Labour’s anti-Semitism
The upcoming UK election (December 12) has focused on the Brexit issue, but there’s another one: the Labour Party’s anti-Semitism.
You can find several articles on the topic in today’s Telegraph: for example, this one as well as this. You can also read about it here, although that author seems to have little understanding of the fact that the Times and WaPo are now the Pravda and Izvestia of US leftism.
One thing that is clear, however: the Jews of the UK have turned on the Labour Party. From the latter article:
94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour next Thursday. For those Jews who cannot stomach a vote for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pro-Brexit Tories, the Liberal Democrats offer the option of unambiguous support for continued European Union membership without the rank stench of anti-Semitism. Last year, the country’s three Jewish newspapers—each representing different political and communal traditions and constituencies—all published the same, front-page editorial warning that a Corbyn-led government would present an “existential” threat to British Jewry. The old joke about two Jews, three synagogues really does not have any pertinence when it comes to the matter of how the British Jewish community sees Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn’s and Labour’s anti-Semitism has been blatant enough that even Jews who would ordinarily be inclined to vote Labour are having trouble doing so.
Democrats here are going on about the “existential threat” posed by Trump, but in the UK, Labour Jew-hating really is an existential threat to British Jews. This holds on the Continent as well, as many American Jews with European family can testify.
The self-understanding of British Jewry differs from that of American Jewry, with the mode understanding the community as a confession rather than an ethnic group. Most British Jews are orthodox, a dispensation that captures < 10% of American Jewry. Their basic inclinations are much more skeptical of leftism than is the case for their American counterparts.
The prevalence of Jews among the American word-merchant sector inhibits the embrace of yet another bad cause by our horrid intelligentsia. The comparatively small Jewish population in Britain isn't nearly so prominent in public discussion, so doesn't move the needle in regard to the Near East. British intellectuals in re the Near East embrace venomous causes just as do intellectuals everywhere else.
Jeremy Corbyn is with scant doubt the most unintelligent man to have led either the Conservative or the Labour Party since 1935, but he is a dependent and hanger-on of the intelligentsia (his wretched school record notwithstanding). Prior to entering electoral politics, he'd pretty much spent his adult life working as office plankton for trade unions, editing their newsletters and the like. His upbringing was professional-managerial bourgeois (and both of his brothers are quite accomplished). He knows nothing of business, or of any trade or profession (blue collar or white collar).
British Jews have NOT turned on Labour; Labour has turned on them.
This is entirely consistent with what’s been happening on the European continent.
And American (mostly ethnic, no longer religious) Jews refuse to see the same leftwing threat to Judaism here.
And, sadly, lefties like Glenn Greenwald who have fallen all over themselves to deny and excuse any charge of antisemitism against Labour will likely say not one word about any of this. The opinions of actual British Jews will not register with them.
It’s a lesson for us all because Greenwald is dead on when it comes to the Russia paranoia on the Left, yet it determinedly oblivious about this.
Mike
The BBC aired a hard-hitting documentary this past July, Is Labour Anti-Semitic?, which brought this matter to the fore. You can watch an eight-minute+ preview of it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7eEQMyzLeo
New Statesman, a prominent leftist publication in UK which has endorsed every Labour administration since 1913, will not endorse Corbyn and stated, “….the essential judgement that must be made is on Mr Corbyn himself. His reluctance to apologise for the anti-Semitism in Labour and to take a stance on Brexit, the biggest issue facing the country, make him unfit to be prime minister.”
Following that BBC documentary, Simon Schama, along with some others on the left, signed this letter that appeared in The Observer:
Corbyn has been very supportive of Muslims and there is no doubt whatsoever among conservative Jews that Islam is anti-semitic.
This version of the BBC Panorama documentary “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” runs 59 minutes:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7d0xfe
A number of Jews have been killed, individually, in Paris in recent months. Here’s one:
Supposedly, he was too high on cannabis to be prosecuted, maybe. One article I read said that he won’t be prosecuted, this one says it’s unclear.
Sorry I missed the link to the above,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/27/how-the-murders-of-two-elderly-jewish-women-shook-france-antisemitism-mireille-knoll-sarah-halimi
Good for the British Jews.
As for us in the USA, it’s high time to see the facts for what they are. Many liberals, including high pooh-bah Democrats are Jew haters.
Many liberals, including high pooh-bah Democrats are Jew haters.
No doubt Omar and Tlaib are Jew haters. I doubt that motivates too many others. Read Paul Hollandar’s Political Pilgrims and Thomas Sowell’s Vision of the Anointed. Our intelligentsia has an affection for venomous causes. The Soviet Union back in the day, commies in the Far East later, commies in Latin America, Arab and Muslim revanchists in the Near East, loudmouth black nationalists at home. You name it, they’ll produce an apologia for it in The Nation (denouncing the perfidy of American policy-makers) with a companion piece in the New York Review of Books by some professional scribbler about how vulgar and flat-footed American policy-makers are to let it come to this. Your reaction to this sort of thing defines in-groups and out-groups among a certain sort of haut bourgeois, which is why the likes of Pete Buttigieg will never call bullsh!t on this or ever subject it to any critical examination.
Our intelligentsia is horrible.
Is anti-semitism a form of racism?
Is racism an all-encompassing evil that includes anti-semitism? and nationalism?
Or is anti-semitism just plain anti-semitism?
Why don’t we begin again to be for some things & beliefs rather than against?
“even Jews who would ordinarily be inclined to vote Labour are having trouble doing so.”
Yeah, imagine how it is for the Twin Cities Jews. They’ve provided most of the Minnesota Democratic party funding for decades. When Ilhan Omar was just a candidate, she appeared before a group of local Jews and recited some meaningless platitudes. They responded with money and votes. Now that it’s perfectly clear that she’s an Islamist Jew hater, they keep begging her privately: “Please, can you hold off on the hateful tweets long enough for our checks to clear?”
I kid thee not. Trump, who has never said anything or acted antisemitic and has a daughter who is an observant Jew, is the real danger. But they’ll incur massive chiropractor bills from patting themselves on the back because they support Omar, who wants them dead.
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