To be delighted that Keir Starmer has already managed to get rid of the horror show that is Rebecca Long Bailey.

[lemonsandlimes123]

I wondered why he appointed her in the first place. Glad to see he has managed to ditch her pronto. Shame he can't do the same with Rayner.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude

But how can Keir Starmar sack BoJo? He can't, can he? He can beat him in a general election but there won't be one for at least another 4 years. He can cross examine him at PMQs and criticise him in the media.

In the meantime, KS wants to win back the trust of the Jewish community, a large number of whom have traditionally voted Labour.

His main task is to win back support for Labour in the polls. (Which surely is what we all want to happen if we're to get the Tories out.)

Asking to step down is a sacking. It's not uncommon in some jobs to be asked to resign as keeps their CV cleaner.

Also agree they are so far left and need moving more centric.

But I think same with Tories who need to move more to centre from the right!

We need a more centric type of approach with the diversity in this country and a strong leader.

We can live in hope!

Anyone in the labour party with any sort of public profile, who makes any sort of negative statement about Israel when it's not strictly necessary, is either an anti-Semite or totally tone-deaf and therefore shouldn't be in the shadow cabinet. Just don't fucking make digs about Israel, it's not hard surely. Legitimate criticism of specific acts by the Israeli government, within a relevant context, well sure but very, very cautiously. RLB had revealed herself to have neither the brains or the right attitude to be in an important role in the PLP right now. Also she's a pain in the arse, so good news all round.

TomPinch, what i find interesting from further reading is the 3 lobby groups, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee’s Project Interchange and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs have paid for police chiefs, assistant chiefs and captains to train in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Now I get the job of lobby groups is to protect their members interests, and the training suggests that it was counter terrorism based but depending on how that training and policy reform trickled down then the kneeling on the neck could be something that was learnt in repsonse to this training.
To me the idea of the training seems a bit like the Met police getting free training from the National Front or EDL, as those groups have an agenda and their views could be quite persuasive to the right kind of people.
I'm sure soldiers and police in Israel have a pretty crap job most of the time due to political decisions high above their paygrade and i'm sure most people who sign up for that work are doing it for the same reasons most soldiers and police do it the world over to protect those they love.
So in answer to the question "Would it matter just as much if the US police had learned it from, say, MI5?" I'd say yes it would matter just as much.

What Maxine Peake said wasn’t Anti-semitic. RLB shouldn’t have been ‘let go’ for sharing the article.

I can't stand the woman but I admit I don't really understand why she's been sacked here. She shared an online article from a mainstream newspaper, which contained a false claim about Isreal training American officers, which was refuted in the article itself. So what was she sacked for?

seems a bit like the Met police getting free training from the National Front or EDL

This is gobsmacking.

@Mittens030869

I was joking.
The main aim of the Leader of the Opposition is to deprive the current PM of their job.

@ChazsBrilliantAttitude Sorry, of course, I see what you mean. And making his party electable is the first step to achieving his purpose of removing the PM from office. I'm sorry we have to wait 4 years, but, in the meantime, being a good opposition leader is a very important job, too, and he is doing that.

It's anti-Semitic because it shifts the blame from the police in the US to Israel.

We know the US police are to blame for the death of George Floyd, but Maxine Peake seeks to shift the blame from them to the Jewish State, when it clearly is not their fault

nauticant, you don't see a similarity between police forces with a propensity for violence being trained by an organisation with a propensity for violence naturally leading to more violence, where a police force with a history of racism being trained by racists would lead to more racism? I thought i'd come over fairly clearly on my concerns.
Theterrible42, "Legitimate criticism of specific acts by the Israeli government, within a relevant context, well sure but very, very cautiously. I think here lies the crux of the whole problem, when ANY criticism of the Israeli Government quickly becomes an antisemitism argument. Surely if a Government is doing bad things then they should be called out robustly and without caution.

hink here lies the crux of the whole problem, when ANY criticism of the Israeli Government quickly becomes an antisemitism argument

I posted elsewhere how similar this is to TRAs and transphobia. Any criticism / discussion about Israel and its Government generates calls of anti-semitism in the same way any discussion about trans people generates calls of transphobia and debates get shut down.

Very often people who get upset when TRAs say things are transphobic are the same people who say things are anti-semitic when Israel gets criticised. Or even mentioned.

