i dunno. I imagine if all this abuse from supporters of corbyn was about black people, you’d see a different response.
Dunno mate but black people were abused by Windrush and apart from the occasional mention it’s largely brushed under the carpet now.
Also I know it’s not the same but the Conservative party seems quite content with the growing Islamaphobia in its party. And the reaction there is flaccid at best.
I understood @nickm's post more to be about the reaction among the Corbyn-aligned parts of Labour, not the public as a whole. Maybe he can clear that up. (Edit: he just did.)Dunno mate but black people were abused by Windrush and apart from the occasional mention it’s largely brushed under the carpet now.
Also I know it’s not the same but the Conservative party seems quite content with the growing Islamaphobia in its party. And the reaction there is flaccid at best.
By groups or fan clubs identifying with Labour or Corbyn?Yes, black people are never abused on the Internet
By groups or fan clubs identifying with Labour or Corbyn?
Dunno mate but black people were abused by Windrush and apart from the occasional mention it’s largely brushed under the carpet now.
Also I know it’s not the same but the Conservative party seems quite content with the growing Islamaphobia in its party. And the reaction there is flaccid at best.
I agree. But this is a thread about Corbyn and his weakness on antisemitism.
As wrong as it is, and I agree with you, the difference is the Conservative party are already in power and unless Corbyn's Labour Party changes people's minds about him and this issue they are likely to remain in power.
Weak response.Famously no one ever pretends to be something they aren't on the internet
Weak response.
So its march 2019, have Jeremy and the Labour party stopped hating jews yet?
They don't have to because it's an Israeli conspiracy that's only on the internet and some people don't like blacks either.So its march 2019, have Jeremy and the Labour party stopped hating jews yet?
They don't have to because it's an Israeli conspiracy that's only on the internet and some people don't like blacks either.
Was this supposed to be funny?They are working on afinalsolution
No, this is. It’s a great article by John Harris that says it all better than I can.That the best comeback you could manage?
No, this is. It’s a great article by John Harris that says it all better than I can.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/04/labour-antisemitism-party-left-bigotry
They are working on afinalsolution
John Harris, oh wow, he's the authority on everything
Are your replies to everything always this dull?
@Eboue i had an even longer post written out but I’ll leave it for the sake of our time, etc. Enough to say that while I don’t share the basic assumptions which underlie your approach to this conflict, we could legitimately discuss and argue over any of your points without it ever crossing my mind that antisemitism was a motivating factor in your critique. I’ll just comment on the fifth point though, because it presents an opportunity to look at just how I feel the popular contemporary leftist critique of Israel tends to leave spaces to be filled by antisemitic discourse.
It is of course the nature of the left to focus on the power relations it deems define the conflict and issue its support accordingly. I think this approach has its limitations but it's completely legitimate as long as it's just the start of the analysis, not the end of it. A good old-fashioned Marxist approach to the conflict would strive to identify the roots of the apparent power imbalance by applying the classic critiques of imperialism and nationalism to the conflict, identifying the various material factors which produced it and continue to prolong it, while honestly and without hesitation accounting for everything that complicates a purely black-and-white assessment (this is the approach taken by the Marxist Arabist Maxime Rodinson who wrote one of my favorite books on this conflict, Israel and the Arabs).
Unfortunately I think today an influential (though perhaps not particularly large) section of the left has little interest or time for this kind of approach, it prefers a reflexive analysis based to some degree on the identification of the conflicting parties with the identity and racial politics which have come to dominate so much leftist discourse in the West. The idea that there are clear-cut divisions between certain privileged groups and the not so privileged - a valuable approach generally in my opinion, but always problematic when applied to the Jews because antisemitism requires at least some Jews to be perceived as privileged and powerful in order to flourish. So Israel becomes the privileged White Man in the Middle East, or worse the successful powerful Jew, imposing itself on a basically defenseless subaltern people, and no further explanation is really needed since all we need to understand are these relations of power.
