By Yair
Rosenberg
Yesterday,
the British Labour party suspended one of its members of parliament, Naz
Shah, for advocating that Israel be forcibly relocated, comparing the Jewish
state to Nazi Germany, and likening Zionism to al-Qaeda. Today, the party suspended one of its top officials, former
London mayor Ken Livingstone, for claiming in live interviews that Hitler was a
Zionist, while insisting that “during the 47 years I’ve been in the Labour
Party, I’ve never heard anyone say anything antisemitic.”
On Thursday, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “There is
no crisis.”
None of this should be the least bit surprising.
After all, nearly eight months ago, the party elected Corbyn, a
radical leftist, as its new leader with a resounding 59.5% of the vote. This
occurred despite the fact that Corbyn, as we reported at the
time, had an exceptionally nasty track record of associating with antisemites
and bigots of all stripes. Among other exploits, we noted, Corbyn had:
– Donated to the
organization of Paul Eisen, a Holocaust denier, and appeared at his events. He
later claimed he was unaware of Eisen’s unsavory views, despite 15 years of
association.
– Defended vicar
Stephen Sizer, who disseminated materials arguing the Mossad did 9/11, after he
was banned from
social media by the Church of England for posting antisemitic material.
– Praised preacher
Raed Salah and invited him to parliament. Salah claimsthat Jews make their Passover matzoh with gentile blood, that Jews had
foreknowledge of 9/11, and that homosexuality
is “a great crime.” He has been banned from the U.K. for antisemitic
incitement.
– Invited activist
Dyab Abou Jahjah to parliament and spoke alongside him. Abou Jahjah had called the 9/11 attacks “sweet revenge,” said Europe made
“the cult of the Holocaust and Jew-worshiping its alternative religion,” andcalled gays
“Aids-spreading faggots.” He is now banned in the U.K.
– Described himself
as a “very good friend” of Ibrahim Hewitt, a preacher who likened homosexuality
to pedophilia and incest, and labeled it an “abominable practice.”
– Campaigned for
the release of Jawad Botmeh and Samar Alami, who were convicted in Britain in
1996 for bombing the Israeli Embassy in London and one of the country’s largest
Jewish charities.
On the
eve of Corbyn’s election, Scottish columnist Stephen Daisley wrote a widely
circulated warning about
what his ascent represented for the British left:
Jeremy
Corbyn is not an antisemite. How I wish that he were. How much easier it would
make things. We could chalk all this up to the prejudices of one man and we
could avoid the raw, awkward conversation we’re about to have. Because this
isn’t about Jeremy Corbyn; he’s just a symptom and a symbol. The Left, and not
just the fringes, has an antisemitism problem.
Contrary to left-wing mythology, anti-Jewish prejudice has never
been the exclusive preserve of aristocratic snobs or skinhead fantasists. “The
Jew is the enemy of the human race,” declared Proudhon. “One must send this
race back to Asia or exterminate it.” Bakunin labelled Jews “bloodsucking
people” while Orwell, self-consciously antisemitic, even obsessed over the excessive number of Jews
sheltering in London’s Underground during World War II. (No matter what the
Jews do to protect themselves, it’s always disproportionate.) Marx, the
grandson of a rabbi, essayed:
“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism –
huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible”.
The problem of late, continued Daisley, was that antisemitism
had found a home on the left by recycling classical antisemitic tropes beneath
a thin veneer of “anti-Zionism”:
The
contemporary Left, in most cases, would recognise these statements as
irrational prejudice. But what if we substituted “Zionist” for “Jew”, what
would happen then? How many would object to “Zionists” being termed enemies of
the human race? How many would be glad to see the “Zionist” become impossible?
Anti-Zionism has removed much of the need for classical antisemitism by
recycling the old superstitions as a political critique of the State of Israel.
