RUTHFULLY YOURS

But never on any subject have I wanted so much to be proved wrong as on the obscene level of anti-Semitism – or Jew-hatred, to give it an uglier, more accurate name – infecting the left-wing in this country.

A whopping 13 years ago, I wrote a farewell piece in the Guardian explaining that I was leaving my job on the newspaper – the established voice of the British Left – due to what I saw as its ugly, anti-Jew rhetoric and accompanying Islamophilia (the final straw was when they ran an opinion piece by Osama bin Laden).

In that year, 2003, attacks on Jews had risen by 75% and since 2000 there had been a 400% increase in attacks on synagogues.

“What sort of world do we live in, when racism is ‘allowed’ to be reported only if it comes from the white and the right?” I wondered at the time. And the statistics are far worse now.

The strange fruit which was allowed to blossom by a Labour Party, smug in its anti-racist credentials, has turned the party into a rotting edifice fatally riddled with the ancient disease of anti-Semitism.

The long, lonely road here started with the perfectly ­reasonable desire to be anti-racist and ended up poisoned by what I call Paint-Chart Politics.

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PCP is the equally illogical inversion of conventional racism – in this case, the furthest-from-white is always right.

And, hence, the Labour Party has found itself supporting a sexist, homophobic, nihilist death cult – Islamism – just because the majority of those who practice it are dark skinned and the majority of Jews white.

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Though anyone who has visited the tiny, glorious state of Israel will have been impressed by a melting pot so vivid it makes NYC look like Salt Lake City, where coal-black Ethiopian immigrants ride the buses alongside platinum-blonde female soldiers and where Muslims serve as MPs, judges and Israeli Defence Force soldiers.

Jewish immigrants came to this country with nothing and contributed massively in everything from the arts to the formation of the trade unions.

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Rather like the Indians now, they have been hard-working, self-starting and never found it necessary to molest women en masse or torture, rape and traffic thousands of female children (and have the police turn a blind eye in the name of “community relations”) for either pleasure or profit.

Of course, it’s possible to criticise Israel without being anti-Semitic – Israelis do it all the time, in perfect freedom, uniquely among Middle Eastern countries.

But it is anti-Semitic to say that the Jews, uniquely, do not deserve their own country – especially when Muslims have so many.

REUTERS/Hannah Mckay

And the enemies of Israel wish there to be yet another Muslim state – Palestine, in which gay men are already exiled and women have been arrested for laughing in public.

There are 230,000 Jews in this country and two million Muslims. If the Labour party was currently committing self-immolation for purely ideological reasons, it would be tragic enough.

But the fact that they are doing it cynically, as well – to win the biggest group of voters – compounds their catastrophe.

I am torn between feeling sad that the Labour Party I was brought up in is dying by its own hand and feeling glad that this brain-dead zombie which calls itself a political movement will soon be finished.

With each new day, and each new outburst, I’m thinking the latter. And that is why I will be voting for the Women’s Equality Party at the next election.