isolated incident, no one would say based on that alone that corbyn is anti semitic. I'd have raised an eyebrow but been willing to accept the explanation and apology.

But what we are seeing here is a consistent pattern of behaviour over many years. Either corbyn is a bumbling idiot who is just very unlucky in the company he keeps or hes an anti semite (the most generous label is that hes very comfortable with anti semitism).

This is the same poster who on another thread argued at length that a labour councillor calling a Jewish colleague a 'Shylock' wasn't anti-Semitic. In fact calling it such was very elitist of me because not everyone is fortunate enough to have studied Shakespeare or some such nonsense. Not surprised to see them trying to deny yet more obvious racism.

The thing is that so far each one of these bits of evidence, when I've looked into it, has been something that would have been ignored as an isolated incident because it is essentially circumstantial.

Do we accept a whole bunch of circumstantial evidence to convict people in court when stakes are high, or do we look for something a bit more solid? Especially when there is a whole bunch of competing circumstantial evidence which show an opposite view. The media and establishment have been hostile to Corbyn from the start because he questions their narrative which says we all have no options and no choices in current capitalism but to accept the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer. Which set of circumstantial evidence is going to swing it?

No, not everyone has studied every Shakespeare play. You call me racist: I call you classist. Where does that get us?

I'll ask you the same thing I asked on the other thread- you had no idea that Shylock was Jewish or used as an insult despite its long history of being associated with anti-Semitism. You apparently don't recognise images that are commonly used as offensive Jewish stereotypes. Therefore why do you think you are qualified to tell others what is or isn't anti-Semitic? You appear pretty ill informed on the whole subject.