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

Please do not be brainwashed. He’s not an antisemite and there are plenty of times he has called out antisemitism and said there is no place for it in the Labour Party or in society.

The trouble is clear - there are people who like to conflate criticism of Israeli government policies with criticism of Jews. They are not the same and only the latter is antisemitism. Please find me one example of Corbyn being derogatory towards Jews or Judaism. It simply does not exist.

Nor is it incumbent upon him as the party leader to kick out MPs who have openly criticised the government of Israel. That is not antisemitism and there is no need for him to speak out against those party members.

Sure there are bad eggs in this party just as there are antisemites, Islamophobes and racists in other parties too. But this is predominantly a, sadly rather successful, smear campaign against labour and Corbyn.

Please do not be fooled by everything you read in the press.

Please do not be brainwashed.

This is precisely the problem you have. Your devotion to Corbyn is weird and cultish.

My advice would be to not believe the posts on here, but do your own research. I've only seen a few impartial post's in this thread.

I cannot believe I have actually just read this. You have Jewish people on here telling you it’s a problem with ample evidence to back it up yet you know better. You ARE the problem. Would you tell a black or Asian person they are wrong? No you would not so why say to a Jewish person

No, @recrudesence - my support is based on years of research and enlightening myself with facts, rather than naively believing everything I read in the newspapers/on twitter or anywhere else that has the precise aim of influencing its readers. Wake up and smell the smear campaign if you think everything said about JC is accurate. OP, please do your own research to decide who deserves your vote. You’re very likely to get a lot of ignorant replies from those who do not understand what antisemitism actually means.

87% of British Jews believe Jeremy Corbyn to be antisemitic. This is what's important, not running to some of the 13% who dont and saying 'see, here are some jews who dont the same way' and then disingenuously say 'oh, is this the wrong type of jew?'

For the jewish Chronicle to almost beg voters not to vote for corbyn is so unprecedented it shows the depth of fear that corbyn has aroused.

You may be a corbyn supporter but you cannot just dismiss the genuine fears of an entire minority community as based on 'slurs '. Jews are just as capable of critical thinking as others.

^^ This. So, so many times over, this.

Non-jewish- "it doesn't affect me, I don't care, I will stick my head in the sand to get what I want"

I also know plenty of Jewish people who say they feel perfectly safe and that antisemitism is not as big a problem nowadays as islamophobia. Three of my Jewish friends are voting labour. It must be a horribly antisemitic party indeed.

Sorry but the Jewish chronicle also momentarily published an article (before absolute outrage from the public made them remove it) entitled “When Genocide is Permissible”. I wouldn’t go near that publication with a bargepole.

What things that people have posted about Corbyn on this thread are incorrect JollyRocker?

That he’s an antisemite for one

there are plenty of times he has called out antisemitism and said there is no place for it in the Labour Party or in society.

So, JollyRocker, your argument is that Corbyn is simply totally incompetent? Totally unable to do anything about antisemitism in the Labour Party apart from make weak ‘calls’ which has allowed it to flourish to the point of meeting the EHRC threshold for investigation?

That he’s an antisemite for one

I'm talking about the specific examples given. You're the third poster who has come onto this thread to say we are just brainwashed/ believing smears etc but none of you have been able to refute specific allegations. I'm asking what examples given of things Corbyn has done or said aren't true please.

Sorry that should be third poster I've asked- not had an answer yet.

I asked this on a thread last year and I received the following list of examples from a poster called Bananafish

So I can understand, please be clearer re what the anti-semitism is (understanding that I am critical of the State of Israel's incursions into Gaza and the West Bank and therefore not going to accept criticism of this as evidence of anti-semitism).

Just a couple of examples here

Distinct lack of condemnation or action by Corbyn or the NEC :

1. Labour Students at Oxford University Labour Club mocked the Jewish victims of the Paris kosher supermarket attack, called Auschwitz a ‘cash cow’, and used the Neo-Nazi slur ‘Zio’, according to extensive testimony from Jewish students. After months of obfuscation, including an NEC decision to not publish a party report that concluded there had been ‘some incidents’ of anti-Semitic behaviour, Labour’s NEC decided not to discipline the key perpetrators.

1. A Jewish Labour MP, Ruth Smeeth, was sent a 1,000 word death threat from a Corbyn-supporter calling her a ‘yid c–t’. The threat followed Smeeth’s decision to walk out of a meeting outlining Labour’s response to anti-semitism because she was accused of working ‘hand in hand with the right-wing media to attack Jeremy’. Smeeth then received 20,000 abusive messages and has since questioned whether Labour is still ‘a safe space for British Jews’.

1. A Labour council candidate in Peterborough, Alan Bull, shared anti-Semitic material online which claimed that the Holocaust was a ‘hoax’. The Labour party was made aware of the posts in 2017, but only suspended the candidate when contacted by the Jewish Chronicle in March 2018. Bull says he has never denied the Holocaust and re-posted the article in question to find out what his friends thought of it.

