UK Labour Party suspends legislators for anti-Semitism
But clarity on related racism sorely lacking, writes Leonid Bershidsky
THE Labour Party in the UK is embroiled in an anti-Semitism scandal. It has resulted in the suspension from the party of an MP, a former London mayor and several local legislators.
And those are just the public suspensions; Labour has reportedly suspended 50 members in the past two months over racist and anti-Semitic comments.
It is damaging, and it highlights the need for a clear definition of the modern incarnation of anti-Semitism.
The scandal broke out over a Facebook post Naz Shah, a newly elected Labour MP, had written before winning her seat in parliament. It suggested “relocating Israel into United States”, arguing the transportation would cost less than three years of US defence aid to Israel, and that the “whole world will be happy” as a result. Although Ms Shah apologised for the post in parliament, saying “antiSemitism is racism”, she was suspended from the party.
The same fate awaited former London mayor Ken Livingstone. He tried to defend Ms Shah, saying her remark was not antiSemitic — and then launched into a bizarre tirade in which he claimed that “Hitler supported Zionism” in 1932, before going “mad and killing 6-million Jews”. That got him suspended and sent off to tend his beloved newts.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn says he is determined to weed out every possible form of racism including anti-Semitism, from the party, and he has set up an independent inquiry. So far, three local councillors have been suspended: one for sharing the same Facebook post that got Ms Shah in trouble, one for blaming Islamic State terror attacks on a “Zionism game being played”, and a third for tweeting to Israeli soccer player Yossi Benayoun: “You and your country doing the same thing that hitler did to ur race in ww2.”
I am Jewish, and I am not equally offended by the statements for which these Labour officials have been suspended. In some of these cases, I think, their right to free speech should have been better protected. I do not believe Ms Shah was seriously proposing the forced removal of Israeli Jews to the US I think she was expressing the view that Israel is an impostor in the midst of a Muslim region. I disagree, and my sympathies lie with Israel, but I think the argument about its role is political and, to some extent, religious, rather than racial.
Mr Livingstone’s defence of Ms Shah is not anti-Semitic either, as far as I’m concerned, though it is misguided. Hitler never supported Zionism — he just authorised a programme that allowed German Jews to emigrate to Palestine while keeping part of their assets. He remained firmly opposed to the idea of a Jewish state, in Palestine or elsewhere. Yet Mr Livingstone did not say anything I could interpret as racially charged. In fact, he correctly described the Holocaust as a mad enterprise on a huge scale.
Of the “offensive” statements that caused the suspensions, only one was openly racist — the one that lumped Mr Benayoun with what the writer, Shah Hussain, described as Israel’s Hitler-like policies, simply on the basis of his nationality.
All these remarks, however, would qualify as anti-Semitic under the 2005 “working definition of anti-Semitism” by the now-defunct European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC).
There is a reason the European Union’s Fundamental Right Agency (FRA), the EUMC’s successor, has not been using this definition since 2013. It is too restrictive; it tells one side in a long-standing conflict that its political and territorial gripes are racist and so illegitimate.
In 2014, the FRA issued a summary of all available data on antiSemitism in Europe without attempting to define the phenomenon. That is akin to hiding one’s head on the sand.
A good, detailed, official definition is urgently needed, both to serve as a framework for efforts such as the one Labour is undertaking now, and to show Europe’s population the line that should not be crossed if Europe is to be a peaceful home to diverse ethnic and religious groups.