Conflation of issues is crippling Labour
Tparty. hey were This 10 week words the party that ’shook s ruling Jeremy body accepted Corbyn’s the Labour International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism and the accompanying examples in full, including that it can be considered antisemitic to claim the “existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour”.
This ought to have ended Labour’s summer of madness. Yet it seems Britain’s political season will begin as the holidays started: with finger-jabbing rows about how racist or not the Labour leader is. Some Labour MPs say Corbyn can’t solve this crisis as he is the problem. He has certainly made mistakes, and has apologised for some. British Jews’ trust in his party is at a historic low. Some of the criticism is fair, some is unfair. The heart of the problem is that two issues are being conflated: one is the crisis in the Holy Land; the other is the safety and security of Jews in the UK.
The Labour party is not antisemitic, but there are pockets of Jew-hatred within it. Online these have festered, often unchecked. Bigotry cannot be acceptable among Labour members. The defence of anti-Zionism cannot be invoked when using antisemitic tropes. Corbyn must stop supporters turning a denial of antisemitism into a kind of left wing principle. His ally, Peter Willsman, made unacceptable remarks and is unfit, at present, to sit in judgment on others on the national executive committee. There is a kneejerk and wrong response by sections of the left to see a factional attack behind every claim of antisemitism. The fear and anxiety felt by many British Jews is not to be belittled. Labour must be a reliable ally in fighting prejudice and Corbyn’s party ought to be a protective, not hostile, environment.
Corbyn had grounds not to implement the text in full. Six nations that have implemented the IHRA are engaged in outright glorification of Nazi collaborators and Holocaust distortion, if not denial. It was deemed flawed by a parliamentary select committee in 2016, and has ended up as a tool, according to its author, to curtail free speech in the US. This is a real concern. Next month one London council will debate whether to ban supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement from using its facilities, because BDS allegedly fits the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Corbyn does not support the boycott movement, but he wants to protect the right not only to criticise but to organise around that criticism. London, September 5