Worried Jews ‘think about quitting UK’

MANY Jewish people in Britain would emigrate if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, a senior politician warned yesterday.

Andrew Feldman, former chairman of the Conservatives, said members of the community were reluctantly making ‘contingency plans’ because of the scale of Labour’s anti-Semitism.

Writing in London’s Evening Standard, Lord Feldman, who is Jewish, said: ‘Mr Corbyn, I want you to know that many Jewish people in the United Kingdom are seriously contemplating their future here in the event of you becoming prime minister.

‘This is because they can see that Labour, a party with a proud tradition of tolerance and inclusiveness, is now a hotbed of feelings against Israel and therefore the Jewish people. Quietly, discreetly and extremely reluctantly they are making their contingency plans. And this would be a tragedy.’

He added: ‘It is time you... took aggressive steps to erase antiZionism from the Labour Party.’

Gideon Falter, chairman of Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, said: ‘Labour is now so institutionally anti-Semitic under his leadership that the Jewish community considers it to be a threat to our very future in this country.’

Around 250,000 Jewish people live in the UK. The Jewish Agency For Israel said 213 had left for Israel in the first half of this year – up 9 per cent on last year.

Dr Moshe Kantor, of the European Jewish Congress, said many Jews feel they have no future in Britain because Labour had failed to take a stronger line on antiSemitism, but added that he thought the UK ‘remains a safe and welcoming place to be Jewish’.

A Labour spokesman said: ‘The attempt to conflate criticism of policies of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism is wrong.’