UK Politics Mega-thread - Page 577

On December 13 2019 21:40 Gorgonoth wrote:

I was watching the sky news election feed last night and a labor MP said on live television that Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism was appalling and there was a vote of no confidence in the Jewish labor party (caucus if that’s the right word) . Some of the loudest complaints have come from within the labor party too so I am a little surprised you say it’s complete nonsense.

On December 13 2019 21:40 Gorgonoth wrote:

I was watching the sky news election feed last night and a labor MP said on live television that Corbyn’s handling of antisemitism was appalling and there was a vote of no confidence in the Jewish labor party (caucus if that’s the right word) . Some of the loudest complaints have come from within the labor party too so I am a little surprised you say it’s complete nonsense.

On December 13 2019 21:53 Nebuchad wrote:


The opponent is Boris Johnson who is objectively worse in all respects when it comes to all forms of racism including antisemitism. Nothing wrong with criticizing Corbyn for his treatment of the issue afaik, I didn't follow it extremely closely but he seems to have not done the best job. However there's no way that it was the deciding factor in any decent number of votes. This was about Corbyn personally, about Brexit, and about the overall media coverage, in some combination of the factors. My guess Brexit the most but we'd have to look at detailed results to confirm.

On December 13 2019 22:01 Wombat_NI wrote:

In defence of Boris, for the first and possibly the last time from me in this thread, quite a lot of the quotes brought up about him are totally out of context and in context aren’t particularly racist (IMO anyway)

On December 13 2019 22:30 Nebuchad wrote:


I got him on islam setting the muslim world centuries behind the west, accepting to publish Taki's race and IQ bullshit, and having the jewish media conspiracy in a novel that seems overall delightful. Were you thinking of the same?

Edit: also didn't he associate with Bannon a few months back?

On December 13 2019 22:54 Zaros wrote:


He had like one meeting with him after Trump sacked him and hes never been seen again, I wouldn't read much into that.

Very happy we are actually going to leave the EU now, I think this will take out a lot of the hate and heat in political debate and we can return to a more civilised discussion.

On December 13 2019 21:54 Wombat_NI wrote:

Feels to me rather like a weapon to try and oust Corbyn after failed attempts at a leadership challenge.

There are really only two scenarios here IMO.

1. Corbyn has come in and a wave of anti-Semitism has followed him that he’s if not courted, then failed to counteract effectively.

2. Anti-Semitism was already rife in the Labour Party and Corbyn has failed to deal with it.

In scenario one, is there evidence to prove that? In scenario two, if it is a long-standing issue then why did it come under such a spotlight in the Corbyn era.

The previous leader and the brother he defeated were both of Jewish descent, although not practicing to my knowledge, if anti-Semitism was an issue why didn’t the Jewish Labour wing raise it with them?

I can’t really speak for others, I don’t think the charges are total nonsense, or Corbyn has handled it particularly well. What I do think is nonsense and transparent is the combination of quite how much media focus there has been on it, coincidentally to a leader who is further left and who is more critical of Israel than others have been historically.

On December 13 2019 23:16 Zaros wrote:
You guys really dont understand the Brexit vote at all.

On December 13 2019 23:19 Neneu wrote:


I got some materials for scenario 1. How about when the following image were removed from Labour's Facebook page, depicting the ruling class as jewish stereotypes with big noses, Corbyn questioned why it was removed. If not coming with a wave of antisemitism, he certainly failed at counteracting it.

How about the response from certain Labour proponents, when the rabbi warned against Corbyn, were that the jewish community are more leaning to the right, because of their interest in capitalism (which is an continuation of the old stereotype of jews and money).

On December 13 2019 23:16 Zaros wrote:
You guys really dont understand the Brexit vote at all.

On December 14 2019 01:20 Wombat_NI wrote:

I already said Corbyn did not handle it very well at all, but you’ve skipped around all the points I made to reiterate the same points I’d initially responded to.

I’ve said, I think in here and also in the US thread definitely that I think there is a worrying resurgence in anti-Semitic sentiments and tropes across the political spectrum that requires a suitably robust response.

Over-conflation of criticisms of Israel with anti-Semitism over the years unfortunately now have people dismissing very real incidences of the latter. Unfortunate but entirely explicable.

In an interview with Andrew Neil for the BBC, Mr Corbyn was confronted with several of the statements made by Labour Party members, including one who suggested the number killed in the Holocaust was wrong, and asked if they were antisemitic.

