Chaos over meetings plan as Corbyn plays ‘divide and rule’
THE BOARD of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council have said they will not attend a “round table” meeting with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn next week — and have been backed after calling on “other communal organisations to follow our lead”.
In a statement issued after the JC exclusively revealed that Mr Corbyn had invited Jewish groups including Jewish Voice for Labour to a session next Wednesday, the Board and JLC said the meeting had no “agenda for action” on how to tackle the party’s on-going antisemitism crisis.
The two organisations are still planning to meet Mr Corbyn and Jennie Formby, the new Labour general secretary, next Tuesday in a previously arranged meeting.
“After we have had our meeting with Mr Corbyn on April 24, we will see whether he and the Labour Party have committed to the action we need against antisemitism,” said the joint Board and JLC statement.
“We therefore see no reason for us to attend the round table meeting... which does not have an agenda for action.”
Other Jewish groups invited to the discussion on Wednesday include the Jewish Labour Movement, the Community Security Trust and the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism.
But CST confirmed it would decline “our invitation to this meeting for the reasons set out in the JLC and Board statement”.
JW3, Liberal Judaism, Masorti Judaism, the Jewish Rep Council of Greater Manchester and UJS also said they would not attend.
One senior community source added: “Mainstream organisations are refusing to attend. This cynical ‘divide and rule’ attempt by Mr Corbyn’s office seems to have backfired spectacularly.
“Anyone who does still attend under these circumstances will rightly have questions to answer.”
Among those planning to go to the meeting at Labour’s London headquarters is Leah Levane, JVL co-chair.
Ms Levane, who is Jewish, is a candidate for Hastings in next month’s local elections. On an article posted on Facebook last month titled “Austria’s neo-Nazis find friends in Israel”, she wrote “not surprising”.
David Abrahams, the former Labour donor, told the JC he would attend as a representative of the Gateshead Jewish community.
He said: “It is up to Jewish Labour people to sort out the issue of antisemitism in the party. If you don’t attend you won’t be there to express any viewpoint on what needs to be done.” Meanwhile Ms Formby announced her office had seconded a team of lawyers to start work “immediately” in an attempt to deal with the huge backlog of alleged antisemitism disciplinary cases within the party. She also revealed Labour had advertised for “inhouse general counsel, who will advise on disciplinary matters and improvements to our processes”.
IT WASN’T a problem. You’ll remember that. Or, insofar as it was a problem it was a small one being exaggerated by enemies of Jeremy Corbyn. Lady Chakrabarti would sort out what difficulties there were, there’d be a suspension here, of, say, naughty Ken, a distancing there, and some political education everywhere else and we’d all get on with the business of fighting the Tories. This was what you might call the mainstream Corbynite position — the Jon Lansman, Owen Jones, not-much-to-seemove-along-but-we’re-on-your-side position.
Then that fell apart. The mural. Half the Corbynites said it wasn’t antisemitic before the other half admitted that it was. Jeremy said sorry. Then the Facebook groups. Then the discipline person on the National Executive Committee turned out to have sent an a email in support of a Holocaust denial-supporting Labour candidate (a what? Am I mad?), then says she hadn’t read the complaint against him and she’s sorry. And then she resigns. And still half the stuff people like me are seeing from grassroots Corbynistas is: “it isn’t antisemitism, you’re lying”.
But now the mainstream Corbyn people have either spotted the danger of this label sticking or are actually — as they say — suddenly apprised of the truth of the situation. It’s a terrible thing, who knew? And those groups, including the ones who turned up at the Enough Is Enough protest to counter-demonstrate and who might just as well call themselves Jews Against Talking About Antisemitism, are sadly mistaken. Furthermore, Jeremy himself is fully committed etc etc etc. So he’s going to be taking it all very seriously and meeting the Board of Deputies and the Leadership Council and listening to what the Jewish communities have to say.
And you know (and the mainstream Cor- know), that’s all he really had to do. That and make sure Ken stays out of the party.
But he couldn’t even do that. Because his idea of a really good Jew is almost certainly Leah Levane. Ms Levane has got a voice on her. At the Labour Party conference in the autumn she represented Hastings and Rye constituency party (she is now a local candidate there) and Shouting As a Jew, condemned those complaining about Labour antisemitism. It was terrible, she yelled, somewhat incoherently, “that you can treat antisemitism and make that accusation every time you criticise the despicable behaviour of the state of Israel towards the Palestinian people”.
“Great contribution from LeahLevane —Jewish human-rights activist and my comrade,” tweeted Jackie Walker, “Our voice at last being heard.”
“Well Said LeahLevane, Tweeted a Kamel Hawwas. “Important Jewish voices speak up for Jewish Labour members against Zionist apologists for Israeli crimes.” Though that hadn’t been what she was supposed to be doing at all.
Ms Levane was once of Jews for Justice for Palestinians and is now of Jewish Voice for Labour. She claims to speak for the Jews who the other Jews don’t speak for. But the thing is that if you read all her tweets from 2013 to 2016 there is one aspect of life completely absent. There’s a Could Jeremy not get this one little thing right? lot about austerity and the NHS. There’s a lot about Gaza. In 2015, she goes mad for the Corbyn leadership campaign. Off the scale. Then in 2016 there’s some stuff about there being no antisemitism in Labour. But there is NOTHING about being Jewish at all. Nothing about Jewish life, Jewish events, Jewish holidays, Jewish history — zip. For someone who claims to represent Jews (as for example, I don’t) it is a bit of a gap.
Of course she may have done all the Jewish stuff on Facebook. I don’t know. What I do know of is that she wrote online, regarding an article titled Austria’s neo-Nazis find friends in Israel that this was “no surprise” and wrote elsewhere online that “Jews are often agents rather than instigators of exploitation.”
And it’s to a meeting with the organisation of which this person is a leading light that Jeremy Corbyn this week invited the Board and the Leadership Council to discuss the problem of antisemitism. Oh Owen Jones! Ah Jonny Lansman! Shall we next hold a round-table on racism in Britain featuring Caribbeans for the Confederacy and the Empire Asian Association? Why, ask yourselves comrades, could Jeremy not just get this one little thing right? Because to him Leah Levane is the real thing. She is the authentic voice of what he thinks a Jew should be. He thinks a good Jew would not even really want there to be a state of Israel.
He believes the good Jews are the ones he has been mixing with all these years. He can’t help himself. And you, JC reader, sure as hell can’t help him.