…For
too many on the Left, Jewish suffering does not touch them the way Muslim
suffering or gay suffering or black suffering touches them. Scrutiny of
Corbyn’s associations elicits cries of “smear” or just a collective shrug of
the shoulders. It was always going to. We lack a language to talk about antisemitism
because too many on the Left don’t consider it a serious problem and couldn’t
recognise it as readily as racism, misogyny or homophobia anyway.
Upon
his election as party leader, Corbyn proceeded to prove Daisley right. Under
him, Labour readmitted an array of members who had previously been expelled for
antisemitism, only to have to re-jettison some of them when their prior bigotrycame to light. Newly appointed officials in the party were
awkwardly suspended when it turned out they were praising Hitler on
social media.
Corbyn
himself soon appointed Livingstone, a former mayor of London who had been widely accused of antisemitism
for many years, to several key party posts. This was the man whom The Guardian editor Jonathan Freedland—a former
Livingstone voter—famously said “doesn’t
care what hurt he causes Jews.” A UK-based charity personally backed by Corbyn funded a play in
which Gazan children reenacted the murder of Israelis.
On
university campuses, similar incidents unfolded on the left. In February, the
co-chair of the Oxford Labour Club resigned over antisemitism
within it, writing, “a large proportion of both OULC and the student left in
Oxford more generally have some kind of problem with Jews.” This month, the
UK’s National Union of Students elected a far-left president who claimed the
mainstream media was “Zionist-led” and publicly defended terrorism against
Israeli civilians. (She had also condemned her
university as a “Zionist outpost” due to its “largest Jsoc [Jewish student
society] in the country.”)
Then
came the Naz Shah affair this past week. An MP from Bradford, Shah was found to have posted
on Facebook likening Israel and Zionism to Nazi Germany and al-Qaeda, as well
as advocating the transfer of the Jewish state to America. She soon apologized unreservedly.
Her party’s leadership, however, was less resolute. Corbyn initially refused to
suspend Shah, only doing so after days of intense pressure.
Following
the debacle, Labour MP Wes Streeting said that the
cascading antisemitism in his party brought to mind “lifting up a stone and
having insects crawl out.” On cue, Ken Livingstone stepped into the fray to
prove him right. Speaking on BBC
Radio, the former London mayor insisted that Shah’s comments, though “over the
top,” were “not antisemitic” and that “I’ve been in the Labour party for 47 years;
I’ve never heard anyone say anything antisemitic.”
Then Livingstone said something even more astounding:
Let’s
remember when Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews
should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism—this before he went mad
and ended up killing six million Jews.
Livingstone’s
ahistorical claim that Hitler was somehow a Zionist—and his transparent attempt
to link Zionism and Nazism—provoked a storm of outrage across Britain. Yet even
as over a dozen Labour MPs called for Livingstone’s suspension, Corbyn remained
silent, and Livingstone went on further
talk shows to defend his remarks.
This proved too much for Labour MP John Mann, chair of the
All-Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism, who confronted Livingstone
publicly, calling him a “racist” and a “Nazi apologist”:
After this incident, Livingstone was finally suspended—but Mann
was summoned and reprimanded for his conduct. Remarkably, according to New Statesman political editor George Eaton,
Corbyn’s team wanted to suspend Mann, but was prevented by protests from the
Whip’s office.
Taken
at a glance, the Livingstone and Shah incidents certainly seem shocking and
unexpected. But taken in context, they are all too predictable. Indeed,
Corbyn’s pattern of turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism while dismissing its
detractors is reminiscent of Donald Trump’s similarly cavalier attitude towards
white supremacists among his own supporters.
As
Robert Shrimsley, the political editor of The Financial Times, put it,
“Labour has a problem with antisemitism and a leader who does not seem to care
enough about it.”
Until this changes, expect more of the same.
Yair Rosenberg is a senior
writer at Tablet and the editor of the English-language blog of the Israeli National
Archives. Follow him on Twitter @Yair_Rosenberg.