He dodged the opportunity four times to apologise to the British Jewish community for the party's handling of the issue - and instead said a Labour government would protect all communities from the abuse they receive.

In 2013, he criticized a decision to paint over a mural depicting hook-nosed bankers that was deemed anti-Semitic, later apologizing. He also once referred to Hezbollah as friends during a meeting in Parliament, a comment he later apologized for as well.

Mr. Corbyn was filmed at a 2013 event saying British “Zionists” don’t understand “English irony,” following a pro-Palestinian speech by Manuel Hassassian, then the Palestinian envoy to Britain. Several Labour lawmakers have quit the party, with some joining the Liberal Democrats, over concerns that anti-Semitism is being allowed to flourish. A poll by the Jewish Chronicle newspaper in October found that 87% of Jews think Mr. Corbyn is anti-Semitic, something he and other party officials have repeatedly denied.

That newspaper published a front-page article this month urging voters to cast their ballot against him on Dec. 12. “His hatred of Israel runs so deep,” said Damon Lenszner, a pro-Israel activist, as he campaigned outside the Labour Party event on Tuesday.

There are around 300,000 Jews in the U.K., accounting for roughly 0.5% of the population. Still, the criticism poses a problem for Mr. Corbyn, who is trying to sell his party as the kinder alternative to the ruling Conservative Party, which itself has been criticized for failing to tackle anti-Muslim racism in its ranks. Labour currently trails the Conservatives in the polls by around 10 points.

To state the obvious, criticism of Israel and Zionism is not necessarily anti-Jewish: that’s why there are so many Jewish critics of Israel, inside and outside the country. But it doesn’t take a professor of logic to know that just because x is not always y, it does not follow that x can never be y. Of course opposition to Israel is not always antisemitic. But that does not mean that it is never and can never be antisemitic. As Downing and Kirby have helpfully illustrated.

I hope that, as a result, many on the left will pause next time Jews raise the alarm about antisemitism. I hope they’ll remember that, while most anti-Israel activists are acting in good faith, some are motivated more darkly, while others carelessly express their opposition to Israel in language or imagery that has a melancholy history.

It’s time we acknowledged that Oxford’s student left is institutionally antisemitic

There’s a deeper reason to pause. Many good people on the left want to make things neat and simple by saying that Israel and Zionism have nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. That they can deplore the former even while they protect and show solidarity with the latter. But it’s not quite as easy as that.

While many Jews – especially in conversations with each other – condemn Israeli government policy going back many years, they do identify strongly with Israel and its people. A recent survey found that 93% of British Jews said Israel formed some part of their identity. Through ties of family or history, they are bound up with it. When Jews pray they face east – towards Jerusalem. And they have done that for 2,000 years.

It’s inconvenient, I know, but that needs to be remembered by those who insist that there’s no connection between Israel and Jews, that it’s perfectly possible to loathe everything about Israel – the world’s only Jewish country – without showing any hostility to Jews.

Jews themselves usually don’t see it, or experience it, that way. That doesn’t mean no one should ever criticise Israel, for fear of treading on Jewish sensitivities. Of course it doesn’t. But it does mean that many Jews worry when they see a part of the left whose hatred of Israel is so intense, unmatched by the animus directed at any other state.

They wonder why the same degree of passion – the same willingness to take to the streets, to tweet night and day – is not stirred by, say, Russia, whose bombing of Syria killed at least 1,700 civilians; or the Assad regime itself, which has taken hundreds of thousands of Arab lives. They ask themselves, what exactly is it about the world’s only Jewish country that convinces its loudest opponents it represents a malignancy greater than any other on the planet?

Which brings us to Jeremy Corbyn. No one accuses him of being an antisemite. But many Jews do worry that his past instinct, when faced with potential allies whom he deemed sound on Palestine, was to overlook whatever nastiness they might have uttered about Jews, even when that extended to Holocaust denial or the blood libel – the medieval calumny that Jews baked bread using the blood of gentile children. (To be specific: Corbyn was a long-time backer of a pro-Palestinian group founded by Paul Eisen, attending its 2013 event even after Eisen had outed himself as a Holocaust denier years earlier. Similarly, Corbyn praised Islamist leader Sheikh Raed Salah even though, as a British court confirmed, Salah had deployed the blood libel.)