Problems arise when this simple approach is confronted with complicating factors. Some obvious examples would be: the antisemitism which drove the original Zionist project and ultimately produced the Holocaust; the fact that about half the Jewish-Israeli population is descended from the MENA region; the very real and genuine historical, cultural, religious and emotional ties Jews have always maintained with the contested land; the genuine liberal strain that exists in Israeli society; the very real security challenges Israel faces in the region; the sorry state of politics in the surrounding hostile region; and the fact that the regional confrontation with Israel over the decades has been channeled primarily through two ideologies - Arab nationalism and Islamism - which are inherently illiberal, intolerant, and some might argue fascist in nature. Acknowledgement of these things needn't alter the ultimate conclusion that Israel is the oppressor and the Palestinians the oppressed. But without an honest accounting for them in the analysis, they will be ignored, minimized, distorted or denied when raised, and lazy, reflexive, conspiratorial and in some cases antisemitic rhetoric will fill the gap (hence "it's AIPAC" or "Zionist controlled-media!").
So Zionists are resented for having suffered the Holocaust which they now employ to secure their privileged status, while being told they are actually implicated in the Holocaust (or else the Holocaust is explained away in some fashion); Mizrachi Jews are told they're suffering from a false consciousness; Ashkenazi Jews are dismissed as the descendants of the Khazars; Israeli Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism are told they themselves are responsible since they are represented by a "baby-killing" military; Israeli liberalism is an insincere facade used to "-wash" Israel of its crimes for a Western audience; Arab dictatorships are simply serving the Zionist agenda and nothing more; and the "resistance" is actually an authentic and legitimate left-wing socialist response in Middle Eastern garb. What this all looks like to any Jew with any kind of attachment to Israel (i.e. most of them) is a collective attempt to dismiss their history and narrative as contrived, fraudulent, and nefarious; so that even in cases where no antisemitic implication is intended or indeed even explicitly apparent, there is a natural tendency to see antisemitism nonetheless. I do think many Zionists could be more understanding of the ways that well-meaning people can get sucked into this kind of discourse. And of course there will be those who seek to cynically employ "antisemitism" in any case - in an age where so much political discourse places premium value on the idea of a hierarchy of victimhood, it would be extremely strange to find that Jews alone were somehow immune to the temptations of the race to the bottom.
John Harris, oh wow, he's the authority on everything
He is a left leaning journo who goes out and actually reports. His question - why do anti semites think Labour is the party for them - is still unanswered by you.
Thats being kind. Also didn't he spend two years going around the country reporting the ''real'' views of the British people only to then call the election completely wrong. Hence why he now works at the IT department at The Guardian.He is a left leaning journo who goes out and actually reports.
why do anti semites think Labour is the party for them - is still unanswered by you.
https://antisemitism.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Antisemitism-Barometer-2017.pdfBy comparing these responses with the data from the polls of the British population that we commissioned YouGov to undertake, we can pinpoint the problem. The YouGov data shows, for example, that Labour Party supporters are less likely to be antisemitic than other voters, so the cause of British Jews’ discontentment with the Labour Party must be the way that it has very publicly failed to robustly deal with the antisemites in its ranks. This means that the Labour Party has fallen out of step with its core supporters, who are generally less likely to hold antisemitic beliefs.
It seems to me that you are saying that a) there is a good deal of antisemitism on the left and b) even stuff that isnt antisemitism can seem that way to most jews.
This isnt 1933 and they arent in gdansk. Israel is the major power in the region, had nuclear weapons, has a more advanced military than its regional rivals and has the support of the major superpower. Their position is safer than most people in recorded history and much safer than their immediate neighbors. I understand that it's natural to recognize historical persecution and be wary but that doesnt excuse the actions of the state of Israel...
...Ilhan Omar...in fact all lobbying is about the Benjamins
As for your list of things that should be acknowledged, I think most of them are. The left that I identify with isnt enamored with the Arab nationalism or Islamism. I think my views on Islam as a religion are well documented on here. I think we acknowledge the threats that Israel faces but still disagree with the vastly disproportionate responses and continued oppression the state engages in. I dont need to go point by point but I generally reject the idea that any more than a small minority on the left opposes Israeli actions as a base reaction
On (a) what I said was that the approach taken to the conflict by an influential though unquantifiable section of the left leaves gaps/spaces in the analysis which are often filled by reflexive antisemitic discourse. On (b) I said "even in cases where no antisemitic implication is intended or indeed even explicitly apparent" - I'm sure you're aware that a lack of racist intent does not necessarily = lack of racism, and that racist rhetoric is often delivered through implicit means. So you have me wrong on both counts there.
