Herzog to Corbyn: Labour should undergo external investigation to root out antisemitism
Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) chairman Isaac Herzog has called on the UK Labour Party undergo an external investigation of its policies and make public recommendations for eradicating antisemitism with the party.
In a letter to Labour Party chairman Jeremy Corbyn, Herzog said that “The revelations made by the BBC Panorama documentary on the expansion of antisemitism within the Labour Party under your leadership have caused much distress and dismay. The treatment by Labour’s leadership of antisemitic incidents within the ranks of the party is properly outrageous, and the leniency and laxness displayed by the party’s institutions towards members who spread antisemitic tropes and cast antisemitic aspersions is mind-boggling.”
He explained to Corbyn that while it is permitted to criticize the government of Israel, delegitimizing the Jewish state is a form of antisemitism.
“It is antisemitic to demonize Israel and Israelis in general as inherently evil,” Herzog wrote. “It is antisemitic to apply double standards to Israel, that is: to hold it to standards to which no other nation is held. And it is antisemitic to delegitimize the Jewish people’s right to a sovereign state of its own – and to apply this denial exclusively to Jews and to no other people. All of this relies heavily on ages-old anti-Jewish prejudice, stereotypes and bigotry.
“The new mask of this old hatred fools no one,” he continued, noting that when he was head of the Labor Party, Herzog had invited Corbyn for a tour of Yad Vashem, which he turned down.
The JAFI head then recommended that antisemitism “urgently” and “determinedly” be prevented within the party. The credible way to do so, he said, would be to “entrust the probe to an outside body, which will be completely independent of the party and its leadership and which will make practical recommendations as to the right process to rid the party in the most unambiguous way of the scourge that is antisemitism.”
Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.