British Jews are worried. The front-runner for the leadership of the country’s Labour Party, the country’s largest in terms of membership and second largest in Parliament, has been linked to Holocaust deniers and anti-Israel terrorist organizations, among them Hamas and Hezbollah.
On Aug. 12, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle posed a series of questions to Jeremy Corbyn, the potential leader in question. It took over a week for Corbyn’s office to respond, and many of the answers were unsatisfactory. Take, for example, his office’s answer (Corbyn himself did not respond ) to a very straightforward question: Why do you associate with Hamas and Hezbollah and refer to them as your “friends?”
The second part of his answer was reasonable, if also problematic: “Jeremy has met many people with whom he profoundly disagrees, in order to try to promote a peace process.” Politicians do often meet with enemies to resolve long-standing conflicts (think Israel-Egypt in 1978, Israel-Jordan in 1994).
What makes Corbyn’s statement problematic is that he isn’t part of the equation in negotiating Israeli-Palestinian peace. It’s one thing for a key player to decide the time has come to meet the enemy. It’s quite something else for a Member of Parliament, with no role of any kind in peace talks, to choose to meet with terrorist organizations.
But it’s the first part of the answer where the real problem lies. “The term ‘friends’ was used purely as diplomatic language in the context of dialogue, not an endorsement of a particular set of views. In the difficult quest of establishing a peace, it is common for the term ‘friend’ to be used as part of the process.”
It is? Ignoring Corbyn’s self-appointment as a peacemaker, is it in fact “common” for opponents to describe each other as friends? In 1993, on the White House lawn, did Yitzhak Rabin refer to Yasir Arafat as a “friend?” Did Arafat call Rabin a friend? As the late Moshe Dayan astutely observed: “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.”
Additional, questionable activities on Corbyn’s part are emerging. For years he pled the case of two people convicted of the 1994 bombings of a Jewish charity building and the Israeli embassy, both in London; and several MPs (from the Labour Party, no less) have expressed serious concern about Corbyn’s failure to criticize “friends” for their anti-Semitic rhetoric.
A special party conference on Sept. 12 will announce the next leader of the Labour Party. A poll conducted by the Chronicle found that 67% of British Jews are concerned about Corbyn becoming the Labour Party leader. If news reports are anything to go by, they should be.
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
