Corbyn isn’t fit to run a whelk stall

IF ANYTHING proves that Jeremy Corbyn is wholly unfit for high office, it is his handling of the anti-Semitism row. To allow damaging headlines day after day and make no real effort to bring the matter to a decisive end is a depressing indication of how he would handle the affairs of the nation.

If it was simply a matter of weak leadership that would be bad enough but it is more sinister than that. Corbyn has in the past shown sympathy for IRA and Hamas terrorists and has appeared reluctant to condemn terrorist acts outright – which I think might shake the young out of their love affair with him if only they focused on the pictures of the aftermaths – as long as the cause appeals to him.

Much worse however is his reluctance to embrace the full definition of anti-Semitism as propagated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association because of two particular clauses: one asserting the right of the state of Israel to exist and one forbidding comparisons between Israel and the Nazis.

AS READERS of this page will know I defend free speech and if somebody wants to deny the Holocaust then so be it. The right reaction is to crush such assertions by argument and historical fact, not by criminal penalty. Let people argue for fascism, Marxism or for Earth being flat.

OK, but what serious political party wants Holocaust deniers or flat earthers as its candidates or MPs? On that same basis therefore what serious political party wants its members to compare the Israelis with Nazis?

Has the Israeli government set up extermination camps? Do Arabs, who make up 20 per cent of the population, have to go around with signs proclaiming themselves inferior? Is there a supreme dictator? Are citizens imprisoned for not subscribing to state-imposed views?

The answer to those and many other such questions is no, so why compare a modern democracy with the horror that was unleashed in the 1930s?

There is only one reason and that is to hurt and insult the immediate descendants of those who were tortured and murdered by the Nazis. Does Corbyn really want his MPs doing that? If not then why not adopt the full definition?

As for not allowing the state of Israel to exist, some 70 per cent of those living there were born there. Historical rights and wrongs cannot alter that, any more than they can alter the separation of Northern Ireland from the Republic.

Nothing in the definition prevents criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinian areas on either moral or political grounds so where is Corbyn’s problem?

Of course he decries anti-Semitism but actions speak louder than words, Jeremy.