Like I said, I disagree with your reading of the conflict and Israel's regional position, but it's not really relevant to this discussion. I'm not asking you or the left to excuse Israel or change your position on the conflict. I'm asking for a thorough, honest understanding of the various complex dynamics at work. Not bone-headed, thoughtless analysis which explains nothing but produces glib soundbites on Twitter which have David Duke and Richard Spencer nodding with approval. So for example a mention of the role of AIPAC in the US-Israel alliance should just be the start of the conversation, not the end of it, and it should carefully consider all the alternative factors which drive the alliance, of which there are many (for a good old-fashioned left-wing analysis I'd recommend Chomsky in Fateful Triangle, p. 47-94). Omar's time would be much better spent considering the various reasons why a vast majority of Americans still tend to favour the Israeli side in the conflict and attempting to undermine those reasons - not by claiming "it's all about the Benjamins" (it's not), but by meticulously spelling out for Americans the conditions imposed on Palestinians in the territories, highlighting the militarism of the Israeli state, its dubious regional/international alliances, its wars, its illiberal political order and identity, etc. There are legitimate criticisms to be made on all these and other fronts without a whiff of an antisemitic image or trope, and she has the national platform to do so (and just in case it doesn't go without saying, I agree the attacks on Omar are far worse than anything she's done).
Or to give another example more relevant to this thread, when asked his opinion about a jihadi attack in the Sinai which targeted Israeli soldiers, Corbyn should have discussed the conditions in the Sinai which have given rise to such groups, the growth of jihadist ideology in the region as a whole, and the various ways the policies of the Egyptian and Israeli governments have helped fuel this growth. Instead he simply claimed to see "the hand of Israel" behind the attack, and he did it on the propaganda arm of an antisemitic Islamist regime. Which leads me to...
The part of the left I am talking about is or has been quite enamored with these things over the years. I got interested in politics during the 18-month period between 9/11 and the Iraq War. The charge towards war left me sickened, but then there was that side of the left which responded not just with criticism of US militarism and all that, but with a defense of Saddam and, when the war got underway, the insurgency which grew in response. We had people like Galloway glorifying the jihadis and John Pilger pragmatically arguing that the cost of supporting the insurgency was worth bearing in the face of the American war machine (these two of course denounced the same jihadis as soon as they turned their guns on the anti-American dictator in Syria later on). This is the left I have always identified Corbyn with since I've been aware of him, long before he became Labour Party leader. I generally thought of him as a cuddly, boring and inoffensive version of George Galloway. Corbyn himself was one of the founders of the Stop the War Coalition which tried to legitimise the insurgency in October 2004 (by which point the nature of the insurgency was quite clear). He has marched under Hezbollah flags, called Hamas and Hezbollah "friends", invited Islamists to parliament, and conducted propaganda work for an explicitly Islamist regime. Similar indifference to the nature of these movements can be found across the section of the left I'm on about (see for example Ken Livingstone's comments on Yusuf al-Qaradawi). I didn't just pluck the "authentic and legitimate left-wing socialist response in Middle Eastern garb" out of my arse; here's a quote from Judith Butler - "understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important." And before Islamism merged as a real force, this was the same section of the left which threw its weight behind the Arab nationalist movement represented by the likes of Nasser and the PLO.
That's just one example but the same applies to the rest of those points - I have encountered them all regularly over a long time being engaged in this conversation. Perhaps you haven't and perhaps the trend isn't nearly as strong in the US as it is in Europe (that is a point mentioned in this article on the Gaza = Auschwitz analogy). Fair enough.
Arguably, Labour's current malaise began not with Corbyn, but his predecessor, Ed Miliband. Though he was the party’s first Jewish leader, and expressed a desire to become the “first Jewish prime minister”, his relationship with the community was neither warm nor easy.
That Labour has historically been the “natural home” for British Jews is often invoked when expressing disbelief over anti-Semitism in its ranks. Less frequent are acknowledgements of the community's support for Thatcher, or even – shock horror – that British Jews do not think or vote as one.
Under Miliband, however, something changed: under his leadership, support for Labour among the Jewish community began to crater. The last poll of Jewish voters that gave the party a lead over the Conservatives was taken in the early days of his tenure. By its end, in 2015, polling showed just 14 per cent of Jewish voters were willing to back Labour (just one per cent more than its poll rating under Corbyn ahead of the 2017 election).
