Comment on election in foreign countries — unless Israel — is not typically the purview of this page. But the upcoming general elections in the United Kingdom have us worried.
The country has been ripped apart by Brexit, which is front and center for most voters. The problem with single issue elections? Other issues fall to the wayside. Concerns that would predominate in any other election cycle are ignored, so long as the candidate in question hews to the voter’s position on that one issue.
That, in part, is what is happening in Great Britain. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s history of anti-Semitism has repeatedly and clearly been demonstrated, yet his anti-Semitism continues either to be ignored or, worse, denied by his supporters.
Close to 50% of British Jews have said they would seriously consider emigration if Corbyn is elected. The vast majority believe Corbyn to be an anti-Semite, despite Labour’s trotting out of the usual Jewish suspects in Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Jewish Voices for Peace as the Uncle Toms in the scenario.
Jeremy Corbyn has a long history of being a Palestinian rights activist. This does not make him anti-Semitic, but if one investigates his activism, one quickly finds that he supported and associated with known pro-Palestinian anti-Semites. He famously called Hamas and Hezbollah — two terrorist organizations who murder Jews in cold blood — “friends.” He attended pro-Palestinian events organized by a known Holocaust denier, Paul Eisen.
In 2010, during Holocaust Awareness Week, Corbyn chaired an event in the House of Commons that featured known anti-Zionist Hajo Meyer, who accused the Jewish people of misusing the Holocaust and likened Israel to the Nazis. Corbyn was also part of a group of Labour MPs who wanted Holocaust Memorial Day renamed to Genocide Memorial Day.
In 2013, Corbyn implied that a group of British Jewish Zionists weren’t really English as they didn’t “understand English irony.”
In 2017 Jeremy Corbyn implied that Jews who migrated to London in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries used media to control and influence the general environment. (Side note: Jews did not migrate to London in the 18th century.)
There have been issues with Labour refusing to admit that being anti-Israel can cross into active anti-Semitism, with Corbyn being present at wreath-laying ceremonies for Black September terrorists and with subscribing to pro-Palestinian Facebook groups that openly espouse anti-Semitism.
This list goes on. The infractions have added up to such a degree that an independent inquiry in 2016 into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party found that it contained a “toxic atmosphere.” The past few years have seen Jewish — and even non-Jewish — Labour Members of Parliament leave the party. The latest was just last month when Dame Louise Ellman left the Labour Party after 55 years. She stated: The party allows “anti-Jewish racism to flourish.”
If Jeremy Corbyn claims that being pro-Palestinian doesn’t make one anti-Semitic, he’s doing a pretty poor job of proving it.
Corbyn’s excuse is often “I’m not the one who said it” — no, you just sat next to the one who said it. Or, “I didn’t understand the context.” Are these valid excuses for an aspiring national leader?
In the aftermath of the racially motivated 1993 killing of teen Stephen Lawrence in London, the UK defined a racist incident as “any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”
Yet Corbyn and his defenders deny that right to the overwhelming voice of British Jewry. Instead, Corbyn seeks out marginal voices in the Jewish community who prop him up. It is the very type of paternalism Corbyn claims to loathe.
We understand that Brexit is the issue for many British voters. American British journalist Hadley Freeman put it best: “Vote for [Corbyn] if you want. But be honest and say that certain issues — Brexit, free broadband, etc — are more important to you than anti-Semitism. Just don’t try to justify your choice by telling Jews they’re wrong to see what is vividly right in front of them.”
Copyright © 2019 by the Intermountain Jewish News
