Labour and anti-semitism

[LeLaluifleur]

Apologies for DF links but ignoring the lowbrow style 'journalism' for a minute, I am perturbed about these reports.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3531852/Labour-councillor-20-suspended-claims-called-Hitler-greatest-man-history-latest-anti-Semitic-scandal-hit-Corbyn-s-party.html#comments

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3532042/Ignorant-Godless-Hateful-Corbyn-s-contempt-Jews-disgrace-withering-attack-Labour-leader-donor-backed-party-400-000-2015-Election.html

I like Corbyn a little bit but judge his cavalier attitude to anti-semitism harshly.

Has anti-semitism become cool among labour supporters or something? What is being done about the anti-semitism coming from some labour politicians and how to deal with the Islamist flavour of anti-semitism as displayed by Labour councillor Aysegul Gurbuz (and others) for examples who posted statements such as this on twitter :

"Ed Miliband is Jewish. He will never become prime minister of Britain."
"Adolf Hitler was praised as the ‘greatest man in history".

ammi do you think any of the quotes from Labour members I posted in my post from 09:53 are anti-semitic?

I give up.

"I dont see jews a a specific race, more a religion/culture."

Well Vicky Kirbi in pointing out the age old racist cliche about Jews' big noses is bringing race into her 'criticism' of Israel, wouldn't you agree ammi?

I dont see jews a a specific race, more a religion/culture. They were at one time strictly one race; but conversions from all over the world has meant that technically people of all races under the banner of judaism the faith rather than a race. Much similar to other all faiths we have. Hence i have trouble with this notion of anti semite smear on anyone criticising israel in particular.

If only you'd been around when Hitler was in charge so you could have put him straight and so many lives would have been saved. I'll tell DS, thanks for the tip. Next time he gets abuse for being foolish enough to let on that his Dad is a Jew I'm sure he'll find it of great comfort.

The marriage-out (with no conversion involved) rate for Jews is apparently 50% by the way, according to a report I read recently - if you think the Jewish population is growing through 'conversions from all over the world' you'll be wrong.

And your utter refusal to engage on examples of clear anti-Semitism is really, really telling.

Today 10:01 grinkle

Little point in arguing with the terminally stupid. As I said, anti-Semitism does do us all (Jewish or not) some favours in making clear exactly who the sociopathic imbeciles are. So we can know to avoid them.

thanks for the heads up. I will keep my eyes peeled for these sneaky sociopaths. Do they also resort to personal insults when they cant answer? May have spotted a fair few myself.

ammi just to clarify, do you think any of the quotes from Labour members I posted in my post from 09:53 are anti-semitic?

Vicki Kirby, vice chair of the Labour’s Woking branch
"Jews have “big noses” and “slaughter the oppressed."

Luton Labour councillor Aysegul Gurbuz
"Ed Miliband is Jewish. He will never become prime minister of Britain."

"Hitler is the Zionist god".

"My man Hitler"

"Adolf Hitler was praised as the ‘greatest man in history."
Iran are going to have their own nuclear weapon and are going to wipe Israel off the map."

"The Jews are so powerful in the US it’s disgusting."

Councillor Khadim Hussain, former Lord Mayor of Bradford
"Your school education system only tells you about Anne Frank and the six million Zionists [!!!!] that were killed by Hitler."

"Greater Israel courtesy of Isis" , "There is no doubt who created the so called ISIS and who is arming those vile terrorists!"

Labour councillor Beinazir Lasharie
“Many people know about who was behind 9/11 and also who is behind Isis. I’ve nothing against Jews ... just sharing it!”

“I’ve heard some compelling evidence about Isis being originated from Zionists!”

Thank you for clarifying.

Funny, we've had two absolute masters of deflection twice in two days...

It's weird that so many of these Jew haters, sorry "anti-Zionists" share a Pakistani heritage. I wonder what Jews or Israelis ever did to Pakistan to make them collectively so full of hate?

but let's face it the Pakistanis don't get on with the Indian Hindus and tend to persecute anyone who practices Christianity in Pakistan.

I never understand the 'big nose comment' either as these features tend to apply to ME races too but no one would dare to say that in public office.

ammi (though don't know why I'm bothering, as clearly you've never, ever read anything that might question your racist worldview), here's a couple of articles on the topic you brought up upthread, about how debate on Israel is supposedly 'silenced' in the mainstream media.

As you will note, it is is anything but. It's still not the specific article I was looking for, which broke down stats on British media incl the Guardian, but they should give you a little flavour of the real state of affairs:

www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/

www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide

"In one seven-week period, from Nov. 8 to Dec. 16, 2011, I decided to count the stories coming out of our bureau on the various moral failings of Israeli society—proposed legislation meant to suppress the media, the rising influence of Orthodox Jews, unauthorized settlement outposts, gender segregation, and so forth. I counted 27 separate articles, an average of a story every two days. In a very conservative estimate, this seven-week tally was higher than the total number of significantly critical stories about Palestinian government and society, including the totalitarian Islamists of Hamas, that our bureau had published in the preceding three years."

