Apologies are offered, but anti-Semitism thrives

“Mississippi Burning” was the name of the FBI investigation into the disappearance and murders of three civil rights activists in 1964 by the Ku Klux Klan. One victim, James Chaney, was Black and a local resident. The other two were white Jews from New York City, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The Freedom Summer Murders they were called, in a U.S.A. a-roil with protests and demonstrations, rather like now. The young men were working to register African-Americans to vote.

It is often forgotten now how deeply entwined American Jews were with the civil rights movement and the struggle to obtain equal rights for Blacks under the law.

“Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” was the name of an investigative Panorama documentary that aired on the BBC a year ago which probed allegations made by seven whistleblowers about widespread anti-Semitism within the Labour Party during the years it was led by Jeremy Corbyn.

A party founded in part a century ago by the Jewish Labour Movement, then known as Poale Zion, in the United Kingdom. Workingclass Jews at the time flocked to Labour as the party which reflected the hopes and aspirations of a largely impoverished migrant community but also for Labour’s deep and defining commitment to a Jewish state.

It is often forgotten now how deeply entwined British Jews have been with the very essence of the Labour Party. A party that, in the Corbyn era, was plagued by accusations of anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism, expressed in virulence towards Israel, the nation that Labour had once proudly extolled.

Apologies for anti-Semitism are in the wind.

From Labour’s new leader Keir Starmer, who three weeks ago sacked a front bench MP, shadow education secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey, for sharing a Jewish conspiracy theory that the knee-on-neck restraint which killed George Floyd had been taught to American law enforcement by the Israeli Defense Forces.

To TV host and producer Nick Cannon, with a lengthy if lame Facebook post following a podcast with controversial hip-hop figure Richard “Professor Griff” Griffin, in which Cannon amplified Griff’s views that Jewish people controlled the music industry and the media, likening it to the power of the Rothschild banking family. Really, nothing more than a modern version of the Protocols of Zion, a 19th-century hoax purporting to be the confidential minutes of a Jewish conclave plotting to take over the world.

Cannon said approvingly that Griff was “speaking facts,” praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and his ideology, and insisted Black people are the “true Hebrews.”

“It’s never hate speech,” he said. “You can’t be anti-Semitic when we are the Semitic people, when we are the same people who they want to be. That’s our birthright. We are the true Hebrews.”

Somebody give Cannon a copy of “Anti-Semitism for Dummies.”

The comedian, actor and former host of “America’s Got Talent” — a one-man entertainment dynamo — was axed by ViacomCBS last week amidst an angry backlash, after which he tweeted: “I hurt an entire community and it pained me to my core. I thought it couldn’t get any worse. Then I watched my own community turn on me and call me a sellout for apologizing. Goodnight. Enjoy Earth.’’

Because some in the Black community bravely took Cannon to task. It can’t be easy, especially in these tumultuous times of global protest over policy brutality, racial inequality and Black Lives Matter fighting for the dignity of a people, to assail a Black individual who has achieved mass cultural fame.

ViacomCBS, which also owns MTV, where Cannon’s celebrity sketch series “Wild ‘N Out” has been a fixture since 2005, issued a statement saying the company “condemns bigotry of any kind and we categorically denounce all forms of anti-Semitism.

“We have spoken with Nick Cannon about an episode of the podcast “Cannon’s Class” on YouTube, which promoted hateful speech and spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. While we support ongoing education and dialogue in the fight against bigotry, we are deeply troubled that Nick has failed to acknowledge or apologize for perpetuating antiSemitism, and we are terminating our relationship with him.”

Cannon tried again with the forelock-tugging, even while charging ViacomCBS with being “on the wrong side of history.”

“I don’t blame any individual. I blame the oppressive and racist infrastructure,” he said on Facebook. “System racism is what the world was built on and was the subject in which I was attempting to highlight in the recent clips that have been circulating from my podcast. If I have furthered the hate speech, I wholeheartedly apologize.”

Then he got his sorry around to the Jews. “I must apologize to my Jewish Brothers and Sister for putting them in such a painful position, which was never my intention, but I know this whole situation has hurt many people and together we will make it right.”

Rabbis and others in the Jewish community have, with admirable generosity of spirit, been “educating” Cannon on history. Perhaps they told him about Rabbi Joachim Prinz, whose involvement with the civil rights movement in the 1960s culminated in his “Silence” address at the 1963

March on Washington, delivered just before Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

Cannon is not a stupid man. That’s what made his ignorance so profound. And there was nothing “inadvertent” about it.

He is just, however, one pathetic fool.

How to explain an entire political party going anti-Semitically off the rails, as happened to Labour with Corbyn at the helm?

Under his leadership, radically left membership pulled Labour towards increasingly venomous criticism of Israel, which is entirely legitimate as long as it doesn’t indulge in hatred toward a people rather than a government or indulge in anti-Semitic tropes. Such as former London mayor Ken Livingstone claiming during several interviews that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. Anti-Semitic incidents just kept piling up and many Jews no longer felt comfortable under the Labour umbrella.

Labour became so embroiled in accusations of anti-Semitism that prominent human rights activist Shami Chakrabarti was asked to investigate claims of widespread antiSemitism within the party. She exonerated Labour but uncovered an “occasionally toxic atmosphere.” Many viewed her report as a whitewash. (Chakrabarti was given a peerage by Labour mere months after it was published.)

Last year saw a number of high-profile resignations of MPs and peers over anti-Semitism, including the Jewish MP Luciana Berger. The Equality and Human Rights Commission placed the party under formal investigation over whether it had unlawfully discriminated against, harassed or victimized people because they were Jewish. (The findings have yet to be released.)

There was an endless row over whether the party should adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance of anti-Semitism, which it ended up ultimately approving.

Then the whistleblowers spoke to Panorama, saying they felt there was political meddling from Corbyn’s office in the process for handling anti-Semitism complaints — of which there were hundreds and hundreds.

The Guardian reported last week that Labour is poised to formally apologize to the whistleblowers, who afterwards sued the party for defamation — they’d claimed senior party officials had issued statements attacking their reputations and that their intent was to undermine the party — as part of a settlement to put their crisis behind them.

In last December’s general election, Corbyn led Labour to its worst result in nearly a century.

Immediately after Starmer replaced Corbyn as leader in April, he held a video conference promising to set up an independent complaints process and outlining steps to stamp out anti-Semitism within Labour.

“It was very important to me to seek to address the disgrace of anti-Semitism in our party,” he said.

“Over the last few years, we have failed the Jewish community on anti-Semitism. Labour is a proudly anti-racist party and, going forward, it will not be enough to ‘past the test’ on anti-Semitism.”

Canadians should not view all these controversies and scandals as foreign to us. Jews were this country’s most targeted minority for hate crimes in 2018, according to data released in February by Statistics Canada, despite their small population. And a breakdown of hate-crime incidents revealed last month by Toronto police found 44 out of 139 hate-related incidents in 2019 targeted the Jewish community — 32 per cent of all hate crimes.

Earlier this year, a Zoom prayer service at Shaarei Shomayin synagogue was hijacked by trolls, screaming, “Gas chambers!” and “Hitler was right!”

Pandemic or pogroms, there’s never been a time when Jewhatred has not thrived.