This essay goes far beyond today’s dispute back into history and covers Jews, Judaism antisemitism and much more. Recommended reading…
In response to a string of anti-Semitic incidents involving prominent members of his party, British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has reluctantly established a commission of inquiry. Members and supporters of the Labour Party and members of relevant communities have been invited to submit evidence.
Let me be very clear: I have zero confidence in this inquiry. And not just because Mr. Corbyn’s past actions (such as calling members of terrorist organisations ‘friends’, sharing platforms with Holocaust deniers, patronage of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign) are questionable to say the least. No, a desire to whitewash, rather than shed light, is obvious from the choice of the inquiry panel.
Mr. Corbyn has called the inquiry ‘independent’ — but it is anything but. It’s Chair, Ms. Shami Chakrabarti, is an enthusiastic member of the Labour Party. In her own words
“I share the values of the Labour Party constitution and will seek to promote those values in any recommendations and findings […] not just in the Labour Party but in the world.”
Ms. Chakrabarti can claim no particular expertise on the subject of anti-Semitism. She formerly headed the campaigning organisation ‘Liberty’, a body that militates – among other things – for unrestricted freedom of speech, including the freedom to publish vile racist rants.
The inquiry’s Vice Chair, on the other hand, can certainly claim to be an expert on anti-Semitism. Corbyn’s appointment for this position is Prof. David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism. But, while his expertise in historical anti-Semitism is not in doubt, Prof. Feldman’s positions on contemporary anti-Semitism are – to use a typical British understatement – ‘controversial‘. As are his views on Zionism and Israel. Prof. Feldman does not see anything wrong with singling out the Jewish state for disproportionate criticism. He does not think that likening Israeli Jews to Nazis is anti-Semitic.
Vice Chair of the Inquiry, Prof David Feldman, shared a platform
with Shlomo Sand, author of a “The Invention of the Jewish People”,
which claims that modern Jews descend from Khazars, a Turkic population.
Prof. Feldman thanked Sand for writing the book.
Even more interestingly, the good professor is a member of Independent Jewish Voices (IJV), a group who has stated its opinion before the inquiry even started:
“allegations of pervasive antisemitism within the Labour Party […] are, in our view, baseless and disingenuous [and] deployed politically – whether by the press, the Conservative Party, opponents of Corbyn’s leadership within Labour, or by those seeking to counter criticism of the actions of the Israeli government.”
In its own submission to the inquiry, IJV claims that
“Today, Zionism follows the path of maximalist nationalism and settler colonialism, driven largely by right-wing politicians, rabbis and settlers pursuing an ethnoreligious, messianic and exclusionary agenda. […] This maximalist Zionism is the only form of Zionism that has any political agency or power today. All the constructions of Zionism by those who propagate ‘new antisemitism’ theory are designed to spread the net of the ‘new antisemitism’ ever more widely in such a way as to outlaw recognition of this basic reality. To Palestinians it means the ongoing denial of their civil, political and human rights and the impossibility of achieving Palestinian national self-determination.”
Clearly, some of Mr. Corbyn’s best friends are Jews. No wonder that he has appointed as Vice Chair a ‘good Jew’ – rather than, for instance, the President of the Board of Deputies (the elected representatives of British Jewry). The Far Labour leadership is happy to listen to ‘Jewish Voices’, as long as they are properly ‘independent’, not excessively ‘Jewish’ and voice the correct opinions.
Antony Lerman, who prepared the Independent Jewish Voices submission,
complained in an interview about “the Israel Lobby”.
The second Vice Chair, by the way, is Baroness Royall, a Labour Party peer who has already completed an investigation into antisemitism at the Oxford University Labour Club. Folding that inquiry into the larger one and appointing Baroness Royall as Vice Chair gave Corbyn the excusenot to publish her report in full and not to implement its recommendations.
In light of all this manoeuvring and of its composition, it is clear that the ‘independent inquiry’ is nothing but a cover-up operation. Its report might as well have been written in advance. It will no doubt exonerate the Party and its new, hard-left leadership (as well as some if not all of the individuals accused of antisemitism) of any systematic and pervasive racist inclinations; it will take great pains to emphasise the difference between antisemitism and ‘anti-Zionism’; it will claim instead that anti-Jewish prejudice and anti-Jewish State ‘criticism’ (however obsessive) are two completely different kettles of fish: one rotten, the other smelling of roses.