As with Corbyn, the roots of the problem can be traced to the Middle East. Miliband, the son of Holocaust refugees, did not grow up in the Jewish community but nonetheless made a concerted attempt to connect with it. His first overseas visit as leader was to Israel. Its conflict with Palestine would prove to be the issue that rendered his efforts pointless. His decision to whip Labour MPs to vote for a backbench motion in favour of recognising the state in October 2014 proved toxic.
This decision also compounded damage done during Operation Protective Edge three months previously, which saw Miliband direct fierce criticism at the Israeli government over its conduct in Gaza. “I defend Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket attacks,” he told Labour’s National Policy Forum. “But I cannot explain, justify, or defend the horrifying deaths of hundreds of Palestinians, including children and innocent civilians. And as a party we oppose the further escalation of violence we have seen with Israel’s invasion of Gaza.”
His rhetoric was criticised by Jewish community leaders. The Jewish Chronicle accused him of “knee-jerk criticism of a nation defending itself from terrorism”, while Kate Bearman, a former director of Labour Friends of Israel, quit the party in protest. The backlash presaged a bigger headache caused by the vote to recognise Palestine’s statehood in October, when the actress Maureen Lipman – a Labour supporter of several decades’ vintage – denounced Miliband in a headline-grabbing protest.
“Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse,” Lipman wrote in a polemic for Standpoint magazine that November. “Just when the anti-Semitism in France, Denmark, Norway, Hungary is mounting savagely, just when our cemeteries and synagogues and shops are once again under threat. Just when the virulence against a country defending itself, against 4,000 rockets and 32 tunnels inside its borders, as it has every right to do under the Geneva Convention, had been swept aside by the real pestilence of IS, in steps Mr Miliband to demand that the government recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel.”
Revealing she would not vote for Labour, she added: “I'm an actress, Ed, and I am often commended for my timing. Frankly, my dear, yours sucks.” So did the timing of her attack, as far as Labour’s electoral prospects were concerned. Several Jewish donors deserted the party. At the general election the following May, several north London marginals with large Jewish populations stayed stubbornly blue: Harrow East, Hendon, Finchley and Golders Green.
The lacklustre term of the party’s first Jewish leader – who has maintained a studious silence on the current crisis (aside from a single tweet calling for Labour to adopt the full IHRA definition) – ended with support among the Jewish community at its lowest for two decades. His rhetoric and shift in policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict was nonetheless welcomed by some British Jews – who, as commentary on Labour’s woes often neglects, are by no means universally supportive of the Israeli government. A 2015 poll found that 73 per cent thought Israel's approach to peace was damaging its standing in the world, with 71 per cent backing a two-state solution.
Around the time of Operation Protective Edge, Miliband's criticism of Israel was accompanied by an unequivocal condemnation of anti-Semitism. Calling for a “zero-tolerance approach”, he said: “The recent spate of incidents should serve as a wake-up call for anyone who thought the scourge of anti-Semitism had been defeated and that the idea of Jewish families fearful of living here in Britain was unthinkable.
“Some have told me how, for the first time in their lifetime, they are scared for their children’s future in our country. Others have expressed a general unease that this rise in anti-Semitism could signal that something has changed – or is changing – in Britain.”
As parlous as Labour’s standing in the Jewish community was by the end of Miliband’s tenure, none could have predicted that, within the space of three years, it would be using eerily similar language to describe his successor – and that that successor would be Jeremy Corbyn.
And there it is, proof if it was ever needed that it's about Israel and not about antisemitism.
What about self determination for Palestinians?
On another note, this seems surprising.
I'm sure it won't come to a strike, which would be awkward.
It does hint at one of the problems that this current form of Labour would have in power though. When you're that close to the unions, you really have no choice but to say yes when they ask for improved terms for members, or you face accusations of hypocrisy.
But what happens if the unions start asking for improvements in terms that are completely OTT? Its not their role to worry about Government finances, its their role to campaign for their members, so Labour can hardly hope that they'll just be reasonable. In a weird way the unions are more of a threat to Labour than to the Tories. With the Tories, its a given that they'll be butting heads with the unions, no-one expects otherwise. But widespread action by the unions against the decisions of a Corbyn led Government? That could have all sorts of strange consequences.
