TOM GROSS ON ANTI-ANTISEMITISM IN ENGLAND
In a tweet last week, Dan Hogan, who worked on the British Labour Party’s internal disciplinary inquiries (but has now quit), revealed the scale of allegations investigated. Hogan said: “I’ve done plenty of disciplinary cases against Labour members who compared Israel to the Nazis, peddled conspiracy theories about Israel, promoted Holocaust deniers, praised terrorists, and who questioned the Britishness or loyalty of British Jews.”
Other MPs from the party’s moderate wing said that the party does not have enough staff to handle all the anti-Semitic allegations coming in about Labour Party members.
This is another in an occasional series of dispatches about British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who continues to rise in some opinion polls (largely because of the government’s difficulties over Brexit) and is currently a favorite to be the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. The UK is, of course, a nuclear-armed power and a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
(This dispatch is primarily for readers in America and elsewhere since papers such as the New York Times have inadequately explained what is happening in the UK.)
The cover of yesterday’s Times of London comes is hardly surprising. The far left in many ways share the same anti-Semitic ideology of the extreme right. It led to the murder and persecution of Jews in Soviet Russia, for example. (Because there are laws against race hatred and anti-Semitism in many countries today, including the UK, they often disguise their anti-Semitism as anti-Zionism.)
After Corbyn’s derogatory remarks about British Jews in 2013 were revealed in a video by the Daily Mail on Friday, Home Secretary Sajid Javid (of the Conservative party) said yesterday: “If Corbyn had said “Asians” or “Blacks” instead of “Zionists”, he would have had to resign by now.”
Mike Gapes, a senior Labour MP, said: “Corbyn is a racist anti-Semite. Period.”
On another page The Times’s lead editorial said:
For too long the leader of the opposition has tolerated antisemitism in his party. For too long he has dragged his feet amid a growing clamour from inside and outside the Labour movement to stamp it out. Now Jeremy Corbyn is revealed as straightforwardly antisemitic himself. That is the conclusion any reasonable listener must draw from a 2013 speech in London …
There is a place in any party for legitimate criticism of any country’s foreign and domestic policies, including Israel’s, but this was not Mr Corbyn’s subject. He was singling out Jews on the basis of their ethnicity as problematic and in need of “lessons”. This is antisemitism. Anyone in doubt where such remarks might resonate was offered clarification yesterday via Twitter, which published messages of support for Mr Corbyn from Nick Griffin, former head of the British National Party, and David Duke, a Holocaust denier and former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. With friends like these, Mr Corbyn can end his long search for enemies in implausible places…
Alongside Corbyn on the platform were conspiracy theorists including an Anglican vicar who has claimed that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks and whom Mr Corbyn has commended for “excellent work” … The event was publicised on the website of the military wing of Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation that far from recognising Israel is dedicated to its destruction.
For those interested I have also posted many items about Corbyn on my public Facebook page in recent weeks, here:
https://www.facebook.com/pg/TomGrossMedia
Among previous related dispatches:
Britain’s “next?” prime minister called terrorist who helped blow up café, “brother”
“The worst cancer I’ve ever seen”
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