1. A former Labour parliamentary candidate in Witham, John Clarke, shared a Neo-Nazi meme saying the Rothschild family has used money lending and Israel to ‘take over the world’. He said the meme ‘contained a great deal of truth’ and was later suspended.

1. Jackie Walker, formerly vice-chair of Momentum, said Jews were the ‘chief financiers of the sugar and slave trade’, criticised security for Jewish schools, and said Holocaust Memorial Day was not ‘inclusive’ enough. After the comments were made and widely condemned, Corbyn shared a platform and campaigned alongside Walker.

10. Nasreen Khan, a Labour council candidate subsequently barred from standing, asked: ‘What have the Jews done good in this world?’. She said schools were ‘brainwashing us and our children into thinking the bad guy was Hitler’ and said ‘Jews have reaped the rewards of playing victims’.

11. A Labour councillor in Birmingham, Zafar Iqbal, shared a David Duke video on Facebook entitled ‘CNN Goldman Sachs and the Zio Matrix’. The Labour party accepted Mr Iqbal’s apology and claim that he had have no recollection of sharing this video’ – no disciplinary proceedings were enacted.

12. Andrew Slack, a councillor in Chesterfield, was suspended after sharing an anti-Semitic meme of a blood-smeared, hook-nosed Israeli soldier. The meme said ‘Israel was created by the Rothschilds’.

13. Pam Bromley, a Labour Councillor in Lancashire, posted links to an antisemitic article entitled ‘World War 3: Trump Begins Paying His Homage to Rothschilds,’ commenting ‘we must remember that Rothschilds are a powerful financial family (like the Medicis) and represent capitalism and big business’. Bromley is still a Labour councillor and no disciplinary action has been taken.

14. Terence Flanagan, a member of Hampstead and Kilburn CLP, compared a Jewish councillor to Josef Goebbels and, when calling for his expulsion, referred to former Labour donor Michael Foster allegedly as ‘the Jewish millionaire’. Flanagan was suspended, but then readmitted to the party after formal written warning.

15. Labour Party member and Momentum Teesside activist Bob Campbell has shared an image of a rat marked with a Star of David and claimed Israel controls ISIS. Campbell denied to the press that he had been suspended by the party.

16. In 2016, Aysegul Gurbuz, a Labour councillor in Luton, resigned after tweet surfaced where she said Hitler was ‘the greatest man in history’.

17. Far-left activist Gerry Downing, a Labour member who claimed the existence of a ‘Jewish question’, said ‘elements of the Jewish-Zionist bourgeoisie… have played a vanguard role for the capitalist offensive against the workers’, was expelled after then Prime Minister David Cameron brought his case up at PMQs.

18. Terry Kelly, a councillor in Renfrewshire, wrote that the ‘American Jewish lobby is extremely powerful and it has its boot on Obama’s neck’ and that the film ‘The King’s Speech’ might not win an Oscar because ‘there is a powerful Jewish lobby campaigning against the film because of its historical inaccuracy about Hitler and the anti-Semitism’. Mr Kelly was temporarily suspended in May 2016 before being reinstated a month later.

19. Max Tasker, a Labour Councillor in North Wales, posted Youtube videos to his facebook page with entitled: ‘Is ISIS good for the Jews?’, ‘The whole story of Zionist conspiracy: the filthy history of pedophilia, murder and bigotry’, ‘Not for the immature! Zionist Antichrist will rule the [New World Order]’ and ‘Ukraine’s anti-Russian stance is a Zionist masterplan’.

20. Rebecca Massey, a member in Hove, tweeted that ‘Israel has Tory and Labour parties under control’, and believes Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis is ‘manufactured’. No action was taken and Ms Massey went on to be appointed Treasurer of Hove and Portslade Labour Party.

21. Mohammed Shabbir, a Labour Councillor in Bradford, tweeted the conspiracy theory that Israel was behind ISIS, accused Jews of ‘playing the Holocaust card’, and said the BBC was run by a ‘hasbara media cartel’.

22. Corbyn supporters in Bristol erected a 100 foot banner that depicted Theresa May wearing Star of David earrings, alongside anti Conservative slogans. Local Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire slammed the banner as anti-Semitic and it was taken down.

23. Jeremy Corbyn defended in 2012 an anti-Semitic mural in East London that depicted Jewish bankers playing a monopoly-style game on the backs of the poor. He has since apologised.

24. Jeremy Corbyn wrote a letter of support for Stephen Sizer, a vicar disciplined by the Church of England for sharing an article on social media entitled ‘9/11: Israel Did It’.

Links to all the original stories are here blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/03/labours-pockets-of-anti-semitism-the-evidence/

Yes it's the spectator but decide for yourself if you think all of the anti semitic tropes are all imagined or just Jews being over sensitive

@JollyRocker
The Jewish Chronicle is the main publication of the Jewish community. The fact that you wouldn't touch it with a barge pole speaks volumes.