Remind me again which side has 'silenced' debate?

"When I worked in the AP’s Jerusalem bureau, the Israel story was covered by more AP news staff than China, or India, or all of the 50-odd countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. This is representative of the industry as a whole."

fathomjournal.org/the-ideological-roots-of-media-bias-against-israel/

Yeah, the 'Israel lobby' is really 'silencing the debate', isn't it?

Clearly noo examination of Israeli policies or actions at all, oh no.

From the same article:

"Vandalism of Palestinian property is a story. Neo-Nazi rallies at Palestinian universities or in Palestinian cities are not – I saw images of such rallies suppressed on more than one occasion. Jewish hatred of Arabs is a story. Arab hatred of Jews is not. Our policy, for example, was not to mention the assertion in the Hamas founding charter that Jews were responsible for engineering both world wars and the Russian and French revolutions, despite the obvious insight this provides into the thinking of one of the most influential actors in the conflict."

ammi - either you're being used, you're a fool but you don't know it, or you're an unconscionable racist.

If it's the former, read and learn how you're being duped by some very nasty racists with a very dubious set of vested interests.

If it's the latter, clearly there is no point discussing anything further with you.

From the same article, which sums it up, really:

"In my time in the press corps I saw, from the inside, how Israel’s flaws were dissected and magnified, while the flaws of its enemies were purposely erased. I saw how the threats facing Israel were disregarded or even mocked as figments of the Israeli imagination, even as these threats repeatedly materialised. I saw how a fictional image of Israel and of its enemies was manufactured, polished, and propagated to devastating effect by inflating certain details, ignoring others, and presenting the result as an accurate picture of reality. Lest we think this is something that has never happened before, we might remember Orwell’s observation about journalism from the Spanish Civil War: ‘Early in life,’ he wrote, ‘I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which do not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. (…) I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what had happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”’ That was in 1942."

More idiocy, this time from the lovely chap Gallowy

"UK Respect Party leader George Galloway released a video on 28 April, in which he announced his plans for a coup to "overthrow Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour party," in response to the party's decision to suspend Ken Livingstone."

One worse than the other.

Good luck with overthrowing Corby though I'm all for it though for entirely different reasons.

Galloway:

"The supporters of Israel have the whole political class now dancing to their tune," Galloway says in the video. "Sadiq Khan has promised a festival of Tel Aviv in London to celebrate Tel Aviv, and thus, celebrate the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians across the last 70 years."www.ibtimes.co.uk/george-galloway-reveals-plans-overthrow-jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-leader-1557405

on and on it goes, what a git.

Its impossible to argue with you because you twist everything out of your blind ideological hatred. I was citing a standard historical analysis - and assert it is the type of stuff that anyone who has a more complex understanding of Jewish-German relations would refer too - and I suspect it is what KL is referring to. of course, you can also look up the Haavara Agreement on Wikipeida - but I dont really trust those type of sources.

sorry - that was in response to Bobthebuddha and this comment:

Sorry that history is too complex for you to grasp

That's not really an insult to throw at someone when you've just held Ken Livingstone up as providing quality historical analysis confused

forkhandles - who was that addressed to, and which comment? We have 33 pages...

Ah, cross posted!

forkhandles - did you look at the twitter links I posted to highly reputed historians debunking KL's claims?

They answer your points much better than any of us could.

I'm not an expert on Hitler (or any other aspect of history).
But I do know that we have to be able to debate historical interpretations openly and without name-calling, or we're in a very sorry state indeed. Which, sadly, appears to be the case in our society.

"But I do know that we have to be able to debate historical interpretations openly and without name-calling, or we're in a very sorry state indeed."

Another I agree but whilst discussing the complex issues including problems and solutions in the Middle East let's take care not to be racist about the populations we are referring to, that includes not being racist towards Muslims in the context of a growing conservative and hostile global version of Islam; the same curtousy should be extended to every population group including the JEwsih communities. Would you agree?

"I'm not an expert on Hitler (or any other aspect of history)."

I don't mean this offensively but I believe lack of historical awareness and critical thinking is the root of a lot of problems where anti-semitism and racism are concerned.

These threads make me think that history needs to be taught more throughly in schools.

I have always found In Defense of History interesting and helpful.

""Their [Holocaust deniers'] use of the scholarly apparatus of footnotes and references, and their insistence that they are telling the objective truth, demonstrates in Purkiss's view the 'dire consequences' of such a scholarly apparatus, the bankruptcy of such a belief in objectivity and truth." (pp. 140-1)" www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Whatishistory/purkiss1.html

What I think, Darling, is that we should always - always - remember that no group of people is "better" than any other group of people (and that in essence our groupings are meaningless anyway), and that we should all basically just try to be kinder to each other. To my mind, a part of this is to remain genuinely open to how other people interpret the world and not jump to take offence and label people with emotive terms.