So black people are allowed to say what racism is, but Jewish people aren’t?

Got it.

So black people are allowed to say what racism is, but Jewish people aren’t

I thought trans people aren't allowed to say what transphobia was either...

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why any criticism of Israel is framed as being anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic but it can also be genuine critique of a country with an appalling human rights record that has been condemned time and again by the international community.
I couldn't care less about RBL. She was always on borrowed time. Now KS is the media darling, he will slowly reposition anyone he sees as left-wing.
But I do care, a lot, about the implication that we are responsible for and support every single sentiment expressed in anything we share and in the conflation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel.

@chomalungma

So black people are allowed to say what racism is, but Jewish people aren’t

I thought trans people aren't allowed to say what transphobia was either...

That’s a whole other MN problem, yes.

@AnneOfCreamCables

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why any criticism of Israel is framed as being anti-Semitic. Criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic but it can also be genuine critique of a country with an appalling human rights record that has been condemned time and again by the international community. I couldn't care less about RBL. She was always on borrowed time. Now KS is the media darling, he will slowly reposition anyone he sees as left-wing. But I do care, a lot, about the implication that we are responsible for and support every single sentiment expressed in anything we share and in the conflation of anti-Semitism with criticism of Israel.

There have been some very clear explanations on the first two pages, so maybe read those?

No, there haven't. There have been posts saying it's best 'not to criticise'. There have been posts explaining why they thought the article was anti-Semitic because they thought it shifted the blame from the US to Israel. They haven't explained why shifting the blame to Israel wasn't viewed as anti-Israel but anti-Semitic.
But you're not here in good faith. You are trying to pretend 'Jewish people' view criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic. Well, my family in Israel don't recognise or support what Netanyahu has done to their country and they are appalled at these blatant attempts to shut down criticism by claiming anti-Semitism.

No, actually, that’s not what I’m saying at all.

I’m saying that right now, in the context of everything that’s going on, RLB was being anti-Semitic.

I’m saying that right now, in the context of everything that’s going on, RLB was being anti-Semitic

Do you think she would say she was - or do you think RLB retweeted a long article, in which part of it said that the person being interviewed thought that the US police learnt the knee hold from Israeli police - and she wouldn't have associated that with anti-semitism?

"He asked her to step down according to the newspapers. Doesn't sound like he sacked her so not sure how decisive he was."

Being asked to step down = "sacked" in political speak.

I’ve been a bit baffled by this today, tbh.

Is a comment about the Israeli army the same as being anti-Semitic? I genuinely don’t see how!

And when did everyone become so Team Israel anyway? My circles are still very much in the pro-Palestine camp!*

*I’m being somewhat flippant!

I bet you it’s the headline of that article that she retweeted that pissed him off even more. The idea that if you didn’t like Corbyn you were a Tory who could eff off...when these are precisely the kind of voters who Starmer wants to attract.

Accusing Israel of being involved in some .... is not fine

Why is not fine? Let’s leave aside the facts for the moment - politicians of all stripes are seldom interested in those. Why is Israel - a known and frequent human rights abuser- sacred, but weekly often baseless attacks by top ranking British politicians on China, the US, the EU, etc (or wherever else) okay?

Why is Israel sacred and must not ever ever be criticized?

Why have you selectively quoted my post to make it sound like I said the exact opposite of what I actually did?

I said that criticism of the state of Israel for the human rights abuses they have committed is absolutely legitimate.

What is not legitimate is implying that Israel has a shadowy hand in any instance of wrongdoing or abuse that comes to mind regardless of whether or not there is any evidence that they are actually responsible for it.

And the reason this is particularly problematic when done in respect of Israel rather than, say, China or the EU, is because there is a very long history going back hundreds of years of Jewish people being blamed for ills of society which have absolutely nothing to do with them. To continue to further that conspiracy in the way Maxine Peak did in her article is to fail to recognise or address one’s own internal biases and prejudices towards Jewish people.

The context is extremely important here. The fact that she is too dim to realise that retweeting a conspiracy theory about the Jewish state of Israel after the Labour party tearing itself to pieces over anti-semitism says a huge amount about her character and ability to govern.

Plus she's been completely useless at her job as Shadow Education Sec.

Good riddance.