Zsazsa,

You can see it with the obsession with “Palestine” - you don’t see anything like the same interest in other countries or political situations.

How dare you put Palestine in quotation marks. That is a vile, racist, scummy thing to do. You call yourself jewish, cry about existential threats to yourself and anti semitism, yet have no qualms about putting the entire existence of a nation in quotation marks. Views like yours are repugnant and vile.

Palestine exists. It will continue to exist whether you like it or not. Try showing some compassion to others and not just yourself for once in your life. Your views towards Palestinians are sickening, yet you cry about anti semitism.

Good grief.

A little research on this accusation that the uk Jewish chronicle published an article saying genocide is permissible shows that, in fact, it was a blog post on the 'Times of Israel'.
www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvqqpv/when-genocide-is-permissible-the-unsettling-op-ed-that-never-was
I guess in @JollyRocker's corbynite world view, an article published by an Israeli newspaper is the same as one published by a British Jewish paper and thus one can ignore and disregard the concerns they raise since it's all because Corbyn supports Palestinians ffs. I'm so fucking sick of those, its constant and its insidious

The list published on toryfibs linked by loungelizard is mostly a list of EDMs that Jeremy signed. It is often used to 'prove' that he is not racist.

EDMs do nothing. (Early Day Motions)
They can be signed by MPs. The MPs can then tell everyone 'look how great I am for signing this' They don't get debated in Parliament, they don't change the law.
They are just an EDM. They cost money to administer, and are often used for virtue signalling.

Jeremy Corbyn signing EDMs is NOT evidence of anything.

expelled... suspended... resigned... barred....apologised

A lot of that long list is where someone could argue the Labour-linked-offender didn't carefully read all of the content they were retweeting, or deeply investigate the background of the person they gave support to, who had previously said something offensive. Who among us has deeply investigated all the background of everyone we ever publicly expressed support for? And who can say that the pro-Israel lobby isn't loud & strong, perhaps has a distorted influence on global politics?

I agree as a whole, it's a pile of crap & don't fault anyone if they can't stomach it. But it's not reaching my threshold to make me think the entire Labour party (or Corbyn personally) is worse than Conservatives' offer.

Hold nose to vote GE this year, for sure.

"Ken Livingstone used to regularly insert foot in mouth with comments that were perceived as anti-Jewish."

Ken Livingstone is an out and out anti-semite. to say 'perceived as anti-Jewish' is simply gaslighting.

Corbyn has repeatedly been anti-Semitic on video, including targeting British Jews with racial slurs. He frequently attends events by Jew haters and Holocaust deniers. CBA to start trying to list everything because other posters have done it better, but there is no grey area, nuance or anything taken out of context.

(EDMs don't prove anything but if they did, they'd prove Corbyn wants us all blown up by an asteroid. Little kiddies, snow leopards, butterflies, the lot. Funny how the pro-Corbyn propagandists who apparently set such store by the waste of time and money that's an EDM never show that one)

The fact that people are so blind to the blatant agenda here is laughable. Vote however you like, but racism unfortunately exists in every party. I don’t see other parties doing much to root it out either.

I don’t think Ken Livingstone was actually expelled I think he resigned from the party

He Is now head of some Labour Witchhunt committee obviously being a victim himself

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that there isn’t racism within other parties

What people are saying is that they will not vote for labour under Corbyn and co because the issue of anti semitism in the party that the leader and those around him don’t really want to bother dealing with

Now why is that ? There has always been an element of anti Semitism within the left of the party but now they control the party its allowed for those people to air their views with little consequence - is this a party people want to support

Ken Livingstone should have been reprimanded the very day he made his Hitler comments - he wasn’t there is no excuse

Anti semitism exists in all parts of society. As does racism and Islamophobia and sexism. It exists in the labour party and the tory party and the lib dems and greens. Labour have a massive membership in comparison to other parties. Labour are having to do more about confronting AS than most. JC is not anti semitic. Labour is less sexist less racist less anti semitic less islamophobic than most IME. It is largely the media who do their very best to smear him with anything and everything they think might stick.

Who ever you vote for will have some people who are one or other or all of the above in their party or amongst their supporters.

Vote for the party you think will be best for this country. Or for the local candidate you think best. Or tactically to keep out whatever party you hate out.

How dare you put Palestine in quotation marks. That is a vile, racist, scummy thing to do. You call yourself jewish, cry about existential threats to yourself and anti semitism, yet have no qualms about putting the entire existence of a nation in quotation marks. Views like yours are repugnant and vile.

Palestine exists. It will continue to exist whether you like it or not. Try showing some compassion to others and not just yourself for once in your life. Your views towards Palestinians are sickening, yet you cry about anti semitism.

^ This.

The truth is, JC stands up for minorities, which unfortunately does not sit well with some.