A defining day for Labour

Tom Freeman
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

Today has shown why Labour is having such trouble with anti-Semitism and why it has struggled so bitterly and fruitlessly over the IHRA definition. It’s because Jeremy Corbyn himself is against the definition — because, ultimately, he is against Israel. And his anti-Zionism has taken him, over the years, into the darkness.

Here’s part of the statement that Corbyn wanted to “add” to Labour’s use of the IHRA definition:

Nor should it be regarded as antisemitic to describe Israel, its policies or the circumstances around its foundation as racist because of their discriminatory impact, or to support another settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict.

And here’s one of the IHRA examples of anti-Semitism:

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.

They are in direct contradiction. Corbyn wants to be able to say that Israel — not the Israeli government but the whole country itself — is racist.

On this, Labour’s NEC refused him. A small glimmer of light for the party. But the darkness will keep drawing in for as long as he is leader, because he is the problem. Not the media, not Blairite plotters, not just a few cranks at the fringes of his support: him.

He is the one who has gone out of his way to praise Hamas, showering them with merry fantasies about their commitment to peace and democracy and justice, whitewashing their terrorism against Israel and their human rights abuses against Palestinians. (If you’re pro-Palestinian, you have to be anti-Hamas as well as anti-Likud.)

He is the one who made paid appearances on the Iranian state Press TV channel that had been involved in torturing a critical journalist, where as a phone-in host he refused to challenge the anti-Semitic rants of callers, where as an interviewee he blamed, with no evidence, “the hand of Israel” for a jihadi attack in Egypt.

He is the one who courted notorious anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, blood libellers and 9/11 conspiracy-mongers like Stephen Sizer, Raed Salah and Paul Eisen.

He is the one who claims not to notice what mural he’s defending or what wreath he’s laying.

He is the one who cast aspersions on the Englishness of English Jews who oppose his politics. (But he likes the ones who agree with him.)

He is the one who, when people ask him about such things, responds not with mortified repentance but with bored platitude and tetchy obfuscation.

And today he was the one who tried to torpedo the IHRA definition because for him, it isn’t enough to say that Netanyahu is racist, that successive Israeli governments have treated Palestinians abominably. He wants his supporters to be able to say that the whole country is wrong and bad and never should have been.

I’m sure he genuinely believes he’s not an anti-Semite — just an anti-imperialist, standing up for the downtrodden. But he’s shown himself serially incapable of recognising anti-Semitism when it’s staring him in the face. He didn’t see it in Sizer or Salah or Eisen, he didn’t see it on Facebook, he didn’t see in Hamas, he didn’t see it on Press TV, and he doesn’t see it in the mirror each morning.

He is the one at the top, spreading the rot. And how it spreads. When yet another grotesquery slips out of his back catalogue, a sizable minority of his supporters shout “Smear!” and contort themselves to justify whatever the latest revelation is. They rush to proclaim that the offended Jews don’t understand anti-Semitism, to allege Zionist media conspiracies.

When any of his supporters do get disciplined or reprimanded or investigated for anti-Semitic behaviour, they then find themselves passionately defended by their comrades, celebrated as if they were martyrs, and even re-elected to party posts. Too many on the Labour left are training themselves, under Corbyn’s benevolent eye, to tolerate antisemitism.

But I’m sure — I dearly hope — that many of them are not. They can sense that things are not right. And I hope they’ll think hard about whether the moral compromises of Corbynism are really worth it.

Tom Freeman

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